The unexpected learning opportunities that free online dictionaries for kids provide can not be overemphasized. The simple act of checking a word online will not just boost their vocabulary, but will also improve their spell and writing ability.
In as much as we speak of online dictionaries, most dictionaries have opened the online platform for kids and adults in general. That doesn’t mean traditional, printable dictionaries are not necessary.
They are still needed, the feelings that come from paper dictionaries are also required for your child’s growth process.
That said, there are some dictionary apps and translations that can also help your kids to easily navigate through Android or iPhone. Even though your kid is upgrading from online dictionaries, you can also improve their growth process through free online art classes.
Or if you discovered your kid is tech-savvy, the best coding websites can help you see more of their potential.
Why do kids need special dictionaries?
You might feel like, “my kid can use the same dictionary I also use,” yes they can actually. But free online dictionaries for kids are customized in such a way that your kids can have fun searching for a particular word or words.
Like most of the dictionaries listed here, your kid will not just see the meaning of a word, he will also see the picture of that word. Which will make them feel more engaged in the dictionary and even want to research more words.
You don’t want your kids to be looking up, on our boring kind of dictionaries, where you will only look for the word you want and that’s it. Also, some special kinds of dictionaries have some videos that will enable your kid to learn more about the word.
Further, words in kids’ dictionaries are simple words and have simple meanings. Unlike our normal kind of dictionaries, that will give lots of meanings to a word.
I’m not saying that your kids can’t cope with normal dictionaries but free online dictionaries for kids make it simple and fun to learn. Simplicity is a lot better especially for children.
Benefits of free online dictionaries for kids
- One of the biggest benefits of free online dictionaries for kids is that it is FREE. You get to save a few dollars and your kid will still learn the best word he/she is to learn.
- Online dictionaries offer lots of features, unlike paper dictionaries. You’ll get to play lots of games like puzzles, scrabble, Roman numerals games, maths, and science. Your kid can also learn grammar from the free online dictionaries for kids.
- It is also quick to search from an online dictionary. You kid don’t need to be flipping through pages to get a word. Even if he/she doesn’t know the word, there are word suggestions to help them out.
- There is an audio pronunciation. Unlike traditional dictionaries where all you get is a written pronunciation, free online dictionaries for kids audio pronunciation will enable your kids to easily learn to pronounce a word.
How to find the best online dictionaries for kids
In this post, we got your back to the best online dictionaries for kids, so all you have to do is to read the review, and anyone you think is best for your kid, you can visit the website.
Free Online Dictionaries for Kids
This is the list of free online dictionaries for kids
- Kids.wordsmyth
- Fact Monster
- Britannica Kids
- Oxford Dictionary
- Merriam–Webster’s Word Central
- Little Explorers
- ESOL HELP
- Collins Dictionary
- Dictionary.com
- A Maths Dictionary For Kids
1. Kids.wordsmyth
This is one of the free online dictionaries for kids that has a very cool user interface. Their website is easy to navigate even for your kids.
The designers made it in a way that your kids can enjoy searching for words. Once you visit their website you can start searching for a particular word(s).
Moreover, you can also register to have access to more features, such as;
- Save and share quiz links
- Access to more study tools
- Your kid will also have access to customize his/her dictionary to their best taste.
- Also, this is one of the free online dictionaries for kids where a registered user will be able to see the history of words they have searched.
- When your kid registers, he/she will help kids.wordsmyth to become a better dictionary, and to serve your kid and other kids better.
There is no cause for alarm, registration is totally free, you don’t need to add your credit card to register. When you’ve registered and logged in, your display name will appear at the top of the screen.
Your kid can choose to use his full name or a cool nickname, it just needs to be unique, that is, nobody must have used it. So he/she might need to try a couple of times to get a name no other user is using.
When you’re done registering, they will send you an activation code to verify your identity and to make sure no one registers with another person’s email or even register with a fake account.
As much as this software is free for all users and kids, some features are also restricted to registered users. When you subscribe for an individual fee of $9.95 per year, your kid will have access to more features like;
- Word parts
- Word combinations
- No limit to user-made sharing
- Ads Free
And many more features. Subscribing is not compulsory.
Moreover, this is one of the free online dictionaries for kids that have thesaurus embedded in it. That is, if you search on anything, maybe “beautiful,” the dictionary will show you its antonyms, synonyms, and more related words.
Furthermore, if you know the meaning of a word but don’t know the word itself, with their “reverse search,” you can find this word. Even though you can’t spell the word (which happens sometimes), with their word suggestion, you can see similar spellings’.
With “multi-word result,” you’ll be able to see some phrases and compound nouns from the word you just searched. Once you’ve registered, you can save your quizzes and glossaries and you can access these quizzes from the “My Activities Tab,” from my Wordsmyth.
This online dictionary is also available for App Store and Google Play.
2. Fact Monster
Fact Monster is one of the free online dictionaries for kids that have fun website aesthetics. A cute monster, by the name Frank, welcomes you to the website, with a simple “I’m Frank, I help you with homework and facts. In case that gets boring, I’ll also have some online educational games and trivial quizzes for you.”
That said, Fact Monster has lots of educational games that can keep your kids busy even when they don’t have any word to search. There are;
- Roman Numeral Challenge
- Maths Flashcards
- Hangman Games
- 1010 Classic
- Simon Says
- Merge It
- Tic Tac Toe
- Sudoku
- Poptropica
These games don’t just provide fun to your kids, but it keeps them to continuous learning. The dictionary section, which can be found in the tool section of the home site, have over 125,000 dictionary entries.
You can also lookup, on other misspelled words, which can enable you to master them and not repeat the same mistake while writing or in a competition. Or you can check words that are frequently mispronounced, or you can read an article on “tips to spell better.”
This is one of the free online dictionaries for kids that you can find lots of meaning for a particular word. Also, you can use the thesaurus key to learn more about the figure of speech, synonyms, and related words.
There are so many categories and classes offered by Fact Monster, including;
- World: Where your kid can learn a brief history about
- Each country of the World
- The World in general
- War
- Religion Natural Disaster
- The U.S.
- U.S. history
- Government
- Geography
- Cities
- Flags
- States
- Timelines
- People
- Maths & Science
- Language Arts
In addition, this is one of the free online dictionaries for kids where your kid can take lots of quizzes, their quizzes are sorted in alphabetical order. And, you can find quizzes such as U.S. history, Harry Potter Quizzes, Science Quizzes, and a lot more.
3. Britannica Kids
Britannica Kids is one of the free online dictionaries for kids that is easy to navigate. By just typing a word, you’ll be able to see lots of meaning to that word.
Further, you’ll see some videos related to that word you searched. For instance, you searched the meaning of a Leopard, you’ll see another video section where you’ll see videos on;
- Overview of Leopard
- The rarest big cat in the world
- Leopard hiding their food from other animals
And, many more.
Moreover, this is one of the free online dictionaries for kids that your child can learn from different articles including;
- Different kinds of animals, I’m talking about the amphibians, the extinct animals, insects, mammals, mollusks.
- Fine Arts: This category has lots of online art classes for beginners and kids. You’ll be seeing articles for architecture, craft, dance, drawing, music, movies and television, painting, photography, sculpture, theatre.
- Language art
- Plants and other living things.
And others.
With the paid version, which has a 7-day free trial, you can have access to a lot of their features. Such as, more than 130k fact-checked articles, help with homework, over 60,000 images and videos, over 1,100 biographies.
4. Oxford Dictionary
We all know about Oxford Dictionary, and how you can find almost any word in it. It is not age-restricted, therefore it is one of the free online dictionaries for kids that is always updated.
Through the “topic dictionaries,” your kid can improve their vocabulary through certain groups. That is, if the kid chooses animal group, he will see words under the animal, and when he chooses a particular word under animal, dog, for instance, he will see more words under dog.
Such as; Afghan Hound, Attack Dog, Assistance Dog, Basset, Beagle, and many more. You can also listen to both American and British pronunciation.
Moreover, Oxford Dictionary is one of the free online dictionaries for kids that teaches grammar also. You can learn present perfect and past perfect tenses; quantifiers, possessives, and demonstratives.
5. Merriam–Webster’s Word Central
This is another no-age-limit dictionary. It is one of the free online dictionaries for kids where you can freely test your verbal sensor with two amazing games;
- Robo-Bee; where your understanding of synonyms, antonyms, spelling, and use of puzzles will be tested.
- BIGbot; will test your vocabulary competence, you’ll need to feed the bot with strong words.
This dictionary also has weekly vocabulary words for kids, where your kids’ vocabulary will improve through their weekly provision of new words. Interestingly, these new words and their meanings are simple to learn and memorize.
Further, from Merriam-Webster’s official website your kid can search word on it.
6. Little Explorers
This is one of the free online dictionaries for kids that provides picture dictionaries. That is, it doesn’t just explain a word with a few sentences, it goes further to give a pictorial explanation of that word.
Also when your kid clicks on a word, it will show so many other related words from that word. For instance, when your child clicks on “adjectives,” he/she will see adjectival words and their pictures, like; Afraid, Ajar, Angry, Big, Clean, Closed, Fast, Green, Slow, Sick, Tall, Young, etc.
In addition, your kid can learn to translate words from English to; Dutch, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, German, Spanish. Your kid can also play some of their educational games like “choosing an adjective that absolutely describes a picture.”
Further, this is one of the free online dictionaries for kids that your kid can learn phonics. However, your kid can’t type a specific word in this dictionary.
7. ESOL HELP
This is one of the free online dictionaries for kids that explains a word with pictures. If you click on a word you will see other words related to it.
For instance, when you click on “action,” you’ll see words that require to be acted upon, such as; bake, crawl, cry, buy, comb, dance, eat, grill, mop, drive, push, slap. Or, when you click on nature, you’ll see words under nature, such as; avalanche, beach, desert, drought, earth, eclipse.
This is also one of the free online dictionaries for kids that offer educational games for your kids. There are spelling games, grammar games, vocabulary games, science, games, maths games, social studies games, map games, and many more.
You kid can also take some ESL tests and quizzes, such as vocabulary and grammar tests and quizzes.
8. Collins Dictionary
Collins Dictionary is for both kids and adults. It is one of the free online dictionaries for kids that have been around for approximately 2 centuries.
And since then, it has been helpful to word search for all ages. It doesn’t only help your kid to know the meaning of new words.
It also helps them to know the French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Chinese, Korean, Japanese translations. Moreover, these foreign translations are up-to-date.
For instance, the Collins English to French translation, has over 230,000-word translations, thousands of necessary phrases, idioms. Your kid is also equipped with both audio and video pronunciation, and will also get example sentences.
When you search on a word, “fine,” for instance, you’ll see the part of speech it belongs to. The pronunciation, the word form, the word frequency (how it is regularly used in a sentence).
You’ll also see the American and British explanations to the word, idioms, COBUILD collocations, trends, and how it is been pronounced and spelled in many other languages.
Collins Dictionary is one of the free online dictionaries for kids that have Thesaurus. There are hundreds of thousands of synonyms and antonyms
To even make it easier, their key synonyms and antonyms are highlighted.
Collins dictionary also provided a grammar class, where you kid can learn more about tenses, parts of speech, reporting and reported speech, punctuation marks. You kid can also learn more about the use of English and can take full advantage of the video guide.
Where he/she can learn more from the instructors. You can also type on the search bar, the difference between two confusing words.
For instance, you can search “what is the difference between ability, capability, and capacity?” And it will give you a straightforward answer. To learn more of this, their English Usage has a bundle of it, in alphabetical order.
In addition, the conjugation section will enable your kid to conjugate any word. “Smile”, For instance, your kid will learn that “to smile,” is the infinitive form of “smile.”
And, “I smile, you smile, they smile,” is the present form of “smile.” He can also learn the present continuous, present perfect, present perfect continuous, past, past continuous and so many conjugant.
There are quizzes too that your kid can embark on, they are simple drag-and-drop quizzes.
9. Dictionary.com
This is one of the free online dictionaries for kids that gives you the word of the day, in which you can see the meaning, examples, podcasts, origin, and how it is being used. When you search a word you’ll see the meaning, the synonyms, and the antonyms.
Also, you have lots of games to choose from. Their “word puzzle,” will give you several letters, and you are meant to produce some words from them.
You can also play quizzes, crossword solver, or my favorite “scrabble word finder.” Or even learn new words, trending words, science, and art.
10. A Maths Dictionary For Kids
This is one of the free online dictionaries for kids that explain maths terminologies to children. It does it in a way that they can understand it, and there are 955 maths words in this dictionary.
Moreover, this dictionary will empower your kid to not be amongst those that are afraid of mathematics. The words are in alphabetical order, and there’s no need to type any word.
When you choose the “C” letter, you’ll see words like; centigrade, column addition and subtraction, coplanar, coplanar lines. And when you choose a word it explains it with a beautiful diagram.
For instance, Centigrade has a beautiful thermometer, snowman, and sun diagram, which makes it fun to learn.
Free Online Dictionaries for Kids – FAQs
Is Britannica Kids dictionary free?
Britannica Kids has both free and paid versions. With the free version, you can still search words on the dictionary and have access to some videos and articles, but you’re limited.
With the annual 61.95$ subscription, your kid has access to more features like; unlimited access to more than 100,000 articles and videos, and pictures. Your kid will also have access to text to speech in the article, and many more features.
Why are kid dictionaries different?
Kids’ dictionaries are more simple and more fun than adult dictionaries. If your kid is to use a normal dictionary, they will find it boring, overwhelming, and discouraging. But a special kid dictionary comes with lots of pictures, jokes, and will make them search for more words.
What is the best free online dictionary for kids?
Here is the summary of the best free online dictionaries for kids;
- Kids.wordsmyth
- Fact Monster
- Britannica Kids
- Oxford Dictionary
- Merriam–Webster’s Word Central
- Little Explorers
- ESOL HELP
- Collins Dictionary
- Dictionary.com
- A Maths Dictionary For Kids
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