DEXTER, Maine (WABI) - Inspiring young minds is what the Valley Grange in Guilford has been doing with their “Words for Thirds” project for 20 years now.

Each fall, teams from the Grange travel to five schools to present area third graders with free dictionaries, as part of The Dictionary Project.

On Thursday, third graders at Ridge View Elementary School in Dexter received theirs.

The Valley Grange in Guilford has been participating in the project for the last 20 years. In that time, they gave out more than 4,000 dictionaries to local third graders.

“To me, learning is {a} discovery. Instead of trying to pour things into them, we let them discover what they’re able to do with a dictionary,” said program director, Walter Boomsma.

“We learned how to say the alphabet in hand language

See Full Page