Roald Dahl has an amazing capacity for  making up words. Just think of ‘frobscottle’, ‘snozzcumber’ and a dozen other words that simply don’t exist in the English language. I found this amazing hand written list of names he wrote while working on The Big Friendly Giant and it thrills me to think of an amazing story teller sitting in his shed, coming up with names.  It’s almost exciting to think about, isn’t it? 1

Roald-Dahl-writing

Ameli and I spent some time this week exploring syllables and making up new words to turn into a story.

To prepare: cut words of two or more syllables from a magazine.
Write out what you want from your story – characters, place names etc

You will need: magazine, scissors & glue

Make up words like Roald DahlFor this activity,  cut words out of a magazine – I opted for longer words that had two or more syllables.

Also, in Ameli’s workbook I wrote out the following, leaving spaces for her to glue the answers:

The names of three characters, the name of their town, the name of one character’s favourite food, what this food is.

First we sounded out syllables by clapping and counting the claps: uni(clap)-form(clap), foun(clap)-da(clap)-tion(clap), sim(clap)-ple(clap)-ton(clap) and so on.

We then cut our magazine words up into parts based on the syllables. This gave her an opportunity to become familiar with syllables.

Next, mix and match the word parts till you find words that ‘feel right’.

Our characters were called Verend, Cretsner, and Tiveconsen Light. They live in a town called Garsea. Verend’s favourite food is a berry called chaption, which tastes like fresh water that’s been bathing in sunlight. And has magic powers.Make Up Words Like Roald Dahl

Once we had these details down, I asked Ameli if she could tell me a story with these details in, picked up the camera, and here’s the story. Sure, it needs some refining, but pretty good going for no prep time, and a first attempt, I think. She’ll be an author yet, this one!

 

[youtube vsAV3lv2Dtc]

 

Study Unit Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Find more Charlie & The Chocolate Factory activities here.

  1.  http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/09/the-language-of-roald-dahl/

6 Comments

Make Up Words Like Roald Dahl

  1. What a fun book extension activity! We have been reading Roald Dahl’s books for the past few weeks but have not read this one yet. Where did you find that handwritten list? It is fun to see the author’s musings in his own writing.

    1. Thanks Theresa! We loved this activity too. The list is from the link above it on the Oxford Dictionaries site. I may have seen it first at the Roald Dahl Museum though – I can’t really remember! I think it’s awesome seeing it in his own handwriting too!

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