Word Roots Level 1 Review

^{Disclaimer: We received this product for review purposes. As always, we are not required to write a positive review. All opinions are honest and my own. This post may contain affiliated links.}

Its personally important for my family to weave Logic resources into our homeschooling journey. We use The Critical Thinking Co. products as part of our homeschool curriculum.

We started with MindBenders and Building Thinking Skill and recently added Mathematical Reasoning into our Logic lineup, so we are pleased to add Word Roots Level 1 to our homeschooling……next year, maybe. I’ll let you know why in a few.

What is The Critical Thinking Company?

“If we teach children everything we know, their knowledge is limited to ours. If we teach children to think, their knowledge is limitless.”
– Michael Baker, President

From the website, “Since 1958, our award-winning products have helped students of all abilities achieve better academic results with highly effective lessons that sharpen the mind as they teach standards-based reading, writing, mathematics, science, and history. Our products are fun, easy to use, and guaranteed to produce better grades and higher test scores.”

Quick Overview:

Grade/Age: 5th-12th+
Parent Involvement: Depending on your child’s ability, varies.
Schedule: There’s no set schedule. You work at your own pace, but it is suggested to work page by page and in sequence since the topics do spiral.
Lessons: There are 30 lessons and 4 activities per lesson
- Activity A: Spelling and Defining Words
- Activity B: Completing the Sentence
- Activity C. Defining the Word Parts
- Activity D: Writing Sentences
Review: After every two lessons, there are activites to reinforce the lesson
- Activity A: Write easch word part (prefix/suffix) to the correct definition
- Activity B: Definition
- Activity C: Jumbled Letters
- Activity D: Fill-n sentences
- Activity E: (Optional) Creative Writing: Using the vocabulary words write a paragraph.
Product Format: We received the physical copy but there is a PDF version on their site.

There’s a super helpful Table of Contents that lists which word part(s) you will be focusing on. This is especially helpful if you plan to use this as a supplement. Word Roots is designed to help students expand their spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.

What I love about this book is that it emphasizes thinking and reasoning skills. Studying the word structure of familiar words can help you deduce the meaning of unfamiliar words. We can expand on this lesson by verbally proving their answer by reviewing each vocabulary word.

Here we can practice our writing skills. You also have the ability to extend the lesson via a creative writing piece.

How We Used it?

We use Word Roots Level one as a supplement to our ELA Curriculum.

Costs

The workbook cost $25, however it is well worth the price. Your student will learn 41 Prefixes, 86 Roots, 57 Suffixes, and 295 Vocabulary words. Additionally, if you have multiple kids, you can hand it down from one child to the next or make copies if you are using it with multiple kids across grade levels.

Overall Impressions

Its a great option to build on your word study. The activities are formatted the same way every week. The vocabulary is rich and challenging. However, at this time, its not a right fit for my scholar. Why? I haven’t provided a solid foundation of word roots, so I felt it was a bit advanced for him. Also, it seems he wasn’t retaining the lessons and that again falls on me.

There’s a lot of potential here. I have to figure out how to weave and restructure the lessons into our homeschool for maximum benefit. In the meantime, I will put this level on hold, however, there is a Word Roots beginning level that might be a better fit AND I can potentially use it with two kids simultaneously as a family subject???!!