Vocabulary Detective
Vocabulary Detective
Homeschool Review Crew
As members of the Homeschool Review Crew, we recently received a product from The Critical Thinking Co. for review. We chose Critical Thinking Detective – Vocabulary Book 2 (Grades 5-12+) for our review. Through the years we’ve used several of their products and have loved each and everyone so we knew this would be good. Vocabulary is something we’ve not covered enough so the thought of letting my child become a vocabulary detective was too great to pass up.
About the Product
This book is a single physical book. It is geared for grades 5th and up. So approximately ages ten and up through 12th grade. We previously reviewed Book 1 of this series and loved it! Both the paperback and digital ebook copies of this current review are available for $8.99 right now. The Critical Thinking Co. also is offering up a discount good through 12/31/2019. This code is — TOSCREW19 — it will get you 15% off any size order as well as free shipping.
There are twelve cases for your child to solve within this vocabulary detective book. While solving cases they learn new words and how to appropriately use them within a sentence or paragraph. Also learned is the power of observation. Definitely a great skill to have!
The Critical Thinking Co. currently offers over 200 different workbooks over subjects such as science, math, reading, writing, and social studies. I particularly love the ones that teach logic and reasoning skills. This is pretty much all of them though!
For this book, the main goal is to learn new vocabulary. While this is great, that’s not why my children love it! A secondary goal is logic and thinking skills or reasoning. They take a case and have to solve for who did it while also learning new words.
Within the book, the twelve cases take up twenty-five pages with each case getting two pages of work. After that, you have thirteen pages containing the answers. Basically, the answer pages are the case pages but with the correct answers filled in.
Our Thoughts
We have used the first book so really know how the cases work. Because of this, my kids could work the whole book in one day if I’d let them! They were that excited about it. So instead I assigned one student to be the worker and they only got to do one case per week. It was torture let me tell you.
After telling him he could only do one case per week I then asked him how he should solve the cases. Should he do the whole thing in one day and one sitting? What about spreading it out throughout the week? I know of suggestions to do one case per two weeks but my child would never be that patient to solve the case!
I did assign this review to one of my sons. He is 12 years old and doing a combined 7th/8th-grade year. Logic is one of his finer points and he loves things that test his detective skills. So, this vocabulary detective book was exactly what he needed to keep going through the summer or at least a few months.
As I type this review six of my children are playing a game of Clue and I’m reminded how that game and this book are so alike. You have to use your reasoning skills to deduce who did it. Who is responsible for the murder or in the Vocabulary Detective who is the guilty party in the case you’re working. You’re more than just a detective though as you learn new vocabulary words and how they should be used in the proper context. Maybe someone should make some new Clue boardgames based on these cases! My kids would love that!
How We Used
As I mentioned above I gave my son some free reign in how he used this book. But I did stipulate that he could only do one case per week. I encouraged him to take his time with the case though. My suggestion was that he follows a pattern such as the one below.
Day one: Read the case. Maybe read it again. That’s it. Just let the information sink in.
For Day two I wanted him to go through and write down all the words he wasn’t familiar with. Look them up in the dictionary, and then write down their definitions.
On Day three I expected him to reread the story now knowing what those troublesome words meant. He could also do part of the worksheet on using vocabulary words correctly. By this, I meant that he needed to write down and define any words that were on that list that had not made it onto his.
Day four brought him to actually doing the worksheet.
And finally! On Day five I let him tell me who the guilty party was and how he came to that conclusion.
The answers are in the back of the book but I tear those out and hide them in a safe spot before giving the book to my child. Because I know he’d want to immediately check out his supposition and then not really care so much about the vocabulary words.
Some fun things that I have him do differently. We have a notebook. In the notebook, he gets to write down and define his words. It’s also his place to make notes on the characters for who he thinks might have done what and why.
Final Thoughts
We would love these cases to have more to do with them. Right now taking a whole week to do a case feels like torture to my son. Maybe if there were a few more activities like a word search or scrambled words or something that might make him have more to do.
But no matter what else could be added we absolutely love these books and my kid’s fight over who gets to be the reviewer when they see a new The Critical Thinking Co. book arrive. We love them and can’t wait to find more to add to our ranks.
Before you think these are easy cases, I have found myself wanting to check the answers because I’m stumped after just reading through the case. You really have to use the clues they give you and think about the case. Love them!
Learn More
Please visit the Main Blog Post on the Homeschool Review Crew to learn about all the other products that were available for reviewers to choose. As I mentioned above we have reviewed before and you can find links to those reviews below. Becoming a vocabulary detective is definitely one of our favorite things. Other places to find The Critical Thinking Co. are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram.
Critical Thinking- Detective Book 1
Sentence Diagramming -Beginning
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