Saturday, August 20, 2016

Word Roots & Building Thinking Skills - A Timberdoodle Review

These two fantastic books from Timberdoodle are an excellent addition to your homeschooling bag!  



Building Thinking Skills - Level 2 is geared toward grades 4-6 and is a part of Timberdoodle's Fourth Grade Curriculum Kit.  This book has won a TON of awards including Dr. Toy Ten Best Software, Cathy Duffy Top 100 Award, The National Parenting Center Seal of Approval, iParenting Media Award and SOOO many more!  If you are looking for a workbook for higher-order thinking activities then this is your best choice.  It is the number ONE selling thinking skills program in the world! 





 Here are just a few sample pages from the book - they focus on logical thinking, similarities and differences, sequences, analogies, vocabulary development, descriptive writing, map reading, graphic organizers and so much more!  I usually assign one page a day out of our critical thinking book - we worked on the Level One book for grades three and four, and we are beginning the Level Two book for grades five and six.   It has a broad range of ability levels so I would say anywhere from about third grade to seventh grade on either book is a good range.  The pages are very simple and straightforward - if your kids love to do things like crossword puzzles then this book will be a hit!  The answers are all included in the back which is a huge help because sometimes even I can't figure it out.  They really do make you think critically! 

Word Roots is also a book that has been in and out of our homeschool room with my older girls.  I am thrilled to have this one from Timberdoodle's 7th Grade Curriculum Kit to use for Boo.  She will begin this workbook this year in fifth grade and we will probably take several years to work through it, in addition to her regular language arts curriculum and Latin curriculum, we will use this as a supplemental book. 




 Here are a few sample pages.  This book has activities that teach Latin and Greek prefixes, roots and suffixes.  It is known to improve spelling and reading comprehension in addition to adding hundreds of words to your student's vocabulary!  




 In general, I'm not a huge fan of workbooks within our homeschool as I do lean towards more of a Charlotte Mason teaching style.  However, my youngest learner absolutely THRIVES on workbooks and being able to check items off her daily to do list so these two books are perfect supplemental materials for her homeschool days. 

I was sent this product to review as a member of Timberdoodle's blog team.  All opinions are strictly my own. 

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