Homeschool Review: Critical Thinking Detective Vocabulary (Book 1) #TheCriticalThinkingCo #HSReviews

We are in the home stretch of our homeschooling journey as my "baby" completes her Junior year of high school.  Only one more year and she will be thinking about college.  Of course, each child is different and that calls for a unique approach to how we best school them.  I hope that I have correctly looked at the individual strengths and weaknesses of each of my four children and picked the best path for their specific learning style.  The Critical Thinking Co.™  has offered some neat things to use in this approach over the years, so I was especially happy to introduce the Critical Thinking Detective:  Vocabulary to my daughter.  I know that we need more work on vocabulary and writing skills and this little gem provides some of both.


Written for students in grades 5 - 12, this vocabulary workbook (softcover, 38-pages) offers vocabulary word development in the form of mysteries that need to be solved using your knowledge of words and their meanings.  Acting as the "lead detective," students work through 12 different "cases" to solve problems as presented.  Each "case" contains 18 - 25 vocabulary words that students MUST define and understand in order to prove the guilt or innocence of the given suspects.  They use the vocabulary words to define the parameters of each case, using a process of elimination to make an "arrest."  After students determine the guilt or innocence of the suspects and solve the mystery, they have additional practice using the vocabulary words in a separate fill-in-the-blank activity.  It's really a fun way expand your vocabulary and prepare for standardized tests.  The majority of the workbook is printed in black and white, but the suspects are pictured in bright spots of color for each case.  This helps keeps you interested and makes you want to solve the next case.

The deal is, these aren't easy words.  Using a combination of the hardest words from the SATs and the top words most commonly looked up on an online dictionary, students are stretched and challenged as they explore synonyms and antonyms and use critical thinking skills to narrow down the "suspects" through a process of elimination.  This means that you have to understand BIG WORDS or at least words that aren't used in the normal day-to-day conversation in order to follow the evidence presented in each case.   And if you don't understand the words, you've got to look them up, figure them out, and make them make sense.

Critical Thinking Detective:  Vocabulary offers a fast-paced review, but it's tough.  The page below shows my daughter's first attempt at solving the case of The Antique Double-Dealer.  She thought she would sit down and whiz through the workbook, but was stopped in her tracks and forced to spend some time pondering over each sentence.  I love that she's been challenged to learn new words and to make sure she understands how to use them in the correct context.  I also like that she's honing a new skill -- using a real-life dictionary.  My go-to resource in college was a rather large blue dictionary and I was happy to share it with her.  Yes, I know that it would be MUCH EASIER for her to find these words online, but I like seeing her look through the pages to find the words she is unsure of.

Meant to be used as a supplement, Critical Thinking Detective:  Vocabulary offers additional practice for any grammar curriculum and will help boost your student's conversation skills to a new level.  Personally, I don't want my daughter to just "work through" the pages of vocabulary.  I prefer that she "learn through" the pages instead and I've encouraged her to spend time incorporating the new words into her world through conversation and writing.  As I type this, she is writing a Bill at Girl's State that proposes new drivers must watch a video on the dangers of texting and driving before they take their permit licensing test -- and she's using the very vocabulary words she's been studying. THAT is what it's all about, folks.  Real-life knowledge that becomes real-life skill.

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You'll want to also make sure to visit the reviews of my fellow Crew members as we are reviewing 6 different resources that will help empower the mind of our children.


As an added bonus, The Critical Thinking Co.™ is offering the following coupon and freebie to my readers:

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I was given the opportunity to review the Critical Thinking Detective:  Vocabulary book from The Critical Thinking Co.™ as a member of the Homeschool Review Crew.   Make sure that you visit the  Crew Review to see what other members of the Crew thought of all of these great resources.  You can click on the picture below to jump right over there.  

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