Vocabulary Riddles - Book 1 (Review)

Today I'll be sharing our review of Vocabulary Riddles - Book 1 from The Critical Thinking Co.   Lindsey is a lover of all things riddle, so I thought this would be a fun way for her to increase her vocabulary.   Disregard the little red flags on the right side of the photo below, Lindsey is all about marking her place so she doesn't have to needlessly flip pages.

Vocabulary Riddles - Book 1 is listed as being for students in grades 4-8, but truly I think 4th/5th grade students are going to struggle a bit, and I don't know that 6-8 aren't going to have to dig really deep to try to get some of these things the first time or two. The lessons are in alphabetical order with two riddles per letter of the alphabet, and two riddles per page.  The pages themselves are just black and white (with a bit of gray), nothing distracting or even engaging.  There is a little cartoon character face beside each question either surrounded by little question marks, or with a contemplative expression on it's face.

An example of a riddle from the book would be:  "A's arrant asperity made him alienated and abhorred."    This is followed by 6 questions asking things like "Amiability is an antonym for which word?"   There is also a question that asks what part of speech a word was used as.  In this sample it asks what part of speech "abhorred" is (it's an adjective).  The last question asks the student to choose the sentence that best decodes the riddle and then gives four options.

Like I said these are not your typical "vocabulary" words.   Your student will encounter words like: gordamizer, impuissant, lachrymose, xenophobia, xenomania and yawped to name just a few.   There is a complete answer section in the back of the book, so your student can check their work easily, although I'd be inclined to take out the answer section in order to remove the temptation and opportunity to  just look it up.

What we did with this book was pretty straight forward.  Lindsey would work through one or two pages on her own, then I'd check her work.   We spent some time together trying to figure out how to pronounce a lot of these words.  She spent time looking them up in the dictionary (and googling it when the dictionary failed us) and figuring out what was being said.   It gave her a bit of busy work once her regular school work was done for the day.

I'll be honest, what I thought this book would be and/or do, was to have riddles that called for using more critical thinking on "figuring out the riddle" than on figuring out huge words.   To be truthful, most of the words are not ones Lindsey, or most students, will ever use or even come across in typical settings.  For that matter, I'm well read and I've never heard of many of these words.   Although, I'm far more likely to add some of the words to my vocabulary just so I can mess with my older brother from time to time.

Overall, this was a fun review for Lindsey.   I don't feel like it's a product that's going to improve my daughter's vocabulary a great deal, unless she just wants to throw out some big words now and then to impress (or confuse) people.

To read more Review Crew opinions on this and other products from The Critical Thinking Company, click here.

Special Offer from CriticalThinking.com!
Free Shipping + 15% Off Any Size Order! Use Coupon Code: TOSCREW18. Expires 12/31/2018.

Free Critical Thinking Puzzles!
A $75 Value! Delivered weekly to your inbox. Choose PreK – Grade 8. Sign Up Now!
https://www.criticalthinking.com/toscrew