Critical Thinking Press Product Reviews for Timberdoodle (Phew! That was a mouthful!)

  Since I was very young, not so especially long ago, I hopefully anticipated the day that our Timberdoodle catalogue would come in the mail. When it did, you were sure to find me in my bedroom pouring over all the pages full of their fantastic, hands-on materials for making learning entertaining—I was especially fond of all their puzzles and multi- dimensional block-like materials (particularly these fascinating things called Wedgits). So you can imagine my excitement to have been given the opportunity to write a review on my blog for Timberdoodle featuring two products from the Critical Thinking Press! 
   I assist my mother in teaching many of the younger kidlets, and couldn’t wait to use the two books I received (Beginning Word Roots and Mathematical Reasoning C) on Quenton “Po” aged six and Hannah, who is nine. I love dabbling with different types of curriculum and often use Hannah, Po, and Daylon as my hapless guinea pigs. ;)
  From page one, Po absolutely adored Mathematical Reasoning C—it helps a lot that he is an analytical genius who is working far above his grade level in math and science (this was second grade mathematics). The pages were brightly colored and the illustrations engaging—something he really appreciated as most of his other schoolwork is in black and white—somewhat tedious for young eyes. He would beg every morning, “Can we do that math now?” He referred to it as “that math” because he immediately preferred it over his regular first-grade textbook.





  As opposed to the mathematics program our family normally uses, Mathematical Reasoning C uses the spiral approach to learning, that is a wide variety of areas are covered throughout the book and each topic is returned to again and again. In many ways, this is less monotonous than striving to master a certain topic before moving on by repeatedly studying it day after day—a fast learner like Po doesn’t want to mull over the same principles days on end—he would rather skip around and review a wide range of subject matter. However, there are many young learners that need constant reinforcement of a skill to successfully master it, and so for this reason, I think the program would work better as a supplemental resource versus standing alone as a student’s sole math curriculum.




  Every few lessons, we would run across a connect-the-dots exercise that involved having students work addition problems first and then use the answers to connect the dots. Po thought this was hysterical! He would purposely work ahead many pages just to get to his connect-the-dots activity! I think part of the reason that those pages were such a hit was because unlike other second-grade-level connect-the-dots activities, the pictures were not trite and easily guessable—even I was stumped until the very end. Po and I both agree that those are “our favorite parts” even thought it included a page full of addition problems. Definitely a more interesting approach to completing a full page of math problems. (=
  I honestly think this book does move beyond simple mathematical computation and hone in on their mathematical reasoning skills—Po and I both give this product two thumbs WAY up!!




The second book I am reviewing is Critical Thinking Company’s “Beginning Word Roots”. For each lesson, students first learn the meanings of prefixes, roots, and suffixes. Then they divide known and unknown words into their elements or assemble elements to form whole words, match word parts or whole words to their definitions by analyzing their meanings, and apply their new vocabulary in sentences.

   As I skimmed through the book before beginning the first lesson with my nine-year-old sister, Hannah, I thought, This book seems to be very well-structured—possibly even fun. The exercises are well set up and concise, but still required teacher participation (i.e. it wasn’t the kind of workbook where my fourth grade sister could work alone). Hannah was elated when she discovered that “Astronaut” comes from the Greek words “ástron” meaning star and “nautes” meaning sailor. She piped, “So an astronaut is really a star sailor!” Thanks to Beginning Word Roots, she is having a lot of 'Aha' moments discovering the 'mystery' of words! :)

Legal Disclosure: As a member of Timberdoodle's Blogger Review Team (which I am stoked to be a part of), I recieved a free copy of these books in exchange for a frank and unbiased review. All opinions expressed are solely my own.