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Critical Thinking Detective: Vocabulary from The Critical Thinking Co. - TOS Review

If you love logic and critical thinking and want to impart that to your children, The Critical Thinking Co. has been in the business of doing that for years. I have been homeschooling for 9 years and I have always heard of them, and always in a positive way. I myself have used some of their products and have not been disappointed in them. So it was natural for me to ask for one of them again and it came up for review. This time a lot of the choices were totally new products to me and they look quite intriguing. I opted to give Critical Thinking Detective: Vocabulary Book 1 a try. It comes both as a physical book and an ebook. We received the e-book version.

Critical Thinking Detective™ – Vocabulary Book 1
Critical thinking is an essential skills to develop. Including logic and critical thinking in our curriculum every year has been a priority of ours since we started homeschooling. Now that my boys are in 9th and 8th grade the kind of logic books we use has changed a bit. With kids in Middle School and High School you want challenging but still fun books, and if it can do double duty even better. This is what you get with the higher grade selections from The Critical Thinking Co.

I am planning for my son to take the SAT and one of the things he need to be good at is vocabulary. So, what best way to hit two birds with a stone than to go through a book that allows you to practice critical thinking and at the same team enhance your vocabulary.

Critical Thinking Detective: Vocabulary did not fail. What this book is is a collection of mysteries that your child has to solve. The trick is that the setting and the clues use vocabulary that your child most likely do not know. This forces him to have to look for their meanings in a dictionary.


This particular book contains 12 mysteries where you have to figure out who is guilty based on series of clues. The child the has to understand what is being said and analyze the clue to deduct who the culprit is. After each mystery, you are then suppose to work through a worksheet where your child can practice the words he just learned. This is the part that my son had a hard time with. He was able to solve the mysteries quite easily, but when it came time to fill the worksheet, he had troubles. Actually, when I tried it myself I found it quite challenging. The worksheet is a fill in the blank kind where you need to figure out which of the new word (18-15 words listed at the top) fits in the sentence. It was also confusing that there were more words listed than needed in the worksheet. Even with having to look up words, the whole process is not overly long, about 1/2 hour max. My son preferred to do the mystery on one day and the worksheet on another day. I discovered a couple mysteries in that you could fill in the worksheet right on the screen, but I son still preferred to print them. And, thank goodness, all the answers are at the back! I certainly needed that.



Geared toward kids grade 5-12, Critical Thinking Detective: Vocabulary is engaging, colourful and right up what you expect coming from The Critical Thinking Company. It can be done independently, but kids on the younger spectrum might need coaching. The only objection I have is that it only works on Windows computer, given that my boys use  Mac. They had to do the work on my computer. All in all I would definitely recommend this book for vocabulary enhancement which doubles up as critical thinking practice. Some kids, like my 7th grader may not like the tedious side of having to look words over, but some might thrive on it. My 14 year old who likes to use big words is actually enjoying learning new words.

The Critical Thinking Co has a wonderful and wide array of products for you to check out. For you crew readers they have a couple of offers:

  • Free Shipping + 15% Off Any Size Order! Use Coupon Code: TOSCREW18. Expires 12/31/2018.


Critical Thinking, Understanding Math & Vocabulary {The Critical Thinking Co.™ Reviews}

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