Our goal was to familiarize our children (4th & 1st grades at that time) with the Latin and Greek word roots. When they were older we would study the root words in depth. Our first program choice was “English from the Roots Up Volume 1” by Joégil K. Lundquist. Although we loved the program, our problem was the amount of writing—it was too much, particularly for our 1st grader. So, Jill created “Roots Up” notebook pages. With the page, our girls only needed to write the word root and its definition. Then, they would draw a picture related to one of the derivative words. It was a hit! They looked forward to Greek & Latin.
Thanks to Discovery Channel’s free puzzle maker, Jill also created word searches and crossword puzzles for reviews of the words in both levels of English from the Roots Up. These review files are in MS Word. To view the answers, change the font color from white to black.
Roots Up Volume 1
Roots Up Volume 2
As we looked into other programs [“Words on the Vine” (Claudia Vurnakes), and “Word Roots—Level A” (Critical Thinking Co.)] for more ideas, it became apparent that there was some overlap between programs. Each program used different methods and we really wanted to maximize the benefits each. So, each programs’ words were reviewed and then cross-referenced it to the other program. Now we use the worksheets from the other programs with Roots Up. Below is the cross-reference file.