To sum up this vocabulary curriculum I would say do-able! As a busy homeschool mom trying to fit in everything we need (especially for those high schoolers) we often find we just don’t have time for “extra” curriculum. What I loved about Roots and Fruits is that is very multi-age friendly, fun and easy to accomplish without guilt!
First of all let me say Roots and Fruits was designed by Jill Dixon of Educational Diagnostic Prescriptive Services (EDUDPS) to be a comprehensive vocabulary curriculum for grades K-12. It contains 673 Roots and 1718 vocabulary words and was designed to be done over years in only 15 minutes a day. It’s one book for all your children K-12! Wow!
She recommends a 5 day weekly schedule, which for those of you who know me won’t be surprised that we didn’t follow. The guide suggests posting the words you're working on for the week on a large wall chart on the first day. We did this. Then you look up the meaning in the dictionary and write your words, definitions and whether they are Latin or Greek based on the cards. The guide offers suggestions for how many words each week and exactly what information to put on cards depending on the students age.
The next day she recommends reviewing and the next day giving the words in sentences as well as choosing a game for the day. There are 14 games to choose from, some requiring a little preparation but most don’t. This part of the curriculum makes the learning very fun!
On the 5th day you’re supposed to again use the word in a sentence and play one of several games to evaluate their knowledge.
What worked for us was to do this two days a week. On the first day we put up the chart wrote out our cards and used each word out loud in a sentence. The second day of the week we used the words in sentences again and played one of the games. One of our favorite no prep games is 20 questions. It’s just like the one your probably familiar with and have played in the car many times only now with your vocabulary.
The guide is designed in alphabetical order. Since I have a high school Junior we decided to do the top 205 most common words on the SAT first (she notes those for you in italicize.) How you go through it is up to you. The guide also notes with an asterisk’s the words most appropriate for younger children so if that fits your family you could start there.
If there is anything I might want to add to this program is a type of periodic evaluation which the guide does recommend, “… at the end of each month or 4 week segment.” It does recommend doing the games to evaluate but especially for older kids you may want something more concrete. Personally, I may do crossword puzzles from a free site with the words and definitions we’ve used as additional evaluation. This will take a little work on the teachers part.
I’m sure we will be using this for years to come and the guilt free part is that it’s supposed to take years. There’s no pressure to “finish” the book!
It’s available at EDUDPS for a “limited time” pricing of $11.25 for the e-book or $19.98 for a comb bound copy. Please note when making your choice their e-book system which is explained on the site. It’s a different system from the typical pdf you may be familiar with. My computer worked fine with it and I went ahead and printed this one out in it’s entirety (72 pages) and put it into my own binder. If you don’t want to print it all out you may want to consider the bound copy instead.
If you're still not sure check out their free download of the letter A roots and give the system a try first! On that same page are some free downloads of their other products so check it out! | 
