New iPhone/iPad App Teaches Vocabulary Using Latin and Greek Root Words

The most engaging way to increase your child’s vocabulary is to tap into the tremendous power of Latin and Greek root words. Learning just a few of these roots can lead to hundreds of new words.

There are lots of books and workbooks on the subject, but now there is a fast-paced iPhone/iPad game called Wordcraft that teaches children thousands of words based on their Latin and Greek origins.

How it Works

Consider a word like omniscient. If you know this word already, great! But it’s pretty intimidating to a child who doesn’t.

You could force your child to memorize omnsicient on a long list of vocabulary words. But it’s much more effective to break it down into its roots and figure out the word as a puzzle.

Wordcraft trains the child to break it down into its parts and put it back together. OMNI = all and SCI = know, so omniscient = “knowing all things”.

Now here's where it gets interesting. Add the root POT = able, and we can also solve the puzzle of the word omnipotent: “able to do all things”.

Add the root VOR = eat, and we’ve learned omnivore. That leads to carnivore and herbivore, words most kids know already. But armed with this deeper understanding, they can decipher herbicide (HERB = plant, CIDE = kill).

And now a sophisticated word like regicide is easy to decode: REG = king & CIDE = kill, so regicide must be “the assassination of a king”! Even a very advanced word becomes child’s play: interregnum means “the period between (INTER) the reign of two kings.”

So from just five roots (OMNI, SCI, HERB, CIDE and REG) your child is now in a position to decipher dozens of new words: omnipresent, homicide, interregnum, regent, regal, regimen, prescient, conscientious... the list goes on.

This is the power of Wordcraft: every root your child learns opens the door to dozens of words. So, learning becomes more efficient, and since every word is a puzzle to be solved, much more fun.

How Wordcraft was Created

A year of testing in the New York City public school system demonstrated that Wordcraft provided students with an addicting game-like experience that massively improved their vocabulary. Students of all ages gained a much deeper and more flexible understanding of English.

We are now making Wordcraft available to homeschoolers everywhere in an iPhone/iPad app. Click here to try it for free. We are adding features every day so if there’s something you would like to see, or want to talk to us about bring the full experience to your home school community, please contact us here.