Wordly Wise 3000 (2nd Edition) is a vocabulary program with levels for grades K-12. Books 2 and 3 are designed for children in 2nd and 3rd grade. Each level offers a student workbook, a Teacher's Resource Book, and audio recordings.

The Teacher's Resource Book includes an overview of the program, an answer key for the student workbook, additional reproducible lesson review exercises, and reproducible tests. There is a test for each individual lesson, as well as cumulative tests after lessons 5, 10, and 15. The audio recordings, which are 3-CD sets, have every word list recorded (along with the definitions) and all of the short stories read aloud. The consumable student workbook includes 15 lessons. Each lesson begins with the week's vocabulary words and their definitions, followed by three or four different exercises (multiple choice or fill in the blank) that allow the child to practice using the words in varying ways. After these exercises, there is a short story that uses the week's vocabulary words in context, and the child is then given comprehension questions to answer. Every lesson ends with a crossword or hidden message puzzle.

I used Book 3 with my third-grade son. The lessons are short. We spent about 10-15 minutes a day, and we could easily complete one lesson in a week. Since there are only 15 lessons per book, it would be easy to complete two levels in a year. Or you could slow the pace down and spread the lessons out over two weeks. The exercises are predictable but challenging. My son has always enjoyed words and has a fairly large vocabulary, but I still found Wordly Wise 3000 to be beneficial for him. I liked the way this program made him think through the precise meanings of words and analyze them in different ways.

As much as we enjoyed the student workbook, the audio recordings were a flop. These recordings are designed to allow the student to hear the correct pronunciations of the vocabulary words and to allow the student to hear the short stories read aloud with fluency. They were quite boring. My son thought it sounded like a robot was reading the text. I can see how they would be useful in a classroom with many students, or possibly for a parent whose first language isn't English, but we found them to be completely unnecessary for home use at this level. The tracks are marked well, though, and it is easy to find the correct vocabulary lesson or short story.

Before I started using Wordly Wise 3000 with my son, I read through the Teacher's Resource Book. After that initial reading, I only used the answer key to quickly check my son's answers. While it was convenient to have the answers, at a price of $39.95 the Teacher's Resource Book is expensive. I don't consider it essential to the program. If money is an issue, you can easily use Wordly Wise 3000 with only the student workbook. We enjoyed this program, and using it with my third-grade son has convinced me to use it with all of my sons next year.

Product review by Courtney Larson, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, May 2009