Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Something fun for vocab?

Any recommendations for something fun for DD8 to do to develop her vocabulary over the summer? She tests a little lower on vocab than in other reading skills and I think it's tripping her up when reading harder books. We know about freerice. She is not anti-workbook (in fact, she asked me for a new workbook yesterday--I think she's bored with all the year-end fluff!) but it would be good for it to be fun, too. Computer stuff is okay. I would say we probably are needing something like 6th grade level, but I don't really know. She is a good guesser, so I'm a bit wary of something multiple-choicey where she can just guess her way out of it.

Here are some starting places-- I like browsing around the recommendations at Amazon. The only one of these that I've bought is "Words on the Vine", but DS liked it some time back. There are lots of similar resources out now.

Greek and Latin Roots
Red Hot Root Words
Vocabulary Packets: Greek & Latin Roots
Words on the Vine

Some etymology resources that might spark an interest:

Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062700847 (also see http://www.amazon.com/dp/0550142304)
Word Histories and Mysteries: From Abracadabra to Zeus, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005Q5TEWO
Word Origins, http://www.amazon.com/Word-Origins-T.../dp/0517265745
The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0198611129
Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0415050774
The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004KAB5AU

There's something called SAT vocabulary word a day, or something close to that, which is like a daily calander with a cartoon and a SAT useful vocabulary word on each page. I made my own version of this using Michael Clay Thompson's classic literature vocabulary list of 100 most useful words for reading classic lit. (I'm actually only 1/4 way through the list but I only turn the page every few weeks so it's fine.). I made a page for each word, copied the online definition of it, thought of an illustration and copied it from google images. "countenance" got used a lot, and "prodigious" (enormous, stupendous). This week is "sublime" something so noble or beautiful you admire it. Sometimes at random my son reads the word of the week, sometimes at random the hubby, the boy, or I will work it into a conversation. Very lax.
I pinned this stack of papers on my wall. (literally)
http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad296/Hablame_today/ed5b8bfa.jpg

Here's the list:
Michael Clay Thompson 100 Classic words
http://www.rfwp.com/samples/100-classic-words.pdf

I've used this book with gifted 6th graders:

http://www.amazon.com/Greek-Latin-R..._1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338577375&sr=1-1

I like the subject areas the material is divided into. Also, if your daughter likes learning how languages work, the way Latin derivations are explained might appeal to her -- the author demonstrates how one Latin verb can, through different principal parts (capere / -cipere, for example, versus captus / -ceptus), give rise to English words that a beginner might think were unrelated (capture, recipe, perception, etc.).

If your daughter likes etymology, she might find www.etymonline.com useful. It's my go-to website for answering kids' etymology questions since merriam-webster.com doesn't give etymologies for all the words it defines. The explanations at etymonline are pretty thorough, but not too difficult IMO for a child with good dictionary skills (who knows M.Fr. means Middle French, for example).

If she likes online quizzes, here's a decent online game:

http://www.prefixsuffix.com/rooty.php?navblks=1011000

Last, Michael Clay Thompson's Word Within the Word series has some very imaginative exercises -- much better IMO than the typical fill-in-the-blank and matching exercises in, say, Red Hot Root Words (which I've also used). The drawback of WWW, though, is that its etymologies are rife with errors, and I don't know whether Royal Fireworks Press has ever corrected them or published a list of errata.