My First Crossword Puzzle Book (Dover Little Activity Books: Puzzles)

The Dover activity books are tiny, but just the right size to pop into your bag when going out to a restaurant or waiting area with your kiddo. I like this crossword book because instead of written hints, the hints are pictures, so the child can look and guess instead of your having to read every line. That is also an occasional downside, because the child sometimes might not know what an item is...but that's where guessing context from the puzzle words comes in. I bought this as part of an Amazon.com 4-for-3 sale promotion, and I thought the price was worth the time we would get out of the book.

Kids went thru whole book in an hour!

Because I am using the book to help a friend learn English I would have preferred the pictures to be more explicit, less "cartoonish" and more true to the look of the subject. However, my friend is delighted with his little book and is doing the puzzles in pencil so that he can erase the answers after he completes the book and go back to the beginning and do them again! In this way he can learn and then test himself when he's done them all. We shall probably order another crossword book, slightly more advanced, we hope, until his English is just right - enough of an accent to be interesting and charming but good enough so that he is understood and can handle various matters pertaining to Life in general and in the United States of America in particular (one of the words slightly challenging for him)! The choice of images and words learned in doing the puzzle seems quite clever and pertains to life as lived by the average person enough that the answers come fairly easily - this gives a sense of success which encourages the worker of the puzzle to go on to the next and then the next - very good. Thank you for the little book - I look forward to the next one!

I did this with my grandson, the pictures were great, no question as to what they were, and he said the words and I filled the words in. I did use the cross word as help for some, an he got all but 3 in the whole book. I guess he didn't know what an indian looked like, that was one.

My son who is 5 and 1/2 finished the whole book in one day. Of course he took our help for spellings. The pictures are good and seeing the pictures kids can guess the words easily. Even the papaer quality is good for coloring using crayons or color pencils. My son felt good after finishing the book. Would recommend for kids between 4 - 5.

I bought this cross word puzzle for my boring time. it is very good, likes this cross puzzle, but the quality of the book, the paper and color is not good.

We used this one first for our 7 year-old grandson who didn't take to reading quite so quickly as to math. BUT he loves puzzles and flew through this book faster than even he expected. A great confidence-builder for more difficult ones to come.

Love the ideas of the pictures as hint for the child to write the words. It's very simple for my 5 year old, who struggled a bit when he was in Kindergarten because he was a late talker.