About the game
Big words are just small parts, snapped together
Root Words Lab is a free vocabulary game for grades 5–8, part of The Active Home Academy — The Active Home’s series for older kids. A huge share of English is built from Greek and Latin parts — bio, geo, port, rupt, spect. Learn the parts in this word laboratory, and words a student has never seen start to open up on their own.
The lab: a library plus four games
- Root library — 56 roots and prefixes as color-coded tiles: blue for Greek, amber for Latin, purple for prefixes. Each tile gives the meaning and example words, and the whole library is searchable.
- Root meanings — what does chron mean? What about tract? Learn the parts cold.
- Word builder — snap two tiles together in the right order to build the word for a definition: thermo + meter, trans + port, inter + rupt.
- Crack the word — the real skill: given microscope and the clues micro = small, scope = look at, choose what the word must mean.
- Which root? — reverse round: which root means "break"? "Carry"? "Throw"?
The word bank holds 36 built words, from autograph and submarine to incredible and manuscript. Each game is 10 questions and earns up to three stars, saved on the device.
How it plays
- Tiles, not flashcards. Roots stay visible as physical-feeling parts that snap into words, so the structure of a word is something players handle, not just memorize.
- Two tries, then the answer with its parts. A miss ends with the word taken apart piece by piece, so the explanation is the lesson.
- Saved on the device. Stars are stored only on this device — no accounts, nothing sent anywhere.
For parents and teachers
- Standards. Built for grades 5–8, aligned with Common Core L.5.4b, L.6.4b, L.7.4b, and L.8.4b — using Greek and Latin roots to unlock unfamiliar words.
- A strategy, not a word list. The goal is transferable: meet an unknown word in a science or history text, find its parts, and make a smart first guess.
- Free, always. No ads, no sign-up, nothing to buy.