First Word Search: Easy First Words Paperback – 4 Jan 2011

My son us 6yr old and this book is perfect to learn new words.

Not for 4 year olds . Good for 6 year olds

My son likes to do them book is thin and proper size. 52 word searches total 64 pages has answer keys. Its great for children just learning.

My 5 1/2 year old LOVES word searches. I accidentally found out he could do them when we did one together at a restaurant even with words he did not know. He can do these in this book by himself and enjoys them so much. He is a very active kid but sometimes just wants to sit and work quietly and this is his go-to activity besides coloring. Do your child a favor and teach them a strategy first. We start at the top left and go down then up the next column and down the third, etc. - Looking for the first letter. Then he holds that letter with his finger while he traces a block around it with his pencil eraser, looking for letter #2. After he finds that one he looks for #3, etc, then crosses off the word. I ask him to actually read the word first (not just look at the letter order) before he starts looking for it, so it is reinforcing reading skills as well! Teaching them to read a word backward and diagonal is a challenge at first, but he's totally got it now. When circling around a found word, I just tell him to connect the bottom of each letter together and that keeps those diagonal bubbles lined up. Yes these are skills an older child would know, but this is a word search book for young early readers. Lots of fun!*The only thing I would change- and this applies to most word searches I have seen-- WHY are the hidden words in capital letters and the word list in lowercase? How confusing! My son knows all his letters but there was definitely an adjustment period where he had to switch from looking at an "e" in the word list and looking for an "E" in the word search. Maybe it inadvertently strengthened his ability to transition that way, but if so I know it was inadvertent. This is something that is missed in the creation of these types of books. Not a dealbreaker obviously because it is a great set of word searches and I see this discrepancy all the time. It's an oversight that I think shouldn't happen in a product from educators geared toward very young children. JMO But great book :)

These word searches feature good basic words, but are very tricky for little kids since the words are sometimes place backwards, diagonal, diagonal and backwards, upside down, etc. which makes it not age appropriate for young children. Any child that needs an easy word search probably can't spell backwards or upside down. I would easily give this 4 or 5 stars if they had considered this when creating these.

Bought this as a gag gift for a coworker who is terrible at word searches. It was just what I was looking for--easy, kid-oriented, and a little whimsical. It's the perfect book to tease a friend, but in all honesty, it would be a great buy for a child learning how to read/identify words and common letter combinations. I may come back and purchase in earnest when my son turns four next year as he's already learning how to read.

Not a "first" word search or "first words". Not meant for small kids. Not at all. The words run in all directions. Top to bottom, Bottom to top, left to right, right to left, diagonal...Not a good idea for a child who is learning the basic concept of writing English from left-to-right and reading in the same direction as how the word is written. After looking at this book for a few words, my ~5 year old child started trying to read story book backwards, writing in random directions etc., thinking that it is fun and normal to do so. I never ever opened this book after that. But well, for adults, may be it is a nice entertainment. But the book doesn't do what the title says. The cover picture is misleading. Did not work for me.