well I hope that you have access to making copies. There are many sites you can download articles and various activities from. One in particular that I use every week is
www.breakingnews.com It was posted by a user on here and it is a WONDERFUL resource.
Besides that, I like to create cloze worksheets from songs. It doesn't have to be a particularly popular song, though it is good to have one once in awhile. The important thing is that the pronunciation is at an appropriate level of difficulty for your students. With a cloze worksheet you can justifiably say you are doing vocabulary.
The breakingnews.com articles also provide cloze worksheets and vocabulary synonym matching plus a variety of activities that could easily last an hour. With my middle school kids I just do the cloze worksheet and the prereading activities. Sorry if this all doesn't make sense, but you will see what I mean if you check out that website and download the "word" version of the lessons. To save paper I reformat the provided activities to fit more on a page and cut them out.
The thing is I think you can justify doing lots of great types of activities as vocabulary building and still use your book. The key with the book is to create a daily
REPEATABLE game or activity with the exercises. Perhaps on each picture you could always have them answer the same questions in groups. "How do you use these objects?, what other objects are in the picture?, what does the picture remind you of?" the key is to have it standardized and not to complicated. Its a little routine practice they can do at the start of class to get them focused and get some practice. It can be a good thing!
You could set up weekly "team quizzes" over the vocab and so the groups have to work on making sure everyone in their team knows the words. The average grade of the group is shared, (note I believe it is critical that if you give them a team score you must allow them to take the quiz together so that they have a chance to help their teammates and determine their individual score) And sometimes have an individual score. maybe one week team and one week individual.
I wouldn't do the vocab book for the whole class, no way! And as long as you are using all the book, no one is going to complain especially if they are enjoying the class and feeling like they are learning.
Once again, sorry if that is unclear, let me know if you want some more ideas for activities or are unclear about what I said that was very unclear!
Josh
