Progeny Press ~ The Green Book - eGuide (Upper Elementary Literature guide review)

Over the years I have been blessed to review a number of Progeny Press Literature Guides, for a variety of ages. The vast majority of them (as you will see when I list links to them towards the end of my review) have been for the High School crowd, and then the Middle School ages, but Progeny Press also caters to the elementary ages (I've reviewed one title from Lower Elementary), and my latest review is from the Upper Elementary level, The Green Book - eGuide.

I probably would not have known about The Green Book by Jill Paton Walsh if it were not for this review, and we would have been missing out! My Youngest LOVES to read and may have been put off by the slimness of this volume (he goes for books in the 300-page realm) if left to his own devices. However, good things come in small packages is not true simply for girls and little boxes. This is a gem of a story with many good themes to be pulled out, with the help of Progeny Press and Rebecca Gilleland.

One of my favorite things about Progeny Press (that you will find repeated in each of my reviews) is the lens through which each work of literature is viewed. In addition to learning vocabulary and completing comprehension questions, students are challenged to "Dig Deeper" and discuss the story and the characters through a Christian Worldview. To see how choices and consequences of the characters line up (or not) with the Bible, and how they might apply to our lives today.

So, what exactly will you find in Progeny Press' The Green Book - eGuide?
You will receive two files to download. The actual study guide is an interactive adobe file in which your student can type their answers (or you can print the pages up). Note~ if you have a Mac, you need to open the file in Adobe, not Preview, or it won't work... at least with my old, un-updated Mac... I have no idea how it performs on a non-apple product.

 

• Note to the Instructor on how to use the guide
• Synopsis of the Story
• Background information on the Author of the Story/Novel
• Prereading Activities
• Chapter-by-Chapter guide broken down into

• Vocabulary work~ (Which takes a number of forms from defining words to matching words and definitions to crossword puzzles and wordsearches~ not the same thing for each chapter. I appreciate the variety!)
• Questions~ covering content
• Think About the Story~ comprehension questions, and literary elements (simile, metaphor, foreshadowing, etc...)
• Dig Deeper~ Worldview questions, discussions, and application
• Optional Projects and Activities~ these range from discussions to writing assignments, related science experiments, hands-on projects (including art and cooking to name a couple), field trip suggestions, etc...   
• Overview (Discussing the plot, conflict, themes, etc..) This particular guide also includes a Venn Diagram and a crossword puzzle. 
• After You Read Projects that include science, art, cooking, research and writing, performances, etc... 
• Additional Resources ~ lists of books and links to extension activities

Answer Key

The second file is the Answer Key for the Instructor, pictured above. 

As I mentioned above, The Green Book is a slender volume (69 pages), but you can get at least six or seven weeks of in-depth Literature study out of it, and I suspect your student will adopt the story as a favorite (this has happened with almost every story for which we have used Progeny Press guides)! Although all the extras (science, cooking, art, and other hands-on activities) are great, I feel that this affinity for the books often comes about possibly as a result of the application of the story to our lives from a Christian perspective, in addition to the selections being quality stories on their own.

In this particular instance, many of the activities included for The Green Book were things that we have already explored~ making a journal (from an art review), visiting the aquarium (Jellyfish!), spinning fibers, cooking, learning about maple syrup, making an oil lamp... so I thought I would include some photos of those aactivities that we were able to relate back to, even if we didn't actually do them this time around. It's always nice to be able to connect past activities to a current read. :)

If you would like to check out some of my other reviews they are listed below...

2012 Pride and Prejudice and the Bronze Bow High School and Middle School
2013 The Hobbit and Treasure Island High School and Middle School
2014 The Hunger Games and The Giver  High School and Middle School
2015 Sam the Minute Man Lower Elementary
2015 To Kill a Mockingbird High School
2016 The Scarlet Pimpernel  High School

My son really enjoyed reading The Green Book, and I feel that this is a very valuable literature unit, that would be a good addition to any upper elementary homeschool study.

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Progeny Press 
• Product: The Green Book - eGuide 
• Ages: Upper Elementary (Grades 3-5)
• Price: $17.99 

Visit Progeny Press on Social Media: 

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube  

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Homeschool Review Crew and see what others had to say about this and the other titles reviewed (One from each level, Early Elementary reviewed The Josephina Story Quilt, more Upper Elementary reviews of The Green Book, Middle School reviews of The Scavengers, and the High School selection of Perelandra. Other than The Josephina Story Quilt the rest of the titles were new to me!
As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

#hsreviews #Literature #StudyGuides #UnitStudies #ReadingComprehension

Home School Navigator (Reading/Language Arts Curriculum Review)

We've been checking out the interactive notebooks by Home School Navigator for the past few weeks. They are part of the overall Home School Navigator Reading and Language Arts Curriculum which offers 6 different levels of instruction which are indicated by color, with Red, Orange, and Yellow indicating earlier learning, and Green, Blue and Indigo more advanced. The interactive notebooks are included in the upper levels, and are what my review will focus on, although I will also give an overview of the whole program.

So, what is an interactive notebook? Well, it's a notebook with shapes and flaps that provide a more interesting and interactive way for your child to record their answers to comprehension and discussion questions about a particular chapter book instead of simply filling in blanks or writing on a plain sheet of paper.

Home School Navigator has placed their discussion questions, vocabulary words and comprehension questions into simple graphic formats that are then glued onto a notebook page and filled out. When you become a Home School Navigator subscriber, part of the monthly handouts includes the graphics for the Interactive notebook. You can see below a screenshot of some of the pages we used for the Because of Winn Dixie Interactive Notebook, which is found in the handouts for Month 6 of the Blue Level.

As your child reads through the book, there are items to fill out for every 4-5 chapters.

I recommend printing on colored paper if you have it, as it helps to add interest for most kids. :) Here is what our printed pages looked like before they were put into the notebook.
You don't need anything crazy~ I chose to use a wide rule, spiral bound notebook for my son's work.

A note: Know your children, and even if you think they know what they are doing, check in on them... ;)  Because my son is on the upper end of the age range, I figured he could take ownership of this activity more or less on his own. I handed him the pages, instructed him to cut out each piece and showed him how to glue them down. The pieces are flat with a dotted line where you fold the page up to write the answer beneath. I showed my son that you only glue down the part that is above the dotted line, but he got a little confused a couple of times~ you can see the orange pieces were folded the other way and glued down the wrong way... oops... These pieces are a little different from others we've used before with a similar idea. :) Another thing that wasn't in the instructions, but that I added was to draw around the edge of the shape so that when the flap was lifted he would know his boundaries for writing.

This set of pages shows vocabulary and discussion/comprehension questions with flaps up (kind of) and down.

And here you can see that there are a few pieces included that are informational (middle blue strip), and another that requested an illustration rather than an answer.

If your children are hands-on and enjoy cutting and pasting, this would probably be a hit for them. My son, sadly, is not in that camp. However, this was very good for him to continue practicing his cutting skills, which he generally avoids like the plague (no worries about important papers being turned into snowflakes by HIM! ;), and we had a few discussions that were interesting.
I will say that I do wish that the Master Book List was readily available to the public, as I am very picky about book choices in my home, and want to know up-front what the focus will be. I am sure there are other families with a similar wish. There were definitely chapter books in the upper levels that were not as good a fit for our family, so it was a little difficult for me to find one to use with my son at the appropriate level.  We had a false start with "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" which I thought he would enjoy, but freaked him out instead... (he has a bit of a phobia about robots which translated to the automaton in the story, which I didn't expect), and we ended up with "Because of Winn Dixie" as you could tell.

OK, that being said let me give you a quick glimpse of the rest of the program, even though it wasn't the focus of our particular review (I contemplated switching our focus, but chose not to as many of the books used were books that we had already read/studied/discussed, and that would not have been a good use of our school time~ another reason to make that book list public...),

Each level is broken down into 9 months of work. Each month focuses on a different genre of writing, including:

• Author Studies (Usually two or three in each year)
• Biography/Autobiography/Memoir
• Fables/ Tall Tales
• Folk tales/ Fairy tales
• Historical Fiction
• Mythology
• Nonfiction Texts/Persuasive Texts
• Poetry
• Procedural Texts
• Realistic Fiction
• Traditional Stories

Here is a look at the basic scope and sequence which can be found on the FAQ page 

You can see that there is a lot more to this program with a focus on many reading and writing skills. The monthly handout download I mentioned above is a good thing to skim through to give you a bit of an idea of what the month will hold.

The next item you will want to download is the weekly guide which shows everything you need for each day, each week as well as a breakdown of the day's activities. *Note: You don't have to do EVERYTHING for every day~ this is a "Buffet" of activities~ pick and choose what will work best for your own situation...

You can print these or just use them from your computer.
The rest of the program is accessed from the student dashboard. Each day has a bunch of buttons, for lack of a better word, that are clicked on in order, with all of the instructions and links required. If you haven't already printed out the month's handouts, they are linked individually here as well.

Almost every section includes a video with your child's guides (Ashley and Beth) showing them what to do, and explaining things along the way. This could be very helpful for the new homeschooling parent.

One other item that may be of interest to some parents is the fact that you can upload your child's work to the website, and they will save it/compile it into an end-of-year portfolio (there are reminders to do just that at the end of the daily teacher's guide).

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Home School Navigator 
• Product: Home School Navigator Reading and Language Arts Curriculum 
• Ages: Kindergarten to Fifth Grade
• Price: $97/year
  
  You can visit Home School Navigator on Facebook and Instagram

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Homeschool Review Crew and see what others had to say, especially if you are more interested in the actual day-to-day use of the program, because many others focused on that in their reviews. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

#hsreviews  #readingsuccess    #readingstrategies   #makinglifelonglearners

C.S. Lewis: Master Storyteller (Review)

Over the years, beginning with my Eldest and continuing down through my Youngest, we have enjoyed reading biographies, and have especially appreciated collecting books from YWAM Publishing's many series, including the Christian Heroes: Then & Now series, where we read about, well...Christian Heroes of the faith from the past and the present. This spring we were given a few options to choose from for review, and I was happy to see Christian Heroes- C.S. Lewis: Master Storyteller, particularly as my Youngest and I are reading aloud the Chronicles of Narnia this year.

The book is set up in a similar fashion to others that we have read, covering the entire life of the person from early childhood to death. * Side Note: I realized that we haven't any of the "now" books in the collection when my Youngest commented that the only thing he didn't like about the series was that the books always end when the person dies... I hadn't thought of that before. Guess I'll have to pick up one of the others like Charles Mulli next time... ☺

Word to the wise, there are "spoilers" in the biography so you might not want to read it until AFTER you have finished reading the Chronicles. Unfortunately, I didn't preread, so I wasn't aware.

Alright then, on to the review.
My son thought it was interesting that C.S. Lewis was nicknamed "Jack" and that stuck with him for the rest of his life, because my father-in-law is named John, but also called "Jack," something I just don't understand. :) He particularly enjoyed reading about his life as he is very interested in the WWII time period, and hearing about regular life during those times. He did feel that the story overall wasn't quite as gripping as say, Milton Hershey's life story which we reviewed last summer. As a result, I would suggest that an older middle-schooler might actually get more out of this study than a later elementary student.

I will say that the Unit Study Guide available for this book is also on a slightly higher level, in part based on the topics covered including love and marriage and divorce, which aren't necessarily topics I would have brought up with the youngest ages this book is suggested for. However, as homeschoolers, we are able to tailor our schooling, and we don't have to ask ALL the questions, so it's all good ~ we can allow some details to go over their heads when appropriate.

A word or two about the contents of the Study Guide.
It includes an introduction for the instructor and then moves into the areas of study.

• Key Bible Verses ~ 4 verses that can be used for Memorization, Meaning (thinking about how they apply to C.S. Lewis' life) Devotional, or Display (which could tie into art)
• Display Corner ~ Suggestion that is more useful in a group setting, but some homes are suitable for this sort of motivating idea~ it's fun and adds to the memories if you can do it.
• Chapter Questions~ Each chapter has 6 questions: one Vocabulary, one Factual,  two Comprehension and two Open-ended. I do appreciate that the guide recommends tailoring the questions to your students level and ability, as mentioned above. I tend to do these orally anyway, so it all works out well for me.☺
• Student Explorations ~ These include suggestions like Essay Questions, Creative Writing Projects, Hands-On Projects, Audio Visual Projects, and Arts and Crafts Projects. 
• Community Links ~ Suggestions for activities out in the community that would connect with the book. For instance, because of the British background of C.S. Lewis' life, there is a suggestion to visit a Tea House for High Tea. Fun times, and if we weren't in the midst of Baseball Season and three teams, I'd consider it. ☺There are many other suggestions for ways to interact with people in the community that will add to the details in the book. 
• Social Studies ~ Includes Places, Terms/Vocabulary, Geographical Characteristics, including mapping locations~ this was one of the activities we chose to do, as well as Conceptual Questions (these move from simpler to more complex). 

• Related Themes ~ Gives suggestions of possible related themes in the topics of History, Current Events, Literature, Christianity, and even Travel Skills. 
• Culminating Event~ for families that like to celebrate the end of a Unit Study in a more formal manner, there are ideas for Food, Music, Presentations, Display, Clothing, and Cultural Activities
• Books and Resources ~ Offers a large list of extra resources about C.S. Lewis, other books, other books in the same series, and related articles and internet sites.
  
  I would be remiss if I didn't mention that there is also an answer key to the first four chapter questions in each chapter (Because the open-ended questions can't be quantified in an answer key).

All in all, we have been very happy with the various historical YWAM biographies, and enjoy adding them to our home library as we have time and funds.
Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: YWAM Publishing  
• Product: 
• Christian Heroes: Then & Now 
• Christian Heroes- C.S. Lewis
• Study Guide
• Ages: 10-Middle School, possibly even High School
• Price: List $9.99 at the time of publishing on sale for $7.50

Visit YWAM Publishing on their Social Media pages on
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and their Blog

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Homeschool Review Crew and see what others had to say. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

#hsreviews  #YWAMPublishing #ChristianHeroes #ChristianBiographies #Truebiographies #HeroesofHistory #HeroBiographies #TrueStories #ChristianHeroesThenandNow #Homeschoolcurriculum #Teachthemwell

Hewitt Homeschooling~ Lighting Lit ~ British Mid-Late 19th Century

One of *my* favorite things to review are Literature related, and two out of three children agree strongly! My Middlest isn't as fond of reading as his siblings, but I was very interested to see what he thought about Hewitt Homeschooling's British Mid-Late 19th Century Lighting Lit Guide. I chose this (one of 12 high school units being reviewed by the Crew) because I hoped it would offer him some literature, stories and poetry that would be a little more up his alley, with authors like Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Oscar Wilde. Also studied are works by Rudyard Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot,  and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Other Crew members reviewed Lightning Lit for grades 1, 2, or 3, "My First Report" or Grades 7 or 8 Lighting Lit sets as well as the above-mentioned high school sets. Be sure to click on the linky at the end of the review to see what they had to say. You can also check out my previous reviews for Shakespeare: Comedies and Sonnets (2014), and Early 19th Century American (2012) to see what my impressions were about those titles.

One of the things that my son particularly appreciated about Hewitt's program is that while there are four physical books (See the complete set pictured below) that need to be available to complete the course, all of the shorter works are self contained in the bound Student Guide, which makes it more compact and efficient, with fewer things to be misplaced. ;)

Because my son was just coming off a Novel Study, and it is summer-time, I chose to have him work through some of the portions of this guide that were a little lighter and/or self-contained~ Poetry and Short Story selections from Tennyson, Carroll, and Stevenson, which will give him a head start on his Literature requirements for the coming school year

The High School Lightning Lit courses include a Teacher's Guide (Stapled, 3 hole punched papers that need to be put in a folder) with grading helps and rubrics as well as a couple of well-laid out schedules for Semester or Year-long coursework.

Each Lesson includes an Introduction, Comprehension Questions, a Literary Lesson, and four to six writing exercises to choose from. If following the Hewitt Basic English, English, and English Honors programs, it is suggested that the student submit two written papers for each book-length work, and one for shorter selections. This can obviously be adjusted according to your student's proficiency and exercise choices.

If correcting those written papers seems to be too daunting of a task, even with the included helps,  you may be pleased to know that Hewitt offers a Paper Evaluation service which some Crew members also reviewed (again, click through the link at the end to find those reviews).

I particularly enjoyed going through the Lewis Carroll selections (Jabberwocky is one of my long-standing favorite poems) with my son, and I even learned something about Rhyme Scheme that I didn't know before (Or maybe that I forgot...?): that there are masculine and feminine  rhymes, and an explanation for words in poetry that *almost* rhyme like "again" and "plain" (Slant Rhyme).



Here is a sample of my son's couplet writing
Like Carroll, and possibly Ogden Nash,
he has a droll sense of humor :

The wish of a fish
Was to eat from a dish

While a frog in a bog
Hoped to go for a jog

And the bee's only plea
Was to sip some green tea ...



Once again, I thoroughly appreciate Hewitt's approach to teaching "college-level composition skills by responding to great literature." I will continue to use selections from their guides to flesh out my son's high school literature courses over the next two years.

You can check out samples of the Student Guide and the Teacher Guide on their individual product pages.


Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Hewitt Homeschooling
• Product: British Mid-Late 19th Century 
• Ages: High School 
• Price: $58.23 for complete set including 4 novels

You can visit Hewitt Homeschooling's media pages:
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Homeschool Review Crew and see what others had to say about this and the other titles and grade levels reviewed. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

Memoria Press Iliad & Odyssey Complete Set (A Review)

We've appreciated the opportunity to use and review a number of classical curricula over my time on the TOS Homeschool Review Crew. This time Memoria Press  has generously sent the Iliad & Odyssey Complete Set (grades 7-12) for us to review. Other members received First Form Greek Complete Set for grades 7-12 and another group of crewmates were sent both 200 Questions About American History and The Story of The Thirteen Colonies & The Great Republic for grades 5-8. Be sure to click the link at the end of my review to head their reviews.

     

While Homer's epics were among the primary works typically studied in Ancient Greece and Rome, they have become somewhat less common in today's society. In fact, I am fairly certain that if you were to question the average adult on the street, they will most likely be familiar with the titles, but not really have any idea what they are about. This was somewhat true for myself, in that I had never read the Illiad, although I had a reasonable recollection of the Odyssey. It turns out that my familiarity is somewhat backwards in that the Odyssey relies upon the foundation of the Illiad in order to be fully understood and appreciated. Because this was pointed out, I decided that my sixteen year old would start with The Illiad, which is indeed an epic tome of 447 pages (The Odyssey on the other hand, is only 358 pages of text… :) )

There are a number of components to this set~ the texts, the student guides, the teacher guides and the comprehensive sets of instructional DVD's for each title.

The texts have a very "soft, smooth" feel to the cover that makes them lovely to hold and read. That may not be a big deal to some, but I appreciate a book with a good hand. Samuel Butler's translations, which are used for the text, are interesting in that he chose to translate both works from their poetic form into prose. This makes them more accessible to today's readers, and at an earlier age than the typical college .

The student and teacher guides are typical of  Memoria Press ~ very straightforward, no fancy bells and whistles, just the facts with blank lines to write them in.

The DVD's are the highlight of this set in my opinion, as they offer the opportunity to have a classical scholar come lecture in the comfort of your own home. Without Sean Brooks' instruction I would find it very difficult myself to pull out the background information (both literary and cultural) that is interesting as well as helpful in understanding these ancient works.

When I first received the set I handed the book and student guide to my son and asked him to get started, and we would check out the DVD's later as we had time. I didn't realize that the best order would be to watch the DVD introduction to the entire book first, then read the text, watch the DVD lecture for that section, and then work through the student guide. Now you know, so don't make the same mistake... you can thank me later. ;) OH, and of course, *you* will want to look the teacher guide over before you begin the whole thing, but I'm sure you already knew that, just figured I'd make sure my suggestions were complete for the entire set. ;)

Screen shots of the samples (not including text) found on the Memoria Press website along with the corresponding page from my son's student guide. Note that thee Teacher Guide includes the (answered)student guide on the right portion of the paper with background information and helps surrounding.  

Sean Brooks is a delight to watch (from my parental/educator perspective) because he so clearly loves his topic and really wants to pull his audience into his great enjoyment of this Ancient Literature and its fusion of myth and history and treatment of the human condition. My son appreciates the way Sean explains things and makes the cultural and historical context of the Greeks more accessible while clarifying some of the characters and events of the story.

While I am appreciating the study of The Illiad, I checked out the DVD Introduction and first lesson for The Odyssey, and am looking forward to sharing the adventure of that epic with my son next. More of the same good information, and I think he will continue to be surprised at all the phrases he will find that continue to be a part of our culture today (like Achilles' Heel). It seems that Homer and Shakespeare may collectively be responsible for the greatest portion of literary allusions used even today.

If you visit the product page listed below you will find links to sample pages from each of the books and guides as well as sample videos, so that you can get a feel for the program yourself. If you are looking for quality Classical Education with a Christian Perspective, I suspect that you will be very pleased with what Memoria Press has to offer. 

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Memoria Press
• Product: Iliad & Odyssey Complete Set 
• Ages: 7th-12th Grade
• Price: $135 (A savings of $15 if purchased separately) 

You can visit Memoria Press on their social Media pages: 

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Homeschool Review Crew and see what others had to say about this set as well as the others. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

#hsreviews #memoriapress #classicalchristianeducation #classicalyhomeschooling #classicalchristianhomeschooling