Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.
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Do you have a child reading C .S. Lewis or Tolkien this year? Then, I recommend you dig in with the The Last Battle Study Guide and Fellowship of the Ring Study Guide by Progeny Press. Each of these interactive literature guides is top notch!
Why Did We Choose to Use These Progeny Press Guides?
When we were offered the opportunity to review The Last Battle Study Guide and Fellowship of the Ring Study Guide, I jumped at the chance, for, even though I knew our summer was going to be busy, our past experience with Progeny Press guides has been so positive that I wanted to check out these ones, too.
Our past reviews of Give Me Liberty, My Side of the Mountain, Redwall, and Frankenstein proved to me that Progeny Press can flex with whatever schedule we have and can offer us as little or as much as we want as we dive into pieces of literature.
A Little Bit about These Guides
Like most Progeny Press study guides, The Last Battle Study Guide and Fellowship of the Ring Study Guide offer a wide variety of information and activities, which includes:
- a brief author biography
- background information
- pre-reading activity ideas
- exercises to help learn and use vocabulary words
- focus on moral lessons and character values
- study of literary techniques
- a variety of comprehension and "digging deeper" questions
- writing assignments
- suggestions for further reading
- a complete answer key
Plus, both guides are written from a Christian perspective.
Wonderful for families with multiple children, these studies can be used over and over again for multiple students in your families. (Just do a "save as" of the file for each child or print out multiple copies.)
Wonderful for families with multiple children, these studies can be used over and over again for multiple students in your families. (Just do a "save as" of the file for each child or print out multiple copies.)
High School Students Can Dig into the Fellowship of the Ring Study Guide
The classic Fellowship of the Ring book itself is not included with the downloadable study guide, but can be easily accessed online, taken from public libraries, or even purchased through Progeny Press.
With book and guide on hand, students can do the prewriting activities, then read the book in its entirety, then jump into the guide, Or, they can read a few chapters a week and do corresponding activities. Or, like my son, they can revisit a book previously read for enjoyment only and dig a little deeper into it with a more academic bent in mind.
As students dive into Tolkien's tale of fantasy, hobbits, adventure, danger, loyalty, and courage, they can explore so many concepts, themes, and skills.
Literary techniques included in the study explore alliteration, anthropomorphism, assonance, comic relief, foreshadowing, homonyms, exposition, paradox, point of view, rhythm, rhyme, setting, and tone.
As the guide discusses such issues as how to treat prisoners, ethnocentrism, fleeing from sin, praying, seeking counsel, self-awareness, and true friendship, it also shines a light on how God is in control, the Word of God guides us, and God provides strength. Character and moral issues are central to the guide.
Writing assignments and activities include art, a character journal, a crossword puzzle, debate, essays, mapwork, a mini poetry element study, a travel account and more.
One of the prompts my son dug into had him relating Gandalf to the Good Shepherd and had my son asking a strong question in the conclusion of his response's initial draft:
Just like the good shepherd protecting his flock, Gandalf was willing to die for his sheep, the fellowship. This willingness to lay down one's life for one's friends or followers is a key part of a virtuous leader and a virtuous person. Will we, like Gandalf, or the good shepherd, be willing to lay down our life if it will save others?
Middle School Students and Older Can Focus on the Last Battle
Meant for grades 5-8, The Last Battle Study Guide can also benefit older students. It comes in a downloadable interactive pdf format and can be used in conjunction with any online or bound copy of the book.
Within the study, literary techniques dealt with include allusion, anthropomorphism, asides foreshadowing, idioms, metaphors, motifs, onomatopoeia, parallelism, and more.
Moral lessons, character values, and themes include commitment, courage, discouragement, distraction, friendship, hypocrisy, loyalty, racism, respect, teasing, truth vs. lies, wisdom vs. foolishness, and more.
Within the study, literary techniques dealt with include allusion, anthropomorphism, asides foreshadowing, idioms, metaphors, motifs, onomatopoeia, parallelism, and more.
After a helpful synopsis of the book, activities, exercises, and writing assignment topics include art, comprehension questions, discussion, essays, letter writing, poetry, research papers, vocabulary exercises, and more.
One prompt that got my son thinking referred to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. As my son was drafting his thoughts about the prompt, he wrote:
While this allegory has been used to explain many things, such as education or the lack thereof and its effects on our nature, or the preference of comfortable falsehoods to a strange truth, in Lewis’ book, Lord Digory seems to be referring to a different idea. This idea is that of the items with which we interact vs. the perfect ideals of those items in the eye of the divine. Such as a rose which one could hold, smell and see, but which is missing a petal. That is the shadow. The true essence of a rose is that held in the mind of the divine, a perfect rose, more vibrant than any which exists on this earth, more perfect.
In The Last Battle, Narnia as it was is destroyed, and a ‘new’ Narnia is found. But this ‘new’ Narnia isn’t new. It is Narnia as it should be, a perfect Narnia in the eyes of the divine. The ‘new’ Narnia are the real items, the old are the shadows on the wall.I love that this guide had my son digging into thoughts like this and look forward to reading his final draft response.
My Son's Thoughts on These Guides
When I asked my 16-year-old for his thoughts on these guides, he said:
These guides are useful and educational. I have read both books before for enjoyment. Now, I am revisiting them with these guides. The guides highlight aspects I did not notice before and make parts jump out that seemed less important on my first readings of the books.
I found the essays had me researching other literature in order to glean more. This is valuable for me because I am thinking of going to a Classical Liberal Arts college.
I would recommend them.
I would recommend them, too. Whether your child has never read C.S. Lewis and Tolkien or is revisiting books, Progeny Press encourages active, engaged learning.
Learn More
Progeny Press study guides for elementary, middle, and high school students are are available for instant download with no shipping costs and work on Windows and MAC with a universally compatible PDF format.
The Interactive Study Guides should be opened with a free Adobe Reader program and, once opened, allow students to enter their answers directly on the computer, saving their work in progress. (You can also print the guides, of course, if you or your students prefer to work offscreen.)
Multiple children? Progeny Press has you covered. Any child in the family may use the guides - just save a copy for each child.
Want to grade your kids? A complete, separate answer key for parents comes as an included download and can help.
Over 30 Homeschool Crew Review families chose from one of four guides recently, so you can read about experiences with guides for every grade level - by clicking through to find links to everyone's reviews.
