Check Out These Excellent Study Guides for 2 Classic Books {A Progeny Press / Homeschool Review Crew Review}

 Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

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.) 

High School Students Can Dig into the Fellowship of the Ring Study Guide

The Fellowship of the Ring Study Guide is aimed at grades 9-12 and, when done in full, can earn a high student .25 transcript credits.

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.

Of course, there are more traditional vocabulary and comprehension exercises, too.

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.

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.

Plus, if you're not tech savvy, free technical support is available if you encounter any difficulties using the digital guide!

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.

You can also find Progeny Press on:

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Enjoy and Learn about Living History with a Progeny Press E-Guide

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Living history books bring happy hours of read together time to my family, yet independent study options are something I seek for my children as well.  Thus, I was delighted to be offered a chance to review the Give Me Liberty E-Guide by Progeny Press.  I thought it would offer my children and I the best of both worlds, so to speak, by acting as a catalyst for us to gather together for another fabulous family read aloud, while also providing my oldest child with encouragement to stretch himself through independent study.

An E-Guide with a Mission

Before taking this review, I was not that familiar with Progeny Press.  However, upon browsing their website, I was thrilled to read their mission:

To teach our children to think clearly, to understand literature, and to rely on the scripture for truth and values, and enjoy themselves while they do it!

Add a few more topics after "literature" and add "and catechism" after "scripture", and I'd say they've summed up a good portion of my homeschool mission with their business mission.

Take a look at their 61-page Give Me Liberty E-Guide  for middle-schoolers, and you can clearly see the mission in action.  Along with typical vocabulary exercises, comprehension questions, and literature device studies, the guide focuses on connections between the living history book and scripture.  It also offers a host of optional activities to engage students in further study and exploration.

A Thorough Literature Study

The Give Me Liberty E-Guide  is quite complete.  It offers:

• author information
• story synposis
• story background
• pre-reading activities
• vocabulary study
• comprehension question
• post-reading activities
• writing prompts
• resource listings 
• literary device activities
• an answer key

...and more. 

For those that like to write, it also provides suggestions for such exercises as writing:

• biographical essays
• literary analysis
• persuasive essays
• poetry
• research competence
• speech writing

Plus, it continually encourages students to discover spiritual meaning connected to the characters, plot, and themes within the book Give Me Liberty.

Also, the Give Me Liberty E-Guide  comes as an Interactive Study Guide, which means you download it as a .pdf which can be printed and used as a typical paper-and-pen product, or it can opened with Adobe Acrobat Reader onscreen in an interactive format where students can type answers directly into the form.  This option for typing and saving work as students progress is a boon for those who prefer typing to writing.

Does It Meet Its Mission?

Progeny Press encourages students to read the entire Give Me Liberty book before tackling questions in the Give Me Liberty E-Guide , so that is exactly what my children and I began to do.  We added a library copy of the book to our daily read aloud pile and found ourselves getting completely immersed in the plight of 13-year old Nathaniel Dunn as he navigates his personal hopes and dilemmas amidst the turbulent times of 1775 Virginia. 

Indeed, we quickly found ourselves sad upon learning how Nathaniel became an indentured servant,  angry at the way he was treated by a man who almost bought him, excited by his impudence with a horse as pertained to that man, relieved by his meeting  kindly schoolmaster named Basil, and, in turn, tense as he grappled with decisions as the American Revolution neared.
 
We wanted to keep reading and reading Give Me Liberty, but found we needed to put it aside for a bit to fulfill some other commitments. 

While our family reading was on pause, I assigned my oldest child, who, traditionally, would be in fourth grade, Part One of the Give Me Liberty E-Guide .  I knew the guide would be a challenge for him since it is written for children in grades 6-8, and since my son has had little experience with independent literature study work.  However, I also thought it would be a worthwhile thing to try. 

I was not disappointed.

At first, my oldest son tried the guide on my computer in interactive form, which he liked.  However, since I needed my computer for other things and my son can always use more pen-to-paper practice, I, then, decided to switch him over to a printed copy of the guide.  He groaned at this at first, but, shortly,  acquiesced and, to my happy surprise, began plodding his way through the guide with due diligence.

Granted, my son did not progress through the guide with the utmost speed or depth of answers for open-answer questions, but he made progress both in the guide and in his ability to sustain focus with an independent study.  Better still, he did not complain much.  In fact, he said:

The study guide is okay, but I prefer the book more. I also prefer the computer version of the study guide, because I prefer typing to writing.  I will complete it either way.

Considering my son's typical distaste for anything "schooly", his seemingly "meh" comments are actually "yeah" ones for me.  I knew we'd all love reading the book aloud, but I would cotton to the study guide.  He may not love it, but he likes it "okay" and that is ore than okay by me. 

Learn More 

Progeny Press gets a two thumbs up from this mama. I am excited that I can use the Give Me Liberty E-Guide  with my oldest, and, then, due to its family-friendly permissions, use it again with my younger children when they are ready for it.
Progeny Press earns similar ratings with other families, I hear,  for its wide variety of E-Guides geared toward elementary schoolers, middle schoolers, and high schoolers.  You can read about some of these among the 95 reviews at Schoolhouse Review Crew.






You can find Progeny Press on Facebook and Twitter.

Immerse Kids in Survival Skills & Adventure with a Classic Book & Excellent eGuide {A Progeny Press Review}

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Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor compensated in any other way.

If you are a book study guide lover or just want to cherry pick ideas from an excellent eGuide as your lower elementary through high school students read classic stories, I encourage you to check out Progeny Press, a popular Christian vendor of study guides for literature that makes it their mission:

"To teach our children to think clearly, to understand literature, and to rely on the scripture for truth and values, and enjoy themselves while they do it!"

We're recently been checking out their My Side of the Mountain Study Guide by Carol Clark - an eGuide meant for students in grades 5-8 which can be completed in 8-10 weeks - and I can honestly attest that it is a thorough, varied guide chock full of ideas for learning, review, and discovery.
 

The guide is written to be used in its entirety for independent unit-based engagement and study. However, it is also designed and organized in such a way that parents and/or students can easily scan it to pull an idea here and an activity there for more flexible enrichment or targeted study.

The Study Guide Comes in a Handy Digital Format

When you order your My Side of the Mountain Study Guide, or any eGuide from Progeny Press, you get instant access to a downloadable study guide and separate answer key.
The interactive PDF format of the eGuide works on our Windows laptop, and, I hear, works on Macs, too.

Once  opened with the FREE Adobe Readerprogram, the eGuide allows students (or parents who have students narrate to them) to enter answers directly on the computer and save their progress as they work. (I believe with an alternative app the fillable fields of the interactive guide can work on mobile devices and tablets, too.)

This interactive PDF format is convenient! It means that do not have to print any of the guide if you'd rather just have your kids work onscreen. Or, you can easily print just what you need or want - the whole guide at once, a single lesson or page as students need it, or multiple copies of pages for your family's use.
All the convenience and learning. None of the paper and ink waste. Love it!

What I love even more is that the answer key can also be easily printed or accessed onscreen which can help parents/teachers to check student work without having to read and answer questions on their own.

Plus, there is free technical support offered should you encounter any difficulties when using the digital guide and answer key. This, though, I doubt would be needed by anyone, since the eGuide and Answer Key are so easy to use. Seriously, everything worked A-okay here with this study and one we did previously.

The My Side of the Mountain Study Guide Is One Complete Study Guide!

When I said the My Side of the Mountain Study Guide is "a thorough, varied guide chock full of ideas for learning, review, and discovery" earlier I meant it 100%.

The eGuide offers:

• author information
• story synopsis and background
• pre-reading activities
• vocabulary study
• Bible study
• critical thinking
• comprehension questions
• post-reading activities
• writing prompts
• resource listings
• literary device activities

... and more. In doing so, it really gets students engaged and learning as they immerse themselves in reading classic literature and thinking about survival skills, adventure, and faith.

Included in the 63-page interactive eGuide are:

• Literary Techniques to include adjective use, alliteration, allusion, anthropomorphism, assonance, comic relief, coming of age (or bildungsroman, which was a new word for me), conflict, dramatic structure, facts vs. opinion, flashback, full-circle ending, irony, metaphors and extended metaphors, mood, onomatopoeia, oxymoron, paraphrasing, point of view, recapping, similes, suspension of disbelief, verb use, and more.

• Moral Lessons and Character Values about such things as acceptance, being alone, bullying, fear and worry, daily life, honoring parents, hospitality, lying, patience, provision, superstitions, and understanding God.

• Activities and Writing Assignments to include at and design, cooking, creative writing, a crossword puzzle, drama projects, essay choices, field trips, health & nutrition, journalism, journal writing, letter writing, legends, maple syrup, math connections, parody, plant research, poster projects, research writing, rock climbing, safety chats, science connections, wooden toys, and more.

• Suggestion for Further Reading, which include more materials by the same author and books that tie in with or are similar to My Side of the Mountain.

You can find samples of the eGuide at My Side of the Mountain Study Guide.

Why We Chose the My Side of the Mountain Study eGuide and What We Thought

A few years ago, I got it in my head that I wanted to use the well-loved classic, My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, to start an outdoor book-and-adventure club with friends. However, life kept happening and the club never came to be. Still, I wanted to read the book with my younger two children before they age out of it. Thus, when an opportunity came up to review the My Side of the Mountain Study Guide by Progeny Press, I took it as a prompt to break the book out for some relaxed Mom-and-us style learning.

Key word there is relaxed! Because we were using this thorough resource during the bridge from spring into summer when we tend to wind down more formal studies, I opted to use the eGuide in a non-traditional way with my children.

Basically, we read my old, weathered copy of My Side of the Mountain together as we swung on an outdoor swing together, laid on a blanket in the sun, or snuggled before bedtime. Then, every few chapters, I would break out the study guide with the kids and use it for prompts for faith-and virtues-chats, oral quizzes about vocabulary, literary devices, etc.
I also browsed it for ideas for enrichment for practical life and survival skills among other things.

This led to nature walks and explorations...

 ...salads with wild edibles...

 ... some strawberry picking...

... foraging for clay and trying to make clay ovens...

... picking mulberries...

...building fires...

... picking black raspberries...

... making chocolate covered strawberry deliciousness...

... foraging for and whittling walking sticks...

... and more!

There has just been so much inspiration for hands-on, outdoor, fun and learning!

Or course, there has been indoor learning, too.

Sometimes, I read my children questions from the guide and had them answer orally while I took quick notes on their answers in the fillable fields so I would remember which questions we'd already covered.

One time, when we did this, I set a timer, gave the kids game chips as points for every correct answer and, let the child who had the most chips at the end of the game choose if we would have a snuggly read together or watch one of the movies we'd found in the resource section together before bed.

The winner chose the latter, so we found free access to one of the recommended movies on Youtube. Then, as we began watching it, my other child came in, and the movie engaged us all.

After watching, the movie we dovetailed into natural conversations that night and the next day during which the kids compared parts of the movie to My Side of the Mountain (especially the survival aspects and the ideas of running away and coming of age), chatted about survival skills, and discussed some cultural and faith points that  the movie and our eGuide-enriched study of My Side of the Mountain brought to the fore.

I was delighted with all this and grateful for the eGuide, since I had never heard of the movie before and do not think we would have happened upon it without the eGuide's suggestion.

I also do not think our entire experience with My Side of the Mountain book would have been as rich as it has been without the eGuide. I am grateful that the eGuide allowed us to embrace natural, relaxed learning, to find some great extension activities/resources, and to review some key literary devices, vocabulary, and more.

The My Side of the Mountain Study Guide certainly is a blessing that has all the typical vocabulary exercises, comprehension questions, writing prompts and literature device studies that you'd expect in a literary unit study which can be used traditionally or in a more relaxed way. It also focuses on connections between the classic book of one boy's adventure and coming of age and Scripture and offers a wide array of optional activities and further resources to engage students in wonderful exploration and learning.

I most certainly recommend the My Side of the Mountain Study Guide to others with middle school age learners whether they like independent literary studies or relaxed, hands-on family learning like us.

Learn More

Progeny Press gets a two thumbs up from me both for this My Side of the Mountain Study Guide and for an earlier Progeny Press review of their Give Me Liberty E-Guide due to how well it is written and designed and how family-friendly they are with wonderful extension ideas and permissions that allow you to use the eGuides with multiple children within your family.

Progeny Press earns similar ratings with other families, I hear, for its wide variety of E-Guides geared toward elementary schoolers, middle schoolers, and high schoolers.  You can read about some of the other titles offered among the 64 Progeny Press social media, blog, and video reviews that Review Crew families have shared.

You can find Progeny Press on:

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