Studying Real Books in First Grade: A Review of StoryTime Treasures from Memoria Press

Reviewing: StoryTime Treasures Student Guide and Answer Key and More StoryTime Treasures Student Guide and Answer Key

One of our son's favorite pastimes is reading. He loves to read all kinds of books. So, we were very excited to review StoryTime Treasures from Memoria Press. He was so very excited for their arrival and could not wait to get started reading Little Bear (the first book examined in the curriculum). Between the Teacher Guide and the Student Study Guide, we could start right away since we owned the first book and our library had the second book (Frog and Toad are Friends). (And he is just as excited about More StoryTime Treasures!)

Memoria Press follows a Christian Classical Education, teaching children how to be wise and virtuous. Children will be trained in the liberal arts (studying grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) and gain "familiarity with the great books and the great thinkers of the Western tradition."

If you wish to know more about classical education, you can learn more in this video from Memoria Press:

What is the StoryTime Treasures Set? 

StoryTime Treasures are perfect for first graders after they complete the Kindergarten phonics program from Memoria Press. (We received Classical Phonics and the First Start Reading Set from Memoria Press and reviewed it here.) The lessons in StoryTime Treasures introduce new vocabulary to your children, review phonics and previously learned vocabulary, teach spelling and grammar, and encourage the growth of more skills first graders will need to become lifelong readers and writers.

Reading real books allows children to be engaged in the content and encourage them to become lifelong readers. And because they are classic children's stories, parents do not need to worry about the content of the stories being read.

We only received the student guide and answer key but if you order the StoryTime Treasures Set, you will receive the following:

• StoryTime Treasures Student Study Guide 
• StoryTime Treasures Teacher Guide 
• Little Bear
• Frog and Toad are Friends 
• Caps for Sale 
• Make Way for Ducklings 

In the More StoryTime Treasures Set (First Grade second semester) you will receive the following: 

• More StoryTime Treasures Student Guide 
• More StoryTime Treasures Teacher Guide 
• Billy and Blaze 
• Blaze and the Forest Fire
• The Story About Ping 
• Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie 
• Stone Soup
• The Little House
• Miss Rumphius 

Daily Lessons 

We followed a modified version of the suggested daily schedule that was printed in the Teacher Guide. As our son has already used the First Start Reading books and Classical Phonics: A Child's Guide to Word Mastery by Cheryl Lowe, he was familiar with the basic set up of the materials from Memoria Press. This meant that we could jump right into the work.

Teacher Guide 

One of my favorite things about all of the Memoria Press products we have used so far is that the Teacher Guide provides an introduction to the course as well as a model lesson plan. So if you need a more detailed explanation of how to run your homeschool day, then your Teacher Guide will help you.

For StoryTime Treasures, you can follow a five-day lesson plan. However, you can easily adapt it for your own needs. As our son is reading, we tended to combine some of the days and even read through the entire story on Day 1 (both he and his sister wanted to know what was going to happen next in the story).

I found myself referencing the Classical Phonics book that we received for an early review. I would often have our son read through the pages referenced in the Teacher Guide.

A Typical Week Using StoryTime Treasures in Our Homeschool

I would like to take you through our son's work with Lesson 3: Little Bear Goes to the Moon.

On day one, we examined the common words and new words and talked about contractions. As we do not have the phonics flashcards, I wrote this on paper for him to read. Our son then completed the page in his Student Study Guide. He said the words out loud, used them in a sentence, and wrote the words. We then discussed the definitions of the bold words for the bottom of the page.

The Teacher's Guide has instructions and copies of the Student Guide with answers.  

We read the story again on the second day and went over the common words and new words listed in the Teacher Guide. For Lesson 3, some of these words included: then, thought, that, tumbled, house, flew, and fooling. We can read the phonics words on a separate piece of paper or on our small whiteboard. Finally, our son completed the comprehension questions about the story.

Day three and day four activities are much shorter as they only required our son to review a word study using Classical Phonics. Our son read through the words listed on the pages, paying attention to those listed in the Teacher Guide. For some weeks, we combined day 3 and 4 activities into one day.

As you can see Days 3-5 have phonics lessons referencing Classical Phonics and the flash cards (which we do not own).

For the last day, we saved the Just for Fun activity. On page 16 of the Student Study Guide, our son wrote about his wish to visit the Statue of Liberty and what he thought he would see there as we discussed Little Bear's pretend adventure to the moon. For some reason, our son wanted to skip some of the Just for Fun pages and move forward with the other activities.

Overview 

While StoryTime Treasures looks at four books, More StoryTime Treasures examines seven books. The lessons in both are laid out in the same manner and allow your children to become a better reader and writer. There are brief lessons in the following across the two Student Study Guides:

• How to write a sentence
• Punctuation
• Capitalization
• Verbs
• Quotations
• Contractions
• Adjectives
• Characters, settings, and plot 
• Abbreviation
• Rhyming
• When to use 'a' versus 'an' 
• Sentence types
• Nouns
• Apostrophes
• Personification

These grammar lessons are spread throughout the weeks' lessons on reading, phonics, comprehension, and creative activities. I like that they are mixed in during the regular lessons and not separate parts. It is nice to study these grammar lessons while reading real books suitable for first graders.

Our Thoughts 

I like that even though I had heard of most of the books required between the two StoryTime Treasures sets, that some were still brand new to our son. So while they are classic children's books, some were still new to us and made it all the more exciting to study them with our son (and of course our daughter wanted to hear the stories, too).

During the review period, our son read Little Bear, Frog and Toad are Friends, and Caps for Sale. We jumped around a bit in the Student Study Guide as we had to return Frog and Toad are Friends to the library (we will pick up again with this book in a few weeks' time).

I also like the fact that the materials from Memoria Press all have a similar graphic design. This makes it easy for me to find them among our son's school books. And the spiral-bound design of the Student Study Guide is a nice bonus so the workbooks lay flat on the table for our son. The pages are nice and thick so I don't think they will tear easily – even if our son has to make multiple eraser marks.

So even though our son has chosen to skip some of the Just for Fun pages, when I asked him what his favorite part was that is exactly what he said: the Just for Fun pages. I think that is because they don't all require him to write. He can color and draw and be creative.

Working on the Just for Fun page for Caps for Sale

Flipping through Caps for Sale to find the different colors needed for his country picture

We flipped through the Student Study Guide of the next book (More StoryTime Treasures) and imagined what the next set of books will be about. (He is particularly excited about completing The Little House activity page where he will get to add details for an already-drawn house.) Of all the books listed, our son said he is most excited about reading about Blaze and completing the activities for The Little House.

Each story had one page with vocabulary and questions similar to this page from More StoryTime Treasures

I have been really pleased all the products we have reviewed from Memoria Press. I can foresee us using materials from Memoria Press for years to come!

Note: We have also reviewed Simply Classical Writing Book One: Step-by-Step Sentences (Bible Story Edition) and Book Two along with the teacher guides.

Do You Want to Learn More about Memoria Press? 

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Don't forget to check out the other reviews of Second Grade through Tenth Grade literature sets.

Classical Approach to Learning How to Write Sentences: Reviewing Products from Memoria Press

Reviewing: Simply Classical Writing Book One: Step-by-Step Sentences (Bible Story Edition) and Simply Classical Writing Book Two: Step-by-Step Sentences (Bible Story Edition) with Teacher Key, Skill level about 1st-3rd grade

Our family was excited for the opportunity to review products again from Memoria Press. Our son has been using the Simply Classical Writing Book One: Step-by-Step Sentences (Bible Story Edition) for the past several weeks. As part of the review we received three paperback books from Memoria Press:

• Simply Classical Writing Book One: Step-by-Step Sentences (Bible Story Edition)
• Simply Classical Writing Book Two: Step-by-Step Sentences (Bible Story Edition)
• Simply Classical Writing Book Two: Step-by-Step Sentences Teacher Key (Bible Story Edition) 

Each book is designed to provide a full year's worth of instructions when approached at a slower pace. The books are part of the Memoria Press Classical Curriculum adapted for Special Needs. A Classical Christian education is one in which children are trained in the liberal arts and are introduced to the great books and great thinkers of Western tradition. With the slower pace of these books adapted for Special Needs, families can provide a Classical Education for all of their children. However, your child does not need to be classified as special needs in order to benefit from using these slower-paced books.  I would use Simply Classical Writing books with all children. They provide a firm foundation in learning how to write.

In the beginning of the 118-page Book One, there are two pages of Teacher Notes that outline supplies, how to teach the curriculum, an outline explaining day by day activities, and recommendations for special situations.

Each week consists of the following activities: 

• Read the assigned story
• Learn the rules
• Copy and mark decodable sentences
• Read-Aloud sentences
• Create a sentence
• Challenge sentence – students will use their own words to tell something that happened in the story – our almost six-year-old found this to be one of the harder tasks for him 
• Illustrate and describe the drawing – students draw something talked about in the story and then write a caption for their picture 

The sentences our son copied, wrote, and created were marked using colored pencils according to the instructions: 

• Green for capital letters at the beginning of the sentence
• Red for the ending punctuation 
• Blue for specific names that need to capitalized (in our lessons, these were God, Eden, Adam, and so on) 

In the beginning, we worked on reviewing the rules. You can see how he circled the beginning letter of the sentence.
We had to review what words needed to be circled in blue on more than one occasion. 

Each week's work is spread out over three pages and – depending on your child and their ability – you could take a week to complete the work as suggested or less time. For example, some days we completed one whole weeks' sentences and other days we only worked on one or two parts. In general, we took two days to complete each lesson. 

Our son had some difficulty with the challenge sentence and the illustrate and describe part, so we usually did these two on separate days. As Simply Classical Writing Book One is geared towards ages 6-8, it did not surprise me that our son would need more assistance with some of the work. 

How We Used the Book 

We started using Simply Classical Writing Book One: Step-by-Step Sentences as soon as it arrived. We were both pretty excited to get started.

I decided to break up the rules about sentences (there are four pages) into separate lessons. We started with the first four rules. Then, each day I would introduce one more rule while reviewing the previous ones briefly. Sometimes I wrote them on our small white board and other times we read directly from the book. 

 

As this is the Bible Story Edition, it is recommended to have an introductory Bible story collection. They teach from A Child's Garden of Bible Stories. As we already have three illustrated collections, I used these books. If a lesson took us more than one day, I even swapped which book we were using to read the story. So while one book might have information regarding Moses as just a baby, hearing the word of God, and then leading his people out of Egypt; another of our books told of the plagues and wandering in the desert. This gave our son lots to pick from when he was writing his own challenge sentence for several lessons (weeks 8-10). 

On the first day, I would read the story to both our children. Then our son and I would work on the lesson together. The next day I would read the story again (or use a different book) and then he would complete the lesson.

When working the challenge sentence and the illustration, he would often have the book in
front of him for reference as you can see at the top of this photograph. 

What I Like 

I like how this seamlessly incorporates Bible reading into our day. It is great to talk about the Bible – such stories as that of Abraham and Sarah, Elijah, Daniel and the Lions, the message delivered to Mary by the Angel, the miracles of Jesus, the parables of Jesus, and His death and resurrection – during our language arts lessons. So while our son gains a firm foundation in sentence writing and learns about nouns, verbs, punctuation, and more; he is also receiving a firm foundation in his faith. 

I also appreciate the binding of the book, the quality of the pages (they can take quite a bit of erasing), and the fact that there is ample room to write in the book on the lines provided. At the end of Week 34, there is an appendix with a certificate for completion and a reproducible template for further practice. I think this is fantastic as it will let us continue to use this format (which works) when we read other books and stories.

Because of the high quality of the pages, I could have asked our son to erase the first sentence where he forgot two words. Instead I decided to show him two editing notations to help him correct his mistake. 

The lessons allow us to discuss how wonderfully God provides for His people.

I also think using Simply Classical Book One: Step-by-Step Sentences has helped our son's handwriting tremendously (see example above). The copy work is serving a dual purpose – he is working on his ability to construct sentences, learning grammar rules, and improving his handwriting.

Looking Forward to Book Two 

We will probably begin to work with Simply Classical Writing Book Two in the new year – January 2020. I think finishing up Book One slowly will enable our son to continue to grow as a writer, give him some free time over the summer, and let us focus on building the foundation for writing good sentences using the classical approach of Memoria Press. 

I previewed Book Two so I would be able to schedule the lessons into our homeschooling planner. I like that Book Two continues with the same basic format as Book One but then includes instructions in grammar and sentence writing that are a little more complex. It looks like there is a lot of natural progression for students as they move from one book to the next.

I have included two photographs from the Student Guide and one photograph from the Teacher's Guide to give you an idea of how the lessons change to introduce more complex topics. Students will learn about nouns, pronouns, verbs, commas, apostrophes, synonyms, antonyms, adjectives, adverbs, and how to start writing paragraphs. Mixed into the lessons on all these important concepts are reviews built in for your child. Book Two also has an appendix with some great items like a week-by-week list of themes, scriptures referenced, and the page in the recommended story Bible. There are also a couple of reproducible pages to help you continue the lessons. I am very excited to start working on this book in the new homeschool year with our son.

Simply Classical Book Two: Step-by-Step Sentences

Teacher's Guide

If you would like learn more about Memoria Press, please visit the following:

Website – Facebook – Twitter – Pinterest – YouTube – Instagram

Memoria Press gave families the opportunity to review several products including:

• Simply Classical Spelling Book One: Step-by-Step Words
• Simply Classical Spelling Book Two: Step-by-Step Words
• The Story of the Thirteen Colonies & the Great Republic Set
•  200 Questions about American History Set 
• The Wars of the Jews Set 

I think all these look like excellent products so I can't wait to check out the reviews myself to see what the members of the Homeschool Review Crew think about them.