Teaching Language Arts: A Review of a Progeny Press Study Guide

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 was I compensated in any other way.

When reading good literature with our children, it is often nice to have a study guide to accompany that book. Progeny Press makes it very easy to find study guides to go along with a great variety of books for young elementary students to high school students. In the past, we have reviewed a study guide with our younger son (The Long Way to a New Land) and our older son (Perelandra). For this review, Progeny Press offered members of the Homeschool Review Crew (read the rest of the reviews here) five different study guides:

• A New Coat for Anna Study Guide (recommended for grades K-3): This is the one our younger son and I used the past several weeks. 
• In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson Study Guide (recommended for grades 4-6) 
• My Side of the Mountain Study Guide (recommended for grades 5-8)
• Animal Farm Study Guide (recommended for grades 9-12)
• Little Women Study Guide (recommended for grades 8-12) 

What Is Progeny Press? What Are the Study Guides?

The mission of Progeny Press is: "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!"

The study guides provide students with the ability to better understand and enjoy literature while examining themes and ideas presented in the stories.  The study guides include background to the novel, activities, vocabulary exercises, content questions, literary analysis questions, and critical analysis questions. Among these activities, there are multiple questions that ask children to reflect upon Bible verses or how the work might connect to their life. And don't worry, parents – there is an answer key! 

How Did We Use the Study Guide in Our Homeschool? 

I used this study guide with our upcoming second grader. When the book arrived, I handed A New Coat for Anna to our son and told him we would be completing a study guide for it like we did last year for The Long Way to a New Land. He read through the book by himself at least once before we started the study guide.

Once I downloaded the study guide (30 page PDF file), I looked over the Before-you-read Activities and saw that watching the Sound of Music was one of the activities listed. Neither of our young children had watched the musical, so for a few days during lunch, we enjoyed watching the Julie Andrews musical. We discussed why the Captain wouldn't leave Austria, facts about the real von Trapp family, as well as information about music.

This time, I decided to use the study guide primarily on our laptop and allow our son to type his answers into the PDF. I really liked that I didn't have to print out lots of pages. However, it did mean that he could not work on the questions unless I was giving him access to a computer.

We went through and completed the chart that examined what Anna would need for her coat and where she would get the materials from and when that would happen. Then we matched up careers with descriptions and worked on vocabulary. When answering questions about patience and quotes from Proverbs, we discussed the topics and questions rather than typing the answers in the PDF.

The one activity I did print out was the word search pages. I gave them to our two sons to work on together. I love that our older son was able to share some homeschooling time with his brother and help him out.

What Did We Think? 

I appreciate the fact that I can use the study guides with more than one child in my family. So, we can use the study guide this year with our son and in a few years with our daughter. (Although our daughter did enjoy hearing the story as we read it several times over the course of completing the study guide.) I also like the fact that I do not have to print out all the pages. Being able to keep the work online is a great bonus as we have so many papers everywhere. Our son also greatly enjoyed being able to type the answers into the PDF.

There are a number of activities you can complete when you are finished reading both the book and the study guide. I really wish I had remembered to get all of the ingredients to make the Silver Cake before the end of the review period. Oh, well – something to look forward to in the coming weeks! Our son and daughter enjoyed making bookmarks as the study guide suggested. We had two colors of yarn to pick from, so our son chose a light purple color for the paper part to match the dark purple yarn. They both decided to write fruits of the Spirit onto their bookmarks.

I would recommend the study guides from Progeny Press to homeschool families. They have a great variety of titles available for elementary to high school students. If you want to see how other families from the Homeschool Review Crew used the study guides in their homeschools, be sure to read their reviews.

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Literature Study Guides with a Christian Perspective: A Review of The Long Way to a New Land Study Guide

Using study guides for literature happens to be one of my favorite ways to approach reading lessons for our homeschooled children. So when we had the opportunity to review another product from Progeny Press, I was very happy to pick The Long Way to a New Land Study Guide which is geared for grades 1-3. (Last year we used and reviewed the Perelandra Study Guide with our teen.) This year, our first grader and I are reading through the book The Long Way to a New Land and use the study guide from Progeny Press.

What is Progeny Press?

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!"

There are so many great products offered by Progeny Press. They offer their study guides in a variety of ways including printed workbooks, CDs, and e-Guides that you can download right to your computer. You can also purchase books to go along with your study guide on their site.

What Did We Receive?

For this review, we downloaded the 49-page study guide written by Colleen Schreurs for the book written by Joan Sandin. We purchased the book separately but you could also pick it up at a library or purchase it through Progeny Press. The story, The Long Way to a New Land is set in both Sweden and in Ellis Island, New York in 1868. It is an I Can Read book level 3 (for children reading alone). The family is struggling in Sweden and decides to travel to America for a new opportunity.

As you and your children read the story, you can easily incorporate the study guide activities into your homeschooling day. The study guide contains a number of activities to complete with your child before, during, and after reading the book. For example, my husband and I helped our son complete a family tree prior to reading the story. We also worked on creating the different flags to represent where his ancestors originated in Europe. (Both he and his sister really enjoyed this activity!)

Those activities that relate directly to the chapters in the book contain the following parts:

• Vocabulary 

• Questions regarding the content of the chapter 

This was a fun exercise asking why the family packed different items into their trunk for America

• Literary Techniques and Grammar (such as cause & effect, prediction, synonyms, action verbs, etc.) 
• Comparing past and present 
• A section entitled Dig Deeper that consisted of Bible quotations and questions for reflection such as read Matthew 4:4 "It is written, 'Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.'" with a question asking children why the Bible was an important item for the family to take with them to the New Land

There were also a number of activities for when we were finished reading the book including writing letters to grandparents to learn more about ancestry of the family, the creation of a family booklet with photos, and a cooking center (the study guide contains a recipe for Quick Whole Wheat Bread).

There is also an answer key to help you correct the objective questions.

Note: All the units are written from a Christian perspective. The study guide contains references to Bible quotes using the NIV translation.

How Did We Use the Study Guide?

During the course of the review period, we set aside our other language arts work to focus solely upon reading The Long Way to a New Land and using the study guide. Our son read through the entire book as soon as it arrived. We then completed the before-you-read activities together. When we started working on the sections of the study guide that were specifically geared towards the chapters, I would read the chapter aloud to both our children before our son worked on the questions.

Referencing the book to answer the questions

I only required our son to complete one part for each chapter each day. If he were older, he could probably complete the entire work for each chapter during one day. So the way we worked through the study guide, it will take us about five to six weeks to complete. If you were working at a faster pace, it would probably take you about four to five weeks to complete.

What Did We Think?

I am very pleased with The Long Way to a New Land Study Guide. The variety of the activities means we had something new to work on each day. All the activities were closely connected to the book which I appreciated. This was a perfect fit for our homeschool day.

I also like how you could tie in social studies and history to this study guide. In fact, we were able to talk about the Statue of Liberty (which our son had studied a bit earlier in the year) and examine some stamps from Czechoslovakia as some members of my own family were from Slovakia.

I think the study guide would be perfect for a second grader. I found some of the work to be a bit more challenging for my first grader but as we are homeschooling, we have the flexibility to work through the questions together. Some of the ways we adapted the study guide was taking turns writing out the answers to the questions, reviewing the book as we answered each question, and I gave our son clues as to where to find the vocabulary words in the word search.

Our son's favorite activity from the study guide was creating the flags. He said, "It was so much fun."

He also enjoyed the vocabulary activity where he had to define the word in his own words and then look it up in the dictionary. Some of the words he had to define included homespun, copper, and seaport. From the vocabulary activities, he also really liked completing the crossword puzzle and the word search.

He also enjoyed being able to draw objects from the present that related to objects from the past and coloring in his pictures. For example, he drew a fancy tower (floor) lamp since we no longer use oil lamps like the family used in the story.

I would recommend the study guides from Progeny Press. They are excellent for focusing upon one story or book with your child and allow for tons of learning opportunities.

P.S. Progeny Press has a lot of fun activities and ideas pinned to a board just for The Long Way to a New Land Study Guide! We can expand our time studying about Ellis Island, Immigration, and the Statue of Liberty using their board.

Do You Want to Learn More About Progeny Press?

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Progeny Press offered four different study guides for review. Please visit the other reviews to see how they incorporated the study guides into their homeschooling day.

Reviewing the e-Guide of Perelandra from Progeny Press

C.S. Lewis is one of our family's favorite authors, so we were very happy to be able to read Perelandra and use the e-Guide from Progeny Press to help our teen understand the material at a deeper level. Progeny Press offers "study guides for literature from a Christian perspective" with hundreds of e-Guides available from The Josefina Story Quilt e-Guide geared towards grades 1-3 to the Perelandra e-Guide for grades 9-12 which we reviewed.

The Mission of Progeny Press is "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!"

You can watch this video from Progeny Press to learn more about the company.

Each study guide takes approximately 8-12 weeks to complete which means your child will complete about one page per day. Guides for younger children can take less time. As Perelandra proved to be a difficult text for our teen to read, we are working through the e-Guide more slowly to ensure that he understands the material that he is reading.

The Perelandra e-Guide contains the following elements:

• Synopsis of Perelandra, background information, and a Synopsis of Out of the Silent Planet (the first book in the trilogy) 
• Since our teen has not read Out of the Silent Planet yet (my husband has read it), it was great that he could review the events on Malacandra and Ransom's encounters with the Sorn and Hrossa.
• A biography of C.S. Lewis 
• I love having a brief biography of the author as it prevents the need to go to the Internet to look it up.
• Activities to complete prior to reading Perelandra 
• While we didn't complete the prereading activities, they are quite good. I really like the idea of researching the mythical origin of Mars and Venus as well as that of 1930-1950s science fiction. These are just two of the six activities suggested. 
• Vocabulary words and a variety of activities to introduce and teach the new words 
• Vocabulary activities range from sentences from the book with the new words to discussion of mood and tone to searching for antonyms. With a variety of ways to learn vocabulary, students are sure to find at least one way which suits their learning style. 

• Examination of literary techniques 
• There are questions pertaining to metaphors, similes, descriptions, and imagery to name a few. 

• Examination of moral lessons and character values 
• Through a variety of questions, we are able to discuss the difference between Weston and Ransom as we read quotes from the Bible and examine their decisions. I think this has been one of my favorite aspects of the e-Guide – we can have good conversations with our son with Perelandra as a starting point. 
• A variety of activities and writing assignments 
• There are typical essay assignments available, as well as art suggestions, and research papers to pick from for culminating activities. 
• Suggestions for further reading 
• Having a suggested list of books written by C.S. Lewis to look for and other books that relate to the series takes the guess work out what to read next. And the great thing is our son has already read some of the other books such as The Martin Chronicles and The Hobbit. 

What Our Family Likes 

My husband and I have been enjoying the fact that while we are discussing Perelandra with our son – and the answers to the vocabulary and other questions – we are also getting the opportunity to discuss real world events as well as the concepts of morality, right and wrong, and other topics in relation to the Christian view we are trying to instill in our son.

I also like that my husband is reading the book via an online application that allows him to search for key words as we discuss the various questions in the e-Guide. This way we can find the exact phrase or quote that a question brings up and find the reasons within the text for the answer suggested in the answer key. One specific instance would be that of the question pertaining to "emergent evolution" and the Force in Chapter 7. Our son had difficulty with that question, so in addition to giving him hints from the answer key we were able to re-read that portion of the text aloud to discuss whether or not Weston is presenting a paradox or a contradiction.

Going Forward 

There is also an interactive feature to the e-Guide that allows your children to type their answers directly into the e-Guide. We chose to print out the unit study so that we could all be able to look at it while discussing the questions.

As our younger two children, who are being homeschooled, move forward in their reading journey, I look forward to relying upon Progeny Press for their e-Guides. Within the next year, we could use Frog and Toad Together e-Guide for our 5-year-old son. If our teen makes the decision to homeschool in the future, we will be looking for others such as Hamlet e-Guide, Introduction to Poetry: Forms and Elements e-Guide, and The Screwtape Letters e-Guide.

In addition, if you are curious, Progeny Press does offer an e-Guide for Out of the Silent Planet, if you would rather read Book # 1 in the Space Trilogy first and complete that e-Guide with your child. There are also sample pages from the various e-Guides to help you decide if it is a fit for your family.

To learn more, please visit the following:

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The Homeschool Review Crew also reviewed the following e-Guides:

• The Josefina Story Quilt e-Guide
• The Green Book e-Guide
• The Scavengers e-Guide 

To see more reviews, please visit the Homeschool Review Crew!