Reading and Learning About Great Books: A Review of LitWits Kits

If you haven't realized it by this point in reading A Mom's Quest to Teach, most of our family loves to read. So I was excited to review the LitWits Kits produced by LitWits. When you first visit the LitWits website, you are met with the following:

"Make great books real! Because kids who read great books become great grown-ups."

According to the site, the Kits offer "fun, creative ways to engage kids with wonderful books!" These ideas fit right into our homeschooling philosophy. One of our main goals is to develop and foster the love of reading in our children. We have struggled over the years with fostering this idea in our older son, but so far both our younger children have caught the love of reading for us.

Using the LitWits Kits has helped us spend time discussing The Hobbit with our teen who is reading the classic novel by J.R.R. Tolkien this homeschool year. And I have also looked through two other kits to help introduce Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to our younger children.

For the review, we were offered the opportunity to select up to four LitWits Kits from their collection of 46 kits. We chose the following three to use and review:

• LitWits Kits for Jules Vernes' Journey to the Center of the Earth
• LitWits Kits for J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit
• LitWits Kits for L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful World of Oz 

If you are interested in seeing just what a LitWits Kit looks like, they offer a sample kit so you can see the 9 main components of the kits. Personally, I love that they provide so much information on their site so you can see what the products are all about before you make a purchase. 

The LitWits Kits are based upon the interactive, immersive literature workshops that the founders, Becky and Jenny, have been holding since 2010. Children who participate in the workshops have a particular classic book and they spend the workshop time doing what the characters in the book did and connecting them to teaching experiences. 

In order to help parents and homeschoolers, the LitWits Kits are a private webpage for each book that provides you with the ideas used in the workshop along with learning links and audiovisual links. Having a variety of links in one place makes it so much easier than having to create your own unit study or searching out links yourself in the middle of a lesson.

Part of the Learning Links available for The Wonderful World of Oz LitWits Kit

I did find because the Kits are based upon workshops for more than one child, some of the activities are a bit difficult for me to adapt to using with just our teen or with just our two younger children. For example, in The Hobbit Kit, one of the activities is called Whose Shoes? which first discusses the home of Bilbo and then asks kids in groups to examine a pair of shoes and describe the person who they belong to. We tried to hold this discussion at dinner time and actually switched it up by talking about baseball caps but it didn't work as well as it might have if the activity were completed in a co-op, group, or classroom setting.

Our teen is also in the middle of reading The Hobbit so we haven't been able to complete some of the activities such as The Triple Textural Arc project. This project allows your child to discuss how the events in the story helped Bilbo grow. There is even a script to help you facilitate the discussion. I hope to complete this activity with our son when he is finished reading the book. It will provide a good way to review the exposition, conflict, action, climax, and resolution of The Hobbit. 

The Story Arc shared on the LitWits Kits site for The Hobbit.

What Are the Key Parts of the LitWits Kits? 

• Sensory Prop Ideas 
• Bookbites Ideas 
• Creative Project Ideas & Instructions/Templates 
• Kinetic Activity Ideas & Instructions/Prompts 
• Academic Handouts 
• Creative Writing Handouts 
• Takeaway Topics 
• Learning Links 
• Audiovisual Links 
• Common Core State Standards Alignment 

Don't worry too much if you are not a fan of the Common Core. The Kits have links at the end that tell you how their activities are aligned with the standards. I did not feel that the idea of the Common Core standards was prevalent throughout the Kits.  So if you are interested in how they align with the standards, you can click on the link or—if you have no interest—you can bypass this small section of the Kits. 

How Did We Use the LitWits Kits? 

As I said earlier, our son is in the middle of reading The Hobbit. Since he could not remember much of the story from his dad reading it to him when he was little, I asked him to draw a picture based upon what he remembered of the Tolkien's Lonely Mountain Project. This project is drawn from the 1937 dust jacket of The Hobbit and allows one to discuss perspective, illustrations of book covers, and more with your child. I thought, as our son likes to draw, this would be a good way to have him think about the story before and after he read the book. We will revisit the activity when he has completed reading the book and I will ask him to draw another picture.

Our younger children have heard part of the tale of The Hobbit and seen some of the movies so I thought it would be fun to have them complete the Elvish Sword with their brother. All three children enjoy being creative, painting with special silver paint, and using beads, buttons, and sequins to decorate their swords.

Gathering the materials 

Working on Elvish Swords

Other Fun Activities 

While we didn't get to use all the activities and ideas provided in the LitWits Kits, I would like to share a few more of the awesome ideas with you. For example, each of the three Kits we received has a section on food and refreshments. Using The Hobbit Kit, you could recreate Beorn's Feast or with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, children could enjoy peaches, bread, and lemonade (in the story they drink green lemonade in Emerald city).

Another fun activity from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz includes the Seeing Green project where children can create green-lenses glasses. This can help introduce the discussion of symbolization in the book. Over the years there has been a lot of speculation as just to what the different characters and things in the Frank L. Baum stories might represent (if they represent anything at all). This is a great topic for older children and even high school-aged kids who are studying the Gilded Age of America. The LitWits Kit offers an introduction and links to various views on the political interpretation of the story.

The final fun activity I want to share is one from The Journey to the Center of the Earth LitWits Kit. In the Stromboli Erupts project, kids build their own volcano to represent the one which helped propel the explorers back to the surface of the Earth. Our younger children really enjoyed putting together the volcano and watching it 'erupt.' We will probably do this activity again.

Our Reenactment of Mount Stromboli

What Did We Think?

I like that there are so many options for classic books and they are continuing to develop more through their workshops that will be released in the future. Click here if you want to see a list of 100+ book recommendations from LitWits.

Personally, I think the LitWits Kits would be a fantastic fit for families who have multiple children who are really close in age. One could then have several children read the story together and then use the Kit together as a family. With our children on the outside of the age range, I found it difficult to use the Kits to the fullest extent possible. I think that in a few years' time (when our two younger children are independently reading chapter books), we will be able to revisit the Kits again and more completely use all three of them. As we retain access to the Kits for the life of the company, I know I can return to them to access all the websites that the Kits have brought together for me. 

Do You Want to Learn More? 

Website – Facebook – Instagram – Twitter – Pinterest

With over 46 kits to choose from, be sure to check out the other reviews so you can see how other members of the Homeschool Review Crew used the LitWits Kits in their homeschool. 

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?

Website – Facebook – Twitter – Pinterest 

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.

Studying History Through Unit Studies: A Review of A George Washington Unit Study from Love at Home Education

Disclaimer: I received this unit study for free from the author in return for my honest opinion. All thoughts and opinions are my own. This post also contains affiliate links. For more information, please see my Terms of Use and Disclosure Policy. Thank you.

Our family enjoys learning about historical figures, so we were excited to review the George Washington Unit Study (K-12) from Love at Home Education. The unit study is perfect for homeschooling multiple grades from K-12 allowing the entire family to learn about the first president of the United States together as a family. We focused upon the activities for grades K-2 during our review period but I eagerly look forward to going back to this unit study as our children get older. 

What Do You Get? 

Which version of the George Washington Unit Study you purchase will impact whether you receive just the PDF or PDF and print version. 

The parts of the unit include: 

• Facts about George Washington 
• George Washington's Family Tree
• George Washington Timeline
• What was the flag like? 
• Vocabulary 
• What's a Surveyor? 
• Images of monuments to Washington 
• Recipe of a favorite treat of Washington 

How Our Family Used the Unit Study 

Our son and I started by reading the facts provided in the unity study. We talked about Washington's education, his involvement in the American Revolution, and why he is known as the Father of our Country. 

We continued by filling out Washington's family tree. We looked for additional information on the Mount Vernon website and added in the names of his parents, siblings, and step-children. If our children were older, we would have completed the activity as suggested for grades 3-6 and searched for images of the family to make a proper tree.

Our son then worked on the timeline, which was his favorite activity. We read through the numbered timeline together. Then, he cut out and pasted the images onto the timeline worksheet. I love the fact that the information from the timeline allowed us to discuss more early American history and our first president.

We also spent time going over new vocabulary words. There are different words for each grade and a suggested timeline for when to study them. 

Finally, we talked about surveyors and surveying land. What does the job entail? What did Washington do? My husband was briefly a surveyor so he was able to explain the work of a modern-day surveyor to our son.

A fun activity we completed in conjunction with the studying of surveying was pretending to be a surveyor. Our son took a pencil and paper and drew a map of the area. 

What Do We Think? 

These Unit Studies are great for families homeschooling multiple grades. You can also go back with your children as they get older and complete the activities you did not do yet. In this case, we will be able to to review additional vocabulary, make a more detailed timeline with additional facts, and even look for plans of our town or county to studying surveying in more depth. 

We enjoyed studying George Washington just as much as we did studying Thomas Jefferson and Natural Disasters using the unit studies from Love at Home Education. The unit studies are simple and easy to implement into our homeschooling day. These qualities allow us to incorporate new topics quite easily. I would recommend you take a look at what Love at Home Education offers in the way of Unit Studies! 

Do you want to learn more about Love at Home Education? 

Love at Home Education is "a dinner table friendly, all-inclusive family curriculum; that your high schooler, and kindergartner can learn together. On their own levels." If the children in your homeschool know where their passions lie, then you can find many great options among the religious and secular curriculum produced by Love at Home Education. 

Website – Facebook – Instagram

If you are interested in seeing what we thought about other Unit Studies from Love at Home Education, please see the following reviews: 

Studying Science Using a K-12 Unit Study – Natural Disasters

Disclaimer: I received this unit study for free from the author in return for my honest opinion. All thoughts and opinions are my own. This post also contains affiliate links. For more information, please see my Terms of Use and Disclosure Policy. Thank you.

There are a variety of different options for homeschooling families who wish to learn information together. One such option is using unit studies that are written for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Our family reviewed the Natural Disasters K-12 Unit Study from Love at Home Education. It contains 6 main units and 4 mini-units. Each of the main units is spread out over the course of one week so the entire Natural Disasters K-12 Unit Study could take about 10 weeks depending on if you supplement with additional books, videos, and activities. I am glad that I am able to share this K-12 Curriculum Review with my readers.

What Do You Receive?

You can order either just the PDF or the PDF and a Print Copy (bound). Natural Disasters K-12 Unit Study consists of 7 units for a total of 129 pages. There are six main units and one mini-units set of lessons.

Six Units

1. The Earth's Layers 
2. Earthquakes 
3. Volcanoes 
4. Tornadoes
5. Hurricanes
6. Storms 

Mini-Unit on 

• Landslides
• Avalanches 
• Glaciers 
• Droughts 

Each of the six main units has five days' worth of information and activities for your homeschool. Besides learning new vocabulary, children will be able to share their artistic side with clay figures and painting, use food to help recreate different aspects of the earth, and view suggested videos from YouTube. With the variety of activities provided, you can easily adapt each day's lesson to meet the needs of your homeschooling family.

One of their favorite activities was painting the earth and the layers.

How Our Family Used the Natural Disasters Unit Study

After talking about the first several sets of vocabulary with the kids, we looked at photos from trips that their father
and I took to Penn's Cave, Woodward Cave, and Lincoln Caverns. 

As the review period did not consist of 10 weeks, I chose from among the variety of units, lesson ideas, activities, and work for our family to study.  We started with the first unit—Earth and Its Layers—so we could have a firm understanding of the basics and then moved onto other units. We then spent time reviewing the different vocabulary from all of the units in addition to talking about volcanoes.  We also spent some time going over earthquakes and storms.

We went through the five days as suggested for the first unit and studied the earth and its layers including the inner and outer core, the mantle, and the crust. We also spent some time collecting rocks because what homeschooling child doesn't have a rock collection?

I chose to only spend one day discussing earthquakes for now (we had just read a few books about them) and moved onto volcanoes. Our children had great fun combining colors to create the perfect color of ash and magma for paintings. We also watched some videos on volcanoes and reviewed the vocabulary each day.

Painting their favorite volcanoes. 

Reviewing vocabulary while we waited for the paintings to dry.

I love how the volcano is shown with a cross section because it makes it look like an angry creature.

Storms 

We also talked about storms – thunderstorms, blizzards, and hailstorms – and painted one of the storms. While painting with the water color paints, our children narrated their painting. Our four-year-old daughter explained how the platypus was stuck in the blizzard. It was a baby platypus who was purple. Our five-year-old son painted all three storms in one painting.

What Did We Like

Our children loved the fact that they could paint, play with food, and explore different topics in a variety of ways. I loved all of the different options for using the unit study as part of our homeschool curriculum.

With each unit within the K-12 Curriculum divided into separate days, I was able to easily plan out our days. It made it easy to see approximately how long the entire unit study would take our family if we did the activities each day.

The way Natural Disasters is designed also allows for children to explore the topics they enjoyed in more depth. For example, when studying earthquakes, the unit study suggests watching some YouTube videos on them. If children are really interested, there is a considerable amount of media available to view (depending upon their age and maturity). Our kids were really into the volcano unit so we spent some time watching several videos on volcanoes including the one from SciShow Kids.

Natural Disasters also allows children to become scientists through exploration of theories and hypothesis. For example, there is discussion of theories in regards to faults and the opportunity to speculate what would happen if there was an earthquake along the San Andreas Fault. I remember watching the 1974 movie Earthquake which speculated what would happen in the Los Angeles area if an earthquake occurred.

There is also the option to write about the cause and effect of earthquakes based upon a child's age and writing abilities. From writing and drawing the sequence of events to writing a proper 5-paragraph essay for a homeschooled high school student, there are tips as to what may be appropriate for your family.

One of my favorite parts of the whole unit study is the suggestion to make an Earthquake Emergency Kit (or if you don't live in an Earthquake zone, just a regular emergency kit). I think this is a great way to have a discussion with the family about being prepared. It could also extend into an opportunity to give back by having your family prepare emergency kits to donate to a shelter, church, or other location based upon need.

In the Future and Observations

I can see us revisiting the Natural Disasters K-12 Unit Study when the children get older so we can study the topics in more depth. Homeschooling materials like this allow families to build upon what they have learned in the past as their children move through their educational careers.

As our children get older, we could use the the vocabulary words as part of their spelling words. In fact, depending upon what area of science our teen takes in the future, I will be able to reuse the vocabulary cards with him.

My only negative observation is in regards to the font chosen for the vocabulary cards. My younger children had difficulty reading some of the letters and words. If I was going to make one recommendation, it would be to use a plainer font for the vocab words.

Two of the vocabulary cards.

Do you want to learn more about Love at Home Education? 

Love at Home Education offers secular and religious curriculum for PK through 12th grade. There are faith-based unit studies, ones on presidents, and ones on the human body.

Website – Facebook – Instagram

If you are interested in seeing what we think about another unit study from Love at Home Education, please visit my post on Thomas Jefferson!

Studying History Through Unit Studies: A Review of a Thomas Jefferson Unit Study (K-6)

Disclaimer: I received this unit study for free from the author in return for my honest opinion. All thoughts and opinions are my own. For more information please see my Terms of Use and Disclosure Policy. Thank you.

One of the approaches to homeschooling that is currently working for our younger children is the use of Unit Studies. Our kindergartner is interested in a lot of different topics—including history—so reviewing the Thomas Jefferson Unit Study (K-6) by Sarah Bean of Love at Home Education was a perfect fit for our homeschool. There are three options for purchasing the Thomas Jefferson Unit Study:

1. Download
2. Unbound
3. Bound

We received a digital copy of the Thomas Jefferson Unit Study (K-6) (49-page PDF) to use in our homeschool. It is written to be used over the course of one week and has parts for K-2 and 3-6 grade students. In each of the President studies there are mathematics pages, landmark pages, fact and timeline pages, and a variety of other activities provided.

How We Used the Jefferson Unit Study 

I read through the unit study to decide what parts would fit in our homeschooling day since our kindergartener would be using the materials. I then printed out the following items to use:

• Facts about Thomas Jefferson (3 pages) 
• Timeline (2 pages) 
• Math worksheets (2 of 3 pages for Kindergarten) 
• Vocabulary (1 page for K-2)
• What's the Declaration of Independence? (1 page) 
• Facts about Jefferson (places named for him; 1 page) 

Over the weekend, we read through the facts provided and discussed the new vocabulary words like: surveyor and dumbwaiter. The first activity our kindergartner completed was the timeline activity. This was great because it allowed him to practice his scissors skills and sequencing of events. We were able to discuss some of the things we had learned about Jefferson from the facts we read as well as the books we checked out of the library. (Our son always wants to see if the library has any books on the topic we are studying.)

On the next day, I requested our son cut out the two vocabulary words so we could hang them up and then he also wrote out some of the words in which he was unfamiliar with the definitions. We then worked on one of the math worksheets ("Circle the group that has more").

On the same day, he completed the second math worksheet ("Circle the group that has less"), we read about the Declaration of Independence and looked through our library books on Jefferson. He referred to the vocabulary words that he cut out the previous day.

Finally, we spent time looking at the landmark photos provided in the unit study and working on some geography. For the list of places named for Jefferson, we sat at the computer and looked up locations near our home. We also looked for places on our United States Map.

Recommendations 

Personally, I like that it is "an open and go" book which allows a homeschooling parent to use the unit study in conjunction with other products by Sarah Bean or with whatever works best for their children's learning styles and needs. One of the great things about homeschooling is the freedom that it provides families. Unit studies like this are perfect for that purpose.

Our kindergartner really enjoyed learning about Thomas Jefferson. I felt that the information and worksheets were just right for him. And we would be able to do more research on our own if he wanted to learn more about Jefferson. This was a fun unit study to use in our homeschool. While the Thomas Jefferson Unit Study is available as a download, I would recommend purchasing the printed Thomas Jefferson Unit Study (bound or unbound) because there are full-color photographs and illustrations. This will really help your time studying the third president of the United States come alive! Print versions are now shipping!

Do you want to learn more about Raising Human Beans or Love at Home Education? 

Raising Human Beans: Website – Facebook – Instagram
Love at Home Education:  Website