Progeny Press Review

My children love to read! We are often making trips to the library, both for required reading for school as well as picking out books to read for enjoyment. Some of my children have taken a literary analysis class at our co-op which had them reading some great literature that they might not have discovered on their own. In this class, they had the chance to use a study guide helping them to dive deeper into the books so we were excited when we recently had the chance to review 2 Progeny Press study guides as we knew we already enjoyed them. My 2 oldest chose the study guides for The Hunger Games and Anne of Green Gables.

Progeny Press is a company that offers over a hundred study guides to books (both older classics as well as newer books). The study guides are available for all ages, from lower elementary all the way up to high school. It is their hope that students using the study guides would be able to better understand literature from a christian perspective. The study guides are available in several forms; a physical guide that you can have shipped to you as well as a PDF download you print or as an interactive guide where the student can type their answers in the PDF file directly (eliminating the need for printing it out). We reviewed the interactive guides.

Sarah was excited to try out the Anne of Green Gables interactive study guide as she had just finished reading the book. The study guide suggests reading the book in it's entirety before starting the study guide (we hadn't know that before receiving it, it was just coincidental she had just finished it before we received the study guide). Sarah had the experience in her previous lit class where they read a few chapters a week and completed the pages in the study guide that corresponded with those chapters and in her opinion she preferred doing it that way.

The study guide (and it's accompanying answer key) were very easy to download. The study guide is 61 pages long. We sat down together to go over the notes to the instructor section so we could make sure we were using the guide correctly. They suggest that the student have access to a dictionary, thesaurus and a Bible (they use the NIV version in the guide). Even if you don't have a dictionary & thesaurus, you could just use an online site for the times when you needed one (that's what we did). From there, Sarah was able to do the work on her own!

The study guide has 6 chapters which covers several chapters of the Anne of Green Gables at once. They say it can take 8-10 weeks to fully complete the study guide.  Each chapter of the study contains different sections that cover:

• vocabulary-they are given a sentence from the book with a word underlined and have to look up that word and write out the definition. Sometimes this section also includes synonyms & antonyms.
• questions- the student is to answer a question that is given about the book.
• thinking about the story- the guide gives excerpts from the book which gets them thinking about how different characters feel as well as giving examples of different parts of speech like similes, adjectives, etc. They are also given Bible verses to look up and shown how it relates to areas of the book.
• dig deeper- the student is given examples from the book and then asked to look up scripture to answer questions about the book (for example, did a certain character handle their response Biblically, how would you have handled it, etc)

At the end of each chapter, there is also an optional section that includes several different activities such as research, writing a report, doing a hands on activity or fieldtrip just to name a few.

Each chapter contains the above sections though they vary in each chapter in how they present each section (sometimes it could be fill in the blank or matching). At the end of the study guide, there is an overview section that could be used as a final test. Sarah completed one section a day which usually involved a few pages at a time. I reminded her to make sure she saved it each day (as the first day she hadn't saved it and lost her work). She found it very easy to type her answers in the blue box on the page.

Anne of Green Gables is suggested for grades 5-8 and the interactive guide is available for $18.99

Susan chose the interactive study guide for the Hunger Games as she had recently read the entire book. This guide was 56 pages long and came with an accompanying answer key. I sat down with Susan to go over the notes to the instructor so we both knew how to use the study guide. There are 8 chapters to this study guide which cover several chapters of the Hunger Games each.

Each chapter of the book contained 4 different sections:

• vocabulary- involves matching definitions, eliminating words that aren't similar, etc
• questions- student gives brief answers to questions that are asked about the book
• thinking about the story- student is given examples from the story to help them think more about why a character said or did something, asked how they would relate to a situation, etc
• dig deeper- the student is given excerpts from the book and asked to look up scripture to see how they correspond (share how a character acted out a certain verse, how would the student handle a situation if they were in the shoes of a character, etc)

At the end of each chapter, there is also a section that contains optional activities such as discussion questions, research, writing prompts, etc. At the end of the study guide is an overview which can be used as a final test.

The student answers the questions by either typing their answer in a blue box or using drop down boxes at the end of each question. Susan did one section per day which usually involved several pages at a time. She said she really enjoyed being able to do the study guide on the computer instead of how she used to do them by writing everything out on paper.

The Hunger Games study guide is recommended for grades 8-12 and is available for $21.99

Overall, we really enjoy Progeny Press interactive study guides as I found it got my girls thinking deeper about the book and understanding the characters more in depth. It taught them vocab words they hadn't know and got them digging into the Bible. It also helped them think about how they would respond to certain situations and not only how they would handle them but handle them according to the Bible. I also appreciated reading how the study guides can go towards 1/4 credit per study guide completed.