There Will Be A $5.00 Charge For Whining: A TOS Review: Tuck Everlasting E-Guide (Study Guide)

You can’t beat a good book. Introducing Josiah to great literature is one of my favorite things about homeschooling. I like that we can dive into an entire work or group of works (not just bits and pieces found in an abridged anthology). Most of the time we just read for fun or to shine a light on a particular era in history. However, I do choose a book or two during the course of a semester for an in-depth literature study.

Finding a good guide to take us through our chosen book is important to me. Last year, I was introduced to a company called Progeny Press. We got to review an excellent product. I was excited to see Progeny Press back on our vendor’s list for this year. This time around I received the Tuck Everlasting E-Guide.

Progeny Press is a company that provides quality literature guides through the lens of a Christian worldview. The Tuck Everlasting Study Guide is just under 60 pages and completely interactive. If you have more than one student you can copy as many as you wish. This study is intended for grades 6-8.

My first opinion has been that study guides from Progeny Press are always well organized and thought out. We were encouraged to have a few things on hand. These items included a dictionary, thesaurus, Bible and possibly a topical Bible and concordance.

It is suggested that most middle and high school guides will take 8-10 weeks to complete. Students in High School can count each completed study guide as ¼ of a high school credit.

Progeny Press creates Literature Guides for grades K-12.

Have You Read Tuck Everlasting?

It is a fascinating book written by Natalie Babbitt. 10-year-old Winnie Foster meets a family called the Tucks. They have a secret and Winnie discovers it. A spring, which flows through the woods on Winnie’s family’s land, makes one immortal. The Tucks drank from the spring 100 years before and long to keep themselves and the spring a secret.

The book does not come with the guide itself.

How It Works and How We Used It

The Study Guide suggests that the student read the book over one week and then complete the Study Guide in the weeks that follow.

There are a number of optional prereading activities available in begin the study.

Generally, I am a paper to pencil kind of girl. I like having our notebooks organized and ready to work in. For this study, however, we took advantage of the interactive aspect. Josiah would much rather type than handwrite his answers.

You might need to know that Josiah is dyslexic and dsygraphic. Tuck Everlasting is not a long book, but I read it to Josiah over the course of a week. He has done a pretty good job with navigating the study guide and I have made myself available for any help he might need. Sometimes I have needed to work him through a few more challenging activities. That's okay...I signed up to be his teacher.

Here are screen shots of a few of the activities included throughout the course of the study.

Below are multiple choice questions about vocabulary. I LOVE that the author uses sentences found in the book itself. Josiah is learning the valuable skill of inference.

There are several short answer questions.

This fill-in-the-blank activity is leading to a question on how a descriptive passage can give life and movement to an ordinary and mundane thing...like a road.

There are plenty of questions that ask the student to "dig deeper." Some involve looking up Scripture. This one gave me a little insight on how Josiah feels on the limits we've placed about him. Poor guy. A day with fewer video games played is apparently too restrictive.

The guide is divided into groups of chapters. For example, the Prologue through Chapter 5 are all one section and so on.

At the end of the guide are many overview activities. Writing, drama, music, art and more can be found here. I think we are going to work on an art project. The suggested project involves using original artwork, photos and pictures to create a montage from a passage in the book.

There are so many things to like about this Study Guide.

I like that includes so many thought provoking ideas and questions. The student is not encouraged to merely regurgitate facts.

The Scriptural aspect of the study is a win! I want Josiah to be able to apply Scripture to many things throughout his life. This helps him do just that.

For us the interactive guide has been such a blessing. It has lessened Josiah's burdened. Instead of struggling to write a legible sentence he can think about the subject at hand.

Personally, I feel like reading the book before working on the Study Guide made things just a bit more difficult for Josiah...but that is an easy fix. We have been reviewing as we go along.

Just a side note. If your child struggles with dyslexia or dysgraphia this is a perfectly doable product. While I read the book to Josiah you can easily check it out at your local library. The interactive option makes the guide so much easier to manage.

You can download a sample section of the Study Guide here. Progeny Press has guides available for many beloved books.