It’s back to school time again, and this year we’ve started our autumn off with a book study and used The Bears on Hemlock Mountain E-Guide by Progeny Press.
The Bears On Hemlock Mountain E-Guide is a downloadable PDF to go along with the book by Alice Dalgliesh. The Bears on Hemlock Mountain is a short chapter book of ten chapters. There is going to be a get together and Jonathan’s mother needs a huge iron pot from Emma. However, Aunt Emma lives over on the other side of Hemlock Mountain. Jonathan is only eight, and it’s a long way over the mountain and back, but he’s confident that he is capable of going on this mission alone. After all…he’s always been told that
THERE are
NO BEARS
ON HEMLOCK MOUNTAIN,
NO BEARS BEARS AT ALL.
THERE ARE NO BEARS
ON HEMLOCK MOUNTAIN,
NO BEARS, NO BEARS, NO BEARS,
NO BEARS
AT ALL
He sets off across the mountain and makes it to Aunt Emma’s house, has some freshly baked cookies, and falls asleep by the fire. He wakes up late and leaves…without the pot, so he must return and ask to borrow the pot before heading off on his return trip across Hemlock Mountain.
It’s getting dark, and then he sees some eyes glowing at him…and indeed, there are bears coming towards him! He hides under the iron pot and waits until he hears the voices of his father and uncles who had come looking for him. They finally are convinced there ARE bears on Hemlock Mountain when they see the big bear prints in the snow. Now there will be bear stew for tomorrow’s gathering. And Jonathan has proved his maturity and is on his way to manhood.
The E-Guide
The Bears on Hemlock Mountain E-Guide is over 30 pages. There are fun pre-reading and post-reading activities for children. Kallista really enjoyed taking the tree and bear templates and used them to make her own mountain scene, and earlier this year she went with me on a dawn chorus walk to listen to birdsong, which also just happened to be one of the activities. One of the post-reading activities is to make sugar cookies, which she is looking forward to soon as well.
The sections of the study guide are broken down into sections of about two chapters each, which is a nice workable length. For this project, I read the assigned chapters aloud so that we could all enjoy the story together. Then Kallista would answer the questions on her own, and if she needed a little help, Tristan then jumped in. And it helped Tristan pay more attention to the story as he know he may be asked a question along the way as well! It wasn’t often Kallista needed help, but it was nice for her to have it before coming to me.
What sort of questions are in the study guide? There are many questions about vocabulary: finding the phrases in the story, defining the words, matching the vocab to the meaning, etc. There are comprehension questions, as well as questions about what the student would do in this situation, or what they think/ Questions like these can be more difficult for some children when they have to think about putting themselves into the story and then being able to verbalise what they want to say. These questions make children think more about the characters and thier own personalities and the reasons behind why they do what they do.
From time to time there are quotes from the Bible and questions about how the phrase fits into the theme of the story. If you don’t want to do these questions, they are easy to omit; however most of them can be used within the context of the story, such as offering hospitality.
The last section of the study guide is an overview that asks questions from each part of the book and then you take the underlined letters and form them into a mystery phrase with one more important personal question to finish things off.
This is the third Progeny Press study guide we’ve reviewed, and I wouldn’t keep coming back to them if we didn’t enjoy them and learn from them. The books that they’ve chosen the study guides for are favourites of my children once they’ve read them. So far the books are not ones they would otherwise have read as I have had to import each of the books from North America, but that gives them a new perspective and a wider experience than children locally.
The structure of Progeny Press study guides are logical and the questions age-appropriate. My daughter has really enjoyed this study and I’m sure we’ll be heading to Progeny Press in the future for more study guides as the children grow. It’s always nice when both the parents and children agree!
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