Mr. Popper's Penguin Study Guide - Review
Our family loves using living books as part of our studies. One of my favorite places to find high-quality literature study guides is Progeny Press. The latest study we have been enjoying is Mr. Popper's Penguins E-Guide.
Disclosure: I received a free copy of this product for review, all opinions are 100% my own.
Progeny Press produces Christian book studies for classic literature and has become a real go-to resource for me when I'm looking for a fun and easy-to-use literature study for my children.
Their study guides are available as printed workbooks, CDs, or as e-books you can download. My favorite way to buy the study guides is their e-book option. I love the e-guides because you are allowed to print copies for your own family, and they are immediately available to me with no shipping cost.
These things alone make me love the e-guides but my absolute favorite feature is that they are interactive guides! You can type your answers directly into the PDF and save your work as you go or print the guides out if your child prefers to write their answers by hand.
Progeny Press offers many study guides and divides them by grade level.
Lower Elementary (K to 3rd grade)
Upper Elementary (3rd grade to 5th grade)
Middle School (5th grade to 8th grade)
High School (8th grade to 12th grade)
The book my daughter wanted to study is Mr. Popper's Penguins and the e-guide is intended for grade 4 to 6. Since she's in grade 5 I felt this would be a great introduction to Progeny Press for her.
Mr. Popper's Penguins is a sweet story of a house painter who always dreamed of traveling to the Antarctic. Although he makes barely enough to support his family he has big dreams and never gives up. His family shows creativity and support to help make his dreams come true!
Table of Contents for Mr. Popper’s Penguin study guide.
My 10-year-old daughter decided she wanted to write her answers by hand instead of typing them on the computer. So I printed out the e-guide one section at a time for her to work with.
It is recommended to take a week or so to read the entire book before starting the study. Since it took a while for our copy of Mr. Popper's Penguins to arrive and the library didn't have a copy we really wanted to dive right into the study.
So what we decided to do was read a chapter of the story, then I have my daughter narrate the reading selection to me and we discuss the story. Then the next day we do the questions in the e-guide for that chapter. This does stretch out the length of the study but it has been making it very enjoyable for her!
She's been able to do the reading on her own and most of the study guide questions as well. I have needed to help her a little bit with the vocabulary questions where words need to be looked up in the dictionary.
They then need to write the definition according to the dictionary and again in their own words. Some of the vocabulary sections also have them create sentences using these new words.
Her favorite part of the study is the questions that are directly about the characters in Mr. Popper's Penguins.
What I really appreciate about the Progeny Press study guides is how easy they are to use. I find them very easy for my children to do independently for the most part. I do sometimes need to help with the vocabulary or answer a simple question.
I also love that an answer guide comes with the study guide so I can check my daughter's answers even if I haven't read the story myself.
Earlier in our school year my oldest daughter completed Progeny Press E-Guide for Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. Unlike my younger daughter, she opted to use the study guide on the computer. You can read more about how Carry On, Mr. Bowditch worked for us.
