TOS Crew Review Moving Beyond the Page

My children love anything to do with Narnia, rocks, and minerals. So when I had a chance to review some unit studies from Moving Beyond the Page I knew my kids would be ecstatic when I told them about it.

We were able to choose two items for this review one in Language Arts unit. For the Language Arts Package we 
choose: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We had a choice of Social Studies or Science. We picked Science Unit: Rocks and Minerals.

This is the first time that I have ever heard of Moving Beyond the Page which is a literature based curriculum. Moving Beyond the Page is set up for a complete homeschool curriculum package for literature, social studies, and science but, you can also use the set as an individual unit study. You have a choice of either an online teacher’s guide or you also get the curriculum in a physical book. The literature books used with the units are a physical book regardless of the teacher’s guide you choose. You can view some sample pages to get a feel of how the units work. There is a good variety of literature choices to choose from in Language Arts, Social Studies, and in Science from ages 4-14.

 

The Language Arts Package:  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is for ages 8-10.

 

We read, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” as a read out loud to both of my children age 8 and 11. I also read the question to both kids from the online guide. We did all the external links together. We did this 4-5xs a week until we completed the book. There are10 lessons in this particular literature unit.

Our particular unit had us learn the biography of the author. That was just a small portion of the study. We did not complete all the activities for every lesson. We did have a lot of discussions as my kids love this movie and could probably quote it line by line. At the end of the unit we watched the movie.  They quickly recognized the difference from the movie and book. They found that the movie really left out some interesting information that you can only know if you have read the book.

This is one of the printable worksheets that we had a lot of discussion on.

Here is another example of a printable worksheet.

I am not a big fan of online workbooks, as I prefer hard copies. There are some interesting links and suggestions that made the online version unique which I am not sure if you have the links suggested in the hard copy. 

Here are some of our vocabulary cards that we made.

One of the final projects was to create a diorama of the story. The kids didn't want to do a diorama so we adjusted it to fit our needs and we created a sort of movable diorama that the kids played with pretending they are in Narnia.

After we finished this unit we went to the zoo to see the lions and the kids wanted to ride on the lion just like the kids did in Narnia.

One thing that I don't like about the online guide is that it is only available for a short amount of time and after that you no longer have access. I personally think it's worth a few extra dollars to have the hard copy. 

For the Science Unit:Rocks and Minerals. This is for ages 8-10. The cost for this is $64.89. This was in a metal coil spiral bound book. The teacher’s guide lays flat! I dislike having to fight with a manual and it keeps closing on me.

How does it work and how did I use it in my homeschool?

I did this with both of my children. Little Man did all the activity pages and Bug did the hands on activity with him. Little Man and I took turns reading-out-loud the literature books. My kids absolutely love science and couldn’t wait to dig into this unit literally!

We did a lot of fun activities from learning the basics about the periodical table, chip mining, birthstones, streak test, hardness test, magnetic testing, how to identify different types of rocks, rock smash, making rock candy, geodes, volcano explosions, fossils, dinosaur dig, and getting to be a Paleontologist. That’s just a few of the activities we did. They had several activities to choose from and we didn’t do everything. Obviously from the above list you can tell we have been busy little scientist. 

We did a lot of hands-on learning that I am just going to show you with some pictures.

We smashed opened a geode.

We attempted to make rock candy!

We erupted a volcano more times than I can count.

We did streak and hardness test.

We dug for dinosaur bones and found a T-Rex.

 We identified rocks that we collected.

 We had a lot of fun with so many rocks!

Lessons:

Mineral madness (2 days)

Rocks Rocks! (3 days)

Fun with Rocks (

Crystals (2 days)

Volcanoes and Earthquakes (2 days)

Fun with Fossils (2 days)

Final Project: Paleontologist RAFT

It came with a physical teacher's guide. 

The book: Geology Rocks: 50 Hands-On Activities To Explore the Earth

Dig A Dino T-Rex

Set 3: Minerals, Crystals, and Fossils Science Kit

We needed to add a few minor items at home for some of the activities. There was a supply list in the teacher’s guide which helped us prepare early for each lesson. The lesson structures are laid out nicely with notes explaining what will be done and that day.

Each lesson is structured in this format:

Big Ideals- The big questions to explore the scientific concepts of each unit.

Facts and Definitions- Your new knowledge and vocabulary is taught here.

Skills- Objectives or skills that you will learn.

Material-list of everything needed for the lesson.

Introduction-this is where you get to explain the introduction to your scientist.

Activities- This is where you will have all the student activity pages and hands-on learning activities. 

Options- let you choose other options based on your child skills.

Conclusion- Putting all the ideas from the lesson together that has been taught.

Real-Life Application-encouraging application to apply the new skills and knowledge to your scientist.

What is my impression for Moving Beyond the Page?

Pros:

Inspiration for creative thinking and writing.

Lots of hands-on activities to choose from to fit any learning style.

Great variety of units with some great books.

The manipulative are right on the mark to teach the needed concepts.

Cons:

If you have a child who doesn’t like writing then this may be difficult for them or you will have to adapt with oral or you do the handwriting.

The books are for one student as per the copyright laws. I did see that you can order the student pages separately. Which I will order the student pages if I do another unit for this curriculum. 

I’m not sold on the spelling or grammar teaching in these units. Maybe it’s because I needed more structure with it.

Overall, Moving Beyond the Page has been a lot of fun. My kids loved the Language Arts and the Science units equally. I am not sure if I would do this as a whole curriculum. I could see myself using this as a unit study on some of the books in the future. The important thing is that my kids learned a lot during the past few weeks. 

 
Facebook – www.facebook.com/movingbeyondthepage

 

Stop by and check out what other are saying about Moving Beyond the Page. Many of the Crew have reviewed different units.