Little Homeschool on the Prairie: Memoria Press Fourth Grade Literature Guide Sets a TOS Crew Review

We read a lot of books and literature is an important for me to include a lot of books in our homeschool. My main concern is always if they really comprehend the stories that we read. I love Memoria Press and have always been impressed with all their products. I was excited to receive a physical copy of their complete Fourth Grade Literature Guide Sets without the books.

Memoria Press is a family run Classical Curriculum since 1994. They have a full spectrum of subjects from Preschool to High School.

http://www.memoriapress.com/curriculum/literature/fourth-grade-literature

The Fourth Grade Literature Guide Sets include the Student Study Guide and the Teacher Guide for the following books:

Dangerous Journey: The Story of Pilgrim’s Progress Arranged by Oliver Hunkin

Homer Price by Robert McCloskey

The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden

The Blue Fairy Book by David M. Wright

You can buy the Literature Guide Sets with or without the books.

The Teacher’s Guide is laid out in the same format as the Student Workbook. It has some tips on how to use the set. All the answers are included in the Teacher’s Guide.

The Student Study Guide- all the Fourth Grade Literature Sets have the same format basically. The appendix and enrichment sections differ from each other. The books are different and the guide does a good job with making each one unique in some ways. I’ll cover each aspect later in my review. Every chapter is broken down in the guides. Also, the Student Study Guides are consumable and you will need one for each student.

*Reading Notes- has definitions of harder vocabulary or saying in the story. You will read these out loud. This helps grasp the concepts in the chapter.

*Vocabulary- takes parts of the story and you figure out the meaning with the sentence context it is used in. You will need a dictionary for some of the vocabulary words. This is a fill in the blank question.

*Comprehension Questions-can be answered orally or written in the provided space. This is your clue to see if they comprehend the story.

*Quotations-ask questions about the story and you fill in the blank with the sentence.

*Discussion Questions- This is where you discuss the story orally with your student.

*Enrichment-This is the activity portion and each Study Guide will vary.

*Unit Review and Test.

The Blue Fairy Book in the enrichment section you have activities like drawing a picture, copying a passage from the chapter, writing assignments on varying topics, and a large section in the back of the book to for additional space for the enrichments.

The Cricket in Times Square does copywork, maps activities, character descriptions, composition, vivid verbs, character quotations, literary device for puns, foreshadowing, conflicts, and an appendix with maps and pictures of things from the book.

Homer Price has copywork, noticing details, creating your own comic strip, quotation review, studying context clues, comparisons and contrasts, creating your own illustrations, character identification, and ordering events of each chapter.

Dangerous Journey: The Story of Pilgrim’s Progress. In the introduction you learn about John Bunyan and a brief biography about his life. You also get introduced to what an allegory is. Lots of other activities are included like matching characters to represent their descriptions, drawing pages, mapping Christian’s journey in each chapter with drawing the places, and writing assignments.

How did I use Memoria Press Fourth Grade Literature Guide Sets:

I bought the Dangerous Journey: The Story of Pilgrim’s Progress two years ago. It’s one of my favorite stories that I wanted to share with my kids. I got nervous that I might not be able convey the beauty of the allegory with my kids and thus I stalled. I was excited to finally feel like I could teach it to him with confidence.

I ended up working with my 10 year old Little Man with this beautiful allegory. My 13 year old daughter listened to the story with us.

On Monday we would look at the Student Study Guide briefly and go over the Reading Notes. Afterwards, we would read a chapter. I had him read some of the story out loud and then I would read. The following day we worked on the other parts of the Student Study Guide. On vocabulary I would have him see what he thought it meant in the sentence context and then we would look it up in the dictionary.

The chapters in this book are pretty short so we did 3 chapters a week. I would then refer to the Teacher’s Guide as I needed with some help explaining the allegory to him. We would then check his work together.

We just started in Homer Price. We read this book a few years ago but, he doesn’t recall a lot about the story.

Final Thoughts:

Little Man enjoyed the Dangerous Journey: The Story of Pilgrim’s Progress story. As the Study Guide he said, “It helped him figure out the odd words in the story”. He enjoyed the experience and looks forward to digging into Homer Price. Of course, as a 10 year old boy he isn’t fond of writing. I didn’t think the writing was too much for him to do.

I didn’t think the Study Guides were overwhelming. The layout of each one flows nicely. Even if you have a child that has a hard time writing you could easily do this orally. My 13 year old daughter has arthritis and learning disabilities and after doing this with my son I think it would work for her with me doing it orally.

I would recommend the Fourth Grade Literature Guide Sets from Memoria Press. Other Crew members have been doing other grade levels so stop by and see what they have to say.

Memoria Press was very generous with providing another amazing product to the Crew. Thank you for giving us an opportunity to use these in our homeschool.