Review: Progeny Press

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the Homeschool Review Crew in exchange for my honest review.  I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.  


Issac and I were first introduced to Progeny Press back in 2017.  The Mission of Progeny Press is "To teach our children to think clearly, to understand literature, and to rely on the scripture for truth and values, and enjoy themselves while they do it!"  I love being able to read a book with my son and not worry that we might stumble upon something that might seem inappropriate.  This time around we were able to chose two of the guide to work through.  We chose In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson Study Guide Grades 4-6 and My Side of the Mountain Study Guide Middle School Grades 5-8. I really thought Issac would enjoy both of these and the difference in grades would let us see if one age range was better than another for him.

  In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson Study Guide runs $17.99 and the book can be purchased through Progeny Press for $6.99. We started out reading this book first because honestly I thought the mention of Jackie Robinson in the title alone would catch my son's interest.  I chose to do these as our morning reading and then work through the study guides both out loud and using the computer or printed pages.  I find that more often than not if my son is engaged in the story then he's more willing to answer questions and discuss rather than if he feels it's assigned work.  We both really enjoyed the story of Shirley Temple Wong on her journey to the United States and how she learned about Jackie Robinson and made friends. My son being only 13 years old had no idea who Shirley Temple was or why it was funny that this little girl had her name. He has heard of Jackie Robinson, so those parts of the story were of great interest to him.  This book was a little different than others in that each chapter was a month of the year.  We had a few good discussions about how it would feel to leave our country and go to another where we knew nobody, didn't understand the customs and language.  At one point my son didn't think it would be that difficult, but then I reminded him how we are in the process of switching our homeschool co-op and will be the a "new family" there in September. He's a little nervous about how their co-op works and how will fit in, so that helped him understand Shirley Temple Wong a little better. 

 One of the things I like so much about these guides is how they are set up. There is first a synopsis of the book, info about the author, some activities to do and then it jumps into the real meat of the guide. These guides help to introduce students to new vocabulary words, understand grammar, think through the tough questions and be able to answer them in a way that others will understand.  I also like the dig deep questions that are provided at the end.  

Progeny Press does an amazing job at making these guides interactive and able to work for all families. This is an e-guide, so there is no waiting on shipping you have your study guide almost immediately. You have the ability either to type your answers directly into the guide on the computer or to print the pages and hand write them. We have done a little bit of both through the guide and it really just depends on my son's mood for the day. I also like the amount of activities because we can do some together, then he can do some on his own and we can skip any that he's not really interested in doing. Right now he's not really in a hands-on phase, so as much as I wanted to do those activities we skipped them for now. 

The My Side of the Mountain Study Guide was new to our family because it's a book that I don't recall reading to my children or hearing about before. In this story Sam Gribley decides he's going to venture out on his own and go find the old Gribley homestead that nobody has lived on in many, many years. His father gives him his blessing and off he goes with a knife, flint & steel, an ax, some cord and $40. Can you imagine sending your child off into the Catskills Mountains to provide for himself? Sam has been studying and preparing before this trip, but he can never even imagine what things he'll encounter. The first night he was cold and hungry because he couldn't get the fire started. Thankfully he met a friend who fed him and showed him some tricks to ensure that Sam wouldn't struggle with his fire again. As Sam learns some tough life lessons about how to feed himself and provide shelter he meets some "new friends" such as Frightful, his falcon, Baron Weasel, Bando and many others. In this book several of the chapters are grouped together. I found this book and guide took us a little longer to read and more thought to answer the questions as it was a higher grade level than the other. That being said the book was very interesting and the activities still varied enough to be interesting. There are a great many suggestions for activities to go along with the book. It's not just your typical question and answer type guide. You can easily go off on lots of different rabbit trails due to the animals, weather, foods, etc. talked about in this book.

I think that Progeny Press has done a fantastic job of choosing great literature for our students while providing them a variety of learning activities.  We used these study guides for some summer learning, but you could easily pick a few and add them in to your Language Arts program for the year.  For those with a student in high school four of these study guides will count as 1 full literature credit for the year.  

We had 64 reviewers using Progeny Press study guides, so there will be a variety of ways that families used these guides.  If your interested in more information go check out what the other reviewers  thought and which study guides they used.  You can also get more information on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Youtube.