Progeny Press: Little House in the Big Woods Study Guide {Crew Review}

For this Schoolhouse Review, we were given a PDF copy of Little House in the Big Woods Study Guide by Rebecca Gilleland, published by Progeny Press. This guide is designed to go along with the novel Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It was given to us for free in exchange for our opinion of the product which is shared in this post.

Little House in the Big Woods is a story written by Laura Ingalls Wilder to portray what life was like living as a child in the Frontier days. This wonderful book has been read by many over the years and is a core part of many homeschoolers reading lists. The entire series is a great asset to any homeschooling library.

Little House in the Big Woods Study Guide by Rebecca Gilleland is a wonderful addition to the book. It helps to get students thinking about the information they are learning and to compare today to yesterday. This brings Little House in the Big Woods to life.

Little House in the Big Woods Study Guide was designed for use with students in Grades 4-6, those in Upper Elementary school. It is reproducible for students meaning Homeschooling families can print the guide over and over for each student within their homeschool classrooms. This makes it able to be used again and again for students who may be learning at different levels.

Little House in the Big Woods Study Guide is a Literature Guide. It is designed to be broken down over a period of 6-10 weeks depending on the speed of the readers using the guide. Preferably students should first read the novel, Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder and then work through the study guide, rereading at their own pace. Completion of at least one page of the study per day is expected to be done daily while using the study.

As with most materials we use, we did this one together. The guide was simple enough to understand. Progeny Press writes explicit informative guides for students and teachers to easily follow along. The guides begin with an introduction to the materials and a section explaining their expected use and lesson guide. This makes it easy to begin the study right away.

We read Little House in the Big Wood aloud together. We briefly reviewed the information about Laura Ingalls Wilder which we had previously learned about through another Schoolhouse Review we completed last year. This made it easy for us to move forward quickly in our study.

We also reviewed past lessons on Paul Bunyan who happens to be one of our favorite American Tales and a person of interest in our homeschooling since we have a long family history of Lumberjacks aka Loggers in our family. Paul Bunyan is a household name around here!

This also lead to us reviewing our last field trip to Josh’s work where we saw the equipment at work and discussed the many differences in past logging and logging today. Living in a town that is centered around the International Paper Mill and has survived over many decades due to the logging industry, these lessons were easily added into our study. In fact, much of our lessons with this guide were easily expanded upon because of our lifestyle at home. Many of the words covered within this guide were ones we already know from other lessons we have completed or simply from life itself.

I’d say most of this guide was a review for us but much of it allowed us to take a longer look at the things that surround us. Though we may not live where Laura lived, much of our home is like Laura’s was back then and many of the things that affected Laura’s life can be found right here daily in ours. It was odd to see how much we have in common while seeing how much different our lives are from technology today as well.

This study guide is interactive, allowing completion right on the guide. This made it easy to use the guide to talk together and answer the questions together as well. I did print out the vocabulary sheets as review for our study. We also looked up a lot of things online, learning some differences between today and yesterday within our study that were easier seen through videos and past photos.

The Little House in the Big Woods Study Guide is 56 pages in length from cover to cover. It contains questions for each chapter of the novel, crosswords, word finds and other activities to make learning fun, vocabulary to fit the lessons, and many suggestions for games and other fun things to bring learning to life. Each chapter of the guide is different from the previous one so that children do not bore with rote learning while completing the guide.

Little House in the Big Woods Study Guide is available to purchase from Progeny Press for $16.99 as an e-guide. It is designed for grades 4-6. The novel, Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder, must be purchased separately and is necessary to complete this guide.