Using the Illuminations Study Guides

One thing I was very excited about with homeschooling this year was to start using the  Illuminations* Study Guides.  Every year I would see the cool books listed there, but I knew I couldn’t add in YET ANOTHER THING to our school day.

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This year we are done with All About Reading* lessons and that freed up almost an hour of our school day.  An hour that I promptly filled up with writing and typing lessons, but I had another 20 minutes left, so I knew what I wanted to put there.

 

Illuminations study guides

If you read my 5th grade curriculum post you’ll see I listed several books I planned for the kids to read.  Those books are all from the study guides with Illuminations*, and so far as I first write this we’ve completed two of the study guides (I missed the first few weeks because of travel and then I didn’t order the book in time).  Oh, I just remembered I did use one last year because I really wanted to add a bit more about Pompeii that week, and I knew the kids would be able to read the book.

Each week has a different set-up, so if your kids is not the super studious child, next week’s study guide might be more for them.

Our first week the study guide was on Sundiata: Lion King of Mali*and it was an easy picture book, and an art lesson.  The next week it was a chapter from Courage and Conviction and there were 3-4 questions to answer each day.

 

They’re the perfect introduction for my kids to more serous work.

 

Thus far in they’re schooling I have not required much in the way of book reports or filling out answers.  Instead we’ve had several discussions and lots of projects.  However, as they get older I recognize they need to have a more structured schooling.

This is giving us a bit more structure in a non-threatening manner.

 

Last year I sprang test on my kids without adequately preparing them.  Understandably they freaked out.  This year I’m slowly easing them into more tests, and continuing to teach them how to take tests, and they are getting better.

But, they also need to understand how to take short essay tests, and this occasionally is giving them access to short essays.

Or how to answer questions in sentences.  I still remember the rude awakening moving from California to Texas and going from writing an answer to being expected to rephrase the question in my answer as part of the complete sentence.  It’s a helpful skill, if a rather tedious skill to learn.

 

This coming week our read alone guide will be one chapter from Explorers Who Got Lost* and I’m looking forward to the mapwork they’ll be doing.

 

One of the reasons I held off on getting Illuminations for so long was because I wasn’t sure what the study guides were like.  It said for 3-8 grade, what does that mean in terms of difficulty?

 

Well, the read alone guides so far can all be easily completed by my kids in elementary school.  A 3rd grader will struggle a bit with some of it, but in general it’s easily doable for a strong 5th grader.  If you have an 8th grader the work might be easy, but I’m sure you’ll be like me and this isn’t the only assigned reading your kids have.

In addition to read alone guides there are family study guides.  Those are a harder read and are frequently designed to last several weeks.  The questions are more difficult, and the books are longer.  If you are like me and don’t want to have a read aloud time (going back to that YET ANOTHER THING), then skip it.  Or if you have a 7th or 8th grader assign these books for their read alone guides.

I haven’t looked at the high school level read alone guides, but I do know this summer my kids will be reading A Wrinkle in Time* from the family study guide and I’ll be taking some discussion questions from there.  A Wrinkle in Time is one of the first books I remember devouring as a child.  I’d read and enjoyed books before, but I adore Madeleine L’Engle’s writing style.  I own most of her books and read every single one of her books I could find as a kid/teen/adult.  I still do that.

 

So, if you had questions what the Illuminations Study guides are like, hopefully this helped you answer them.  If you’ve got more questions feel free to add them in the comments and I’ll answer them to the best of my ability.

 

PS: I’m working on writing up our writing assignment from Sundiata that I mentioned up above.  Because heaven forbid I just follow the guide, I took the ideas in it and expanded on them for our weekly writing assignment.