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.
I first heard of the study guides from Progeny Press before I even had children. Back then, I had never even heard of using anything for school except proper “schoolbooks,” and the idea of reading a story book and studying it was quite a novel idea to me. I wanted to see what these study guides were like, but never had the chance to look at them until they were offered for review recently. I had the choice of study guides for several books, and chose A New Coat for Anna Study Guide. We don’t have the picture book A New Coat for Anna, but I was able to find it in an online library we use, which made it possible to study the book. 
A New Coat for Anna is a delightful story about a little girl who needed a new coat, which was unavailable in the years right after World War II in Europe. I read the story to Mr. Sweetie (age 10), Mr. Imagination (age 8) and Little Miss (age 5), and then we worked through the study guide together. One of the advantages of the downloadable PDF, besides the fact that it is immediately available, is that I was able to print just the pages we actually needed, and as many copies as we needed. Little Miss doesn’t read or write yet, but the other two do, so they each had a set of the pages. We started out by finding definitions for some of the words from the story and writing them down, and then answered questions about the story. The children enjoyed taking their measurements the same way the tailor in the story took Anna’s measurements for her new coat. (Mr. Sweetie was delighted that he is still a little bit bigger than Mr. Imagination!)
After several pages of questions about the story, we did a study of patience. We talked about how Anna and her mother had to have patience, and about some times that we needed to have patience. We also talked about the qualities of a noble woman, from Proverbs 31, and how Anna’s mother displayed those qualities. To wrap up the study, the suggestion is made to have a party like Anna and her mother did in the story. We didn’t do that, but one of my boys wants to make the cake that is suggested! We did do the activity at the end of the study guide. To do it, the boys had to find the missing words in sentences from the story, and then find the words in the word search. At the very end are suggestions for more books to read, by the same author and of related interest.
This guide was laid out very well. It was based on a very interesting story, which my children loved reading. The questions were good ones, and I liked the studies of patience and the noble woman. The study made my children think, but they enjoyed doing something different. I will be happy to use more of these guides in the future; they make a nice change of pace from our normal schoolwork. To read the opinions of 64 other families, click on the image below.
There is a worksheet which goes along with this. Each day, I’m reading through about three sections of this page with Mr. Diligence, Mr. Sweetie, and Mr. Imagination, and we answer the questions that go along with those sections. It takes about 15 minutes to do that much, and that’s about all the time they can handle doing something like this, since we usually don’t get to it till after lunch and they are ready to run outside! Mr. Intellectual is doing this part by himself, since he is a strong reader. One thing we really enjoyed about this page was a photo of the International Space Station. What we really loved was that New Zealand, and the top part of our island, was in the background! It’s a very clear photo, and we could almost see where we used to live!
