Homeschool Happenings: Hewitt Homeschooling Resources ~ A Review

Over the past weeks my daughter has been reading some great literature with the Grade 4 Lightning Lit Set from Hewitt Homeschooling Resources. The author's goal is to, "instill a love of great literature in children, expand their ability to read intelligently and deeply, improve their communication abilities, and prepare them for more advanced language arts concepts." Students will focus on literature, grammar/mechanics, and composition.

The books read (in the order they are introduced) are:

The Earth Dragon Awakes by Laurence Yep

Morning Girl by Michael Dorris

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

Gone Fishing by Tamera Will Wissinger

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

The Family Under the Bridge by Natalie Savage Carlson

Nims Island by Wendy Orr

The Dreamer by Pam Muñoz Ryan

Love That Dog by Sharon Creech

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

The Borrowers by Mary Norton

Here are a few of the books.

I like that the book choices are so very diverse. Two of the books, Love That Dog and Gone Fishing are poetry books. What drew me to wanting to be a part of this review is the book choices. Some of the books are familiar, like Nim's Island and The Borrowers while others such as The Earth Dragon Awakes and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind were unfamiliar.

My daughter is in the 5th grade but does not like to read so I found this Grade 4 to be a great fit for my daughter. The books were a perfect fit for where she is at. While she can read books at a higher level, to truly study and dissect a book for the purpose of a literature study these books are a great fit. I wanted my daughter to be able to feel successful and not overwhelmed.

The Student Workbook is laid out so that the student can easily keep up with what they need to do throughout the week. The beginning of the week has a Student Checklist so that the student can know exactly what needs to be completed during the week with boxes to check when each task is completed.

During the week the student will complete assignments such as:

Reading Comprehension
Literary Analysis/Critical Thinking
Grammar
Optional Exercises
Composition

My daughter liked that there was not a lot of workbook work to complete each day. She was able to read a good amount of the books and enjoyed most of them. I did opt to let her read them out of order. Since she does not like to read I thought that this would help to give her some freedom to be able to choose the order of the books. I know that this was not what Hewitt recommends but for us it worked.

For the book Nim's Island one of the Composition assignments was to write a friendly letter to someone. In the student guide it said that even though this is a dying art it was still worth knowing how to do and I definitely agree. Most children and teenagers today have no idea how to write a proper letter and address an envelope. My daughter decided to send a letter to her great-aunt and they have now been conversing back and forth via "snail mail" for about two months now. My daughter loves getting letters in the mail. I would share one of her letters but my daughter said that they are personal.

The next Composition project is to write a research report on islands or a particular is land. Students are guided through each step from organizing their outlines, writing rough drafts, making Venn diagrams, all the way to final drafts. With so much going on with our other curriculum and other circumstances at home I did not make my daughter do the research reports. I do plan on adding these in this summer and into the next school year.

One of the fun activities suggested in the Teacher Guide for Nim's Island is to have a whole tropical island meal choosing only from the foods that Nim eats such as fish, clams, fresh coconut, flat bread, banana, pineapples, etc. I thought this was a really fun idea. My daughter unfortunately has a medical condition in which this was not possible to do. Under normal circumstances I would have definitely done this.

The Teacher Guide is a great resource beyond just the answers to the questions in the Student Guide. The Teacher Guide is a great book discussion break-down for each book including elements for discussions such as:

Theme
Story
Character
Setting
External Details
Internal Details
Conflict
Symbolism

For the students composition projects the teacher guide gives a list of elements that need to be researched. There are discussion questions listed that you can ask your student about each book. There are hints and helps for each section that correlate with the student guide.