The Wise Woman Story with Literary Analysis Journal Questions: A Schoolhouse Crew Review
These past few weeks we’ve swapped out our usual Reading Curriculum and replaced it with The Wise Woman with Literary Analysis Journal Questions from Home School Adventure Co.
Along with other members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew we reviewed The Wise Woman with Literary Analysis Journal Questions
The Wise Woman with Literary Analysis Journal Questions is a reprint of George MacDonald’s The Wise Woman with the added bonus of questions for thought and pondering.
The Wise Woman is meant to be used as a read aloud and discussion time for families and also as a read aloud with children ages 9-12. Older children such as High Schoolers can read the book and answer the literary questions on their own.
The Wise Woman is 177 pages long and divided into 14 chapters with 20 or less analytical questions per chapter.
In the back of The Wise Woman there is a vocabulary section. This is helpful because for young inquisitive mind the words of Old English can be big and unfamiliar. It’s a great vocabulary list and I think pretty helpful.
We reviewed the PDF download that can be purchased for $14.95 (I put it on my Kindle)
You can also purchase the bound book for $28.95
About The Wise Woman
The story of The Wise Woman was written by George MacDonald a Scottish minister who lived during the 19th century.
It tells the story of a young, spoiled princess who is, as a result of being so spoiled, mean and thoughtless. Her parents, the king and queen, call for The Wise Woman to come and teach her some manners but then reject her advice. She commandeers off with young princess anyway and sets about to teach her some manners and a better way of life.
Midway in the story The Wise Woman heads off to collect the daughter of a shepherd. Although not as blessed with worldly goods and more content with less than the princess this daughter of a shepherd still had her problems. Even though she was kind to animals and not disobedient she had the issue of being prideful and conceited.
Both girls think they are “Somebody” via their parents awful parenting and The Wise Woman shows them otherwise.
More than just the daughters realize their shortcomings. The story is a bit mystical and magical in it’s telling. And the language not the slang filled trite of today. For those reasons I thought my 8 year old wouldn’t take to the telling of it (I’m immersed in the time period). I was surprised when she not only understood the story but answered the questions and read the book on her own.
The goal of the literary analysis questions (per the website) are to inspire critical thinking and expand communication skills.
In the past two years of homeschooling I’ve been realizing how important this is. This analyzing what is read. Already as a regular practice our daily Reading Class includes reading stories together and discussing along the way the storyline, what the author might want to convey, why what happened did happen and so forth. The Wise Woman fit right in.
How did we use it?
When we first started The Wise Woman I replaced our regular daily Reading class with the book.
Each day, much like at library story time, she would sit on a little blanket in front of me and I would read several pages or a whole chapter of the story. Much like our usual Reading class at the end I would tell her to stay tuned. The Sweet Peanut is used to cliff hangers in reading class and that is what each chapter ended as, a cliffhanger.
I feared the Old English language of the past would leave her lost and not understanding much of the story but that wasn’t the case. Even before we got to the literary questions I would ask her bits and pieces to make sure she was understanding the story.
I was also worried she would not grasp what lessons we could learn from the character’s behaviors but she did.
That’s all great and good but by the second reading I knew she was hooked . She asked me for my Kindle so she could read it on her own.
When did I truly know she was hooked? That same night when, while working in the office, I overheard her reading The Wise Woman to her father at the end of what had been a very busy day for him. She used inflection in the right places and even went through a few of the questions with him. It also proves what Stacy Farrell says in the beginning of the book. The story is not just for women.
It was so sweet to listen to a young voice reading this story with feeling. Sweet Peanut really enjoyed this story.
I not much into fantasy stories and there was quite a bit of the magical in here. But I did find the story interesting and the questions were good thought provoking ones for my daughter and even for me. The analytical questions not only had me rethinking some of my own parenting choices and behaviors but the Sweet Peanut too.
This would be an excellent way to add some character training, read a Christian classic, and work on analyzing fiction works in your homeschool.
If you want to add this resource to your Homeschool Curriculum you can get 10% off any download purchase with the following code:
Code: CREW-10
Expires: May 15
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