Our family is always reading, so it's no surprise that we love book reviews! I have a little one just learning to read all the way through a high schooler who is an advanced reader. We have many picture books and even more novels for the older ones, but I've realized it's trickier to find good books for kids who are just venturing into chapters. If your child is ready for more complex sentence structures, a richer vocabulary, and a much heavier emphasis on words over pictures, this new series from Kregel Publications might be perfect for you.
My boys have been enjoying the first couple books in this six-book series: Jem Strikes Gold and Jem's Frog Fiasco.
The Goldtown Beginnings series follows the life of Jem Coulter, a nearly 8-year-old boy living in California during the Gold Rush. The stories weave in interesting characters as they teach history in a fun, exciting way. Each book is less than 80 pages long, 10 chapters, and geared toward the lower elementary ages.
My 7- and 9-year-old boys read the stories. I asked the older one to help me with the summaries. Here is what he said about Book one, Jem Strikes Gold:
Jem was panning for gold and found a small gold flake. His fingers were too big to pick it up. His sister Ellie wanted to help, but he wouldn't let her. He eventually gave in since her fingers were smaller. After that, it was time to deliver his mom's pies to the miners. They pulled a wagon with the pies and got gold nuggets as payment. Everyone was living in tents and trying to make enough money to survive.
Before they finished delivering the pies, a rich boy named Will started picking on them. He tried to steal a pie, so Jem pushed him. Will pushed him back and made Jem fall in the wagon on top of the pies. His pants were covered in mushy blueberry pie. When they got home, Ellie told her mom everything that happened. Their parents comforted him and told him it was ok. They helped cleaned everything up. The Jem and his dad delivered more pies.
Next, their neighbor had a dog follow him home. Jem and Ellie wanted it, but they knew their parents wouldn't let them have it because they couldn't feed it. The dog kept following them though and would play with them all the time. When they went to deliver pies again, the dog followed and bit Will's pants when he started teasing them. Their mom was happy and let them keep the dog and their dad found some gold. They named the dog Gold Nugget.
Here is my son's description of Jem's Frog Fiasco:
Jem and Ellie went to deliver pies again. Jem wanted to get another job, so he went to the cafe to ask for one. The cafe owner said he could have a job catching bull frogs to put on the menu. When Jem and Ellie went to catch bull frogs, they saw one. Ellie tried to get it. When she grabbed it, she started screaming. Then it slipped out of her hand. All the other bull frogs hopped away.
The next time they went to catch them, Jem wanted to do it by himself, but Ellie tried to help anyway and scared the all the frogs away again. Then he yelled at her and she stomped home. Jem waited a while and caught a lot of bull frogs. After he caught them, he couldn't lift the pail, so he had to drop a few out. When he went home, he realized Ellie wasn't there. Everybody in town went looking for her. Someone told Jem to use Gold Nugget to find Ellie. The dog sniffed Ellie's doll and found Ellie in a coyote hole. He got her out and they went home. Jem realized he wasn't being nice and Ellie forgave him.
One thing that I appreciate about Susan's books is her passion for teaching. She realizes that books for young kids can be much more than simply entertainment. Each one contains a list of new words that might be more advanced. Vocabulary such as pester, fiasco, hoarse, and tuckered out are listed and given a brief description so the reader can better understand the text. The end of each book contains a short two-page history of a relating topic from the story, in this case, gold miners and coyote holes.
Not only that, but she offers many other learning resources to enrich the experience. There is an activity guide that offers a daily schedule, a lapbook that includes read-to-be-cut colored pages, and coloring pages that correspond directly to the books. The free activity pages include something for each chapter. There is a wide variety of exercises: short answer, vocabulary matching, maze, math problems, writing prompts, Bible lessons, dot-to-dot, and more. There are also activities that involve drawing, cutting and gluing, graphing, and a recipe. A full answer key is at the end of the guides.
The Goldtown Beginnings books are morally sound and filled with much learning. They are great as both read alouds and silent reading for 1st-3rd grade or so. My guys enjoyed the stories and had fun completing some of the activities.
I can't wait to see which adventure Jem has next as the series continues!
You can connect with Kregel Publications on the following social media sites:
You can read more reviews of these books on the Homeschool Review Crew blog.
Oh, wow! That coloring page is awesome. Such detail.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the lovely review and the shout out for the enrichment activities. They're a lot of work to create, so it's very satisfying to see folks using them. :-)
Thanks again!
Susan Marlow