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Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

It is fall, and with fall comes Halloween. What better time to dive into Frankenstein?! Over the past several weeks, that is just what my daughter and I have been doing. For high school literature, we have been using the Frankenstein Study Guide by Progeny Press. It has been an excellent addition to our homeschool.

Let me share a little about the study guide and how we used it. Then you can decide if it is a good fit for your homeschool.

Literature Study Guides by Progeny Press

Progeny Press is a Christian company that has many literature study guides for grades K-12. They offer literature guides in a variety of genres, so you are sure to find something to fit your homeschool. I really like their selection of high-quality literature. My kids have found many they want to give a try.

Now, you have a few options when purchasing a study guide. You can buy a physical workbook, a CD, or PDFs for instant download. For this review, I received an interactive e-guide.

You might be wondering what I mean by interactive e-guide. Let me explain.

Interactive E-Guides

For this review, I received the interactive e-guide for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The e-guide is a PDF version that can be opened on Windows and Mac devices with a free PFD downloader (programs like Adobe). It’s really that simple. Once you download it to your computer, it is yours. You can print off as many copies as you need.

However, the e-guides have another nice feature. This is where the interactive part comes in. You do not need to download the guide for your child. Instead, they can fill in their answers inside the guide. I think it’s a pretty cool feature in today’s high-tech world.

If you aren’t that tech-savvy, don’t worry. Progeny Press offers tech support to help.

Oh, I should mention, the study guides do not come with the books. However, I found a copy of the book for my daughter and me to use. Yet, you can purchase a copy of the text on the Progeny Press site if you want. It may be simpler if you are already buying the guide at the same time.

More on the Literature Study Guides

The study guides, including Frankenstein, cover the following many areas. Here are the different sections within the guides.

• Author Biography
• Background Information
• Before-You-Read Activities
• Vocabulary words 
• Literary Techniques
• Moral Lessons and Character Values
• Activities and Writing Assignments
• Suggestions for Further Reading

As I mentioned earlier, Progeny Press is a Christian company. So, all the lessons are from a Christian worldview. Within each guide, students will look up various passages in the Bible and relate them to their reading. This helps kids analyze literature in a new way.

Each literature study guide is expected to take 8-10 weeks (except in the younger grades). It is a very comprehensive study of each novel.

Plus, each study guide comes with a teacher answer key. Yay, it makes correcting work so much easier. After all, I struggle enough with correcting work. I really don’t want to struggle to correct high school literature. Fortunately, Progeny Press has taken care of this for me with their answer key.

Using the Frankenstein Literature Study E-Guide in Our Homeschool

The Frankenstein study guide is for approximately grades 10-12. However, I did use this with my 9^th-grade daughter. She is a strong reader and has read a children’s version of the book before. Plus, she has seen the movie which she now knows is quite different from the book (isn’t it always?!). Therefore, I would agree that this book is probably for grades 10-12 or strong ninth-grade readers. I say this because the style and language are different than how people write today.

Since we are trying to incorporate more technology in our homeschool, my daughter used the interactive e-guide online. I emailed a copy of the Frankenstein guide to her as a Google Document. Then she opened it in Google Docs and typed her answers in it. After, she would save her work and share it with me. I was then able to open up the study guide to review her work. We both really liked being able to do this. It was a great option.

Overall, I really enjoyed the pre-reading activities for Frankenstein. The guide gives an overview of the author, background of the historical period, some map work, and other activities. These early lessons helped build a better understanding of what was coming in the book and set the scene. Everything was put in context, especially helping students to understand the historical period this is taking place in.

For each reading assignment, my daughter began by looking up her vocabulary words. For some vocabulary assignments, she was asked to guess the word’s meaning and then look up the definition for herself. Each word was used in context, not just a list. I liked how this was done. It helps kids use critical thinking skills to figure out the meaning of unknown words instead of just looking them up immediately.

Next, my daughter would read the assigned chapters. Early on, the assignments were three or four chapters. Nothing she couldn’t handle. However, you could easily spread the reading over a few days if needed.

After the reading was complete, there were a series of assignments to delve deeper into the reading. She had to work on:

• Characterization
• Comprehension questions
• Analysis questions based on literary techniques
• Dig deeper questions that had her looking into how ideas related to the Bible and other critical thinking questions

Here are some work samples.

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My daughter has been working on this literature guide independently. However, at the end of each section (for example, Chapters 1-3), we sit down and go over all her answers. I am also reading the book, but I use the teacher answer guide while discussing her answers. I am very grateful for the answer guide. It has made our discussions that much better.

Since there is a lot of work for each section, I spread the questions out over several days. This way, my girl can take her time and really think about her answers.

At the end of the study, there are several essay questions, literary element discussion questions, and related resources to expand your analysis of the book. It offers a lot to help make this a great literature course for high school.

Overall Thoughts

I am VERY impressed with how challenging and comprehensive this study guide is. My daughter is definitely getting a solid education in literature. I can easily use these study guides for English credit on her high school transcript. They are that well done. I will be looking to add other guides to our homeschool.

Well, you know my thoughts on Progeny Press. Now take a look at reviews of other Progeny Press study guides. Click the banner below, and you can learn about other guides for different ages.

Happy Homeschooling!