LitWits Book Kits for Learning

Homeschool Review Crew

Recently we chose four LitWits book kits to use and review with the Homeschool Review Crew.  The four titles we chose are Around the World in Eighty Days, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Treasure Island, and The Wind in the Willows.  These are four books that appeal to all ages and are great classics to include in our homeschool so I was excited to add them in.  They are also four books that I don’t think we have ever used as read-aloud books so that made them even better!  These LitWits Kits include all you need minus the book to have a great unit study type experience. 

There are almost too many titles to choose from!  I had a really hard time choosing which four we would use.  There were so many I wanted to try out!  I definitely have a wishlist going.  I’d love to see what fun activities there are to go with some of my favorite books like Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, or Little Women.  I had to stop myself from getting them because we have read those books multiple times and I wanted my children to experience some new books this time!

These LitWits book kits are best for ages 8-12 but I find them to work for kids over and under that age range!

About the Program

LitWits book kits are created by two sisters who grew up in a very literature-rich environment.  I love that they are sisters who grew up loving books together and now work together to help another generation love books too!  Becky and Jenny truly believe that reading books or having them read to you is vital to the proper growth and development of the child.  I happen to agree with them which is why we have a house overrun with books!

The kits that are created by Becky and Jenny are multi-sensory and packed with lots of fun activities and projects plus learning handouts to help your child go deeper into the book and comprehend/remember just a bit more.  

LitWits book kits are divided into ten sections. These ten sections are:

1. welcome
2. overview
3. prop ideas
4. hands-on fun
5. book bites 
6. takeaways
7. handouts
8. learning links
9. quotes
10. copyright

How to Use

When you purchase a book kit you will be given a page that you can go to that contains the entire kit.  It is basically a page on their website that only those who have purchased have access to it.  This was a bit too much for me.  I kept having to remember how to get there and it had a few extra steps. 

Instead, I finally saw(yes it took me a while) the little icon that you can use to get a pdf version.  I got the pdf and downloaded it to my computer and also printed it off.  This made it easier for me so that I didn’t have to go back to the website every time I wanted to reference the kit.  Having it in print was also helpful so I could work on what we wanted to do and making our schedule when not at home.

Here’s a snapshot of what the little icon looks like.  I kept thinking it would just print off the website page and that didn’t appeal to me. But then I finally clicked it!

See that little printer icon in the top right area of the book cover?  Yeap.  That’s what you want to hit for the PDF version.  From there you can just click all the links that are included, print off the entire sections, etc.  I love having a print copy but I love the interactive part of the PDF where you can just click and go where needed.

Now for the kits, we received!  We decided to start with Around the World in Eighty Days.  Full disclosure, a few of my older children had read the book before.

Around the World in Eighty Days

Most people are familiar with this iconic book if not in the book form at least in one of the many film versions.  My children have never seen any of the movies so that makes this book all the better for them!  We have plans after having completed the book to watch at least one version of the film over the winter. 

We read through the book together as a read aloud.  I had several copies of the book on hand though so my older children could read ahead or simply read the whole book in one sitting as many of them tend to do! 

World geography is a huge part of our study for this book.  I went more in-depth by grabbing more information and books about each of the places we “stopped” at.  One of the activities was around the world in 80 minutes.  Yeah umm, we made that around the world in 8 days because we spent so much time learning about each of the stops!

My kids all love to color so we loved doing the poster activity as you can tell by these photos!  I know there are a lot of them but it’s not even all of the wonderful posters we had made.  And it’s really hard to get 10 posters in one picture and still show detail.

The most common themes were riding on an elephant because they think that it would be fun.

Here is our little three years old working hard on his poster!  He loved it!  The back also got some coloring treatment so it’s reversible too. 

I was really impressed with how well my six-year-old did and her attention to detail in her picture.

Another fun activity that they wanted to be able to do was travel by ship as illustrated on the right here.  Another elephant on the left.

While you can read through the book as you complete activities I found it best to read through the entire book first and then go through the LitWits book kits.  We did do some of the handouts that covered things like vocabulary and main ideas while reading through.  I’d stop reading and pass them out and then when done we’d read some more. 

My kids really loved this book and the fun we had while reading it and doing the activities.  I highly recommend you travel around the world with Jules Verne as well!

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Jules Verne takes us on more adventures!  This book we’re going to really focus on the Geology aspect like we did Geography in the other Verne novel, Around the World in 80 Days.  Volcanoes will be fun and I’m already planning on us making our own!

I love the use of props to help illustrate the book to your kids so I’m searching for some props here.  My kids are taking a Geology course in our homeschool coop this semester and collecting some amazing rocks so those will definitely be used!  Just a note, I won’t be doing the rancid fish and such prop.  That one might make me gag even if it’s not real.

Some fun things that I see browsing through the LitWits book kit for this title that I know we’ll be doing are the thundereggs.  I already have some set to purchase as this sounds really neat. Oh, and the poster this time is on geology so I’m definitely thinking that will be a good one to do.  The secret codes and Arne’s runes are going to be an amazing one too as my kids love all things mystery!

All in all, I’m having a harder time finding one stop that we won’t be doing than sharing all that we will be doing!

The Wind in the Willows

This is the second LitWits book kits that we have started.  We’re not very far in yet as we did take time to do some vocabulary words for my younger set of listeners and readers.  This was a book I loved as a child and I can’t wait to experience all the activities with my kids!

Our first activity is going to be the Ridiculous Relay Race of Mister Toad. I also definitely see us doing a wonderful feast.  The Relay Race we can do in our basement though as winter has set in here in the Midwest.  I’d love to have a nice day to do the feast but we might have to do it with the woodstove open and pretend we’re outside on a nice day.

Treasure Island

This book is definitely going to include how to read a map and a lot about cartography for us.  I have already decided it will be our last book of the four that we chose so that we can spend an unlimited amount of time working on it.

I love the book bites for this one being apples and cheese and am planning on (gulp) my kids helping me MAKE cheese before we start this book so that we can then EAT the cheese during the book!  We have our own milk cow so this is very doable.

It looks like so much fun and I think we will be doing all of the activities plus I’m sure I’ll be having my kids make their own treasure maps too!

Our Thoughts

We have really been enjoying using these kits and do highly recommend them!  You’ll love experiencing some old classics again alongside your children as they fall in love for the first time.

While we did not do every project or activity I found that they were very well explained.  None required a lot of special stuff that most homeschool families wouldn’t have which is definitely a deal-breaker for us as we don’t have the necessary close stores to just pop out and grab things.  

I used these with all but my infant.  She just turned a year old and while she can chew a mean crayon she really isn’t up to doing activities just yet.  The youngest one sitting through the readings and activities with us is three and while he definitely did not understand or complete correctly everything, he loved it!  He loves doing the things his big siblings do so we love to include him.

The youngest one that could try and actually understood or “got” the concepts we were talking about and could participate in our discussions is 6.  On the flip side, the oldest one in our house doing the study in our group is 14 unless you count me!

I really think that all ages can benefit and have fun using the studies so don’t hesitate to print off extra copies of things for the younger ones.  

So far we’ve used and completed the Around the World in Eighty Days kit.   I do have to admit that I get all the extra books from the library and we really go heavy on the additional literature reading.  So we might have read about the history around the time period in each of the geographical locations.  This definitely made the study take longer, but you can certainly get done with it a lot faster if you don’t go on rabbit trails like I’m prone too.

We recently started The Wind in the Willows so that we’re not doing two Jules Verne in a row.  Because everyone is really excited about Treasure Island we’ll do it last so they’re not getting bored with book studies.  

If you print off the PDF definitely print it in color!  The pictures are lovely and the black and white just does not do it justice!

Learn More

Ready to learn more about LitWits book kits and what titles you might like?  Check out all of the blogger reviews linked up on the main blog post over on the Homeschool Review Crew blog.  Bloggers got to choose which book kits they used so you’ll find a variety to choose from!  You can also find LitWits book kits on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.