LitWits Kits

The books that we choose to review for LitWits for their LitWits Kits which you can find in their shop here are Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, My Side of the Mountain, & (one of my favourite books as a kid) Tuck Everlasting. Today, we will show you an activity below after the product review, the activity we did.

You can see a free sample LitWits for Little House in The Big Woods here.

If you don't know a quick synopsis of each book, here you go!

Tuck Everlasting- LitWits Here
Who wants a magical spring? Well, in this book that takes place in the 1700s, 10-Year-old Winnie Foster comes into contact and interacts with the immortal Tucker family. How are they immortal? They drank from a magical spring in a forest and have not been able to die since. When Winnie decides to try to do it the Tucker family kidnaps her to get her to stop from drinking from the spring by explaining why it's not good.

My Side of the Mountain - LitWits Here
Survivor in the wild? Sam Gribley who dream about leaving in the wild on his own runs away to Catskill Mountains where he uses his skills, the library, and instincts to be able to survive. He creates a home in a Hemlock tree that is hollowed out and must find his own food, keeps a journal of his life on bark, trains a falcon and much more.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - LitWits Here 
The midwest gets tornados-- and so? Well, a tornado happens in Kansas and a little girl named Dorothy and her dog Toto land in the wonderful land of Oz. Dorothy ends up meeting, making friends and journeying with Scarecrow who thinks he doesn't have a brain, Tinman who think he doesn't have a heart and Lion who thinks he doesn't have courage. They take a journey to see the Wonderful Wizard of Oz who can give Scarecrow a brain, Tinman a heart, Lion courage and send Dorothy home to Kansas. But the street and path aren't straight. They are met with monkeys, witches, spells, and more along the way.

Journey to the Center of the Earth - LitWits here
Who hasn't seen this movie? It was good and it had the Rock in it. I digress. This is about Axel's uncle who is a geological professor and has found a 16th Century secret. The professor goes to journey to the centre of the earth to learn this secret and brings his nephew with him to the extinct Iceland volcano. There they meet a native who helps them where they come and go in primitive forests, creatures that have not been seen by humans, & clues to the origins of human life. What is it that they find and how does there journey go?

I think I see a theme between what my kids and I like in terms of books. We like to dream big, fantasy, depth, and adventure!

Accessing the LitWits Kits

As you can see you go into your account, you see which of the LitWits Kits you ordered. So you can see the above kits I was telling you about that are ordered for me. Then you see tips and tricks for how to use the kits. It reminds you as a parent/teacher/leader how to approach the Lit Wit Kit itself.

Then you click "access my kit". When you do that, you can see as part of the picture where it takes you. It takes you to the kit online. I REALLY like that fact it's online. This is because some kits that are PDF, while great, can be a little overwhelming. Especially in a day and age when more and more parents and teachers and even kid leaders (like scouts) are younger and are used to access to things online. Although, we have to be careful to have everything online. There is something to having a physical copy of the book in your hands that helps with learning in the same way that writing something down by hand helps you remember it better than typing it. Which is why I love that that have a printer button so you can print if you want. That is great!

What's in the LitWits Kit?

1 Welcome
2 Overview
3 Prop Ideas
4 Hands-On Fun
5 Bookbites
6 Takeaways
7 Handouts
8 Learning Links
9 Great Quotes
10 Copyright

You can see some of the awesome resources that are shared but also on top of that, you can see you can use Academic handouts, even see the common core state standards and where it aligns. This can be very important especially for any state reviews you may have for your homeschool classroom.

I like that you can see some history, political history, science, literature, and links of all sorts. I have always been a huge proponent of lessons being fully explored and to show how these literature stories play out in other areas of the academic courses. So I have a huge appreciation for this.

My Thoughts:

It does seem geared towards more younger children that are grades 2-5. So some of it, I think my 8th grader would find boring. However, I do feel like with this kind of curriculum, you can easily tailour it to each child. Have them think a little bit deeper. Use creative and critical thinking skills.

For the academic worksheets that you can download and use, I am wishing that they could have a longer more thorough academic set of worksheets. It's only seven pages long for the Wizard of Oz, for example. But for what it is, it is great. It covers the narrative arc in the story and asks the kids to apply the narrative arc to the story, geography, creative writing, & vocabulary.

For the common core alignment, I appreciate that they do it based on grade level from grades 3-6.
It is put up as an online pdf so it's easy to print to use for homeschool review, which is fabulous and appreciated. It is also well laid out from the different points of the common core requirements from literature.

The Activity of Doing the Tornado in a Jar for Wizard of Oz

This is always a fun activity. It brings imagination to life in parts of the story, in fact, key parts of the story. What is even more awesome is that it, of course, sneaks in science. From learning about tornados, you can see the links to YouTube videos that teach about tornados. On top of that, you can stretch the science of tornados to include vocabulary, writing, creative writing, history, etc.

My son is also doing literature lessons separately about the weather in general so it's a great tie into this LitWits kit activity.

Following the directions on the LitWits Kit are quick and simple. It's written in the format of a blog. When they do link up the supplies needed, it goes to Amazon. Not sure if it's an affiliate or not because it doesn't state. But either way, I like that they link some of the supplies so it's even easier to get the materials easily.

They should know though, that the YouTube playlist that they connected with the lesson is out of date. But the idea is still a great one to listen to music that fits the theme well.

The activity itself was a lot of fun! Anything that gets the kids doing stuff is great!

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