Our Study Guide arrived today!
It looks excellent 
There is a fair amount of Christian/Biblical content, but given that we are dealing with the Narnia books I think it’s fair enough - in fact, I’m pleased about the Biblical aspects, and will try to include some of them as we go along. It’s strong on language, literature, history and geography, a bit of science in there too. Plenty of choice of activities - I went through the first section on The Magician’s Nephew and picked out the ones I thought would be appropriate for our children, and there are a couple for each chapter, which I think will be about right for us.
I had thought that we’d read the whole book first then go back and ‘do’ the study guide, but having looked at it, I think it will be best to read/do them gradually together.
Today Anna and I sat down and talked through a few of the activities from the first five chapters of the book that we’ve read so far. I don’t want to go backwards so we’ll just pick up from where we are.
We’ve started a list of characters and their symbolic meanings. Anna was quite interested in that, she clearly hadn’t made the link for herself before now. We looked at some of the ‘vocabulary words’ suggested in the study guide, and talked through definitions, then used them in sentences. We talked about temptation, and compared the temptation in the book (of touching the rings, of seeing what was in other worlds, of ringing the bell with the hammer) to the temptation of Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden. Then got sidetracked wondering when the vacuum cleaner was invented, thankfully Josiah came to the rescue with a Ladybird Read-it-Yourself Inventors book!
- General, The Magician's Nephew | Time: 4:17 pm
I am watchng this space with baited breath… I keep looking at that book but know full well it’s probably to “old” for Becca yet! I’ll be interested to know if it’s as good as it looks. Tim obviously “got” some of the symbolism as he stomped off when Aslan started singing Narnia into existance muttering about “another God book…” ah well…
Comment by Katy — September 1, 2005 @ 6:33 pm
I saw the study guide ages ago and thought it sounded good, will be interested to see what you make of it all. I haven’t read the books (except TLTWATW) so when we do get round to reading it I expect it will go down well with us all!
Comment by Kirsty — September 1, 2005 @ 8:00 pm