LitWits – Review

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know I love kids’ books, and I love planning fun educational things to do with them. Sometimes, though, my kids need to read books that are, well, … not my favorites. I’m finding this to happen more often as they get older – there are some books that I just don’t want to dig into that deeply. That’s why I am so excited for the opportunity to review LitWits Kits by Litwits.

LItWits are digital kits that are designed to contain everything you need to teach one of more than 40 great books. The vast majority fall easily within the realm of classical literature.

Each LitWit kit contains the same sections:

• Sensory Prop Ideas. These are ideas designed to bring the story to life using all of the senses. With ideas for costumes, music, and more, this is a really fun category.
• Bookbites. This section contains recipes so you can eat like the characters do.
• Creative Project Ideas. This is much like it sounds – ideas for projects that are creative and fun.
• Kinetic Activities. These activity ideas will get your kids up and moving.
• Academic Handouts. This section has printables and is full of hard-core academic analysis.
• Takeaway Topics. This section is designed to help your students think about the overall lessons or point of the story.
• Learning Links. This section consists of a list of links that take you to other places for more information.
• Audiovisual Links. This section contains a list of videos and music provide mood and background information.
• CCSS Alignment. If you’re concerned about matching up your studies with Common Core curriculum, you’ll love this section! See exactly what matches up here.

There are so many great things about LitWits! I loved having these as a resource for There and Back Again, better known as The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien.

This is a book I was quite happy never having read, as fantasy is not my most favorite genre ever. However, My Little Man has been asking for months to read this book, and with all the hype surrounding it, I wanted us to read it together and make it a big and exciting unit. I knew that I was going to need some help to pull that off, however.

Our LitWit kit did all of that and more! I love how easy the kit made it for me to connect the story to fun and hands-on activities. That’s what I often find missing from other printed materials; hardcore analysis work is out there, but I like to balance that work with background information, recipes, decorations, creative writing, and more. LitWits kits have all of these elements!

What makes this really work is that each of these elements is independent from all of the others, meaning that you can pick and choose the elements that you want to use. You can use any part of the kit and skip the parts you don’t want to use, and each part is still completely understandable. Each part stands alone instead of building on one another, making the kits very flexible to use. We were able to use our Hobbit LitWit kit just as we would any other unit: we did big chunks on some days, we skipped days when we were field-tripping, we dug deeper into parts that interested us and ignored parts that didn’t fit our personal learning styles. I chose some parts to use with my own kids and others to use with My Big Helper’s book club. The variety and flexibility within the materials is great!

Who are LitWits best for? Tough question. That really depends on your kids. The creators of LitWits recommend kids ages 8-12, with a little leeway thrown in there for kids working up or down. My kids have always been really strong readers, and they’ve read and/or studied most of the LitWits books long ago. However, there were still plenty of new ones for us to choose from, and we were excited by the variety of titles and of difficulty level. While I would say that the Hobbit isn’t a super easy read, the projects in the kit were fairly simple. Meaning that they could easily be ramped up or down so that you could make these assignments work for several kids of different ages at once. (I love that about these kits!) My analysis-loving kids found some of the projects fairly simple, so I made them a bit tougher – but with my Little Man at nearly 13 and My Big Helper in high school, that’s understandable.

We were able to choose a few other LitWits kits to work with, too. We’re looking forward to using these in future studies:

• The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I love this book! There are loads of fun elements in this kit – lots of information about Colonial life, the witch trials, and about the choices that Kit has to make.
• The Tempest. There are some really great projects here! I can’t wait wait to use this with our Shakespeare unit next year. The analysis work is strong, and the discussion points are very relevant to today’s society.
• The Trumpeter of Krakow. I haven’t read this book, but My Little Man was excited to pick it when he read the description. Science, history, and crystals – some of his favorite things! The activities look really cool, and I like the variety included in the kit.

LitWits provide great options for families who want a balanced, fun study of classic literature. With flexibility and lots of hands-on choices, I think it’s a great way to make learning fun. Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it. Click on the graphic below to read other reviews from the Homeschool Review Crew.