The Book of Trees ~ A Review

You will need to purchase the Peterson First Guide to Trees.

We love Memoria Press and were delighted to receive The Book of Trees for review. What a wonderful introduction to trees and botany. This was a perfect bridge for my children between earth science that they studied this year and biology that they will study next year. The Book of Trees curriculum comes with a student workbook, a teacher guide and a book called The Book of Trees. The student workbook is set up in the same style as many Memoria Press student books. Each lesson consists of a reading assignment from The Book of Trees, fill-in-the-blank questions, a diagram and labeling section and activity section. The lessons are not at all overwhelming, even for a slower reader. There are only about four pages to read for each assignment, and the workbook pages are clear and easy to read. Many of the activities draw the student out into nature to study bark or find leaves. There are also neat science experiments like drawing leaf pigment out of leaves.  There are five units to this curriculum. The first four are intended for all students and the fifth unit is advanced work for the older student, so a family can work together. Each unit has a review and then there are lesson quizzes and unit tests in the teacher's guide. The units are listed below.

• Unit I ~ The Root & Stem
• Unit II ~ Leaves
• Unit III ~ Flowers & Fruits
• Unit IV ~ Observing Trees
• Unit V ~ Advanced work Photosynthesis & Respiration

My daughter (13) liked that the reading text was large print. She liked all of the pictures and diagrams throughout the book. She found the reading material to be very informative, but not too wordy. She liked the layout of the workbook. The activities were her favorite part, since she is a hands-on learner. She found the style of learning in this curriculum to be comfortably familiar to her Charlotte Mason nature study upbringing. 

This curriculum could be used year round, but would be easier in the spring or summer when flowers are blooming on trees and kids want to wander in nature. 

I love that this curriculum has hands-on learning and yet encourages learning through the classical model. This is a wonderful botany study for a middle school student. I feel that my daughter was able to gain so much more knowledge about trees than she knew previously. The set of three books does not include the Peterson's First Guide to Trees. You will have to purchase that separately or do your own Internet search as we did.

As a teacher with some visual difficulties who has always struggled with tracking skills while reading, I often find answer keys to be very difficult. The answer keys often have all of the answers bunched up in columns that are in a different format than the student workbook questions. This is not the case for Memoria Press teacher guides. The answer key is set up using the exact format as the student workbook. This makes it easier for me to quickly grade the workbook. I really appreciate this, because it makes my life much easier. 

This program gets a thumbs-up from our family. We love Memoria Press and this program did not disappoint. Some other members of the review crew reviewed other programs. The Memoria Press Latin programs look great. To see all the reviews, click on the banner below.

Blessings, Dawn