I originally came across the Mosdos Press Literature Series when looking at the Timeberdoodle homeschool curriculum packages. We ended up buying the 4th grade text called “Ruby“.
The curriculum offers a student text book ($58), a workbook ($23), a teacher’s book ($80), and a test CD ($69.95).
What is it?
“Mosdos Press publishes a secular literature anthology series in which every selection is morally acceptable and intellectually challenging.” They have curriculum covering grades 3-8. The 4th grade Student Text book is 615 pages and consists of:
- 20 short stories
- 37 poetry selections
- 5 nonfiction essays
- 1 play
- 3 biographies
How we used it:
My son is a great reader, and he’s not a fan of busy work. We decided to just get the Student workbook and the Test CD. We were able to do the curriculum in less than an hour a week, and my son was able to do it independently. We started out the year with me reading and discussing the story element with him and then him reading the stories on his own. By the end of the year, he was doing it all totally independently. We used the curriculum one day each week (and read chapter books for fun other days). The book is meant to be used in schools, so it does have lots of projects at the end of each chapter in the Student Text that can be adapted and done if you want more hands on projects. By buying the Student Workbook you could make this a robust curriculum that could be done daily if you want to go deeper. The workbook focuses on vocabulary and written comprehension questions where the tests from the CD are multiple choice.
What I loved:
1. High Quality Book
The book is beautiful. It is a very well put together hardback book, and the stories are nicely illustrated.
2. Moral Stories
The fact that these stories were “morally acceptable” was one of the big draws for our family. The stories they choose all have an element of morality to them and teach integrity, kindness and good character. All of the story characters learned important life lessons. They were great conversation starters.
3. Teaches Story Elements
Every chapter covered a Story Element. They teach topics such as: theme, setting, internal conflict, forshadowing, major and minor characters, internal dialogue, author’s purpose, fictionalized biography and so much more. The element was explained up front and then the stories that followed demonstrated that element. I felt like the elements taught were very interesting and age appropriate.
4. Tests Comprehension
We were able to check reading comprehension as well as comprehension of the story elements at the end of each chapter. We used the multiple choice tests from the Test CD to make sure my son really understood what was taught. Each sheet asked several questions about the story element and 5 or 6 questions about what happened in the story. The questions were easy to answer and just right for double checking comprehension without feeling like busy work.
Our Conclusion:
I loved this curriculum, and I am so glad we used it this past year. My son was neutral on it. He didn’t love it, but he didn’t mind doing it either. He got almost all of the test questions correct and can still explain the story elements to me, so I feel like the curriculum was effective. We will not be using it again next year, because we are moving on to doing book studies (starting with Mr Popper’s Penguins and the Progeny Press book guides). Overall, I would definitely recommend this curriculum for at least one year for students in grades 3-6.