One of the reasons I enjoy doing product reviews is that it gives us an opportunity to try out products that we probably would have never discovered otherwise. We recently had a chance to review three media enhanced books from Weigl Publishing that included online content. For our review we received PDF versions of:
A Lion's World
There Once Was a Cowpoke Who Swallowed an Ant
Glaciers
Weigl Publishing was established in 2000 and has published more than 1000 titles in the areas of social studies, science, language arts, sports, and high interest. Their media enhanced books were launched in 2012. With the purchase of a media enhanced book, you receive the book (we received PDFs but purchasers receive a physical copy) with a code in the front of the book to access the online content. The amount of online content varies depending on the type of book you purchase and the age range.
A Lion's World is geared for children in grades K-2. The story contains simple sentences that have factual information about lions such as where they live, how they look, what they do, and more. along with photo illustrations. The first page of the book gives you a code and instructions for using the code to unlock the online content. When you enter the code at the website, you can have the book read aloud to you and the pages come to life as the pictures turn into videos. You even hear the lion roar.
There Once Was a Cowpoke Who Swallowed An Ant is also written for children in grades K-2. This story is a funny fictional book about a cowboy who swallows an ant and then swallows a spider to take care of the ant, and then a road runner, a lizard, an armadillo, a snake, a boar, a longhorn. his horse, a rope, and himself. The second page of the book gives you the information you need to unlock the online content. When you go to the website and enter your code, you can choose to have the book read aloud to you. The pages are turned for you and as it is reading, the text is highlighted and there are some sound effects in the background.
I used these two books with my 7 year old daughter. One day when she was feeling under the weather I grabbed the computer, entered in the code, put in the validation word and let the books read to her. She loved book books for different reasons. She thought There Once Was a Cowpoke Who Swallowed an Ant was really funny. The voice that read the story was very pleasant to listen to. A Lion's World had some interesting information on lions. She loved the way it came alive online. We have very slow internet so we did have a bit of a lag time with the books.
Glaciers is from the Earth's Water series and is geared for children in grades 3-6. This is a nonfiction book will photograph illustrations, diagrams, a timeline, maps describing what glaciers are, glacier movement, glacier location, Glaciologists and more. At the end of the book there is a glacier quiz and a science experiment. When you go to the website to unlock the content with your code, you will find a lot of extra content in addition to the complete text of the book. There are 4 different videos to watch. There is a 10 page PDF activity pack with worksheets you can fill out to go along with the lesson. There are links to web pages with more information on topics. You can remove information on the charts and put them back one step at a time. For instance on the Glaciers body page you can start with #1 the accumulation zone is formed here, click on the area and then it adds #2 This is the ablation zone. There is a picture slide show of glaciers. You can have the text read aloud to you and if you click on the underlined vocabulary words, a definition for the word comes up.
My boys and I were very impressed with Glaciers. There is a lot of extra online content for this book! Your online access does not ever expire and you can go to it as many times as you want. Using the worksheets and extra resources really turns this book into a Unit Study. I was very impressed. The voice that reads this book is a little more computer like then the other two books we had and you may be interested to know that the timeline does show millions of years.
To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!
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