Alaska~By The Way {Crew Review}

Our family has enjoyed learning more about Alaska this past month using the By The Way Book Series.  By The Way books are a unique set of geography books that teach kids about the world around them in a story format that incorporates a Christian world view.

Following siblings Lexi and Alex on their family vacation to Alaska we learned all about different aspects of Alaskan culture, animals, and geography.  To be honest, when I first opened the book to flip through it I thought, “That is a lot of writing.”  While it is written in story format, it really is a lot of information to digest.  Interesting information, but dense, none-the-less.  Thankfully, the story is told in a fashion that makes it easy to break up into smaller chunks for reading and this is what we did.

One of the nice things about breaking it up is it gives you more time to digest the information and dig into topics deeper if you choose.

And, if you don’t want to read it through beginning to end as a story, it wouldn’t be a big deal.  I skipped around reading pages here and there that caught my eye (sometimes even just reading the facts segments) and it was fine.  The story is designed to relay the information in an interesting way, but you aren’t going to feel lost if you don’t go in order.

At the very beginning of the book, are some seek and find pictures for kids to look for as you navigate through.  Since we were not reading the book all in one sitting, my five year old just went through it herself and found the matching pictures.  This was good because it got her excited to get to certain portions of the book where she saw pictures that caught her eye and then was interested in learning more about was she saw.  She couldn’t wait until we got the the page on the Common Murres.

Our book on Alaska was chock full of beautiful pictures of all things Alaskan–from native animals, to places, scenery, and all things found in Alaska.  Illustrated pictures were also sprinkled throughout that related to the story being told.  The pictures really helped to catch the eye and keep the interest of my younger children.

There were also pages laced with interesting facts about the topic being discussed.  For example, we learned that the scientific name for the harbor seal is pinnipeds.

They were beautiful scriptures and I loved that as you read through the book it consistently pointed out how awesome God and His creations are as it provided opportunities to point it out to the kids and ask them to find or think of their own examples.

I learned so much about Alaska through this book and just looking at all the beautiful pictures made we wish a trip was in our future! My ten year old also learned about geocaching in the book and is excited to go on her first geocaching expedition.

Others on the Crew reviewed books about Ireland, New York City and Indiana, so click on through to read their reviews and see how they incorporated them into their homeschool.  I would definitely not mind having other books in the series on my bookshelf.