Zombie Fire Ants!!!!!!

Zombie fire ants. What in the world is that?! It sounds like something out of a really corny science fiction movie. But no, they are actually real!! What child wouldn't love to learn about that?! Since we have ants coming in every nook and cranny of our house right now, it just seems fitting to do a unit study on them. :-) I can't get rid of the little critters, might as well learn more about  them! I am thankful that they aren't the fire ants that we learned about in this study from The Old Schoolhouse.

E-Book: The Curiosity Files™- Zombie Fire Ants 

There were many great things about this study, one being the price. It was only $6.95, and you could even get it cheaper if you bought several studies in the series at one time. I loved all of the beautiful, colorful pictures this study has. It really kept my children interested, and wanting to learn more. It is geared for the ages of 8-13, but with a little creativity I used it for my younger two children as well, 6 and 7. It was very biblically based with lots of scripture, which I LOVED!! It offered everything from snack ideas, lab time (with actual activities), time zone learning, math problems, handwriting (manuscript and cursive), measuring, how to make an ant farm and even practice on the days of the week. I have done several unit studies in the past, that I feel are great. But they all needed to be supplemented with our other school work. This is not one of them. It was very well rounded and covered more than enough for a school day. It was also a pretty inclusive study. There wasn't the constant running back and forth to a computer to look up a certain link, (there were some links) which is wonderful. My children are easily distracted (as am I), and if we have to keep leaving the school room our work does not get done. An answer key was also provided, which made my life a whole lot easier. Sure I can figure out the problems....but who has time for that in between laundry, farm chores, and house work??

As with any school material there are always a few downsides, one being those beautiful/colorful pictures I mentioned in the previous paragraph. They are a little pricey to print out, and with this being a fully inclusive study (lots of pages), it went through the printer ink pretty fast. One other thing that kind of threw me for a loop was the fact it didn't have marked out how much material you should cover in a day. Now depending on the way you want to look at that, it can be a good thing, or a bad thing. It ended up being nice when I didn't want the pressure to finish X amount of pages before lunch, but then I fear that I pushed too hard on the other days. Learning to pace oneself is a lesson that should be taught though, and I guess inadvertently this study did just that. :-)

Overall I would give this unit study a thumbs up. :-) It in fact did live up to its name, The curiosity files, and my children wanted to know MORE and MORE about the zombie fire ant. Isn't that what homeschooling should be about? Learning about really cool things that God has created in our world. I think so, and so do my girls! Thanks TOS for letting me review this product. Many fun memories were made through this study!