Antarctica Unit Study, by Evan-Moor Education (review)

I purchased this "complete" curriculum from Currclick as an e-book for $12.99 back in August. The download was smooth and easy and viewing the book as a pdf was no problem.

Subjects covered by the unit are:
• An introduction to geography as a study
• The basic use of a globe and more complex map skills
• Icebergs and glaciers
• The landforms of Antarctica
• The plants and animals of Antarctica (penguins in particular, and the food web)
• Exploration and explorers of Antarctica
• The people (research stations) on Antarctica
• Politics of Antarctica
• Pollution
• A brief overview of the Arctic for comparison

Worksheets and other printouts in the study include:
• short report forms
• a number of charts
• some question and answer forms
• trivia cards
• a crossword
• a word find
• a glossary
• a bibliography (to be filled out)
• comparison charts
• maps for marking and for reading
• a timeline
• a booklet to be cut out and assembled

I have been hesitant to use curriculum because I don't want to become reliant on it, because I was afraid they would all be formulaic (I was disappointed by what I felt was mindless busywork and jabber in the Amanda Bennett unit studies), and because mostly I try to follow Calvin's interests when we go "exploring". Having done this once, though, I'm likely to do it again with the right publisher. The Evan-Moor study had a handful of busy-work projects, but even these had some purpose, and mostly it was a number of open-ended worksheets. More importantly, this was not a collection of short readings with comprehension questions to reinforce learning. Instead, the unit provided short readings as a jumping off point, and any questions that were posed required additional research outside of what the unit provided.

The study is meant to be used in a classroom, and there  is plenty of material directed at the teacher suggesting ways to present material, but I didn't even read these pages. I did not follow the order of presentation, and I skipped over some of the sections completely. The great thing about the study is that it was completely bendable to our specific needs.

As a warning, the physical page numbers are not the pdf page numbers—the title and cover page are existent here in the pdf but not numbered in the physical book—so when printing specific pages be sure to add two to the desired page number. I found this out the hard way.