Study Guides for Literature: Miss Rumphius – Review

One of my very favorite children’s books is Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney. It’s a delightful little story that we read as part of our curriculum last year. When we received the opportunity to review the Miss Rumphius study guide from Progeny Press, I thought it would be a great addition to our homeschool.

If you have never read Miss Rumphius, it’s a story about a woman named Miss Rumphius (Alice). She had two goals in life: to follow in her father’s footsteps and travel to faraway places, and to settle down by the sea. Once she has traveled to faraway places, she does settle down by the sea, but she does something more. She spreads lupine seeds wherever she goes in order to help make the world a more beautiful place.

What is the Progeny Press Study Guide?

The Miss Rumphius study guide is designed for children in K-3rd grade. The guides are designed to help students dig deeper into literature and to learn how authors write their stories. The goal is to help the students understand the themes and ideas in stories.

Our study guide arrived in digital form as a PDF. This PDF is 43 pages. It includes a section telling the instructor how to use the guide, a synopsis of the story, an about the author and illustrator section, a before you read Bible study/nature study, before you read activities, and then the book is broken down by sections of the story. You will find vocabulary, comprehension questions, and a Dig Deeper section that helps the student really grasp the themes of the story. There is also an answer key.

How we used the study guide 

My oldest child is in first grade and is not quite ready for all the writing involved with the study guide if I just gave it to him. We love the story Miss Rumphius, so we read the story together and then I looked over the study guide and asked him the questions I felt he could answer. 

One of my favorite sections of the study guide is the Before You Read Study. This study guide talked about setting goals, which is something Alice does in the book. In the study guide, we dug into some Bible passages about setting goals and had a nice conversation about why setting goals is important. We also talked about how sometimes our plans do not turn out the way we hoped, and that ultimately God orchestrates our plans. It was such a good lesson and something I would not have thought of on my own in connection with this story.

As I mentioned, some of the study guide was really a bit too advanced for my guy, and we are still working our way through some of it. There are many wonderful activities such as learning about our heritage and making a special gift for a relative that lives far away that we plan to do soon. 

I really enjoyed this study guide and I would purchase another one for another story we do. I also think this would be wonderful to use in a co-op setting.