There is a woman in our church who used to live in Australia. My daughter watched a movie about a gymnastics team, from Australia.  We read a book about life “down under” recently. All of this has led to me having four children who are very curious about Australia. I am thankful for LightHome Publications who happens to have a wonderful ebook to help our kids learn all about Australian Animals while at the same time, learning a bit about that land “down under”.

There are 74 pages in this ebook which is designed to help our children with their cursive penmanship but it is really so much more than that! While it begins with tracing and writing the cursive alphabet (upper and lower cases), it quickly moves on to having them write complete paragraphs. 

Each paragraph teaches them about one of the animals that are found in Australia. Sometimes we would get out a map so we could better see about where they lived; other times we looked up videos to see them “live” and hear the sounds they make. It is always great to see our kids learning and be reminded of how much more there is to learning about animals - math and science, geography, handwriting, narrating and reading skills - these are all so very evident in this ebook.

There are also fun coloring pages (my oldest uses them as a guide to independently draw the animals for himself) which my younger children really enjoyed coloring. There are also lots of fun word searches, mazes, hidden picture activities and challenges for you to make your own words from the letters in an animal name. My children loved how some of the puzzles were even shaped in the form of an animal!

We all had so much fun learning together with this one! From the frill necked lizard, to the atyelpes (Australian native cats), the platypus (who looks nothing like Perry my son says) and the quokka we learned so many fun facts about these animals and the land they live in. It’s all about learning something new; exploring and finding those passions with our kids and certainly something like this can really encourage and inspire that very thing.

-Product review by Jennifer King, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, April, 2017