Prince Caspian Resources

The movie version of Prince Caspian is set to be released within the week. With that in mind, I thought it would be fun to round up a few resources for those who may be reading the book or planning to see the movie.

Homeschoolers and classroom educators alike can download a free educator poster from Walden Media - complete with colourful several pages of language arts activities. HarperCollins offers a number of resources for the Narnia books, include free online games. The Narnia Academy, also from Walden, offers a number of free resources for home or school use. If you are beginning your reading with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, check out their 40-lesson study plan for this book. Hopefully they will also offer one for Prince Caspian! One more from Walden is the Narnia Resources, which include guides for parents, teachers, youth leaders, etc. For older students they offer “teen tools.”

EasyFunSchool offers a summary of the book and some background on CS Lewis, plus a word search, some suggested vocabulary words and questions for discussion. Katrina also has some questions for each chapter, plus suggested fun activities. Activity Village offers a number of free Narnia themed activities, including crafts.

Wondering when to introduce the Narnia books to your children? Wondering what order you should follow when reading the series? Ambleside Online lists the series for reading as free reading in Year 4, and the books are rated for ages 9-12 by Amazon. This article from NarniaWeb discusses the several ways to approach this question, and also looks at how a reader’s experience of Narnia will be coloured by the approach taken. Not a definitive answer, by any means, but food for thought!

Maybe a little background information is in order? This page from Woodlands Junior School discusses why children (and other vulnerable people) were evacuated from London during WWII, and what it was like for them to live through this experience. Teacher resources for C.S. Lewis are plentiful at the Children’s Authors Home Pages and at eThemes (several state educational standards are listed, to help educators identify objectives covered.)

At CurrClick there are three Prince Caspian downloads available to suit a variety of homeschoolers. The unit study from Highlights of Homeschooling would work well for either younger students or older students who are very visually oriented. The unit study from Brandenburg Studies has a spiritual focus, and is appropriate for either homeschool or Sunday School use. The novel study from New Learning Publishing is a student-directed literature study that requires no parental preparation. Depending on the unit selected, there are questions for discussion, copywork, sequencing activities, multiple choice and fill in the blanks, colouring pages, and directions for creating journal entries, newpapers, etc. inspired by the book. These units are specifically designed with home educators in mind.