Z-Guide to the Movies Review

Once again I was blessed to receive a Z-Guide to the Movies from Zeezok Publishing.  What you say?  You have never heard of a Z-Guide?  Well, let me tell you all about them!

What is a Z-Guide?

If your student enjoys watching movies, we just made it easy for you to incorporate them into your curriculum. We have dozens of guides— each of them falling within a specific time in history. All of the guides contain ten educational activities that build upon the movie. The guides are movie specific. We tell you exactly which movie we used, and almost all are available thru Netflix. Most you can probably get through your local library. So you don’t even need to buy the movie to use our guides!


Check out their information page if you have more questions. 


Each Z-Guide starts out with a topic overview and then advances on to questions about the movie, activities centered around the historical period of the movie, hands-on activities, world-view activities and more.  Z-Guides are a great way to get your students to critically think about the movies they watch.  Movies have agendas and if you can teach your student to recognize the tactics used in movie making then they can be less easily influenced by them. 

What better way to watch a movie then as a family?  How about having activities and discussions during and afterward?  We spread the Z-Guide out over two weeks but the recommendation is to complete it in a week.  I found it completely adaptable to our needs and would use it spread out again. 

If you want to see a sample of what a Z-Guide has in it, head over here and check it out.  You will be very impressed. 

For our Z-Guide we received My Side of the Mountain.  I remember Mrs. Finley reading this book to us in grade school and it stuck with me all these years.  So, when I saw that this was an option to show my kids I jumped on it!  I couldn't wait to share this movie with my girls.

While I was disappointed with the movie, I was quite happy with the Z-Guide. 

It's funny the things you don't remember from childhood and I didn't remember the world-view of this movie.  I wouldn't keep my girls from watching it but it was nice to have the Z-Guide to ask the questions and get them to thinking about why the movie/book  it was written the way that it was.

If you like to incorporate movies into your schooling, then these would make a wonderful addition to your curriculum.

Zeezok sells the Z-Guides for $12.99 and they range in ages from Elementary ages up through High School.  Zeezok also sells the movies the Z-Guides are based on for varying prices.  Check their website to see a full listing of Z-Guides and movies. 

**I was given a copy of the Z-Guide My Side of the Mountain in exchange for my honest review.