We love Unit Studies in our homeschool! We have done more than I can count over the past ten years of homeschooling; and while we have used movies to accentuate our studies, I never thought of using a movie as the basis of the study. That is exactly what Zeezok’s Z-Guides to the Movies do. They take great movies and use them as the starting point for great learning.
What exactly is a Z-Guide? & How does it work?
From the website:
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!
Activities include movie review questions, research and writing skill-builders, at least one hands-on activity, a worldview activity and an art activity. Family discussion questions help to build critical thinking and communication skills.
All the lessons are laid out clearly and concisely. No guess work required and very little prep for mom (if any at all). Answer keys and a grading scale are also included.
How it worked for us–
We love history and movies and unit studies, so this was a great fit for us. By reviewing Amazing Grace, we learned things about William Wilberforce and John Newton and slavery in general that we had not known before, even though we had watched the movie several times before. Until we dove in to the activities included in the Z-Guide, we had overlooked a great amount of learning that we could have gleaned from previous viewings. And even though this is meant to be only a week long study, I could definitely see us stretching it out longer as we found more “rabbit trails” to follow.
Our Opinion
I would definitely recommend Z-Guides to others. It was an enjoyable study, not tedious at all. It encouraged JC14 to master “Amazing Grace” on the piano. (I am thrilled!) While we used Amazing Grace with our high schooler, I think my elementary girls would love to study Kit Kittredge. 
I could also see this working well during a season when Mom (or kids) need a bit of a break from traditional book work. I wish I would have known about these when I was on bedrest. It would have made my days seem more productive to know the children were learning while watching movies with Mom. 😉
How Much? & Where to Get This?
Z-Guides are downloadable and only $12.99 per movie title and available to purchase on the Zeezok website.
Several titles were reviewed by other crew members. Check out what they had to say here.
Except for learning to play the piece on the piano, we had almost the same thoughts on this review!! We really enjoyed it – glad you did as well.