Weigl Publishers: A TOS Crew Review

   Traditional paper books are great, but we have an amazing amount of information at our fingertips with technology and our kids are drawn to it like flies to honey! When my girls learned we were going to read some new books with media enhancements and digital content, they were intrgued. Glaciers, A Lion's World, and There Once Was a Cowpoke Who Swallowed an Ant from Weigl Publishers had my girls hooked from the start! Glaciers and There Once Was a Cowpoke Who Swallowed an Ant are geared towards kids in kindergarten through 2nd grade. Glaciers is for an older set, 3rd-6th. Although the age range is quite broad, I encouraged all of my girls to give them a try.    Here is a quick synopsis of each title. 
     This title is so much fun! It has the same feeling as the song, There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly. This light-hearted, tale will make your kids (and you!) laugh from start to finish! Because this is geared towards younger kids the digital content is not too extensive, but it is still really fun! The narrator reads the story aloud and has a lovely reading voice which is pleasant to hear and the cowboy's voice is quite humorous. 

This was such a cool book! This was my favorite and I think the girls liked it best as well. Each page had beautiful videos showing real lions. There were some super fun audio too! Grace especially enjoyed this particular title. She had already read the story aloud for us. Watch her lip read in the video and then roar along with the lion! How cute is this little girl?!?!

    This title was really interesting for my older two as well as Grace. She again enjoyed reading the book aloud, but this info grabbed her sisters a bit more than the first two titles did. I personally thought this had some of the coolest digital enhancements! Underlined vocabulary words can be clicked on to find the definition. Pictures can be clicked to access insider videos that are spectacular!  There are kid-friendly links to other websites (although we always still check these first) and slide shows too.   It is good to know in advance that this has the perspective that the earth is billions of years old. This is not a huge issue for us. While we hold to a literal interpretation of Genesis, including a literal 7-day creation week, we do not isolate our children from resources which disagree with this view. It provides perfect opportunities to discuss the differences and why we believe what we do about the creation of the world.

Weigl Publishers is a brand new company for our family. I've never heard of them, but they were a hit all around! Rose asked what other types of books they have and if we could get some more! One aspect I loved is that the text is highlighted while being read. This is incredible for kids who are younger learners or have reading challenges. This is a great opportunity to give kids books to read, but not require them to actually do the reading if that is a struggle. It is a beautiful thing to give eager learners opportunities even when they have one area that is harder for them. 
We highly recommend this company! I'm sure you will find a title or twenty which will engage your kids! 
Check out what my Crewmates had to say!