.: Review: God's World News

For our seventh grade year, we've been putting more of a focus on current events with Mackenzie. She's been digging through the news paper each week trying to find articles that she could understand and give a report about. However, the pickings have been slim. Either they have been over her head or, in my opinion, very one sided. Either way. It wasn't working for us. So we were quite pleased to be giving the opportunity to review Gods World News, Top Story Edition for middle schoolers.

About God's World News

God's World News strives to provide news and interesting information to children at their level, and from a biblical standpoint. They use todays current events and cover subjects such as science, social studies, religion, geography, and more. There is something for every area of your curriculum. With magazines for pre-k through adult, there is also something for every student.

And you get more than just a news magazine. Their online content is extensive and filled with things that would make great supplements to your student's learning. With our Top Story subscription, we had access to biographies, quizzes to test comprehension, fun lessons to compliment the current issue, and a website just for the students that further extends the learning.

Our Experience

We received a full year subscription to the Top Story Middle School edition. The subscription includes 10 full color issues with one issue every month except December and May. Each issue is 32 pages long and is printed in full color. Each issue contains age appropriate articles, editorials, news graphics that explain difficult concepts, puzzles, Map It activities, editorial cartoons, and more. We also received a huge 20" x 30" world map that corresponds with the locator maps inside the magazine. I receive an email every week, with answer keys to the quizzes and puzzles along with easy access to the web content.

We have been primarily been using the magazine as her source for Mackenzie's current event assignments and it has been working beautifully!!! The articles are short, informative, and age appropriate. The content is varied. She's done reports on everything from government data collection to border patrol to Syria to robots. And she is really enjoying them. The articles have been very straight forward making it easy for her to outline them and write her report. She's actually enjoying her current event assignments now. No more stress! You can read a sample issue HERE.

The list of online biographies is quite extensive and I've been able to utilize those to supplement our science and history studies, as well. She's read about the Egyptian Pharaohs, Gregor Mendel, and Isaac Newton. I'm currently going through the list of biographies and matching them up with our scope and sequence. Many of them will find their way into our future lessons. Check out a sample HERE.

I am also finding that the articles and biographies make wonderful source texts for our writing curriculum. This has been very helpful when she needs extra practice on certain writing techniques. And now I don't have to go digging for appropriate material. It's all at my finger tips.

Each issue also comes with at least two, sometimes more, additional lessons that you can access online. Again the topics are varied, every thing from mummies to cancer to baseball to life in other countries. The lessons include an informative article, puzzles, quizzes, and fun assignments. You can see a sample HERE.

And guess what else you get with your subscription? Online access to all levels. Including back issues. This is very handy if you have a family member who tends to toss things into the trash, like current GWN issues, without looking at them first. (You know who you are!! lol)

I hate reading on the computer but I don't mind it on the iPad. (Weird, right? lol) So I was very happy to see that they loaded easily onto my iBooks app to make my life easier. And there's even an app for the adult version of God's World News. And it's free with your subscription.

I am so pleased with this product. All I was expecting was a news magazine that would help us with our current events studies and we got so much more. We are really enjoying this magazine and all of it's extras. This is something I plan on continuing to subscribe to in the future. In fact, I'm planning on subscribing to the kindergarten issue for my little one. We just love this magazine!!!!