Leadership Garden Legacy Review

As a parent, it is important to me that I raise good leaders with excellent character, strong moral values, and an intuitive sense of self that cannot be squashed out by peer pressure.  Of course, the reality is that life is hard and kids need far more guidance than I am capable of providing all on my own.  I was recently able to review, for free for the purpose of this blog post with the Schoolhouse Review Crew, many of the products from Leadership Garden Legacy.  These resources are fabulous for teaching children (and adults) how to find the leader from within and to use their strength and abilities to shine a light onto the world around them.

Each book that I read and mp3 that I listened to was full of great information.  The U.N.I.Q.U.E. KIDS: Growing My Leadership Garden book is written for and to children using people and animals on a Leadership Farm to illustrate the points.  The book itself is full of beautiful, full-color pages that are engaging and fun to flip through.  Each chapter was easy to read to my children, and following the chapters was a section called “Hugh Wants to Know”, which encourages the readers to reflect upon what they just learned through the story.  Not only that, but the questions in this section also help guide children through exploring their own lives and how the story that was just read applies to situations that they may experience.  There are take action steps so that the kids can actually take the information they just learned and apply it.

There is an activity guide and journal available to use with this, as well as Mp3s that can be used to help enhance using this book as part of a homeschool curriculum or just as a fun and interesting family activity.  We actually read the book and/or listened to the mp3 audio book before completing some of the “Hugh Wants to Know” questions and then looking into the Activity Guide.  My younger children had a hard time following along and understanding the concepts, but my 7 year old (almost 8 now!) was able to understand the metaphors in the story and apply them to her life.  Sometimes she got confused with what the story was talking about and we had to spend a bit of time working through it.  For example, the author talks about “weeds” in the leadership garden.  Weeds can be a variety of things, but in the particular lesson I’m thinking of, we were trying to discover that weeds can be that Negative Nancy voice that you have in the back of your mind saying that you’re not good enough or can’t achieve big goals.  Once my daughter understood that, she was able to come up with some examples of weeds in her leadership garden, which is exactly what the exercise was all about!!

I received the following for the purpose of this review:

Books:
U.N.I.Q.U.E. KIDS: Growing My Leadership Garden (for use with children 5-12 – $18.95)
U.N.I.Q.U.E.: Growing the Leader Within (for people aged 13+, including adults – $18.95)
The Leadership Garden Guidebook (for people aged 13+, including adults – $18.95)

Downloadable Resources:
U.N.I.Q.U.E. KIDS Activity Guide & My Leadership Garden Journal – PDF Downloads (for use with children 5-12 – $8.95)
U.N.I.Q.U.E. KIDS Audio Book MP3 Download (for use with children 5-12 – $8.95)
U.N.I.Q.U.E.: Growing the Leader Within – Audio Book MP3 Download (for people aged 13+, including adults – $14.95)

Note that they offer bundles if you want to purchase sets of items to use together.

 The story that is told in the U.N.I.Q.U.E. KIDS: Growing My Leadership Garden book is very similar to the one in U.N.I.Q.U.E.: Growing the Leader Within, but the kids version is geared toward kids ages 5-12 as opposed to adults.  I read the adult version and found it to be really eye-opening for my personally.  It’s basically a self-help book teaching you how to live to your full potential.  I enjoyed many of the exercises, and the guidebook came in handy for this.  If you’re like me and HATE writing or highlighting or dog-earing books, then the guidebook will be an essential element to doing this!  It really takes the questions and action steps from the main text and elaborates upon them, giving you space to write and think about what you’ve learned.  This will be interesting to go back to later to see how I have progressed in my personal life.  I know the kids will feel the same way with some of the activities and text we completed with their book, as well.

An example of an exercise that was enlightening to me was from The Leadership Garden Guidebook.  After reading a chapter in the main text, it had me list the name of someone important to me with whom I have had differences.  Then I was to list behaviors in them that I didn’t like.  Then it took it a step further and told me to list what I see in my own behavior that I don’t like and compare the lists.  Is it possible that I display some of the behaviors I find despicable in others?  The guidebook then offered some insight into why these lists might be similar and encouraged me to be honest with myself.  I was then supposed to list leader-friendly practices to use to alter my view of that relationship.  That was just the first HALF of an exercise from Lesson 4.  You can see why I found this study very in-depth and eye-opening.  There is just SO much self-reflection taking place through reading the story and completing the exercises.  It is possible to take a long time on each lesson in order to really get the most out of every exercise and let it sink in.  I liked reading a chapter and then waiting until the next morning to complete the prompts and activities suggested.  This gave me a night to sleep on the story and really reflect upon it a bit before challenging myself with the questions posed in the guidebook.

This was a fun review because I was able to do the adult version for my own personal growth and use and also teach them the kid version of it to take a look into how my kids think.  Both texts are very similar, but written slightly different to target the appropriate age-level.  The simplified version for the children proved to be a mind-bending and fun experience for them.  The more complex adult version was interesting for me, because it helped me to address some issues that I had been neglecting.  I am definitely a leader in so many ways, and it is important to fine-tune my skills and be the best leader I can possibly be!  If you’re looking to do the same, check out this series!