You Can Homeschool - Read, Read, Read
First a favorite homeschooling quote from Albert Einstein, "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales".
Homeschooling is a great opportunity to read all kinds of books with your kids. It is also a great chance to read great books that you didn’t get to as a child or reread your favorites. Below are some of my favorites, though I am sure I am forgetting some.
First, you can get almost any book in the world from Interlibrary loan,
of course it is nice to own some of the best books, especially if you
have several children and because often the best books children will read
and reread. In buying books I have a few recommendations, remember
the Scholastic Book Flyers you used to take home in school?, well with
homeschooling you don’t have to be limited to the one the school
thinks is for your grade you can choose from them all. We used to
order as a group though our homeschooling group and some of us would order
so many we joked about starting a sub-group “Scholastics Anonymous”.
You can order individually from The
Scholastic Store ,
also if you live near any of their outlet stores it is worth it to get
on their mailing lists for the teacher sales they have a few times a year.
So What Should I Read with my Children
This is of a course a list that could go on and on but I will list some family favorites in our family.
The Boxcar Children – Series for young readers, full of mystery and adventure.
Nate the Great- Detective series for beginning readers, full of quirky characters and a lot of puns.
The Indian in the Cupboard- The original was made into a movie, there are actually three books, the last one is for more mature readers and deals with Skinheads and maybe some other things I don’t remember but I loved these stories.
Artemis Fowl – Another series of very clever books about a boy genius and his encounters with the fairy people who live under the Earth’s surface. A real hit with kids that love gadgets and technology.
Rifles for Watie – Great Civil War historical Fiction.
The Egypt Game – There was also the The Gypsy Game, which wasn’t quite as good but both very imaginative.
Enchanted Forest Chronicles Series - The first is called Dealing with Dragons and they are all full of great take offs on other fairy tales and stereotypical fantasy characters.The Shakespeare Stealer – Historical Fiction about Shakespeare’s theater and times, and guess what – this book also has a sequel.
Midnight Hour Encores – A great book about the sixties, as a father teaches his gifted musical daughter about her parent’s lives before she was born.
The Lives of Christopher Chant – Another series book, it’s hard to figure out the order of the related books but worth it. They deal with different types of magical peoples and magical worlds that are interconnected.
The Westing Game – We read this clever mystery, unlike any other for it’s age range many times. Full of great characters and a riveting story.
Daniel Pinkwater – Okay, that’s not the book, he’s an author, he’s got tons of fun books for younger children and young teens, go to the library and choose one to try, you’ll probably get hooked.
The Great Wheel – A favorite non-fiction about building the Ferris Wheel at the Chicago World’s Fair.
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - About intelligent rats who escaped from a lab and build their own society.
Of coures all of the Harry Potter Books.
Some of my favorites from childhood that really held up:
My Side of the Mountain – This also has some sequels, about a boy living off the land. If you ever saw the movie the beloved falcon gets shot in the end, in the books he continues on through the series.
The Water is Wide – The movie for this one was called Conrack, about a teacher who takes on a group of underprivileged black children living on an isolated small island.
The Born Free Books – About life in the African wild with lions.
Flowers for Algernon - The Movie was called Charley (with the R backwards), about a man who is transformed from a mentally retarted person to a genius and back again, very poignant..
Catch 22 - For the older teens, a great story about government/army bureaucracy.
Some Favorite Classics
The Great Gatsby
To Kill a Mockingbird
