HOMESCHOOLING RESOURCES

Hello! I’m so glad you’re here! If you are new to homeschooling, please do not let this list overwhelm you. Homeschooling is something that is so tailored to each individual family. For that reason, I’m starting with books that nurture YOUR heart. Books that can help you develop your ideals and goals for your personal homeschool.

See my highlights on instagram for more details.

MOM-HEART

Teaching From Rest
Brave Learner
The Call of the Wild + Free
Educating the Whole-Hearted Child

MOM-HEAD

Smart But Scattered
Lost Tools of Learning (Essay)
The Well Trained Mind

SCIENCE

Answers in Genesis
Answers in Genesis for Kids
Check out their website— they have soo many resources, including picture books with dinosaurs without evolution being shoved down your throat. They even have a great website with fun videos to watch!

SCIENTIST BIOGRAPHIES

Here is the list of scientists we researched this year. We haven’t read biographies on all of them though, so we are slowly getting through this list!

Hipparchus
Ptolemy
Copernicus
Galileo
Kepler
Cassini
Newton
Banneker
Herschel
Mitchell
Leavitt
Hubble
Hawking

SPIRITUAL FORMATION

Our 24 Family Ways
Our Heritage Our Hymns
Happy Hymnody
Trial and Triumph, Stories From Church History
The Bible Story — only available on EBay. It’s like an encyclopedia set, going through the entire Bible in a way that causes kids to stop and think, and really connect to their hearts. Highly recommend!
How Great Is Our God
Indescribable

POETRY

Joyful Noise
Random House Poetry
Emily Dickinson
Robert Frost

NATURE/GEOGRAPHY

Tom Brown’s Field Guide to Nature Observation and Tracking

Draw the World
Draw the USA
Draw Europe
Draw Mexico
Draw Africa
Draw Asia Part 1 and Part 2
Draw Canada
Draw Oceania

ECONOMICS, GOVERNMENT, FINANCES

Uncle Eric Books — I do not have this entire set, but I really appreciate what we have read of his, and plan to work through this list. You can get them individually. I would recommend starting with “Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?”

READING

All About Reading I have taught all four kids to read with this program and cannot recommend it highly enough! I have some with dyslexia, and this teaches in such an intuitive way for natural reading that all four are excellent readers.

WRITING

Institute for Excellence in Writing Another one that I cannot recommend enough. This is the writing program that CC uses, and it is such a gentle progression from retelling information from one small paragraph to being able to write a 5 paragraph research essay. Andrew Pudewa, the founder, uses the phrase “easy plus one” and I apply it to so many areas of my life! Learn a new skill and work on it until it is easy, then add something else in! It keeps overwhelm from being something that blocks the learning pathway.

MATH

We wasted 5 years on another program that goes for “mastery.” You spend an entire year on addition, then the next year is solely subtraction, etc… Once you graduate out of that book, you don’t touch that aspect of math again, until it naturally shows up years later. It did not work for my kids. The facts were not locked into their head, and we were starting at square one when it did show up in something like long division. It may work for some, but I will never go near a program like that again.

Saxon Math is the opposite of that! There is so much repetition and it is a very old program with proven results. I have a friend who didn’t have to refresh her memory on the math she was teaching her kids (is that not unheard of!?) because she was raised on Saxon. It is boring, it is not flashy, but it works.

OUR FAVORITE LITERATURE

Book of Virtues
Aesop’s Fables
Little House Series
Narnia Series
Little Britches Series
Lord of the Rings Series
Birchbark House Series
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch
The Secret Garden — this one is best on audio with Finola Hughes as the narrator with her Yorkshire accent!
Anne of Green Gables
Crispin
Where the Red Fern Grows
The Hiding Place
The Sign of the Beaver
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
Number the Stars
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
Little Pilgrims Progress
Heidi
Little Women
Sky of Seven Colors
Eight Cousins
Wind in the Willows
Tuck Everlasting

CHARLOTTE MASON METHOD

Ambleside Online is not something I can confidently recommend, because we have not yet used it, but it’s our plan for this next school year. It is a free resource to help those with a Charlotte Mason homeschool find age/grade appropriate materials for a robust education. I’m very eager to explore this tool and see how it helps us on our first year going on our own, outside of Classical Conversations!

My summer reading is loaded with all things Charlotte Mason. I have read books that other people have written on her, but I’m digging into her actual volumes this summer.

BLESSINGS ON YOUR HOMESCHOOL

Whatever it is that you are using in your homeschool, I pray abundant blessings on all of you! That the peace of God would reign in your home—that you would be able to keep the First Thing the first thing. For us, that is holiness and beautiful character. If those things are solid…no way will our children be hung out to dry! As mothers, we are more than qualified for this job. YOU CAN DO THIS!!!

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