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Share your favorite homeschooling resources!
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It’s that time of year again. Most of us are making plans for next year, buying curriculum and books and attending conferences and used curriculum fairs. I thought it would be helpful if we all shared some of our all time favorite resources for homeschooling, from homeschool help books to curricula to living books.
I’ll go first!
For homeschooling help, I just love A Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola for CM inspiration. In fact, I love all of her books. I wish she would write more!
For a resource that will lay it all out and truly give you a can-do attitude towards CM homeschooling, the SCM teaching DVD’s just can’t be beat!
Math U See is our all time favorite math curriculum. We’ve tried Life of Fred, Saxon, Miquon and Teaching Textbooks but Math U See has beat them all in our homeschool.
I love, love, love SCM picture portfolios for picture study!
Visual Latin is a hit around here. The teacher is funny and really knows his stuff. It’s easy to fit this into short lessons as well though I wouldn’t use it before middle school myself. This is pretty serious latin.
SCM’s Visits To.. geography series is just wonderful. It is so great to be able to just pick it up and jump into learning without any teacher prep on my part.
We prefer living books for elementary age science. Some of our favorites were the Burgess books. For highschool science, we love Apologia for my daughter.
We love Living Books all the way for history and Literature. Some of our favorite spines have been the H.A. Guerber books and A History for Peter books by Gerald Johnson. We enjoyed the Genevieve Foster books as well. Literature would take too long to list but I will say that Understood Betsy is a don’t miss book for all families! I mention this one because it’s not as well known as the classics and we are all familiar with those. My daughter’s favorite classics so far are Alice In Wonderland, Swiss Family Robinson, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and The Scarlett Pimpernel. My son loved Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. His favorite book is Little Britches.
Okay! Those are the highlights from our homeschool years so far! I can’t wait to hear yours!
I wanted to add that I just love The Millers series for family devotions with young children. I can’t bear to part with my set! I’m hoping to read them to my grandchildren!
Rainbow Promise by Mary Landis is similar except for it’s a continuing story. Each chapter does have a scripture and a moral. It’s from Rod & Staff I believe.
I read Pocketful of Pinecones by Karen Andreola every year for encouragement.
I love SCM’s blog archives for back to basics grounding in CM methods.
Math U See here.
History is books, everlastingly books. Sometimes with a guide that plans which books for us (SCM or Beautiful Feet, etc) and sometimes just planned out by me.
We generally use Spelling Wisdom for copywork and dictation. Simple, straightforward.
All About Reading has been great for teaching reading when I didn’t want to plan lessons all on my own (did that for the first several kids, now kid #5 and I are enjoying AAR).
Kindles have been priceless, ebooks to read! And audio books to listen to!
Library card – we use it all the time and between the 11 of us we can get out 1089 books at one time (99 per card). We don’t get that many out, but it’s nice to know we could if we wanted to. Usually we have about 75 out.
SCM Picture Study Portfolios. If they didn’t make them, we wouldn’t have them, and we wouldn’t do picture study. I simply don’t have the time to pull something like that together.
I saw at CHAP that Queen Homeschool, has their own version of the Pic. Study Portfolios…….so I looked at them, just to see. And their pictures are a full 8×10 (no border around the edges). BUT, the SCM pictures are a better quality print. The Queen prints are dark, and the details are hard to see. I don’t remember the price, so I can’t comment on that.
Queen Picture Studies also group a bunch of different artists’ work together. I much prefer to study by one artist at a time, for 6 or 8 works in a row.
? SCM Picture Study Portfolios!
Another MUS fan here! We’ve been using it for several years and have no plans on changing. It’s very large family friendly!
Visual Latin is great so far. Easy to understand and fun to watch! My DC haven’t used it yet, but I’ve been going through the lessons on my own, so I can keep ahead of them when we start the new year. I’m hoping to work with my youngest DC while the oldest two go through the videos on their own. I’ll be restarting the younger ones with Prima Latina, which the older DC enjoyed…although I’m not near as entertaining a teacher as Dwane Thomas. 😉
Harmony Fine Arts has been a big hit. They love anything art related, and it’s a nice mix of hands-on and art appreciation. We’ve been using the middle school ages for a family study. Grades 5-8 line up with a 4 year history cycle.
Paper Sloyd for the Primary Grades has been a super easy and inexpensive handicraft. I highly recommend it for all ages! Plus it’s in the public domain.
We also really like Spelling Wisdom. My oldest was a natural speller, so I was curious how it would work with DS, who struggles. This year I finally saw quite a bit of improvement in his spelling.
ELTL has also been a hit. We haven’t used them as is, but I would pick and choose portions of each lesson. We subbed in Spelling Wisdom for the ELTL dictation passages. We often read the poetry & did the picture studies as a family. We skipped some of the literature and folk tales when time was short or they didn’t care for the book. However, I really liked the narration passages, writing instruction, and grammar lessons.
For reading instruction, McGuffey Primer & 1st Readers have been my favorite. We added Webster’s Reading Handbook this time around, along with a Starfall “dictionary”. She loved adding new words to the dictionary and seeing how far she’s come.
R&S Preschool Books are always a hit as well. They are so much more fun than the cheap ones you find in the stores and much cuter! They have lots of little cut & paste activities that my DC have all enjoyed.
SOTW 2 was a surprising hit here. I never though it would be a good fit for us, but Famous Men didn’t go well and I needed an inexpensive substitution. We ended up adding in the Activity Guide, making it not quite so inexpensive, but they’ve all really loved the coloring pages and maps.
We are also fans of SCM’s Visits series. It’s very simple and effective, which is always a good thing. Material World and the Geopuzzles are everyone’s favorite part of the lessons. The Geopuzzles aren’t scheduled in with Visits, but I try to fit it in on our geography day.
For Homeschooling helps: I love “Easy Homeschooling Companion: Exhortation, Encouragement and More Easy Ideas” by Lorraine Curry (there is a set), and A Charlotte Mason Companion. Also I consider the Library to be our biggest asset. I am always trying to keep costs down and between Kindle, and our great library (small town but it belongs to a super group with several large libraries that we can borrow from).
For math I have two using Teaching Textbooks and two using CLE math. I feel that CLE is more rigorous then TT but I have a huge time constraint in the afternoon and cannot teach four separate math classes! So two do TT. I dabbled in Professor B math early on and had my youngest try Life Of Fred but didn’t care for them.
I also love the SCM picture portfolios and I have a generous friend who shares hers with me but sometimes I buy old calendars by famous artists and use those for picture study as well.
This summer we are going to be starting Rosetta Stone German. I tried to do a free online course this year but it got left out and pushed behind to many days (my fault) so we will try again this summer.
For Science we are doing a lot this summer and next year. I have done 106 Days (which I loved) when my kids were younger and then searched for a couple of years for something that I liked and finally settled on AIG. But next year my oldest three are in 6th, 7th and 8th and I wanted something different. So I finally settled on http://experienceastronomy.com/ which is online and starts in September. It was on sale when I bought it. But we are also going to be following the living science curriculum from Sabbath Mood Homeschool. And I bought by my 2nd grader a DVD from Supercharged Science for him to do this summer. We have a microscope already and he is doing most of this on his own. I have come to a point where sometimes you just have to spend some money on things that are important.
For History I have always LOVED the SCM guides but this year with my oldest in 8th and planning on attending a private High School I wanted to go through all the ancients with her in one year. So we are going to try Beautiful Feet History guide of the Ancients this year. That way I didn’t have to do all that planning myself. I especially miss the Bible readings being included in that but I will try to add them myself as I go along.
For Language Arts I will have the three older doing Analytical Grammar and Write With the Best Vol 2; my 3rd grader will be doing the EFTTC II and starting cursive writing and working on transitioning into studied dictation.
We also have to finish up Catechism with my 6th grader as next year he and his older sister will be taking classes with our church Pastor.
We are just trying to finish some things and looking forward to next year!
Excelerate Spanish DVD and activities has been a hit!
the Child’s Story Bible by Catherine Vos, Bible Maps Then and Now with overlays, we use almost weekly. SCM Scripture Memory System, so easy!
LDTRails for Children, love that everything for habit study is there, plus the poems and stories are great and often funny, helping us to really connect and think. Story Starters.
For mom: Gentle Art of Learning by Karen Andreola, and Ruth Beechik’s A Biblical Education. Raising arrows.net for practical encouragement and Sallyclarkson.com for building family legacy/vision. Read for the Heart – book lists.
AiG science, supercharged science, smarter everyday videos.
Math on the Level, so easy to implement short lessons, even teaching kids together at times; once I got over my learning curve! Love 5 review problems a day. Utilize the spreadsheet please:) and the free webinars from author, so refreshing and doable. Paper and cardboard Sloyd.
Picture study portfolios, but wish there were more with landscapes and still lifes.
SW, able to simplify this area and seems more effective. Still like AAS till grade 3, helped my kids learn to read.
AAR readers are the best I’ve found, engaging and funny, not twaddley for early readers, great sketch pictures.
Creating a Masterpiece, but so sad I can’t find on DVD anymore. SCM Learning and Living DVD series.
spreading the feast: My First Lab duoscope microscope kit (need to add light from a desk lamp or led flashlight, but very sturdy), binoculars, The Backyard Birdsong book, Bug Zoo, good art supplies in basket, A Child’s Garden of Verses illustrated by Tasha Tudor, field guides (flowers by color, birds, rocks and minerals, bugs and insects, edible and medicinal plants), rock pick hammer, bug net and containers, flower press.
Less mentioned books:(lit.) Swallows and Amazon’s series, Mistmantle series, Ginger Pye and others, Narnia audio drama, Swiss Family Robinson (book, picture book, old movie, and audio by Jim Weiss), E. Nesbit books
<span style=”line-height: 1.5;”>Trailblazer series (history/missionary), SCM Stories of America and World volumes, and Ancient Egypt and Her Neighbors audio. G.A. Henty audio dramas.</span>
<span style=”line-height: 1.5;”>Bear Wants More series (picture books/early years read alouds), The Complete Brambly Hedge, The Evergreen Wood, Mike Mulligan and More, Wind in the Willows and The House in the Woods illustrated by Inga Moore.</span>
Oops, this became quite long, ha ha! 🙂
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