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Using a kindle for homeschooling
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I am considering the idea of using less paper books and putting books on the kindle for next year’s school plan. (I have no clue how to do this, but thankfully I have a tech savy husband ; ) Since joining this discussion forum, my eyes have been opened to all the free books out there I never knew of before. I’d love to cut down on school expenses, save space in our home and to not have to search around the house for the book I need.
What are other benefits of using the kindle over paper books?
Also, what are some of your favorite (FREE) titles that you have read for an 8 year old and 5 year old? We will be in module 2 for history, but I”m looking for ideas for ALl subjects.
Thank you! This forum is such a blessing to me.
Some Kindles (ones with a speaker/headphone jack) can do Text-to-Speach – which helps with my dyslexic son.
If you can manage it, I’d buy the Yesterday’s Classics collection when they have another sale (last was $49.99) for 225 great books – they are formatted well, have pictures (if original did), working Table of Contents etc.
Here are a few of my places for free ebbok http://pinterest.com/scouterguider/ebook-collections/
also manybooks.net
many AO books are available
I recieved a Kindle for this past Christmas, and I use it in homeschooling more than I ever dreamt possible. I was given a Kindle Paperwhite and love it. I was really concerned that the screen would hurt my eyes, and it does not.
Keep checking the Amazon free list often – they always have new books up, some to use in homeschooling, and some to just enjoy yourself. Also, Amazon has many free books. I’ll list the ones I have currently on my Kindle that I got for free. Almost all of them I got through Amazon.
Among the Forest People, Meadow People, Farmyard People, Night People, Pond People byt Clara Dillingham Pierson (reading this with my 2nd grader)
5 Little Peppers and How they grew (Reading this as a family and LOVING it)
Wild Animals I Have Known (5th grader just finished reading this and loved it)
Tons of Grace Livingston Hill books (Christian writer from the early 1900’s – I started reading her books while on bedrest, and am loving each new book I read by her)
Jane Eyre (another one for me )
Madam how and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley
The Wonderful Bed by Gertrude Knevels (Haven’t read this yet)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcot
All the Free books by SCM
The Children’s Life of Bee’s <aurice Maeterlinck
The Peterkin Papers by Lucretia P. Hale (Read this as a family read aloud)
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Little Lord Faunteleroy and A Little Princess and Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (we read aloud A Little Princess)
Pilgrim’s Progress
Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (Family read aloud)
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (read when my son was in 4th)
5 children and it and The Enchanted Castle by Edith Nesbit
Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Pinocchio by carlo Collodi
Understood Betsy by Dorothy Fisher
Burgess Animal Book for Children and Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thorton Burgess
Pond and Stream bu Arthur Ransome
Child’s book of the Seasons by Arthur Ransome
Book of Dragons and The Railway Children by E. Nesbit (we read aloud the Railway Children)
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling (read to my youngers – 5yo and 2yo)
The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (devoured by my then 4th grader)
Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Comstock (so much easier than lugging the giant book around!!)
Swiss Family Robinson by Jean Rudolph Wyss
Pollyanna by Elenor Porter (read aloud to a 2nd grader)
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Wuthering heights (for me again)
I grabbed the one with this title “The Complete Sherlock Holmes: with an introduction from Robert Ryan”, but I can’t seem to find that exact one on amazon now. I got it back in January.
We use the Kindle too though if I had the chance to use a hard copy for any of the books I woudl take it. We also have the Yesterdays Classics series plus we use Heritage History which provides lots of books in electronic format.
My kindle is not the fanciest. The biggest thing I don’t like about it is that it is hard to flip ahead and see how much is left in a chapter or things like that. We have also begun running into the problem that ds and dd need to use it at the same time so now I am contemplating getting a second one.
Nebby
I have also had great success finding some older books to download from http://archive.org/ and they have a Kindle option for many of the books there. Also, don’t forget that with a tablet, you can go to http://www.mainlesson.com and find lots of free books there. We have the Galaxy Tab here and have a Nook app on it as well as a Kindle app. Occasionally, Nook offers a book for free that Kindle does not and vice versa.
I have a Sony e-reader, but I’d love a Kindle! DH just got one and they seem to have more free books! It’s very nice when we have Dr. appointments…I can bring it in the car and literally have 100s of books to read from!
I also recommend the Yesterday’s Classics. There are so many CM friendly books in the set…lots of nature books, literature books, history books, readers, etc. You can download many of the books for free as well…the free ones generally have some “typos” and non-linkable table of contents, but are still very usable. The YC books are written for elementary through junior high (some would even be appropriate for high school).
Another great list to look at is the SCM literature module list. Many are available for free and many more are available for $1-2! I had a long list of read aloud books on my homeschool wishlist that I was able to cross off. I’ve even been reading some to myself from the high school list. I’ve also downloaded some books from the AO and HUFI curriculums…I started putting together some of these for independent reading lists for my older two.
If you want a book that is in a format different than what you have, using Calibre will help you format it for your device. I use it a lot for ePub files to go on my Kindle. I can download the same files to all our Kindles, too.
At Christmas, Staples had a $25 off coupon for any Kindle. I used two and got my 2 older girls a basic Kindle. I love how much that helped us to use the Yesterday’s Classics and Heritage History books more – plus we downloaded scriptures and other church type books, the Thomas Tapper composer series, some of my favorite poets, etc. I spent several hours going through the free books from the Kindle store and added several favorite authors like Thornton Burgess, Beatrix Potter, etc. If you sign up for their email notices, you can watch for a coupon.
In our History studies, we all have the same spines and other read alongs books. If I can’t do the family readings, the kids can still keep us on track by reading it independently. =) In reality, we have all the history readings on them. Saves me a lot of money.
Heritage History allows you to download individual books that can be printed or used as ebooks for $1.99. I think their CD’s are incredible, though, because you get 45-85 books per CD plus maps, timelines, study guide, etc. You still pick the books you want to read. This is great either as a stand alone or to be used with SCM modules.
Mainlesson.com is the Yesterday’s Classics free online. Also, several are duplicates of the Heritage History books. (Although, I figured for the extremely LOW price, I wasn’t worried about it!)
Our Kindle is teaching our kids to spell — well, kind of.
There are some free games that are fun and educational, such as Jigsaw Words, Thread Words, Everyday Words and Math Blender. My kids like them and I do think it helps them with their spelling. I won’t load any game onto the Kindle that isn’t educational.Nebby mentioned that you can’t tell how much is left in a book or a chapter with her kindle. I just wanted to mention with the Kindle Paperwhite, you can. It tells you how much is left in a chapter or until the end of the book – whichever you prefer. And my kids love Thread Words and Everyword Crossing!
Okay, my kindle must have done an automatic system update recently because now it tells me how much is left in the chapter. But it does it in terms of minutes and I am not sure how helpful that is. I will have to play around with it some more.
Nebby
My dad just bought a Kindle for my children and I’m very excited. As soon as I can get the YC special I will. I have a quesiton about Heritage History, which I want to use extensively:
if you buy the cd, how do you get the books/timelines, etc onto the kindle?
Thanks
You either email them to the Kindle’s email address (use the free one) – or you connect the Kindle to the USB port on your computer with the cable, and then it shows up like a drive, and you move them onto the Kindle just like you would move a file on the computer. (I think to the Documents folder – it has been a while). Make sure to tell the computer to “Eject” the Kindle once you are done, before removing the cable.
Now, that is instructions for a basic Kindle – I think the Fire might be different.
There are some free games that are fun and educational, such as Jigsaw Words, Thread Words, Everyday Words and Math Blender. My kids like them and I do think it helps them with their spelling. I won’t load any game onto the Kindle that isn’t educational.
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