Literature - Fall 2009

In our home school we read a TON of books for all subjects, but we do have some books that are specifically for Literature. Some books we read in a couple weeks, and other books are spread out over the whole school year.

Literature - Chapter Book

These usually take a couple weeks to a month to read, depending on how interested we are in the story.

We started reading The Princes and the Goblin by George MacDonald, but the kids were worried about the idea of goblins (their previous exposure to goblins being The Lord of the Rings), so I read the book and found these goblins to be stupid, awkward sort of fellows, but my kids aren't buying into my reassurances, and freak out when I bring it out. So we are listening to the Redwall series by Brian Jacques (currently Mattimeo - book 3) which we started listening to on our recent family trip to California. This is one thing I love about homeschooling - when something doesn't work for us we change it! But I would still recommend The Princess and the Goblin to anyone who may be interested and doesn't have a fear of goblins.

Literature Tales

These are books we will read over the course of the school year. We usually read one chapter spread out over a month or one story per week depending on the length of the chapters/book.

American Tall Tales by Adrien Stoutenberg - For example, this books has 8 chapters, so we will read several pages once a week to read an entire chapter in a month.

Little Pilgrim's Progress by Helen L. Taylor - The chapters are short enough to read one per week. This is a beautiful children's version of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and we are really enjoying it. I was amazed that my kids understood my explanation of what an "allegory" is and were able to point out some of the symbolism from the first few chapters (King, Celestial City, etc.)

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit - This will be the third year we have been reading from this book. We do one to two plays a month. We've read Romeo and Juliet more times, because it is Nyah's favorite (She loves all that drama!). Next year we will move on to Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb, which have a little more detail and story complexity. I am hoping we will catch some live performances of Shakespeare's plays this year, but we'll see what happens. And ever since I watched the movie Tea with Mussoulini I have wanted a miniature Globe Theater with puppets, and I finally found one!! Shakespeare's Globe is on my Christmas list!

Ambleside Online and Milestone's Academy (two curriculum guides I use) both recommend reading Charles Kingsley's The Heroes, which are Greek myths, but instead I am using a beautiful book I already own called A Children's Treasury of Mythology by Margaret Evans Price, which are Greek myths with some Roman tales as well. We read one per week and the kids are really enjoying these as well.

Literature

My kids and I are always reading!!

We read books for fun: "The Tale of Despereaux" by Kate DiCamillo-- we are having a hard time reading this one right now because Kurt wants to listen too!

We listen to books in the car: I almost always have an audio book for us to listen to, mostly because I don't want my kids listening to the radio all the time. We have times when we do listen to the radio, just to let everyone know they aren't completely sheltered, but when I turned on NPR the other day and the discussion was about sex services (nude house cleaning- isn't that just creepy?) found on Craig's list, I thought "What else can we listen to?" and thankfully we had a book! We just finished "The Vacation" by Polly Horvath, which I will review on my book blog soon, and we just started "Charlotte's Web" which we have read/listened to so many times I'm starting to have it memorized.

And we read books for school:
1. Chapter Book: We are currently reading/listening to "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood" by Howard Pyle. We read one chapter a week, over three days.
2. Fairy Tales: We are reading "The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde" by Osacr Wilde- I found a great version illustrated by Michael Hague at a yard sale for a couple dollars- yard sales and thrift stores are my friends :) We read a couple of these a week.
3. Shakespeare: I know what your thinking- HOW? We are reading/listening to "Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare" by Edith Nesbit. Here is an awesome website- "Shakespeare for Kids" which lists tons of online resources for reading Shakespeare with kids. My favorite part? The Librivox free online audio recordings of the book!! We use this with so many of our books- anytime they have one we are reading. We are using it with Robin Hood right now too. We only do a couple Shakespeare stories a month.
4. Poetry: We use Ambleside Online's poetry selections because they are grouped together and free!! So our selections for this year are on the Year 2 Booklist- We are reading Christina Rossetti right now. I also pick a poem each month for us to memorize, which is on the sidebar- "The Falling Star" by Sara Teasdale.
5. The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan- Now this is one of those classics often recommended by other homeschooolers, its on both curriculum lists that I use (Ambleside & Milestone's), but when we started reading it at the beginning of this school year, none of us were very interested in it, so I stopped and figured we'd pick it up in later school years. But I think we are going to give it another shot using the Librivox recordings. I can be a horrible read-aloud-er (??), especially with books I'm not familiar with and those that have an older style, which describes this book. So hopefully with someone else reading we may come to enjoy this, we'll see.
6. And of course we read books for other subjects too! Morning Devotional, Phonics, History, Science, Nature, Geography, and so on.

Happy Reading to Everyone!!