When I attended our state’s homeschooling convention last month, I knew I wanted to spend my cash on books, not packaged curriculum. Books for reference. Books for history and science. Books for fun. Give me books and more books. I made my selections carefully – we are all homeschooling with a budget, aren’t we? – and took home catalogs that I will poor over for months, making online purchases as the year goes on. And next May I will walk among the books again, eager to add to our shelves.
My children are 11, 10, 7 and 5 so we’re starting to move into the meatier subjects like Creation vs. Evolution, economics, theology and what makes good writing. I expect to get good mileage with this list, lasting us into the teenage years.
These are the books I purchased:
Capitalism for Kids (Growing Up to be Your Own Boss) by Karl Hess
Creation or Evolution (A Home-Study Curriculum) by Mike Snavely
Writers Inc (A student Handbook for Writing and Learning) written and compiled by Patrick Sebranek, Verne Meyer, and Dave Kemper
I found Writers Inc in the used book sale for $1.00. A great buy and it was on my to-buy list.
Making Jesus Lord (The Dynamic Power of Laying Down Your Rights) by Loren Cunningham
Torches of Joy (A Stone Age Tribe’s Encounter with the Gospel) by John Dekker
. . . and this last one caught my eye because I did grow up in a Christian home. I need to read it for myself.
Growing Up Christian by Karl Graustein
The longer I homeschool, the more I see the importance of having good books at home that the kids can grab off the shelf as the inspiration strikes. I’ve seen this happen time and time again with a science book left out on the coffee table or history book nestled on the shelf. I don’t need to assign the reading, it just happens. It can’t happen if you don’t have the books.
What books did you find at your homeschool convention this year?
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Homeschool Conventions? Are we supposed to go to one of those? The last time I went to a homeschool convention an Alpha Omega salewoman asked me if I was ready to be fitted for a denim skirt. I don’t attend homeschool conventions anymore.
Twitter: monicabrand
You mean a denim jumper, Arby. I didn’t see one denim jumper on any gal over the age of five. I think they are finally out of fashion.
Of course you don’t have to go to your state convention; there are lots of other ways to purchase your books, yet it’s nice to get plugged into that community of like-minded folks, even the homeschoolers that aren’t necessarily homeschooling the way you do. I’m thinking here of my friends who do not approach homeschooling from a place of faith like I do. I LOVE seeing them at our convention hosted by ENOCH (that’s the Educators Network of Christian Homeschoolers here in NJ). For the secular homeschooler, there is no other place to go that has all the supplies, books, curriculum, etc in one place that they can browse.
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