Today I have a much requested video: some of my favorite homeschool books for moms.

There’s a combination of homeschool and parenting books here, these have all be helpful in our homeschool journey and I hope they will be helpful in yours!

 

 

 

GREAT HOMESCHOOLING & PARENTING BOOKS

Seasons of a Mother’s Heart

A mother’s life is a whirlwind of seasons, changing from one to another without much warning, and then to another the next day. If your heart is prepared, you can adjust to whatever season comes upon you, weathering the changes with grace; if it is not, you will find yourself reeling and twisting in the winds of life, grasping for something or someone to hold onto. But that is the secret to weathering the seasons of life. You need something God s word, and someone Jesus Christ, to hold onto. They are what give you the grace to weather the seasons. Nothing else can…Only the revealed truth of God made alive in your heart through the Holy Spirit can. –from Seasons of a Mother’s Heart

Your life is a whirlwind of changing seasons that can just as easily exhaust as exhilarate you. Sit down, take a few moments, and allow yourself to be refreshed and encouraged by stories, insights, and lessons from a friend. Sally Clarkson opens her heart within these pages, sharing what she has learned as a homeschooling wife and mother about herself, her children, and her Lord. Sally Clarkson has worked in vocational ministry for almost thirty years, serving with Campus Crusade for Christ, as well as with women’s and singles ministries in the U.S. and overseas. Sally and her husband, Clay, are the cofounders of Whole Heart Ministries, an outreach that encourages and equips Christian parents.

 

Adventuring Together

Parents today complain of fragmented relationships with their kids. What parents yearn for–and their kids too–is deep, heart-to-heart connections. But how can parents compete with all the other noise fighting for their kids’ attention?

The answer, says Greta Eskridge, is to break free from regular routines and familiar comforts of home to experience new places and adventures–even if those adventures go awry. From simply reading a book together to going on an overnight backpacking trip, activities together provide unique and crucial bonding opportunities. Adventuring Together highlights Greta’s stories of doing just that, including

• an array of ideas for outdoor and indoor ventures,
• what to do when your finances are limited,
• and how to adventure if your family can’t hit the hiking trail or spend the night at a campground.

 Giving readers the tools to make adventures happen, Adventuring Together is a step-by-step guide for parents–whether in the city or the country–to start building connections today that will last a lifetime.

 

The Highly Sensitive Child

With the publication of The Highly Sensitive Person, Elaine Aron became the first person to identify the inborn trait of “high sensitivity” and to show how it affects the lives of those who possess it. Up to 20 percent of the population is born highly sensitive, and now in The Highly Sensitive Child, Aron shifts her focus to highly sensitive children, who share the same characteristics as highly sensitive adults and thus face unique challenges as they grow up.

Rooted in Aron’s years of experience as a psychotherapist and her original research on child temperament, The Highly Sensitive Child shows how HSCs are born deeply reflective, sensitive to the subtle, and easily overwhelmed. These qualities can make for smart, conscientious, creative children, but with the wrong parenting or schooling, they can become unusually shy or timid, or begin acting out. Few parents and teachers understand where this behavior comes from–and as a result, HSCs are often mislabeled as overly inhibited, fearful, or “fussy,”or classified as “problem children” (and in some cases, misdiagnosed with disorders such as Attention Deficit Disorder). But raised with proper understanding and care, HSCs are no more prone to these problems than nonsensitive children and can grow up to be happy, healthy, well-adjusted adults.

 

An Unschooling Manifesto

A “normal” American family decides that normal just isn’t cutting it anymore. They start doing crazy things like visiting 52 zoos in 52 weeks, taking a 5-week trip to Cambodia, quitting school, and going down this crazy path called unschooling. They decided to take the road less traveled, and it has made all the difference.

 

Pocketful of Pinecones

Karen Andreola, best known for A Charlotte Mason Companion, has written a unique sort of book in the homeschool world. Pocketful of Pinecones is a teacher s guide to nature study cleverly disguised as a heartwarming story, written in the form of a mother s diary.

Woven into the story are:

• More than130 examples of what to look for on a nature walk,
• Latin names for the living things observed by the characters,
• Study questions,
• Nature poems and verses.

Other features include:

• A supplement of selected quotations by Miss Charlotte Mason,
• An annotated list of books with a nature theme, both fiction and non-fiction,
• Nostalgic pencil drawings.

 

The Read Aloud Family

The stories we read–and the conversations we have about them–help shape family traditions, create lifelong memories, and become part of our legacy. Reading aloud not only has the power to change a family–it has the power to change the world. 

But we all know that connecting deeply with our families can be difficult in our busy, technology-driven society. Reading aloud is one of the best ways to be fully present with our children, even after they can read themselves, but it isn’t always easy to do. In The Read-Aloud Family, you will find the inspiration you need to start a read-aloud movement in your own home. Discover how to:

• Prepare your kids for academic success through reading to them
• Develop empathy and compassion in your kids through books
• Find time to read aloud in the midst of school, sports, and dinner dishes
• Choose books across a variety of sibling interests and ages
• Make reading aloud the best part of your family’s day

The Read-Aloud Family also offers age-appropriate book lists from infancy through adolescence. From a toddler’s wonder to a teenager’s resistance, you will discover practical strategies to make reading aloud a meaningful family ritual.

 

The Core

In the past, correct spelling, the multiplication tables, the names of the state capitals and the American presidents were basics that all children were taught in school. Today, many children graduate without this essential knowledge. Most curricula today follow a haphazard sampling of topics with a focus on political correctness instead of teaching students how to study. Leigh Bortins, a leading figure in the homeschooling community, is having none of it. She believes that there are core areas of knowledge that are essential to master. Without knowing the multiplication tables, children can’t advance to algebra. Without mastery of grammar, students will have difficulty expressing themselves. Without these essential building blocks of knowledge, students may remember information but they will never possess a broad and deep understanding of how the world works. In The Core, Bortins gives parents the tools and methodology to implement a rigorous, thorough, and broad curriculum based on the classical model, including:

– Rote memorization to cement knowledge
– Systematic learning of geography, historical facts, and timelines
– Reading the great books and seminal historical documents instead of adaptations and abridged editions
– Rigorous training in math and the natural sciences

 

Charlotte Mason Companion

This modern classic is written by the homeschool mom who first carried Charlotte Mason’s writings to America in her suitcase in 1987. Karen and her husband Dean arranged for Miss Mason’s books to be republished for a new generation of parents and educators and kept them in print for 25 years!  After 10 years of study – living out Miss Mason’s principles in a practical way with her own children, Karen wrote A Charlotte Mason Companion: Personal Reflections on The Gentle Art of Learning TM. Today’s parents can now see what a Charlotte Mason education looks like in a contemporary setting, while gleaning from its many benefits.

Charlotte Mason’s Christian principles of education offer a way to learn, and a way to live!  

A Charlotte Mason Companion offers you tools to create an extraordinary learning experience. At the turn of every page, you will meet a practical idea and the inspiration to carry it out.

Some Chapters Include:

• How to select and use living books,
• Admiration for heroes in history,
• Poetry that even boys can stomach,
• Art and music appreciation for all ages,
• Nature study in the great outdoors,
• The atmosphere of home,
• Good habits make for happy children…and parents,
• Keeping up enthusiasm for lessons and for life,
• And a first peek at Mother Culture ®, because mothers are people too!

 

Homeschool Bravely

Many homeschool parents have a long-term relationship with self-doubt. “Did I make the right decision?” “Could someone else do this better?” “Am I robbing my kids of something by not sending them to ‘regular school’?”

What if there’s a better way?

Not a 3-step technique or a shiny, new curriculum, but a change in perspective that transforms the way you plan, teach, and homeschool?

Homeschool Bravely teaches you to see homeschooling as a calling, helps you overthrow the tyranny of impossible expectations, and guides you through the common bumps in the road, including how to:

• juggle school and parenting with toddlers at home
• teach a struggling learner
• plan with the end in mind
• accept your own limitations without feeling guilty
• stay the course even in the face of criticism

Reclaim your hope, renew your purpose, and transform your homeschool. Because the truth is: God will use every part of your homeschool, even your fears, faults, and failures, to weave good plans for your kids.

 

The Life and Faith Field Guide

“Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.”
Proverbs 22:6
 
As a Christian parent, you want your children to develop good character and godly wisdom. But how do you go beyond hoping and praying to teaching them ethical knowledge, practical skills, and virtuous habits?  
 
This innovative guide provides practical, effective ideas you can use to help your children build their faith and character in 50 ways, including…

• engaging with the Bible and culture
• interacting with God and others
• making good decisions
• becoming better learners
• managing conflict

Once you grasp these concepts and discover how to teach them, you will be able to successfully shape the character and worldview of your child or teenager.  

 

Triggers

Do you believe your struggle with anger stems from the wrong behavior you see displayed in your children? The knee-jerk reactions and blow-ups you’re facing are often a result of a bigger set of “triggers.” Some of these are external, like a child’s disobedience, backtalk, or selective hearing, while others are internal, like an overflowing schedule, sleep-deprivation, or perhaps your own painful experiences from childhood.

Triggers: Exchanging Parent’s Angry Reactions for Gentle Biblical Responses examines common parenting issues that cause us to explode inappropriately at our children. Moving beyond simple parenting tips on how to change your child’s behavior, authors Amber Lia and Wendy Speake offer biblical insight and practical tools to equip and encourage you on the journey away from anger-filled reactions toward gentle, biblical responses.

 

Reading Magic

Best-selling children’s author and internationally respected literacy expert Mem Fox reveals the incredible emotional and intellectual impact reading aloud to children has on their ability to learn to read. With passion and humor, Fox speaks of when, where, and why to read aloud and demonstrates how to read aloud to best effect and get the most out of a read-aloud session. She discusses the three secrets of reading, offers guidance on defining and choosing good books, and—for this new edition—includes two new chapters on boy readers and phonics, a foreword, and a list of “Twenty Books That Children Love.” Filled with practical advice, activities, and inspiring true read-aloud miracles, this book is a turn-to classic for educators and parents.

 

 

The Well Trained Mind

The Well-Trained Mind will instruct you, step by step, on how to give your child an academically rigorous, comprehensive education from preschool through high school―one that will train him or her to read, to think, to understand, to be well-rounded and curious about learning. Veteran home educators Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise outline the classical pattern of education called the trivium, which organizes learning around the maturing capacity of the child’s mind and comprises three stages: the elementary school “grammar stage,” when the building blocks of information are absorbed through memorization and rules; the middle school “logic stage,” in which the student begins to think more analytically; and the high-school “rhetoric stage,” where the student learns to write and speak with force and originality. Using this theory as your model, you’ll be able to instruct your child―whether full-time or as a supplement to classroom education―in all levels of reading, writing, history, geography, mathematics, science, foreign languages, rhetoric, logic, art, and music, regardless of your own aptitude in those subjects.

Thousands of parents and teachers have already used the detailed book lists and methods described in The Well-Trained Mind to create a truly superior education for the children in their care. This extensively revised fourth edition contains completely updated curricula and book lists, links to an entirely new set of online resources, new material on teaching children with learning challenges, cutting-edge math and sciences recommendations, answers to common questions about home education, and advice on practical matters such as standardized testing, working with your local school board, designing a high-school program, preparing transcripts, and applying to colleges.

You do have control over what and how your child learns. The Well-Trained Mind will give you the tools you’ll need to teach your child with confidence and success.