Homeschool Discoveries

One of the things I’m eager to consistently share on this blog is the books that I read aloud with Miss M (Age 7.5 — 2nd grade).  I love discovering new books via the reviews/recaps that other bloggers write, and I hope to help others do the same!  I went back to the list of books we read this school year in the months before I started this blog.  There happens to be ten of them.  (How convenient…so I can link up to “Top Ten Tuesday“!).  🙂

I doubt I will find the time to write complete reviews or recaps of these books, so here is a tidbit about each of the books I read aloud with Miss M this fall/early winter:

1. Heidi — A classic story of friendship and unconditional love set in Switzerland.
2. A Wrinkle in Time — This was one of my favorite books growing up and I may have overshot a little bit by reading it to Miss M at such a young age.  It’s a fantasy/science fiction genre story, but I was surprised as I read it how much the story is really about personal exploration and finding a sense of self worth. Miss M seemed to enjoy it anyway (we also went to see a play based on the book), though I will have to encourage her to read it for herself again when she is older!
3. Alice in Wonderland — I’m not sure I actually read this growing up.  Parts of the story were familiar to Miss M and I from having seen two different movie versions.  It was a fun read, though I will admit we skipped over some of the song/poetry sections!
4. Through the Looking Glass — Somehow I find Through the Looking Glass to be even weirder than Alice in Wonderland.  Parts of the story were familiar since movie versions tend to combine highlights of the two books.  Miss M and I were scratching our heads at points wondering exactly what was going on, but I think we still had fun with it.
5. The Wheel on the School — This Newberry-award winning book tells the story of a group of school children who are very intent on finding a way to make storks come and nest in their small village, just as they do in the other nearby villages.  As odd as that premise sounds, this is a great story that Miss M and I both really enjoyed.  It’s definitely one of my favorites of the books we’ve read aloud this year.  I love how the story starts with one very determined girl, yet through the course of the story she really brings her whole village together.   I felt very drawn in to the lives of the characters, and how they were learning about hard work, friendship and valuing others as they tried to accomplish the goal of finding a wheel for the roof of their school (the wheel being the place for the storks to nest!).
6. All of a Kind Family — I had never heard of this book until I saw it mentioned in a positive light in a short list of books that also included my beloved Betsy-Tacy series.  This is story of a Jewish family of five girls in early 20th century New York City.  Miss M could have read this on her own (and did read the sequels on her own), but once we started reading it out loud, I wouldn’t let her finish it on her own because I really wanted to share it with her.  I really appreciated the look into the life and experiences of a Jewish family and their holidays and customs, and it was right up my alley as a story of “fun adventures” (though there is a bit of a plot arc as well).
7. Door in the Wall — Another Newberry winner (we’ve read a lot of those this year!).  I picked this to correspond with our history studies, since we’ve spent most of the year in the Middle Ages.  This was a bit more of a stretch for Miss M to listen to due to the vocabulary, but she still enjoyed this story of a young man learning to overcome a handicap and find his place in society.
8. The Family Under the Bridge — We had this one on our shelf for a while, and since the title wasn’t particularly appealing I avoided it for a while. But 0nce we got going, we read through this story quite quickly of a older homeless man in Paris who takes a family of homeless children under his wing.
9. Caddie Woodlawn — Having enjoyed the last few  books in the “Little House” series over the summer, we decided to try this pioneer adventure as well.  Caddie is a girl who doens’t fit the “pioneer girl” mold in quite the same way as Laura Ingalls.  While Laura definitely has her moments, Caddie is in another category all together as she is much more often to be found adventuring with her brothers than helping her mother. Caddie is a strong protagonist that learns how to use the ways she “doesn’t fit the mold” for good.
10. The Thirteen Days of Christmas — I chose this as a Christmas-time read-aloud after reading a review of it at the blog Orange Marmalade.  This is a fun, silly story of a suitor in Tudor England wooing his girl, based around…you guessed it, the song “The 12 days of Christmas.”  That’s Miss M’s favorite Christmas song, so we had a lot of fun with this book.

Happy Reading!