An Ongoing List of Homeschooling Reading

With the huge amount of research I have done into homeschooling, unschooling, and education in general, I thought I should begin a list of books I either have read and found helpful to develop my own style of homeschool or books other homeschoolers have recommended that I plan on reading soon. Who knows how this list will come in handy! So (deep breath) here goes:
1. Weapons of Mass Instruction - John Taylor Gatto.
2. Dumbing Us Down - John Taylor Gatto
3. A Different Kind of Teacher - John Taylor Gatto
4. How Children Fail - John Holt
5. How Children Learn - John Holt
6. The Underground History of American Education - John Taylor Gatto
7. Homeschooling for Excellence - David and Micki Colfax
8. Deschooling Society - Ivan Illich
9. You Are Your Child's First Teacher - Rahima Baldwin
10. Homeschooling Rights and Responsibilities -  Christian Liberty Press
11. The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum - R J Rushdoony
12. Homeschooling - The Right Choice - Christopher Klicka
13. Homeschool Heroes - Christopher Klicka
14. The Homeschooling Father - Michael Farris
15. The Learning Gap - Steveson & Stigler
16. Play with a Purpose - Dorothy Einon
17. Why Johnny can't Read - Rudolph Flesch
18. Better Late than Early - Raymond and Dorothy Moore
19. The Christian Homeschool - Gregg Harris
20. The Homeschool  Jumpstart Navigator - Barbara Shelton
21. The Great Escape - Geoffrey Botkin
22. For the Children's Sake - Susan Schaffer Macauley
23. Develop a Lifestyle Routine - Marilyn Howshall
24. The Well Trained Mind - Susan Wise Bauer
25. The Unschooling Handbook - Mary Griffith
26. Late Talking Children - Thomas Sowell
27. How Lincoln Learned to Read - Daniel Wolff
28. The Montessori Method - Maria Montessori
29. Loving God with All Your Mind - Gene Edward Veith Jr.
30. Feel-Bad Education - Alfie Kohn
31. Homeschool: a Family's Journey - Gregory Millman
32. The Homework Myth - Alfie Kohn
33. In Their Own Way: Discovering and Encouraging your Child's Personal Learning Style - Thomas Armstrong
34. Seven Kinds of Smart - Thomas Armstrong
35. Why We Do What We Do - Edward Deci
36. Deschooling Our Lives - Matt Hern
37. Learning All the Time - John Holt
38. Teach your Own - John Holt
39. Punished by Rewards - Alfie Kohn
40. Do Hard Things - Alex and Brett Harris
41. Real Lives: Eleven Teenagers Who Don't Go To School - Grace Llewellyn
42. Growing Without Schooling (magazine)
43. The Old Schoolhouse (magazine)
44. Home Education Magazine (magazine)
45. The Home School Source Book - Donn Reed
46. Good Stuff: Learning Tools For All Ages - Rebecca Rupp
47. The Power of Play - David Elkind
48. The Hurried Child - David Elkind
49. Miseducation - David Elkind
50. So You're Thinking of Homeschooling - Lisa Whelchel
51. The Mismeasure of Man - Stephen Jay Gould
52. Hard Times in Paradise - David and Micki Colfax
53. Growing with Games - Sally Goldberg
54. Homeschool Your Child for Free - Gold and Zeilinski
55. Real Life Homeschooling - Rhonda Barnfield
56. The Homeschooling Book of Answers - Linda Dobson
57. The Big Book of Unschooling - Sandra Dodd

58. The Underachieving School - John Holt

59. What Do I Do Monday? - John Holt

60. Freedom and Beyond - John Holt

61. Escape from Childhood: the needs and Rights of Children - John Holt

62. Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better - John Holt

63. Home Education - Charlotte Mason

64. Parents and Children - Charlotte Mason
65. School Education - Charlotte Mason
66. Ourselves - Charlotte Mason
67. Formation of Character - Charlotte Mason
68. Towards a Philosophy of Education - Charlotte Mason

69. Smooth and Easy Days - Charlotte Mason

70. Doing it Their Way: Home Based Learning and Autonomous Education - Jan Fortune-Wood

71. The Unschooling Unmanual - essays by various

72. Free Range Education - Teri Dowty
73. One to One: A Practical Guide to Learning at Home Age 0-11 - Gareth Lewis

74. Unqualified Education: A Practical Guide to Learning at Home Age 11-18 - Gareth Lewis

75. Educating Your Children at Home - Alan Thomas

76. How Children Learn At Home - Alan Thomas
77. Help for the Harried Homeschooler: A Practical Guide to Balancing Your Child's Education with the Rest of Your Life - Christine Field

78. The Unschooled Mind - Howard Gardner 

79. Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire - Rafe Esquith


(More coming! Want to recommend a book to add to this list? Let me know!)

Alphabet Flashcards

We made these fun flashcards today and thought I'd share. No, I'm NOT a fan of flashcards and neither am I trying to replicate a classroom environment at home. However, the kids had so much fun making these and Bombie is getting to where she's soaking up large amounts of information. I'm thinking it's time to teach her to read. She knows the sounds letters make - thanks to Leapfrog's Phonics DVDs - but she knows only her uppercase letters. So, this is what we did!

We bought some plastic separators from the office store and stuck plastic letters on them. Then I punched holes in the side and tied them with ribbon. I thought about binding them together, but that was not such a great idea because this way, we can focus only on the ones they're having trouble with as well as break them up and make words later. So fun! And, because they made them, they love them!

Pretty soon, they'll be reading! Hey, look at us... we're homeschooling. :)

The Most Wonderful Time of Year?

That time of the year has arrived. I cringe a little more each year. It is also constantly thrust in my face in no uncertain terms. It’s always said tongue in cheek but it carries with it deep significance: mothers it seems are doing the happy dance that their children are now away at school and they have some time away from them. Relief floods their voice. Ever since we decided to homeschool, I try to steel myself against this day. And my children are not even close to school age yet. However, it still affects me. This time reminds me of my choices, our choices as a family, that we are not mainstream, that we have made some unpopular decisions and the consequences of those decisions give me less time away from the children, less time to develop myself (whatever that means) and a more insular life focused entirely on my children, my husband and our three bedroom home with its laundry, its cobwebs and its perpetually unkempt bathroom.

I now get why one of the homeschooling groups I know in Sacramento throws a “Not Back to School” party. It’s a reminder that we are not alone, that we do have something to celebrate. As my veteran homeschooler friend Jackie Ehtesham put it, “‎Why shouldn't the people who are subject to someone else's schedule and an assembly line curriculum (both at school and at home), feel as if THEY are the ones missing out?” It’s true and yet I forget. They are the ones missing out – they’re missing out on time with each other, missing out on a Christian education in the home (schools are Humanist if anything); they are the ones missing out on being able to take vacations when they want and learning experientially, creatively, at a pace that works for them, in an educational environment that is focused on their children individually. It doesn’t get better than that. Not for my children and not, as a mother who wants the best for them, for me. “And yet,” Jackie says, intuitively, “even in the face of wildly successful statistics on the social contributions and academic accomplishments of homeschoolers, we can still succumb to the fear put upon us.” Fear that the children aren’t being “socialized” as if we’re going to put them in the basement and keep them on a strict diet of chicken bones and algebra.

This fear however I think takes a back seat to the real fear most women (including me) have hidden in the back of their minds: the fear of a diminutive life, a life where no one notices what you do, a life where you do not matter. Feminism has done immense damage in this area, preying on this fear that is part of a normal person’s life – man or woman. The only antidote to this existential fear is Biblical. I might matter to no one else, but I matter to God. In the absence of God’s authority, however, and certainly in some circles in addition to God’s authority over us, feminism has convinced us that if a woman doesn’t have a job outside the home (or a home-based business) she isn’t really worth anything. Fear-mongering of this kind is even blatant in supposed financial planning shows where women are told to keep a stash of money hidden away from their spouse and be aware, be aware of how much money they have as a family if they choose not to do so and never, ever quit your job because, hey, your husband could cheat on you, leave you or, well, he might just up and die on you. I hope my sarcasm comes through because with all that is living in me, I reject this notion. This is not my truth. This is not my reality and I refuse to accept anything that would shove its way between a union God has created – that between my husband and me. My truth is a man who cares enough for his family to accept a life of unending work, who cannot go to school to further his education and start a new career path because the drop in pay at the entry level position would be a hardship on us. So much for the male chauvinist holding down his woman, pregnant and barefoot.

This existential angst, this reaching for the stars on our own, this fear that I will never amount to anything in and of myself has its roots in the Fall of Man. Throughout Genesis 1 and 2, we see order placed where there was no form, order where there was chaos, words of blessing, natural divisions between light and dark. And then, in Genesis 3 begin the lies, the deception and eventually the Fall.

When Eve spoke to the serpent in the Garden of Eden she was subtly deceived into misquoting God. She was asked, “Did God really say…” Doubt was planted in her mind. She should have exercised authority immediately. After all, man(kind) had dominion over animals in Eden - the serpent had no business questioning God’s commands. But she did not stop him. She refused to exercise her authority over him and in arguing with him, she misquoted God. In one statement, “Eve disparaged the privileges, added to the prohibitions and weakened the penalty.” (The Bible Knowledge Commentary edited by Walvoord and Zuck.) I can’t help but think that this is the way of all sin. Each time I am tempted to sin, this is the trajectory my thoughts take and this exactly the thought process that is behind me so-called role of being a boring, frumpy stay-at-home mom who homeschools her children.

Thank goodness (and God!) for sending me friends who get what I’m saying, friends who I can turn to for support and direction, who have been there, done that, felt that and have chosen the right thing to do. Kari Brautigam is one of them. I have never met her – she lives in Wisconsin and we have only “talked” through our blogs and Facebook pages. I complained to her about moms doing a happy dance this time of year and asked her how she felt about it. These were her words, “To be honest I hear you... your little ones are so little and dependent, I know what that's like! BUT (and here's my big BUT) DON'T LISTEN TO THEM!!!! They won't be dancing when their kids come back to them disrespectful and whiny, hurried and stressed. Don't think that sending them away will be better for you. They won't behave better if they get a break from you either, in fact, the opposite will probably happen. You are wonderful with your children. You have a grip on discipline that will be lost if you send them away. If you need to, set up play dates, trade childcare days with friend, make the time you spend with them fun... It's true, you may have to give up some of the things you enjoy, but it's only for a season!” Or in other words, according to Jackie, who I previously mentioned, “It's really hard to break out of that mold of comparing ourselves to everyone else, instead of looking at our actions from an eternal perspective and using The Bible as our measuring stick (incidentally, the word "Canon" means "measuring stick"). The Apostle Paul talks a lot about "keeping our eyes on the prize" so as to "win." We are never told to keep our eyes on the other runners.”

In a world where nothing beyond today matters and the best life one can have involves having the most fun or the most stuff, it is important to remember quotes such as this from G. K. Chesterton:
"When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness."

So keep your dancing shoes on, those of you who are so thrilled to get rid of their children. But I will not be joining you this year or any other year when school begins. I will be rejoicing quietly in my work as a woman, a wife and a homeschooling mom in my three bedroom home with its laundry, its cobwebs and its perpetually unkempt bathroom.

What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder...

On St. Valentine's Day this year, I'm grappling with decisions about schooling the children. I really should say "we" are but James agrees that for the most part, I'll be making the day to day decisions. He simply feels strongly about the children not going to public school. Ever. As someone recently said, "Mom is the teacher and Dad is the principal." We might just stick to that adage around here. 

My mind, though, is also dwelling on how often man does put asunder what God has joined together. St. Valentine, as we all know now, was a priest who got couples married even when there was a national ban on marriage when King Claudius hoped to get more men to fight his wars in ancient Rome. For this, he was martyred. Married people don't like to be away from their spouses, well, ban marriage. 

What does this have to do with homeschooling? A lot, John Taylor Gatto would say. 

My introduction to homeschooling has been different from the typical path. For whatever reason, I was drawn to it when the idea first entered my head when we left Pollock Pines. I was still pregnant with Hucksley and Bombie was one. Then I was picking up books at the local library when a homeschooling mom stopped to chat with me because she saw the books I was buying. She had her totally unselfconscious and confident children with her. She encouraged me to read Gatto and join an un-schooling network.

I hadn't the faintest idea what I was getting into.

Here we are about a year and a half later and I'm now trying to decide between charter schools or "pure" homeschool. Some places go as far as to say that if you're using a charter, you're not homeschooling, you're doing "independent study." I'm beginning to lean that way as well. Something inside me completely revolts at the idea of someone from a government agency walking into my house and "letting me" buy only what is according to certain guidelines. While the money is nice to be able to buy curricula, if I can't teach my children anything Christian unless it's "over and above" their usual coursework, then what's the point? 

I also read while browsing various Charter School websites that the education specialist / teacher / state representative stops by to give you your ordered material and talk to your children about what they're being taught. I know, I know. I'm sure it's done in a completely non-threatening way and the representative is not personally the mean guy, so to speak, but the very idea of it gives me a visceral reaction. 

So, I guess it makes me one of the others. 

The truth is, my husband and I is very much aware of man putting asunder what God has joined together on every level - marriage for one and education for another. I read in a great article in a homeschooling magazine yesterday that the first family of Adam, Eve and God is the true model for education of children. That is how education was to be imparted. From the parents to the children. I had a reverence for my teachers that rivaled my reverence for my parents. Guess who won out in the end? By the time I was a teenager, what my parents said didn't matter a whit. Maybe if I had been home schooled, the story would have been different. 

So we're going to do it. We're going to step out in faith and really, truly do it. We're going to homeschool. The Christian way. The way God intended. 

I can't wait!