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!)

Amidst Baby Teething...

... Bombie learnt to put a flatter, weaker magnet on stronger ones and make a spinning wheel. This was her idea and not initiated by me in any way.
... The older kids made ice cream with basic guidance from me. Bombie's motivation to master my tasks is exhilarating. "I do it!" has become the phrase of the week it seems.
... Bombie has been making squiggles on lined paper which may not look like a lot but is fantastic pre-writing practice. I  absolutely do not intend to put worksheets in front of my children until they're good and ready. A lot of research suggests that at this point the single most important thing they have to learn is hand eye coordination and fine motor skills. If we rush through this, writing (when it's time) can be a big challenge.
... Hucksley learned about trucks today, which is what he was interested in the most. And in a wonderful moment of homeschooling, I showed them, using two sheets of paper how when a cloud passes the sun it dims the light. I loved it when they reenacted what I had told them to my husband when he came home.

Library Day

After a day of house arrest we headed out to the local library today where the older kids had a chance to play on the computers again but it was busier than usual so there were a few tears from both. We played a little, read a little and then headed home for lunch.

I also picked up Thomas Sowell's book Late Talking Children which so far seems to describe Bombie pretty well. I haven't finished reading it yet but am about a quarter of the way through and it mentions how certain children just talk late and have no other developmental issues. Einstein was a late talking child as a heartening example. Bombie is definitely not talking at the level of a four year old but she's not delayed on any other milestone. So far, the book is offering me tons of hope and reassuring me that reading and talking to her and keeping her out of an institutionalized assembly line education is the best way to handle the situation.

Unschooling day (yes, another one)

We stayed home today on a self imposed time out. It's truly amazing to me how much more gets done when we decide not to do anything. See for yourself!

Counting game

We made a counting game today, although everyone is still really tired. (By the way, one thing I'm learning is to limit the number of other adults in my children's lives, but more on that later maybe. I've noticed a perceivable difference in their behavior as it relates especially to obedience when they interact with too many other adults. Perhaps it has to do with styles of relating to them. I don't know. All I know is we're going to have to stay home tomorrow and if nothing else gets done, we're going to be working on getting their behavior back under control. There hasn't been any outright rebellion but there definitely have been little rumblings and mumblings.)

The counting game was fun. And they enjoyed most of it. I wrote a number on an index card which they had to identify and then they stuck colored dots on the back which matched the number I had just written. It was number recognition, counting and fine motor skills all in one. And I found out something in the process - they recognize numbers just fine but they have no concept of counting. They do go in order but they begin at a random number. When James came home,  he went over some numbers with Bombie again which was such a blessing because she relates to him in a completely different way. But I know now what the next immediate focus has to be - counting, counting, counting. Add that to reading, reading, reading! 

Busy weekend

What a busy weekend this has been! On Friday, we headed to Barnes and Nobles to pick up a gift for my friend's daughter who turned five. I had warned the kids that they could touch things at the store as long as they didn't tear or break anything and to my amazement they were incredibly well behaved. They even put away the stuffed toys lying around when I said it was time to clean up and go. Of course I could not go to a book store and not get something for the children and myself. So I bought them a board book of nursery rhymes, another book of the story of the three pigs and bought myself a few things as well. I love that being around them makes me rediscover my own love of stories. Good stories. The kind in which you can get lost - stories about heroes and good things happening, stories about people doing the right thing and overcoming obstacles. Stories that are, sadly, not a part of current literature which seems obsessed with despondency and despair.

On Saturday, it was birthday party and sleepover (for Bombie) day. She did incredibly well and came home the next day quite tuckered out from all the fun only little girls can think of! I wasn't convinced that she wouldn't wake up scared in the middle of the night and I would have to go get her but turns out that fear was unwarranted. Besides, I completely trusted the family she was with so on some level I knew she would be fine. But I barely slept. It's all right. I think given the choice between over protection and under, I'll chose the former. I guess I'm old fashioned that way. ;)

The kids made wonderful wrapping paper with celery and carrots for the gift books. I loved how we could incorporate what they were already doing into their friend's birthday!

Today has been kind of an unschooling day. The kids need some down time to play freely and drink the lees of the fun weekend. Bombie is still runningaround with the bag of party favors she received - bracelets, plastic rings and swirly straws and when I sent them outside to play with a Frisbee, they made a birthday cake out of it. Clearly,they're not over it yet. And I'm in no hurry for them to move on. Time moves way too fast already.

Grocery Shopping and other gifts

It wasn't that long ago that I used to go grocery shopping with one kid and then two. Something about going with three scared me though and so I would wait until my husband got home from work to head out by myself. Sure, it gave me a chance to dawdle a little and actually *gasp* read labels. However, it did mean that I would have to sacrifice an evening at home. Anyone who knows me knows that my evenings are incredibly important to me and since we already spend three out of five weekday evenings at the gym another one spent grocery shopping busy isn't worth it to me. So I started taking the kids again with me. And I figured, isn't this the essence of homeschooling anyway? What's the huge advantage of looking at a picture of an artichoke over actually seeing an artichoke and learning what it's called? Who decided textbooks were the essence of learning anyway? So off we went. They learned names of vegetables, they learned to count, but more than anything else, they learned obedience and also appropriate behavior. Yeah, that dreaded s word - socialization.

The funny thing is I feel like God Himself has literally reached down to my level and reminded me again that I must homeschool. Everything had literally fallen into my lap. A case in point:when we came home, the kids asked to play with plastic Easter eggs. I let them. And then soon a fight broke out. They couldn't share! So I suggested that we divide the eggs and write their names on them to identify them. (We're writing initials currently.) I brought out a marker and to my surprise, Bombie got very excited about writing her initial on her eggs. And then Hucksley wanted to write his. So here we were LEARNING TO WRITE! And this morning, I found Hucksley sitting and writing perfect Hs all on every piece of paper he could find! Who needs a workbook? When you're a preschooler, the world's your school!