Of all that I share here on this blog, searching through books to develop our reading plans is what I spend the most time doing, as I hope to choose books that our family cherishes reading together (and your family cherishes as well, should you choose to use our reading plans!). The only problem is… there are so many great books to choose from! Having acknowledged this fact, I share our reading selections for next school year realizing that there are a ton of other great works of literature to explore.
Several of the following read aloud selections are books I’ve wanted us to read for some time now, so they are more generally categorized by semester or the overarching memory work themes of Medieval history and World Wars. Because we are also using the Western Civilization Study (Calendar Quest) as our core history program for this year, we’re not so concerned about touching on every piece of memory work in these reading selections. If we have questions about our history memory work, we will reference either our Acts & Facts History Cards or our CC Cycle 2 Reading Correlation for Story of the World.
If you are interested in using shorter books as read alouds, our first reading plan for Classical Conversations Cycle 2 (written three years ago) is correlated more directly with memory work. (Click here to see that reading plan.)
Read Aloud Selections First Semester:
The Magic Runes: A Tale of the Times of Charlemagne. A book about showing Christ’s love to others.
Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle or Robin Hood by J Walker McSpadden (both are free ebooks). Because we have never read through any of the Robin Hood classics, we decided this year we’d dive into this classic. (There are paperback versions on Amazon should you choose to use a hard copy!)
The Door in the Wall. This one is a Classical Conversations Challenge A book set in fourteenth-century England during the time of the plagues. (I highly recommend reading Classical Conversations Challenge books before your child gets to Challenge!)
Crispin: The Cross of Lead. Another exciting Classical Conversations Challenge A book set in fourteenth-century Europe.
If we end up ahead of schedule, I’d like to add in The Trumpeter of Krakow and The White Stag for a look into the times of Attila the Hun from opposing viewpoints.
Treasure Island. My husband says every boy needs to read Treasure Island, so this is what we’re reading as a sort of age-of-exploration type of book. If you’d like a book related to memory work, you can try The King’s Fifth by Scott O’Dell or the free ebook A Book of Discovery: The History of the World’s Exploration, From the Earliest Times to the Finding of the South Pole by MB Synge.
The Struggle for Sea Power (free ebook in the public domain) or re-read The Apprentice and Beneath the Cat’s Claw. The Struggle for Sea Power is a book that covers the age of colonization, providing a history of the European colonies as well as the American and French Revolutions along with the rise of Napoleon. However, The Apprentice (set during the Renaissance) and Beneath the Cat’s Claw (set during the French Revolution) are fantastic books that we would love to read again as a family. We’re not sure which one (or all?) we will read.
Read Aloud Selections Second Semester:
The Twenty-One Balloons. I wanted to bookend our war-related literature/historical fiction selections with lighthearted adventuresome books. The Twenty-One Balloons is the first bookend and is one I’m certain the boys will be delighted with.
I am David. Instead of reading about WWI this year, we have opted to use picture books for World War I and focus our read-alouds on WWII. (Although we may later decide to add a biography of Alvin York or bios of animal heroes during the wars.) I am David tells the escape story of a 12-year-old prisoner of a concentration camp during World War II.
So Far from the Bamboo Grove. This book focuses on the country of Korea and Japan’s occupation during WWII.
Shadow on the Mountain. Last year, we so enjoyed Preus’s book, Heart of a Samurai, that we decided to end our world war reading with this exciting tale of espionage set during WWII.
Goodbye, Vietnam. Stories about the Vietnam War are difficult (as are most stories about war conflict). Because of its tie-in to Vietnam and communism, we chose this story of a family’s escape from modern-day Vietnam.
The Wheel on the School. This does not tie in to any of our memory work, but our 12-year-old son told me we must read this book out loud as a family. Because it at least ties in to some of our geography memory work, and because it is a funny and enjoyable book, we decided we’ll close out our school year with this one.
Stay tuned for picture book selections under a separate post later this summer.
Note: We usually read aloud our family read-aloud selections in the evenings after supper. The following are short readings and/or activities we do to jumpstart our school day.
For some time now I’ve been struggling on how to better communicate how we handle our “connections” or “truth-goodness-beauty” activities. Writing these into a planner makes it seem like such a demanding and hard-set schedule when, in reality, we don’t necessarily read them on those particular days or weeks. The reality is that we have used a loop schedule for years now when it comes to these “extras.” By a loop schedule, I’m referring to the fact that when we “fall behind” on our planned activities, we go back through our plans and pick up where we left off as we continue through the school year. The idea, though, is that in an ideal world, we would read each of our “looped” selections on a weekly basis. So, for each week, we would have a selection from storytelling, Shakespeare, a mini-biography, and a poem. Likewise, we would have nature study, hymn study, composer study, and art. I’m attempting to develop a planner that reflects the loop and am hoping to have it available by the end of June. (As I look at my current to-do list, this may be super-duper wishful thinking on my part, but my heart says I want to get it out before the end of June even if reality doesn’t pan out that way!)
After thinking through a better structure for our loop schedule, we have two loops that we are using in the mornings. I’ll place the resources for these loops in our truth-wonder-beauty basket. The first resource in our basket is our daily Bible/Character devotion, Hero Tales: A Family Treasury of True Stories from the Lives of Christian Heroes.
Morning Storytime Loop:
Daily Devotion (not looped because we’ll read from this daily): Hero Tales: A Family Treasury of True Stories from the Lives of Christian Heroes
Storytelling: Medieval Tales that Kids Can Read & Tell by Lorna Carnota (First Semester) and William J Bennett’s The Book of Virtues (Second Semester). I hope to improve my storytelling skills and help the boys to learn how to engage their audience by telling good stories well. I have chosen these two selections because the former has short stories with specific storytelling skills to practice for each. After we’ve experienced a semester of the guided storytelling practice, we will embark on using William Bennett’s Book of Virtues to practice the skills we learned first semester. Storytelling is a beautiful thing that we enjoy so much. I am REALLY looking forward to this and am glad to have found Czarnota’s book!
Shakespeare: Usborne’s Stories from Shakespeare or Tales From Shakespeare by Tina Packer or the free ebooks Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by E Nesbitt or Tales from Shakespeare by Mary Lamb. I provide some options here because, really, any old Shakespeare-for-children book will work. I personally love Usborne’s Stories from Shakespeare. If you have younger children, you can opt for Usborne’s Illustrated Stories from Shakespeare. Usborne’s Illustrated Stories and Illustrated Classics are highly recommended by our children. They honestly read and re-read them over and over again.
Mini-Biographies: What Really Happened During the Middle Ages (1st semester). I haven’t yet decided on a book for second semester. I’m thinking about another volume of Hero Tales or just using biography selections from William J Bennett’s The Book of Virtues.
Poetry: Our family uses IEW’s Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization (which should be a daily program but I place it into our loop in case I let it fall by the wayside). If you are not ready for a formal poetry memorization program, you can use poems from William J Bennett’s The Book of Virtues.
Morning Wonder-Beauty Loop
Nature Study and Science: First semester – selections from Properties of Ecosystems (God’s Design for Science) and Our Universe (God’s Design for Heaven & Earth) and Find the Constellations; second semester – selections from Heat & Energy (God’s Design for the Physical World). I’m hoping we will do some nature study daily, but I’m writing this into our loop plan just in case we have trouble fitting it in. I don’t want to accidentally drop nature study from our schedule. One of my goals is that we will learn the constellations of the night sky this year. We also plan to create habitats to study earthworms, frogs, butterflies, and other critters. Anna Comstock’s Handbook of Nature Study is a great free resource you can use as you dive into Nature Study with your children.
Hymn Study: Then Sings My Soul. This book has some background information about many different hymns, along with the score (for the pianists). For our family (who has only a beginner pianist), I match up selections from Then Sings My Soul with downloadable mp3s for our family to listen and memorize the words (e.g., There is a Fountain by MercyMe).
Composer Study: The Story of the Orchestra (with CD). Great book for studying orchestra and composers, along with a CD of classical music to listen to.
Art Study/Projects: Usborne’s Art Treasury and Usborne’s Famous Paintings Cards or Art Fraud Detective: Spot the Difference, Solve the Crime! and Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters. We own all of these resources. I offer the Usborne option and the non-Usborne option. All of them are favorites in our home, but I think it’s easiest to use Usborne’s Famous Paintings Cards as a springboard for art study (although it doesn’t provide practice in art techniques).
An important part of our daily loops: Our last trip across the nation totally inspired me. Reading Lewis & Clark’s journal entries and the journal entries of pioneers and scientists/inventors provided extra motivation to set aside time daily for the boys to write and sketch in their journals. The journal entries will be based upon something that we studied during our loops. Of course in my utopian mindset (which is how I always start our school year no matter what last year was like), I imagine sketches of constellations, and a calendar of moon phase diagrams, and neatly-written copywork/poems with lovely illustrations, and free-hand drawings of world maps, and illustrations & explanations of inventions and other ideas. I hope to share how this fleshes out over the course of the year.
History Study
Calendar Quest & Western Civ Study. As a family we chose this study for our core history study in the coming year. We previously used this study (involving calendars, coloring, maps, and a timeline) when our oldest child was nine and are now looking forward to going through it again now that the boys are three years older and can understand more!
I haven’t finished the reading plans yet, but I thought I’d get this out there in case anyone is wondering what read alouds we are planning to use next year. Stay tuned for more!
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