Here are my favorite picks for homeschooling young children including links and prices. As with everything else homeschoolers do, this is what works for us and may not necessarily work for you, but this is where I always recommend that people begin. If you can get things for free at the library, I've mentioned that and always recommend that you take a look at books in person before you buy them if you can. If you can't, most homeschool books are easily resold on ebay. After doing this for 10 years, here's what I like for the youngest learners.
Five in a Row Beginning with Before Five in a Row, this is my favorite resource for preschool and Kindergarten lessons. The premise is simple. You read a classic book to your child every day for five days and teach simply lessons to your little one based upon that book. For example, with the book Madeline, you teach your child geography (the location of Paris and France where the story takes place), math (twelve little girls in two straight lines....how many in each line), biology (where is your appendix and what is it for?), etc. The lessons are all laid out in the book, and the majority of the story books are available through your local library, although you may just want to own them all because they're that kind of quality literature. Only available at this time from Rainbow Resource. Cost for the textbook - $35.
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons Homeschooling parents either seem to love 100 Easy Lessons or they really don't like it. I'm a fan. I've taught 3 of my 4 readers how to read with this book, and the 4th has vision issues and required special efforts and tricks to learn to read. I will make a confession here, I don't do all the little rhyming and word game side lessons and simply concentrate on the big bold letters. This works, and the kids like it, you just have to not let yourself get bogged down in the extra stuff. Cost for the textbook $12.40. Can often be found for free at your local library if you want to try before you buy.
The Kids' Nature Book Science for 3-7 year olds based upon the world around them. Quick, easy mom-friendly activities based upon the seasons and observing nature such as watching ants at work or fun science experiments such as making sun prints using construction paper, leaves and the sunshine. You don't have to do them all, but if you do even 1/5 of the activities in this book, you and your kids will learn a lot of basic science. Cost for textbook $10.36 Some libraries carry this for a free try before you buy.
Miquon Math The book series I most often recommend. Miquon is NOT a traditional math program and focuses more on actually training the brain to think mathematically than on teaching a child to memorize math facts. Memorization is not learning, it is regurgitation. These books are a non-traditional approach to learning mathematics, but so worth the time and effort. This is one of the few books for young students where you NEED to buy the teachers manual. Text books are $5 each. You will go through one a semester approximately, but be ready to buy 2 or more at a time because your child will LOVE math and fly through them.
Singapore Math What if you like a traditional math program? What do you do after Miquon? Singapore! Singapore leads the world with math comprehension among their students. Once you see their math program, you'll understand why. It is logical, easy to use, and actually teaches the why and how of how math works rather than just repetitive memorization of math facts. This program will take you up through 6th grade easily and my kids all still love math after using Singapore. How many other programs can say the same thing. Learn it, love it, be able to do it. Text book and work book together will run you $17 a semester
Story of the World The most child-friendly history program I have tried, and in 10 years of homeschooling, I've tried a lot of them. The chapters are written like the best of story books, but even more interesting because they are TRUE! This comprehensive world history series puts world events on a time line so that your child learns what was going on in China while the Egyptians built their pyramids, and what the Israelites were up to while Ghengis Khan was conquering the world. I love the feeling of getting the whole picture of human events instead of just bits of western culture. Get it with the activity book and your lesson plans and activities are all planned out for you, the worksheets and color pages are provided, and someone else has already planned the craft to go with the lesson. Yippee! I love when someone else does the hard part for me. Cost for Textbook $13. Cost for Activity book $24. You can even buy the audio book and let your children listen to someone else read the lesson if you need to. Cost of audio book $30 (I might even get this to listen to in the car for fun.)
7 comments:
Thank you for the information. These are books that I might order just to have available in my library and/or to send to my daughter in S. Korea. Even though she will be teaching English and depending on which grades she gets assigned to teach, these could be helpful. (I "lied" the other day; she is still in orienation.)
Oh, a hint that might be helpful (with some background). When my younger brothers and I were growing up and we had questions about history, geography, spelling, (well, most anything), Mom would say, "Go look it up and then come tell me about it." We'd have atlases, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and text books (pre-computer days) open all over the dining room table. Because Mom started doing this with us from the time I was about three or four years old, looking something up was never a chore for us. It was an adventure. One of my brothers and I have carried on this tradition. This is an excellent way to reinforce learning, not to mention teaching children how to do research.
Thanks for posting your favorites! It is great to see that I, too, have some of the same for the same reasons too :) I have always wanted to knwo about that Miquon Math. HOw long does your child take to do math for the day? I am scheduling in 1 hour for my 5th grader and for my 2-2nd graders, I am putting in 30 mins. Let me know if you think that would fit. How do you like Saxon? Just wondering...
God bless, Mary @ Cheerios
Wow. I am actually starting to do some Five in a Row with my preschooler and kindergartner, but it's more like "Three in a Row with a lot of corresponding coloring pages because mom is lazy and after three days of the same book, we can't stand to hear it again." LOL
100 Easy Lessons didn't work well with my oldest, but I'm going to pull it back out for my kindergartner who can already read some three letter words. I'm hoping this will be something different to take her to the next level.
I haven't used Miquon, but I might look into it. But we do use Singapore. My Kindergartener already finished the kindergarten level books last school year, but I'm waiting until after she turns six to start her on first grade level.
I use Story of the World as extra reading for my now 3rd grader in addition to the Usborne History Encyclopedia and an homemade outline of talking points. But you should put a disclaimer that it has some anti-Catholic rhetoric, especially when it comes to the Reformation and Henry VIII.
I may also have to check out that Kids' Nature Book. Love your list...and not just because I already use most of it. LOL
I love this list! You have inspired me to (at some point) list my own faves. You are way more veteran than I, but it's nice to see that I have (had) the very same titles on my bookshelves too! I really wanted to love FIAR, but in practice, I used it mostly as a booklist. We use Math-U-See which is very similar to Miquon (in that it's manipulative-based).
SOTW Vol. 1 is great--we loved listening to the CD's in the car. Homeschooling on the road, baby! But yeah...those later volumes don't treat Catholism in a very kindly (or accurate) light so you might want to preview/screen some of those sections dealing with the Reformation.
My children hate Saxon. I only tried it one year--never again.
I have been homeschooling for 11 years. I, too, recommend Singapore Math. The books are wonderful and not nearly as boring as Saxon. However, for Junior High and High School Math, I always recomment the Life of Fred Series. My oldest has gone all the way through Trig. this past year (Junior year) with Fred. They are humorous but very thorough. Why not use books that make math fun?
Love your other suggestions, except Story of the World. However, I think you have very good reasons for using it and I will NOT judge--promise.
Just had to throw that in there.
;-)
Great list! Thanks for the resources!
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