Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Some of Our Favorite Read-Aloud Books


Do you know about Three Thinking Mothers? They are a relatively new blog and they offer tremendous blessings and encouragement to all their readers. This week they are discussing read-alouds and have invited their readers to share how they choose read-alouds as well as share some of their favorites.

We have always read to our children, but things changed drastically in our home five years ago when an older friend of mine encouraged me to read books above my children's level. She guided me to a popular homeschool curriculum's website (Sonlight) to use as a guide in choosing what books to read to my children. I have also used Books Children Love as a resource when trying to find a good quality read-aloud to go along with a certain theme or subject. We went on to use Sonlight for grades 1 and 3 and plan to use it for 4th grade (Core E) once we finish up reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series. My older home educating friend truly blessed our family when she challenged me to do more thought provoking read-alouds with my children. Our entire philosophy of education changed as I began to learn more and more about the importance of using literature - good quality literature as the backbone of all our studies. I began learning more and more about Charlotte Mason and her philosophies from reading about her online, as well as reading For the Children's Sake and A Charlotte Mason Companion.

Here are a few of our favorites and I've tried to sort them out in categories. However, I would like to add that they could all be listed as "fun" reading.

Fun Reading:
Understood Betsy (This was one of my favorites. It truly blessed me as a home educating mother).

History Supplements:

Bible/Character:
Listened to the entire Chronicles of Narnia series on CD

Click over to Three Thinking Mothers. You are sure to discover more read-aloud treasures for you and your family.

4 comments:

Amy @ Hope Is the Word said...

I see lots of favorites on your list! I'd love to have you join in Read Aloud Thursday sometime!

Mary Prather said...

Nikki ~ I am so glad you linked up with us today! I love to talk about reading. Sonlight was what REALLY got me thinking about quality literature, too. That first year (it was just my third grader and I at home then) was spent reading about 75% of the time and we read so many great books. Even though we don't use Sonlight, we still read just as much .

There are some books on your list we haven't read, so I'm adding them to the "wish list".

Thanks again!

~Mary

Erika@RaisingLeafs said...

Hmm, how was I not already following you? Fixed that!

We love reading also. I see a lot of our favorites on your list!

PrairieJenn said...

Enjoyed your list of favorites:) Misty of Chincoteague was one of our all-time favorites too. Thanks for sharing!