Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Books, Lovely Piles of Books!

So, I've been doing a lot of research and planning for our next school year, focusing especially on Ambleside Online's Year-7 since, as always with my eldest daughter, it will be my first time using this beautiful though extensive book-list to cover the Medieval Age at a decidedly higher level than Our Island Story and Discovery of New Worlds, both of which we completely adored! Using resources like Nothing New Press's All Through the Ages, the recommended Free Reading List on the AO's site, and my own experiences with the literature of those lovely Dark and Middle Ages, I've compiled this Free Reading List for my own daughter and thought I'd share it with you, too.

For ease of use and in order of importance, my humble opinion alone, I broke the books down into three categories--Literature, Historical Fiction, and Miscellaneous--and placed them into my best burning-the-late-night-oil chronological order.

Also, if you're uber-familiar with AO and notice their absence, I'll be using Beowulf (daughter said, "Cool!") and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for poetry during Term-1.

Oh, and if you're NOT uber-familiar with Ambleside Online, Free Reading is basically a pile of books my daughter may read on her own throughout the school year, without any required narration or telling back as with her subject core books.

With the pile of these uber-yummy books growing, neither my daughter nor myself can wait to dig in! I've attached links to Google Books, Project Gutenburg, and such, just in case you wanna take a wee peek or jump in with your own literary shovel and join us. :)

Literature:

Historical Fiction:

Miscellaneous or Summer Reading:

Are there any I missed?!

4 comments:

  1. Oh, this sounds so incredibly exciting! We have read both Otto and Men of Iron as family read alouds in the past year and adored both. Roll on Year 7! We've got a ways to go though :)

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  2. Jeanne, I started my eldest daughter a wee later with Ambleside. She was plugging away with Truthquest, whose booklists I LOVED, but required too much planning on my part--especially now! Plus, it made too many of the connections for her, which I didn't LOVE. Boo!

    Anyway, I held back all the Middle Ages gems for just the right moment. I hope she enjoys them as much as we already have! Haha!

    Poor thing. ;)

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  3. This is awesome. These books you have listed are amazing. I am new to Ambleside...not C.Mason though. Wow. You opened up a whole new world for this mom of hungry boy readers. OK. So I go to Nothings New Press...cool. I need lots of help, so bear with me!

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  4. Passionate: Thanks! I get excited about finding good books, too. My own experience with AO started during my daughter's third year of home school. After finishing a boxed kindergarten program of study, we both knew that there must be another way. Since she was young enough, I chucked the grammar, spelling, science, and history textbooks and just started heating up my library card, reading tons of classic children's literature and studying insects and invertebrates that next year, since that's where her interests lay.

    During her second year we did the same pattern of study: great kids' lit with birds and mammals, adding classical music and some books about select artists, but when her third year began, I was running out of ideas for out-of-doors and did a google search for, "nature study." Lo and behold--what do you think I found?! A whole community of loonies JUST LIKE ME. And, although I'm not the kind of gal who's afraid of rowing against the current, it has been an utter blessing to read and glean all that I can to make our experience that much more rich.

    So, all this to say, "Welcome & enjoy!" :D

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I'm gonna shut up now. Please, tell me what YOU think.