Mom's Education

Background: As a homeschooling Mom I am pretty much learning new things right along with my children. When I went to government schools, I tuned just about everything out. It was so boring; I thought. By the time I got to high school I didn't care anymore. I didn't even try to make good grades. I remember being rather shocked when I was told I was going to graduate on time. I'm not really sure how that happened?

After school is when my love for learning actually began. I suppose my sense of autonomy helped spark a thirst for knowledge. I always loved to read, but I used to read "teen dramas" and "fan fiction" nothing beyond that. My love for classics began when the movie Lord of the Rings came out. I wanted to read the books, too! After reading the rich language of these books I couldn't go back to what I was used to read. I tried reading a Star Trek fan fiction book and remember thinking it seemed so elementary. Ever since, I started reading any classics I could get my hands on!

Flash Forward: I just recently discovered the book The Well-Educated Mind. Not to be confuse with the book written by the same author The Well-Trained Mind (I never read this, by the way). I am so excited to get this book! This book teaches you how to read the Great Conversation.  You learn the process of understanding, evaluating, and expressing an opinion. The niftiest thing about this book is the list of books to read in chronological order in different genres. (Find the list here) They include: Fiction, Autobiographies, Histories, Dramas, and Poetry. I have already read many of the books in the fiction list; I don't mind reading them again to possibly get a new perspective. Oh, by the way, the very first book in the fiction list is DON QUIXOTE!! One of my favorite books, EVER! Can you tell I'm excited?!

Right now, I'm reading the beginning chapters. I Can't wait to get into the reading list!

free homeschool resource (free textbooks and courses)

This is an awesome free resource that includes free digital textbooks and courses in various subjects. There are physical science textbooks, algebra textbooks, courses on music appreciation and music theory, just to name a few.

http://cnx.org/

A complete astronomy course for high school, along with some physics and Earth science and a upper level math thrown in.

http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/edufiles.htm

Reading List by Grade

I have been searching the web for a good book list by grade level. I wanted to find books that the kids can read just for fun that was at their appropriate reading level. I wanted a list so I could keep my eyes out for certain titles at flea markets and elsewhere.

My efforts have been pretty fruitless. So what is a Mother to do? Make my own of course.

This took me awhile to compile and I plan on adding to it slowly, but I thought I would share it here in case anyone would find it useful.

A child has not begun his education until he has acquired the habit of reading to himself, with interest and pleasure, books fully on a level with his intelligence. - Charlotte Mason

Reading List by Grade Level

Disclaimer: I put the reading levels of each book. That may not mean the book is age appropriate for that level. Always be wary of what you hand to your child to read. 

I used AR Book Finder for the reading levels.

 ETA: I just recently found this 
 Twaddle-Free Literature by Grade Level 

Books

Have you read more than six of these Books? The BBC believes most people will have read only six of the 100 books listed here. 

Instructions: Copy this into your POST. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started, but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds if desired.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (plan on finishing eventually)

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (read most)

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald 

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (read a few chapters with Trista, she is finishing the rest herself, don't know if I'll finish it myself or not)

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis 

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell 

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (I couldn't finish this because it was too disturbing for me)

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac 

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Read:22

Started but not finished: 5

Many of these books I plan on reading eventually!