The book that has helped me the most and has been the most difficult to read  is Norms and Nobility by David Hicks.  This book is a treatise on education.  It is a hard read.  It took me three years  to finish this book.  Every time I opened the book, my head  would start to hurt.  There were little nuggets in this book, though,  that spoke very deeply to me.  These nuggets made the brain ache all worth it.  One thing  that spoke volumes to me was the description of how a teacher is to be a mentor to the student.  The teacher doesn't just leave the student on his own, rather, the teacher works through the material with the student so that both are learning.  Another thing that has endeared N&N to me are the curriculum suggestions in the back of the book.   The gist of these suggestions is a booklist  but that list makes my heart beat faster.   I am hoping to use this list as the basis for my oldest's history and literature course for Gr. 7.  I am excited  to use Hicks'  suggestions. 

One book that  pushed me into the waters of traditional classical was Climbing  Parnassus  by Tracey Lee Simmons.  This book persuades teachers to give up the myriad of subjects that has become vocational training in our school system  and just focus on a few subjects.  Simmons' suggestions for subjects to be focused on are latin,  greek, math,  and geography.   It has been awhile since I have read this book so I am not sure if music is in that list as well.  This book steered me away from neo-classical.  It  steered me into uncharted, educational territories.  It challenged me to think of education in a way that I had never dared before.  This book opened the floodgates for me into a new world, educationally speaking.

Where Climbing Parnassus  was a treatise on simplifying our educational choices, The Latin Centered Curriculum by Andrew Campbell  puts the meat  on Simmons' skeleton.  LCC is the traditional classical version of The Well-Trained Mind.   It gives us curriculum suggestions for each subject but it keeps  to the  multum non multa  theory (not many but much.)  It is a handy book to have for those who feel a need to pare  the curriculum buffet to a few choices.

Another book that gave me food for thought  is Wisdom and Eloquence  by Robert Littlejohn and Charles Evans.   This book is written mainly for classical school teachers but there were a few bits of wisdom that we, as homeschoolers,  can benefit from.  One of the things that the book talks about is planning your child's education from the top down.  Usually, when we plan our children's education, we start planning for kindergarten, then we move on to Grade 1, and on up the ladder.   These authors suggest starting the planning process with the end in mind,  which means start planning Gr. 12 and then work your way down to Kindergarten.  This is helpful because then you know what you are working towards.  I find this a positive planning tool.  Now that I am planning Gr. 5, I am not shooting around in the dark  trying to figure out what I want my child to know.  Because I already know  what my goals are for the highschool years, I can start paving the way for that in these earlier years.  This helps solidify my planning.

There are many, many books on Classical Education.  These are just the tip of the iceberg,  but if you are wondering which ones to start with,  maybe this list  will give you an idea which one  to wade into first. 

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