One of my favorite tasks of the new school year is choosing which books to read.  Reading is the most important part of our curriculum.  In fact, it is the core of our learning.  My almost 10 year old daughter has already read over 300 books!  It is a bit hard for me to decide on the books we will read together first.  I also assign each child reading assignments to do on their own.

Our first read-a-loud book this year is Bowser the Hound by Thornton Burgess.  Next, we will read Rascal by Sterling North.  Over the summer, we read The Rats of Nimh.  That was very interesting and made for some great conversation, given the sci-fi reality of the times we are living in. It is a fact that the U.K. is already engineering human-animal hybrids and a debate is on within the Catholic Church as to whether or not these "chimeras" should be allowed to have life.  What?!  But, yes it is true.  So, maybe The Rats of Nimh is not as far fetched as it seems.

We have also learned during our first week in school, just how pagan our calender is.  The children and I are going to see if we can train ourselves to refer to the days of the week the way God does...1st day, 2nd day, 3rd day...The funny thing is that I did not intend for us to study this.  It was not written in my planner to study the pagan calender.  It came about through our reading, so we went further with it.  Savannah was assigned to read an old book called, 'Keeping Time, by Walter Buehr.  All it took was for her to share with the rest of us what she was reading and the next thing you know, we are off on a learning adventure.  What is interesting is that our prayer for this year was that God would teach us what He wants us to know and that our school year would be directed by Him. 

Books are so fantastic and if you have access to a public library, you have a lifetime of learning at your fingertips.  Who needs expensive curriculum?  We have also been blessed by my husband's parents who frequent auctions and always buy us the books!  We have a wonderful start on building our home library! 

If you would like to join our informal "book club", feel free to join us.  I will periodically list the books we are reading.  If you happen to read the same book, leave some comments!