We aren’t really following a set curriculum for our reading this year. I’m trying out my own blend of things, using a combination of Charlotte Mason Ambleside Online recommended reads with Sonlight curriculum. Once I get my hands on Read for the Heart, I’ll be adding books in from there.

Each week I will post our books by grade and/or age, read-aloud or reader, links to activities, books and ideas as well as photos – what’s been great, and what hasn’t worked. You can find the full list of Charlotte Mason recommended books from Ambleside Online. Most of the books I have purchased second hand, others are borrowed from the library (if I’m not sure it is one I want to add to my library) and others are purchased from Bookcloseouts or Book Depository.

So far we are a full 5 days into our school schedule, after last week’s mishap. Things have been going very well! But then again, it’s only the 5th day :D

2nd Grade Reading

Monday night The Boy read “Nate the Great” out loud to me and JJ. We read it at night because we ran out of time during the day :D It isn’t a chaptered book, but a good length to read. He didn’t want to read the whole thing, but got so into it he didn’t stop! 

Over the next couple of days we did activity pages from Random House that went along with the story. We are getting some of the other Nate the Great stories to continue with since he loved the first one so much! One of the suggestions was to build a dog house – I tried to get the boys to do this, but they were more interested in building a pirate ship, so we did that instead :D

You can find more links here and here for some great Nate the Great activities.

Before Five In A Row – Toddler and Kindergarten

We started “Caps for Sale” last week when I had my accident. So we came back to it again on Tuesday. My plan is to read the story 3 times a week, then do activities on most of the days.

Homeschool Creations has some FANTASTIC printables for the BFIAR stories. Keep checking back as she is putting up new books all the time! We did almost all of the activities for Caps for Sale, except for the money ones, just because we didn’t have time.

Keekers did a GREAT job of gluing the caps on the tree, and even attempted some tracing and colouring in the lines (wow, she did way better than the boys ever did at the same age!)

JJ did a GREAT story re-CAP – hee hee.

The activities are good for 2 and up, as both my toddler and kindergartener were able to complete about half each, with some help, and they are easily modified.

Read Aloud

Over the last few weeks we have been reading The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew – free on my kindle! It’s a little advanced for my 4 year old, but we still read and enjoy it.

I also recently found Thornton W. Burgess books in a set for a really good price on Book Depository, so we are reading The Adventures of Bob White and doing these activities along with it.

I’d love to hear what great books you are reading and what you’re doing along with them. You can link up to some other great homeschoolers and find out what they’re reading over at Footprints in the Butter.