Creative Madness Mama top ten reading lists
BOOKS,  Homeschool,  Reviews & Shopping

Top Ten Places I search for our next Read Aloud (Book Lists)

Hi, my name is Margaret and I’m a book-a-holic.

You caught me. I am without excuse a complete bibliophile, a book nerd, collector, and I missed my calling as a classical librarian. One of my utterly favorite things to do since I caught the homeschooling bug is to make book lists. I have book lists for reading aloud. Book lists for required student reading. Book lists for enrichment and unit study purposes. Book lists for taking our studies a bit further. Book lists for entertaining and educating and book lists for just plain escaping into the pages of a story. I am delighted to discover a new book list source!

Share your book lists with me!

Creative Madness Mama top ten reading lists

Memoria Press

Blog-Roll-ButtonMy most appealing book lists come from particular curriculums that I’m in love with. For instance, Memoria Press has never steered me wrong when it comes to books. From Junior Kindergarten, Kindergarten, First Grade, and now Second Grade and even the Simply Classical Levels — the Memoria Press book lists can do no wrong! MP has an incredible book list as they have been releasing their Classical Core and now Simply Classical Lesson Plans and full curriculum sets. Even if you just stick with the Enrichment Guides and materials (K-2) or just take from their “supplemental readers” they have some fabulous recommendations! From vintage classical literature and juvenile biography choices, to science readers and history topics, to classical readers for the older stages even including award winners along and along — I have yet to discover a book on Memoria Press’ list that I did not want to add to our home shelves.

Memoria Press 3rd grade
Memoria Press Third Grade Read-Aloud Books

Veritas Press

VPSA_Crest_2Next would have to be the Veritas Press catalog. *sigh* Is there a homeschool parent out there (who loves the Classical Christian methodology!) who doesn’t either sigh with bliss when this catalog arrives or grunt with the fact that they were not planning this in the budget?! I’ve been watching this catalog for years waiting to get started and we’re finally there starting in on the Second Grade materials, where the fun really begins. Books to read aloud and books to have my daughter read aloud to me abound across the curriculum with Veritas Press from their history recommendations to their Bible recommendations and Literature choices in between.

Sonlight

Sonlight CurriculumWell I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Sonlight as it is where we started. The Preschool P3/4 was an incredible beginning for us and our read aloud adventure. We still (five years later and two more children) read these books and reach for them nearly daily in our reading lives. While we weren’t as impressed with the choices from P4/5 there is about a handful we still appreciate and are finishing up enjoying as my daughter just turned six and we are also truly enjoying a selection from their Core A and Core B list as partner reads that she and I can easily take turns reading aloud to the family. I definitely plan to continue to reference Sonlight book lists as we go along in years.

Barefoot Ragamuffins Curricula

You want to know what my favorite find is that I’ve discovered in the last year? That would easily without question be Kathy Jo DeVore’s Barefoot Ragamuffin’s Curricula including English Lessons Through Literature, Reading Lessons Through Literature, and Wayfarers. This year we’re working through the first levels of both ELTL and RLTL and Wayfarers Ancients and love.every.minute.of.it! It all started with Pathways aka ELTL Level 0. If you thought that P3/4 was a good list it has nothing on the three tiered scheduled list from Pathways! Using money and shelf-space saving treasuries and common popular children’s books, this list can help you make sure that you do not miss introducing your youngest learners (Preschool-2nd Grade respectively) to the best of children’s books. Yet, then why not continue on with your budding readers in their language arts with Elson Readers (through Reading Lessons Through Literature), public domain classics (through English Lessons Through Literature) and a plethora of goodies in Wayfarers from geography readers including Newberry winners to history recommendations to go alongside your spine. I could not be more delighted with absolutely everything that comes from Kathy Jo DeVore! Oooh… and I almost forgot through Wayfarers she even has a fabulous list of open domain science books as well. There are also religious devotions and more and you really cannot go wrong with the recommendations from this mama.

The Well-Trained Mind & The Well Educated Mind

Creative Madness Mama reviews the new TWEMMy next source comes from two books that I have read so many times that I’ve lost count. While The Well-Trained Mind {aff} especially is so much more than an annotated book list – it is also that and a fabulous one at that. My experience speaks from owning the 3rd edition and the 1st and 2nd edition of TWEM (releasing soon!). Within TWTM, what I’m mostly looking at are the history recommendations. So while we are studying ancient history this year, I am getting a plethora of recommendations from here and topics to go off of as well. While it is true there is cross over in some of these lists, there are some out of print jewels that it’s nice to find recommended in TWTM that I may or may not have bought used here and there. *grin* It is mostly for the younger grades that I am using TWTM as recommendation, but for my own studies right now and the kiddos later I am collecting classics as I go along in TWEM. I am so excited about the 2nd edition release and I cannot wait to tell you about it very soon!

Ambleside Online

Just like previously I tried to hash out a combination of Sonlight titles for us, it was the same with Ambleside Online as I tried to include these titles in our schedules. While many of these titles are recommended to me now through the fabulous Wayfarers, there are also many others that it is good to have on the sidelines and for consideration if our bookshelves suddenly seem sparse. I appreciate with these lists from AO that there are a lot of British history (dear to my heritage!) that I wouldn’t have known about previously such as Our Island Story and so on.

Gateway to the Classics aka Yesterday’s Classics

I truly cannot mention AO without referencing Gateway to the Classics through the publisher Yesterday’s Classics as this has become key in our night-time reading (as I read aloud from the Kindle Fire with the lights off). While not releasing quite as many as before, I have still found Gateway to the Classics to be a great resource. (If anyone can instruct me how to get mobi files on a Kindle Fire to be read in FreeTime rather than Documents I’d be greatly appreciative!)

The Latin Centered Curriculum

LCCWhile this one is newer to me and I’ve only read it as a PDF I have found even more recommendations that I had been previously unfamiliar with including fairy tales and picture books from incredible gifted story tellers and artists. Following the book lists in here it spans the curriculum and helps to fill our shelves with valuable, classical reading. The Latin Centered Curriculum is also from Memoria Press.

Mother of Divine Grace a la Laura Berquist via Adoremus Books

This is a list that my sister turned me on to. Mother of Divine Grace is a curriculum plan based on a book by Laura Berquist and the online store Adoremus Books has put it in a very easy to shop format that I make a hefty book list from. It has many titles that I wouldn’t have necessarily discovered otherwise and ones that I’m glad to have added to our list to search for our shelves and reading pleasures. Lots of good Christian resources here.

Seton Books

Last year we did the full Seton Home Study School First Grade and enjoyed the book lists that came in that curriculum from their Kindergarten, 1st, & 2nd Grade Supplemental reading. The lists in the curriculum were a little more extensive than what’s on the website, but the basics and good stuff often overlooked is still there.

Beautiful Feet Books Primary American History Books

There are so many more great book lists out there from homeschool curriculum companies, experiences mamas and more! I can hardly believe I’ve gotten to ten already and I haven’t even mentioned Beautiful Feet Books, My Father’s World, or Timberdoodle! There is also Emmanuel Books graded book lists as well as Exodus Books.

There is always something to read!

 

What is your favorite book list?

 

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The Creative Madness Mama also known as Margaret is a Christian Stay-at-home Mama, married to the Enginerd, quilter, cross stitcher, avid reader and book-a-holic. As book blogger for various publicists, she loves to share the latest and greatest about books coming out as well as her needle art and other crafty projects with some pictures of her fourteen-year-old AppleBlossom, twelve-year-old OrangeBlossom (the Princess), nine-year-old Almond Blossom (the Rascal boy!), six-year-old (red) Mermaid Warrior, the four-and-a-half-year-old Viking Dragon, and Huckleberry (due in June 2024!) in between. Homeschooling, cloth diapering, breastfeeding, babywearing, bone broth brewing, tea drinking, list making mama full of a little creative and a lot of madness.

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