Persuasion by Jane Austen

This book is, supposedly, Jane Austen's best book.  I read about three fourths of the the way through it and just couldn't go any further.  I have started four different Jane Austen books and have only been able to finish one of them, Pride and Prejudice.  I think my problem is that I have a hard time relating to the type of culture that Jane Austen writes about.  I think if I had been born into that society, I would have ended up like Catherine from Wuthering Heights, half savage.

I enjoyed Pride and Prejudice because Elizabeth Bennet is the most down-to-earth character in Jane Austen's books.  It will interesting to see what my girls think when they are old enough to read Jane Austen.

Unschooling Rules by Clark Aldrich

It is hard not to get caught up in all you can do with home school.  There are a lot of products out there and even more fun and good ideas.  But, occasionally I read a book that puts everything back into perspective for me again and helps me remember why I'm home schooling in the first place.

I love books like this that lay out not just ideas, but actually what to do about them.  This book does not elaborate, it is very to the point.  I had to read it slowly in order to grasp all the golden nuggets.  I got a lot of ideas of things to actually include in our home school.  Some of those things for young kids are like starting a microcosm like a fish tank, recycling, having a pet, computer networking, and making a real website.  How many kids have made a fake website in school that was really a piece of junk?  I love having projects that have to do with real situations.  This book gives a lot of ideas for high school too.

I have always been a big believer of meditation.  This book talks about the importance of quiet reflection, something I believe is one of the most important things you can do for your life and character.

This book tells a lot about the flaws of the public school systems.  I'm the kind of person that knows when something isn't quite right by the way I feel, but can't always put it into words when I try to explain it to other people.  I'm working on that, but this book explains so many things for me, like why everyone has nightmares about high school for the rest of their lives.

This book is really inexpensive from ibooks and worth every penny.  I now have an exciting "to do" list for our home school.  Some things that I wished it had included though is the importance of religion and serving others.

Shadows

We recently did a science experiment from the Big Book of Play and Find Out.  We talked about the sun and what shadows are and why they move throughout the day.  We did flashlight experiments in the closet and had a shadow puppet show.  We always do these experiments last so that the kids can play for as long as they want to.  This was a hit for sure.  They played for hours afterward making shadow puppets.  Sometimes after I put them to bed at night in the room that they share I can hear them making shadows until they fall asleep.

It's so fun to be a home-schooler.

Dinotopia by James Gurney

I was so excited for this book.  It really is one of the best children's books out there and it has been very successful and it's hard to find a good deal on these books.  When we started this book we had just finished The Wizard of Oz, which the kids absolutely loved.  I thought these were extremely similar books.  They both had great artwork and an adventure to a land unknown.  For some reason my kids were bored with Dinotopia.  They couldn't wait to finish it and groaned every time we read from it.  I would catch Kendi wanting to look at the pictures though.  I'm thinking that I should have waited until the kids could read this book to themselves.  It is written like a journal without dialog so it isn't very fun when read aloud. There are about 20 other Dinotopia books and I think we'll wait until the kids are old enough to read them on their own.