Best Homeschooling Books

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Education: Homeschooling & Unschooling

B.K. Marcus July 1, 2014 at 3:26 pm

What are your favorite homeschooling books?

Here’s one we’ve found extremely important:

http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/

@jendjinn

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Kathy Grable July 4, 2014 at 7:32 am

The Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock. Written 100 yrs ago by a teacher, it beautifully combines science and literature. I still read it now and then. I highly recommend it.

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B.K. Marcus July 4, 2014 at 10:51 am

That’s very helpful, Kathy. Thank you. I’ve download the book from archive.org, and we’ll be looking it over as we head to the Catskills for a couple of weeks — where the temperatures won’t make nature study quite so unpleasant.

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Kathy Grable July 4, 2014 at 6:03 pm

I also liked Sam Blumenfelds reading and writing stuff. http://samuelblumenfeld.com/index.html

A good one to read to your kids is Padraic Colum’s “A Children’s Homer”, a version of The Odyssey. Years later my kids saw the parallels in the movie “O Brother Where Art Thou”.

For older kids, “How to Read a Book” by Mortimer Adler

I loved “Well-trained Mind”, but not knowing Latin, the best I could do was Latina Christiana, a wonderful beginner rote memory Latin program based on Christian prayer, not something secular homeschoolers would want but a good program. The Trivium was beyond me and my girls (we got a late start, I didn’t understand the true purpose of “school” until my eldest was in 5th grade and youngest in 3rd). We ended up doing a lot of unschooling and “Switched on Schoolhouse”. Their dad and I kept them with us and took them with us everywhere.

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Sean Ridlon July 16, 2014 at 2:18 am

We just bought Calverts. Ouch. $$$

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  Kathy Grable July 28, 2014 at 5:20 pm
  
  But is it resellable on eBay? I resold a lot of switched on schoolhouse for close to what I paid for it. I paid a lot for Saxon math books and now they are more prevalent and cheap on ebay, 5 bucks instead of $35.
  
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Michael Esch July 28, 2014 at 6:15 pm

I enjoyed Ron Paul’s The School Revolution. I hear his online curriculum (mostly by Tom Woods) is fantastic.

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Curtis Ownby July 31, 2014 at 7:45 pm

Life of Fred has been an awesome introductory to Math.

http://lifeoffredmath.com/

We’ve pre-ordered the chemistry books as well. I have a chemist friend who will be supplementing that however.

http://lifeoffredmath.com/

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Mandie Koeckes August 28, 2014 at 12:57 pm

I have just started homeschooling my daughter two weeks ago, and she loves the Life of Fred math book series. She’s at a higher reading level but I don’t want her filling her head with teen beat garbage or worse at 9 years old. Anyone have any suggestions for liberty minded kid reads?

I’m truly enjoying and appreciating The Secular Homeschooler.

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  B.K. Marcus August 28, 2014 at 1:50 pm
  
  Mandie,
  
  @SarahSkwire has written about some pro-liberty kids books at the Freeman:
  
  http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/pushcarts-without-romance
  
  http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/just-plain-toothpaste
  
  There’s also this:
  
  http://store.mises.org/Whatever-Happened-to-Penny-Candy-with-Study-Guide-P303.aspx
  
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    Mandie Koeckes August 29, 2014 at 1:34 am
    
    Thank you! I need all the help I can get. 🙂
    
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    Nate Stover September 1, 2014 at 7:27 pm
    
    Rick Maybury, who wrote “Whatever Happened to Penny Candy” and all the other “Uncle Eric” books, is easy to read and understand, but most important, he explains the libertarian models of how the world works. Very few people actually explain those models. He is also a successful business man, so this isn’t just theory. http://www.bluestockingpress.com/uncle-eric-books.htm
    
    For children, I really love comic books like “How an Economy Grows” by Schiff and Lockman. The illustrations are outstanding, and you can get it for free here: http://freedom-school.com/money/how-an-economy-grows.pdf Lockman also wrote “Biblical Economics in Comics,” which illustrates extremely vividly the complete failure of numerous statist economic theories. This book by Lockman covers many of the concepts you find in Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson,” which is the best introduction to free market thinking written and is free right here on liberty.me. Hazlitt’s book is for older kids, and along with it, I highly recommend a very short book by Bastiat: “The Law,” which is also available here.
    
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  Frank Marcopolos August 30, 2014 at 3:59 pm
  
  Douglas Adams would be fun, but maybe in a couple of years.
  
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Curtis Ownby September 7, 2014 at 9:45 am

I can vouch for the Schiff/Lockman book being a good start for economics. My eight year old loved it. I plan to read “The Law” with her as well likely next month while on vacation when we have some time to focus on it.

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