Homeschool Chat on Friday the 13th

Chat was a lot of fun today, even if it was a Friday the 13th! We had a couple of new visitors and some visitors that have not been to chat in quite a while. Our Texas members seemed glad that it was not raining, while the Alabama members were equally as glad that it was raining! And I think our resident Londoner was saying that they had had more rain than usual. We even had a homeschooler from the Netherlands join us this morning. We spent a bit talking about how Amsterdam is laid out in a circle and what homeschooling is like for an Amsterdam teen. We truly had an International Homeschool Chat this morning!

The topic of the day ended up being books. Crystal wanted to know what books we had found to be essential over the years for our homeschool library. She asked for books we could not live without, books that we loved and/or books that had great pictures. Since this was Crystal's topic, we geared it towards the age of her children, twelve and under, but I think we slipped a few in that would be for older children too. And a few webpages and other resources were brought up also. Here are the recommends that were mentioned today:

Fiction

• Anything by Tamora Pierce
• The Book That Jack Wrote by Jon Scieszka
• Cheaper By The Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr.
• The Wrinkle in Time series by Madeline L'Engle
• Bryan Jacques Redwall books
• Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
• My Father's Dragon (& its sequels) by Ruth Stiles Gannett
• The Search for Delicious by Natalie Babbitt
• Wolf Story by William McCleery and Warren Chappell
• My Side of the Mountain and others by Jean Craighead George
• Books by Elizabeth George Speare
• Hatchett and others by Gary Paulsen
• Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles
• Books by Beverly Cleary
• The Secret of Nimh
• The Borrowers
• Love Among the Walnuts by Jean Ferris

Non-Fiction

• Eyewitness Books
• World Book Encyclopedia

Math

• Anything by Theoni Pappas
• Anything by Marilyn Burns
• How Math Works by Carol Volderman
• Reader's Digest How Math Works"
• Math On Call, A Mathematics Handbook ISBN: 0-669-45770-1

Science

• The Way Things Work by David McCauley
• Growing Up With Science Encyclopedia
• Reader's Digest How Science Works
• Reader's Digest How The Universe Works

History

• Timeline from Sonlight
• Timeline stickers
• Joy Hakim's History of US series

Economics

• The Richard Maybury series

English

• Words on the Vine by Claudia Vurnakes

Poetry

• Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

Classics

• Treasure Island
• Peter Pan
• Swiss Family Robinson
• Tales from Arabian Nights
• Uncle Remus
• Aesop's Fables
• Don Quixote
• Grimm's Fairy Tales
• The Three Musketeers
• The Hobbit by Tolkein
• C.S. Lewis's Narnia series
• Misty of Chincoteague by Margeurite Henry
• Charlotte's Web
• Shakespeare

Other Resources

• Sonlight'sReading Lists
• Chinaberry's catalog
• Comic Book Creator
• GameMaker's Apprentice software
• Storybook Weaver software
• The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease

And finally, this blog was mentioned for it's July 12th post of veggie art: Altogether too happy