Here is the July update of what I have read to date for the Tim Challies 2016 Reading Challenge.

My reading:

A book someone tells you “changed my life”: (Teaching from Rest: A Homeschooler’s Guide to Unshakeable Peace by Sarah Mackenzie)

A book by or about a pastor’s wife: (Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full by Gloria Furman)

A book more than 100 years old: (In Freedom’s Cause: A Story of Wallace and Bruce by G. A. Henty)

A book by a woman conference speaker: (The Question by Leigh Bortins)

A self-improvement book: Do More Better

Here is an update of what I have read to date for the Tim Challies 2016 Reading Challenge, and what my 5 year old daughter and I have read together for the CounterCultural School Reading Challenge.

We are a little late to the party, as we just discovered and started the Reading Challenge in late May. Notice I have chosen some titles that overlap my categories and hers, so I can kill two birds with one stone! If I am reading something to her or listening to it with her, it is great if it can count for my list, too. For example, my “book for children” was The Wizard of Oz, and it was her “movie tie-in” book. We did the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe together, which let us both check off a C.S. Lewis title.

After about 6 weeks of reading I am averaging a book a week, placing me solidly in the “obsessed reader” category! Sadly, once school starts back in a few weeks I will have to really curtail my reading and may only prove to be a “light reader” or at best an “avid reader”.

My reading for May/June:

A book your pastor recommends: (Fair Sunshine)

A book for children: (The Wizard of Oz)

A book by C.S. Lewis or J.R. R. Tolkien: (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe)

A book written by Jane Austen: (Pride and Prejudice)

A memoir: Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: (The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson)

A novel longer than 400 pages: (Jane Eyre)

My daughter’s reading:

A book about God–theology for kids: (Everything a child should know about God)

A children’s classic: (My Father’s Dragon)

A chapter book: (Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle)—done as an audio book

A C. S. Lewis or George MacDonald title: (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe)—audio book in the car

A movie or TV tie-in book: (The Wizard of Oz)—narrated on Audible by Anne Hathaway

I recently found Tim Challies’ 2016 Reading Challenge post. Since I am trying to make a conscious effort to do more reading, I decided to jump in with both feet, even though 2016 is half gone. In his challenge he lists 104 categories of books to choose from and the idea is to read one book from each category, from as many categories as you decide to (13 categories is considered a “light reader” while the full 104 makes you “obsessed”). Some of the categories include things like a biography, a classic novel, a book more than 100 years old, or a title recommended by a family member.

As I was working through the list it occurred to me that I would LOVE to have this type of goal for my kids, as well.

Often they focus their pleasure reading on one particular category (animal books, or books in a series, for example) and this seems like a great way to help them diversify a bit.

With that in mind, I made my own list of 50 categories for kids. Today is July 4th so we have about 25 weeks left until Christmas. My kids can work their way through the whole list reading just 2 books a week. If that seems too aggressive, maybe your goal would be one book a week and get half way through the list. It doesn’t matter, as YOU can tailor the goal for your own schedule and whatever you feel would work for your child. I am printing out a list for each of my kids–the younger ones may get through all 50 categories and the older ones might only get through 10 (since their books are much longer). I hope to post updates periodically about some of their selections (and mine!) and I would love to hear from you if you decide to take the Reading Challenge. Happy Reading!

CounterCultural School Kids 2016 Reading Challenge

Homeschooling my oldest son has always been a breeze.  He learned to read when he was 3, and my greatest educational challenge with him was poor penmanship.

I was not prepared for the struggles I faced with our second son.  He wasn’t ready to read at age 3.

Or at age 4.

Or at 5.

Or even at 6.

Some days I felt like I was a failure, and other days I thought he wasn’t trying hard enough.

School wasn’t fun for either of us.  It was disappointing, frustrating, and exhausting.

We had him tested at age 7 and found out that he is dyslexic.  At first I felt like I had been punched in the gut.  I worried we would continue to struggle together for years.

But we didn’t!  In fact, his diagnosis was the key to unlocking his tremendous potential, and the turning point in his education.

Here are some ways we turned things around:

• I knew that working one on one with my son would be his best chance at success, so I stopped entertaining ideas about putting him in school and going back to my easy life.  I committed myself to home schooling for the long haul and started figuring out how to do it better.  I read and researched and tried different methods and curriculum in each subject until I found some things that worked for him.
• We began thinking outside the box.  Some of our new methods were unconventional (such as learning through games), but it didn’t matter.  I was tailoring his education to suit his needs, and we started seeing success for the first time.
• I stopped doubting myself as a teacher and him as a student.  I am grateful that my son never suffered the embarrassment of struggling in a classroom setting, but I confess there were days when my attitude discouraged him. I became more patient and more positive, viewing each challenge as a solve-able puzzle instead of an insurmountable obstacle.  We both gained confidence and began to enjoy school more, approaching difficulties as a team.  This had a positive impact on our relationship as well as on our school day.
• I began to employ a two-pronged approach of remediation and accommodation, which allowed him to move forward in areas of strength while continuing to work on areas of weakness.  Before his diagnosis we spent all our time working on the things he couldn’t do well and never found time or energy for other things.  Our new strategy meant that at least part of every school day was enjoyable and felt productive.  His self confidence grew, and he had more energy to tackle things that were difficult.
• We began using audio books for history and literature.  He began to truly enjoy learning for the first time.  Audio books changed his life so much that we built a website (and a home business) dedicated to helping kids get inexpensive access to the best educational books.

That little boy is a teenager now.  We are still successfully–and happily–home schooling.  Through the use of audio books and other technology, he is an independent, thriving student. He doesn’t have quite the same love for school that his older brother has, but he likes it just fine.  Some things are still hard, but it is no longer a daily battle.  Even the challenges have turned out to be blessings in disguise, shaping our son’s character in wonderful, God-glorifying ways.

I’m so thankful that we stuck with home schooling!!!  The fruit of it is sweet and vastly outweighs the challenges and frustrations.

My first daughter was born shortly after my 40^th birthday.  I hope to be around for another 40 years, to walk as her companion through the many stages of a woman’s life.  But I don’t take it for granted that I will be.

I have already started a library for her, filled with books about faith, biblical womanhood, marriage, and motherhood.  I hope we will read them and talk about them together.  If that isn’t part of God’s plan for her, then I pray she will read them herself and glean much wisdom and guidance from them.

I want to share with her the books that have impacted my life and made me the woman that I am.  I want her to know what I was reading and thinking about at various stages in my journey of motherhood.  And just in case I am not there to tell her, I am collecting an assortment of books for her and inscribing each one with a few words and the date inside the cover.  Some of the books are brand new, purchased just for her.  Others are stained with drips from my ever-present cup of coffee and, occasionally, my own tears.

There is page in the journal I keep for her which lists the books I want her to read.  If the collection is ever broken up or misplaced, or if I “borrow” a title to re-read myself and forget to put it back, I want a record in the journal of what I intended to give her.  There is also a page listing favorite children’s books which I hope she will share with my grandchildren.  I haven’t begun setting these books aside yet, as I will still be enjoying them with her for years to come.  One day, though, when she sorts through my vast library of children’s books, I want her to know which ones were her favorites, and which ones I most loved to read to her.

What great books do you intend to share with your daughter?

Here are a few of the titles I have put in my daughter’s library so far:

Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss

The Excellent Wife: A Biblical Perspective by Martha Peace

Let Me Be a Woman by Elisabeth Elliot

A Promise Kept by Robertson McQuilkin

Mother by Kathleen Norris

The Family Daughter Becoming Pillars of Strength in Our Father’s House by Sarah Bryant

What He Must Be: …If He Wants to Marry My Daughter by Voddie Baucham

Naked & Unashamed: Recapturing Family Intimacy by Bill Mills

Large Family Logistics by Kim Brenneman

The Ministry of Motherhood: Following Christ’s Example in Reaching the Hearts of Our Children by Sally Clarkson

*post first published on Mentoring Moments for Christian Women

The Best of Visionary Womanhood Volume I is now available and I have to say that WOW, it knocked my socks off!  I was a contributing writer for this book, and I am so thrilled to be a part of this project!

It is truly a joy to be able to offer you this outstanding collection of encouraging and thought provoking articles from the writers of Visionary Womanhood on the topics of motherhood, wifehood, home education, Biblical worldview, missions, and homemaking. The book is available as a PDF download, in Kindle format, or paperback (see below for pricing).

Click here to check out The Best of Visionary Womanhood on Amazon, where you can take a look inside the book, see the table of contents, read the introduction, and be inspired by a glimpse of what’s inside!

You can get all 35 articles in one of 3 convenient formats:

PDF eBook Download ($5.00)

Get it for your Kindle($5.99)

Get it in Paperback ($9.99)

Counter-Cultural School was nominated this year for Best Special Needs Blog in the Homeschool blog awards.  I don’t feel deserving of any mention in the blog awards this year, as I have been posting only sporadically since getting pregnant and having our baby.  But I do thank you! 

This blog covers a wide range of topics, but in the past year I have tried to focus special attention on homeschooling the dyslexic child. 

If you are visiting from the HSBA Post blog awards, I hope you’ll take time to read some of the articles about dyslexia, or to listen to my free podcast about our journey with dyslexia and what we are doing in our homeschool to help our dyslexic child.  You can find the podcast and all the articles linked in the right sidebar under the title The Dyslexic Child. 

Our family also created the website My Audio School to help accommodate our dyslexic child, who learns best by listening.  If you have an auditory learner and you are looking for educational books and other audio resources, please check it out!

During the time we were preparing for our trip to Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown, we were also reading the book Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry.

Misty of Chincoteague, 60th Anniversary Edition

Misty is about a Chincoteague boy who participates in the annual wild pony roundup on Assateague. The wild ponies can still be found on Assateague and my boys were dying to see them.

The boys knew that Chincoteague and Assateague were both barrier islands just off the coast of Virginia, and they begged to add that as a stop on our trip. We were already 10 hours from home in Williamsburg; the trip to Chincoteague was just 3 hours further. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to take advantage of their excitement and create memories that would last a lifetime.

We had to cross the huge Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel to get to Virginia’s eastern shore.  This bridge tunnel is known as one of the “seven engineering wonders of the modern world.”  Once across, we still had quite a ways to go to reach Chincoteague, which was accessible by crossing a small bridge.

All lodging and restaurants are on Chincoteague.  We stayed at the Best Western, which is the hotel nearest Assateague Island National Seashore.  It was reasonably priced and the rooms were very clean and nice.  There was a free breakfast daily, with waffles, eggs, bacon, biscuits, cereal, pastries, yogurt, fruit, bagels, and juice.  The hotel had bikes available for rent, though none were small enough for our preschooler, and other bike rental shops were closed since we went during the off season.

It was easy to drive around the refuge.  Chincoteague and Assateague are both very small, with basically one  main road through both.

I’m so glad I listened to the boys and took the time for this “side trip”, which turned out to be a highlight of our vacation.  We went to see the ponies, but ended up also seeing lots of shorebirds.  For this birdwatching family, that was a huge plus.

It was fun to walk along the beach, climb the dunes and see the ocean.

There are two visitor centers on Assateague and both were very educational.  We caught several glimpses of the ponies from the car, and even stumbled upon two wild ponies while walking along one of the trails.  It was nerve wracking and a little too close for comfort for me, but the boys were enthralled.  It was very special to be so close to them!

Having read all three books, it was also a highlight for us to sit in the hotel after a busy day and watch the movie Misty, which was filmed in Chincoteague and Assateague.  There were copies of this re-released 1961 DVD for rent and for sale at a local video store.

If you head to Chincoteague, don’t miss out on Famous Pizza or Island Creamery.  The pizza at Famous Pizza was homemade and delicious, as well as very reasonably priced.  Island Creamery had dozens of flavors of homemade ice cream.  Our 7 year old is already planning to take his children to Island Creamery one day!

Many things were closed since we were there off-season, including the Beebe Ranch and Pony Farm.  We weren’t able to see the now-captive ponies, which are Misty’s direct descendents.  That was fine with us, though.  Just as at Yorktown, we preferred seeing the “real thing”, out in the wild.

If you’re a fan of the Misty books, or heading to Chincoteague, the Misty of Chinoteague Foundation has a great educational website for kids.  

These books are not available in the public domain, so I don’t have them on My Audio School.  Instead, we purchased these audiobooks from Audible.com.  The boys listened to the first one before we left, and the two sequels filled the long hours on our drive to Virginia.  Now they want to read everything by Marguerite Henry!  I just brought her book Benjamin West and his Cat Grimalkin home from the library, and we have Justin Morgan had a Horse on CD.  Both will undoubtedly be “devoured” soon!

It has been harder than usual for me to gear up for school this year. The summer flew by so quickly!! I don’t feel quite ready for Medieval feasts and learning to make mosaics.

Ready or not, here we go! It’s school time again. We’re leaving the Ancients behind and moving on to The Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Reformation.

Although I feel like I’m still recovering from a whirlwind summer, there is one thing that always gets me excited about school: the books! Charlotte Mason believed that living books whet a child’s appetite to learn. I find they do the same for me!

I love deciding what we are going to read each year, and arranging all our school books front and center in our reading nook. The old favorites nestle up alongside shiny new books, just waiting for someone to crack open their covers.

Oh, to be a child again and have time to read every one of those wonderful, living books! I feel blessed that as a homeschooling mom, I’ll get to share a great number of them with the people I love most.

Are you ready to start back to school? Do you need some inspiration? You might enjoy reading some of my Library Builders series. In this series I cover a variety of topics such as Choosing Books for Voracious Readers, Books for Art, Music, Poetry and Nature Study, Mommy’s Reading Time, and Building Character through Books.

I love using the classical cycle of studying history, because I know that my children will encounter each time period in history 3 times throughout their homeschool career.

When they study a topic the first time, we can start to build a framework, and they can fill in the details when we hit that subject again.

The Classical History Cycle

The classical cycle begins with a year of studying the Ancient times, followed by a year devoted to the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, a year for the 19th century and a year for the 20th century. At the end of that four year period, you go back to the Ancients and begin again, each time using more resources which challenge your children at their current level of understanding.

What about “holes”?

Many homeschoolers worry about leaving “holes” in their child’s education. When I started homeschooling almost 10 years ago this was a concern for me, as well. As I began studying history for the first time with my child, I quickly realized that my own public school education had plenty of holes in it! There were vast time periods of history that I had never studied before!

I realize that I can never teach my kids everything there is to know about history, and that the most important thing is to give them a zeal for learning and teach them where to find answers when they have questions. However, I wanted to give them a more systematic approach than the one I had grown up with.

Throughout this Library Builders series we have been reflecting on how the principles laid out in Philippians 4:8 relate to what we should be reading. “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

Every book we read must be excellent

We are told to think on “Whatever is excellent or praiseworthy”. Families today are busy, and most of us probably don’t have as much time to read as we’d like. The bulk of our reading is done for school. Therefore, every book we read for school needs to be excellent.

Some homeschool curriculum providers give children snippets of the classics in textbook compilations. I view this approach a little bit like chewing up a child’s food and then giving it to him to swallow. There comes a point when a child needs to learn to chew the food on his own, and digest it himself.

I do use some excellent history texts as a spine, such as Your Story of the World. We listen to a couple of chapters a week from the volume that corresponds with our history study, as a kind of framework. But the bulk of our reading is classic literature, biographies, hero stories and moral stories relating to the time period of our studies.

Building on a Framework

This framework gives me a basis for choosing books topically. Each summer I get out all the books for the time period we will be studying next. Right now, I am prepping for our study of Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation and Revolutionary war.

I look at all the books that I already own for these topics….the biographies, the hero stories, the moral tales, the theological books, art and music books, and the classics. I set aside the ones we didn’t like the last time we went through this cycle, and make a note of which ones were favorites that we mus read again. Which sections of my bookshelf are wanting….do I need more biographies for this time period, or more art books? As I prepare to make purchases for the coming year, I take note of what I still need, and of which books on my shelves can be substituted for the books my curriculum recommends. I see no point in purchasing a new book about Michelangelo when one on my shelf will do just fine.

The Classical cycle has given me some boundaries, to know how long to spend on a given subject and when to move on. If we spend too much time on the Greeks and not quite enough on the Romans, that’s OK. I know we’ll be back to this material again in a few years, and we can make up for it then. I can feel confident as I look back over almost a decade of homeschooling that I have done my best to provide a systematic study of history. I’m trying to do the same thing with science, taking time to study biology, chemistry, physics and geology in a rotating cycle, as well.

Here are a few of the titles that we have enjoyed during our trip through the Classical cycle. I’ll build some of the links for you, and others you’ll have to google search for yourself!

Ancient Times

G. A. Henty’s The Cat of Bubastes

Tirzah by Lucille Travis

The God King by Joanne Williamson

Ancient Egyptians and their Neighbors by Broida and others in this series

Archimedes and the Door of Science

Classical Kids and other books by Laurie Carlson

Daily Life at the Time of Jesus by Vamosh

Peril and Peace by Mindy and Brandon Withrow

Famous Men of Greece and Famous Men of Rome by Haaren

The Story of the Romans by Guerber

Trial and Triumph by Hanula (spans multiple time periods)

The True Story of Noah’s Ark

books by Peter Connolly

Black Ships before Troy and The Wanderings of Odysseus by Sutcliff (it is worth it to find the illustrated versions)

Hostage Lands by Douglas Bond

Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation

The Great and Terrible Quest has been one of our all-time favorites for this time period

Crown and Covenant series

Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci, both by Diane Stanley

Monks and Mystics: Chronicles of the Medieval Church and Courage and Conviction: Chronicles of the Reformation church by Mindy and Brandon Withrow

The Princess Adelina by Julie Sutter

The Spanish Brothers: A Tale of the 16th Century by Alcock (another memorable favorite)

To Have and to Hold by Johnstone

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare for Children

Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford and other favorite books for Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims

Reformation Heroes

Stories of the Old Dominion

Famous Men of the Middle Ages

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

A Child’s Story of America by Michael/McHugh

Faith and Freedom series by Douglas Bond

Drums of War series from Peter Reese Doyle

19th Century

Charlotte in Giverny by Knight

The Boy in the Alamo by Margaret Cousins

Jack Archer by G. A. Henty

The Drummer Boys’ Battle by Jackson and others in the Trailblazer series

Sarah, Plain and Tall by Machlachlan

Seabird by Holling C. Holling

The Star Spangled Banner by Peter Spier

Modern Times

Twenty and Ten by Du Bois

My Secret Camera

Sergeant York and the Great War by Alvin York and Tom Skeyhill

World War II for Kids

Albert Marrin biographies

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom

The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Augusta Trapp

The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien