Hundreds of the Best Books for Homeschooling

Starting the Homeschooling Journey

When my wife, Kristin, started homeschooling our son she was more than a little frustrated. She learned to read at an early age and never had any trouble getting good grades in school and expected that homeschooling our son would be easy. Not so much. Turned out our son was dyslexic and all boy. Sitting him down to learn his times tables or write his letters or learn to read was a constant struggle.

He couldn’t concentrate for very long and none of the information was sticking. She was frustrated. Our son was frustrated. Neither of them was having any fun.

Kristin felt like homeschooling should be fun. Learning is fun, right? She was teaching art history classes to homeschoolers at that time and had some students who were very bright and loved learning. She asked the parents what they were doing.

Their response? We just read. This was a little perplexing. Just read? Yeah, they pick out books they want to read and they read them or we read them to them.

Adjusting to Your Children

So Kristin got rid of her initial plans and just started reading to our son. He would play with Legos^® or other toys and she would read to him. Through that process she began looking for books, books that would not only teach him things but also be fun to listen to. Textbooks were out. These books had to be entertaining, academic and inspiring.

Kristin started buying the best books she could find and sending them home with her students. When they returned a book she’d ask how they liked it. From this process and her experience reading these books to our son her list of books began to grow and grow.

Serious Fun: The best of the best for homeschooling

Serious Fun: Homeschooling with Real Books is a list of  Kristin’s favorite books that she used with our son in Kindergarten through the 8th grade. They represent hundreds of hours of research on her part, and thousands of hours of writing and drawing on the part of the authors and illustrators whose works are represented. That is the great thing about a well-written book: your children reap the benefits of all the time and effort that goes into each one. 

Our son was a late reader, but he could listen to book after book and absorb complicated content even though he couldn’t read. A kid that might have been considered a slow-learner in a traditional educational setting learned math, science, biology, physics, literature, poetry and grammar from books that he would never have been able to read himself.

If you need ideas for great homeschooling books try Serious Fun. You can get many of these books at the library or purchase them yourself. Not only will your children enjoy them, but you will too. 

You can get a taste of the books in Serious Fun by visiting our website: booksk12.com.