“Living Books”: What Are They, and How I Use Them

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Jaime Herndon finished her MFA successful nonfiction penning astatine Columbia, aft leaving a beingness of psychosocial oncology and maternal-child wellness work. She is simply a writer, editor, and publication reviewer who drinks mode excessively overmuch coffee. She is simply a new-ish mom, truthful the java comes successful other handy. Twitter: @IvyTarHeelJaime

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Jaime Herndon finished her MFA successful nonfiction penning astatine Columbia, aft leaving a beingness of psychosocial oncology and maternal-child wellness work. She is simply a writer, editor, and publication reviewer who drinks mode excessively overmuch coffee. She is simply a new-ish mom, truthful the java comes successful other handy. Twitter: @IvyTarHeelJaime

View All posts by Jaime Herndon

Jaime Herndon finished her MFA successful nonfiction penning astatine Columbia, aft leaving a beingness of psychosocial oncology and maternal-child wellness work. She is simply a writer, editor, and publication reviewer who drinks mode excessively overmuch coffee. She is simply a new-ish mom, truthful the java comes successful other handy. Twitter: @IvyTarHeelJaime

View All posts by Jaime Herndon

Jaime Herndon finished her MFA successful nonfiction penning astatine Columbia, aft leaving a beingness of psychosocial oncology and maternal-child wellness work. She is simply a writer, editor, and publication reviewer who drinks mode excessively overmuch coffee. She is simply a new-ish mom, truthful the java comes successful other handy. Twitter: @IvyTarHeelJaime

View All posts by Jaime Herndon

Jaime Herndon finished her MFA successful nonfiction penning astatine Columbia, aft leaving a beingness of psychosocial oncology and maternal-child wellness work. She is simply a writer, editor, and publication reviewer who drinks mode excessively overmuch coffee. She is simply a new-ish mom, truthful the java comes successful other handy. Twitter: @IvyTarHeelJaime

View All posts by Jaime Herndon

Jaime Herndon finished her MFA successful nonfiction penning astatine Columbia, aft leaving a beingness of psychosocial oncology and maternal-child wellness work. She is simply a writer, editor, and publication reviewer who drinks mode excessively overmuch coffee. She is simply a new-ish mom, truthful the java comes successful other handy. Twitter: @IvyTarHeelJaime

View All posts by Jaime Herndon

Jaime Herndon finished her MFA successful nonfiction penning astatine Columbia, aft leaving a beingness of psychosocial oncology and maternal-child wellness work. She is simply a writer, editor, and publication reviewer who drinks mode excessively overmuch coffee. She is simply a new-ish mom, truthful the java comes successful other handy. Twitter: @IvyTarHeelJaime

View All posts by Jaime Herndon

Jaime Herndon finished her MFA successful nonfiction penning astatine Columbia, aft leaving a beingness of psychosocial oncology and maternal-child wellness work. She is simply a writer, editor, and publication reviewer who drinks mode excessively overmuch coffee. She is simply a new-ish mom, truthful the java comes successful other handy. Twitter: @IvyTarHeelJaime

View All posts by Jaime Herndon

Jaime Herndon finished her MFA successful nonfiction penning astatine Columbia, aft leaving a beingness of psychosocial oncology and maternal-child wellness work. She is simply a writer, editor, and publication reviewer who drinks mode excessively overmuch coffee. She is simply a new-ish mom, truthful the java comes successful other handy. Twitter: @IvyTarHeelJaime

View All posts by Jaime Herndon

Jaime Herndon finished her MFA successful nonfiction penning astatine Columbia, aft leaving a beingness of psychosocial oncology and maternal-child wellness work. She is simply a writer, editor, and publication reviewer who drinks mode excessively overmuch coffee. She is simply a new-ish mom, truthful the java comes successful other handy. Twitter: @IvyTarHeelJaime

View All posts by Jaime Herndon

Jaime Herndon finished her MFA successful nonfiction penning astatine Columbia, aft leaving a beingness of psychosocial oncology and maternal-child wellness work. She is simply a writer, editor, and publication reviewer who drinks mode excessively overmuch coffee. She is simply a new-ish mom, truthful the java comes successful other handy. Twitter: @IvyTarHeelJaime

View All posts by Jaime Herndon

Jaime Herndon finished her MFA successful nonfiction penning astatine Columbia, aft leaving a beingness of psychosocial oncology and maternal-child wellness work. She is simply a writer, editor, and publication reviewer who drinks mode excessively overmuch coffee. She is simply a new-ish mom, truthful the java comes successful other handy. Twitter: @IvyTarHeelJaime

View All posts by Jaime Herndon

Jaime Herndon finished her MFA successful nonfiction penning astatine Columbia, aft leaving a beingness of psychosocial oncology and maternal-child wellness work. She is simply a writer, editor, and publication reviewer who drinks mode excessively overmuch coffee. She is simply a new-ish mom, truthful the java comes successful other handy. Twitter: @IvyTarHeelJaime

View All posts by Jaime Herndon

Jaime Herndon finished her MFA successful nonfiction penning astatine Columbia, aft leaving a beingness of psychosocial oncology and maternal-child wellness work. She is simply a writer, editor, and publication reviewer who drinks mode excessively overmuch coffee. She is simply a new-ish mom, truthful the java comes successful other handy. Twitter: @IvyTarHeelJaime

View All posts by Jaime Herndon

“Living books? What connected world are those?” Glad you asked! Living books are a large portion of the Charlotte Mason acquisition philosophy. Rather than utilizing textbooks, surviving books are preferred. So what are they? Living books are typically written by idiosyncratic with a passionateness for the taxable (generally an adept oregon idiosyncratic with lived experience), the code is conversational, it’s well-written — beautifully written, successful information — and not overly simplified, and it manages to seizure your imaginativeness and animate you. These books are often successful communicative signifier — not adust similar textbooks — and bring a taxable to life. Rather than conscionable being compendia of facts, they incorporate ideas for readers to deliberation astir and prosecute for themselves.

In homeschooling my son, I’ve shifted toward a Charlotte Mason-inspired homeschool from a Montessori-inspired homeschool. While astir CM-inspired homeschools and curricula are Christian, arsenic Mason incorporated that into her lessons, we are not, and truthful our CM is secular. If you’re looking for faith-based CM content, there’s plentifulness retired determination and tons of large Instagrammers and curricula — but it’s not thing we do. Mason’s main acquisition doctrine was that children are calved people, and we request to amended the full person, not conscionable their mind. What does that mean? Their location should beryllium an ambiance of surviving and learning. They should larn astir creation and music, utilize shorter lessons, and person plentifulness of clip for being extracurricular successful nature, arsenic good arsenic free, unstructured play. (This is simply a precise brief, precise distilled summary — if you’d similar to larn more, I would urge A Literary Education: Adapting Charlotte Mason for Modern Secular Homeschooling by Emily Cook, Modern Miss Mason by Leah Boden, and of course, Charlotte Mason’s ain books).

This station is written successful that context, but I privation to marque wide that surviving books tin beryllium utilized successful immoderate household, not conscionable successful those that homeschool. They tin beryllium utilized to supplement immoderate textbook your kid is utilizing successful school, for astir immoderate subject, and they tin beryllium utilized arsenic a usher for choosing books astatine the library.

Examples of Living Books

It’s ever easier to recognize what thing is erstwhile you person examples, truthful fto maine amusement you what I mean. For science, we’ve been studying ecosystems and birds. Instead of looking for a textbook, we’re speechmaking books similar Holiday Pond by Edith M. Patch, Nature School by Lauren Giordano, Stephanie Hathaway, and Laura Stroup, and The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton W. Burgess. If my lad were a small older, I’d privation to work Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults by Robin Wall Kimmerer with him. Instead of being books of adust facts, each of these books person conversations with the reader, thatch done illustration and story, and supply tons of accusation successful a mode that tin beryllium understood without watering it down.

That’s each good and good, you mightiness beryllium thinking, but what astir thing similar math? Well, thankfully, determination are besides surviving books for mathematics — which is large due to the fact that it’s not a favourite taxable of mine, though my lad loves it. One illustration of a surviving mathematics publication is Sir Cumference and the First Round Table, arsenic good arsenic each the different books successful the series. They marque the concepts factual alternatively of abstract, and bring much-needed amusive to the subject.

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I effort to prime a assortment of readers, nonfiction, and fabrication that truly marque the taxable travel to life. It makes a immense quality for my son, and adjacent for myself. Gail Gibbons’s books are usually a go-to for maine (I’ve written astir this here), arsenic good arsenic Julia Rothman’s books, and a substance of representation books and aboriginal section books, for immoderate we are studying.

For wide literature, our surviving books that we’ll beryllium speechmaking this coming twelvemonth see everything from older classics similar All-Of-A-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor and Brighty of the Grand Canyon by Marguerite Henry to much modern books similar A Bit of Earth by Karuna Riazi and Peacemaker by Joseph Bruchac.

The champion happening astir choosing your surviving books is that everyone’s lists volition look otherwise — you mightiness spot definite themes oregon immoderate of the aforesaid books travel up implicit and implicit again if you hunt for #livingbooks connected Instagram (more connected that successful the adjacent section), but don’t get discouraged oregon tense that you’re choosing the “wrong” ones — if you’re pursuing your child’s lead, support going.

But So Many of These Books Are Old!

Yes, yes they are. If you walk immoderate clip perusing Charlotte Mason homeschool pages oregon Instagram posts, you’ll rapidly announcement that galore CM purists don’t stray overmuch from aged curricula suggestions and truly favour immoderate benignant of time-gone-by. Many person a penchant for older books and immoderate problematic classics (Little House, anyone?), and the publication selections tin beryllium less-than-diverse.

Amber O’Neal Johnston (@heritagemomblog connected Instagram), writer of A Place to Belong: Celebrating Diversity and Kinship successful the Home and Beyond, is simply a CM homeschooler who has illustrated that it’s imaginable to person a CM homeschool afloat of surviving books that are divers and inclusive — and don’t person to beryllium decades and decades old.

While galore CM booklists of surviving books person older books — immoderate of which are great; I’m not throwing each of them retired conscionable due to the fact that they’re older — determination are plentifulness of modern surviving books everyplace you look. If they bring a taxable to life, your kid enjoys them, they’re well-written, and the kid people learns done speechmaking it, that’s a large spot to commencement for a surviving book!

When researching surviving books, you’ll besides spot the connection “twaddle.” I disregard that. “Twaddle” refers to books that immoderate radical mightiness telephone “brain candy” — amusive books, casual reading, etc. I similar to deliberation of immoderate speechmaking arsenic bully reading, particularly for kids. You ne'er cognize what they’ll larn from a publication oregon however they’ll beryllium inspired. While surviving books are fantastic and the backbone of our homeschooling, I don’t deliberation judging books helium chooses is productive. That being said, I’ve besides recovered that my lad volition often (at this point, anyway) independently take books that would beryllium considered “living books” implicit alleged “twaddle.”

Living books tin look similar galore antithetic things, depending connected what works for your kid and what their interests are. They tin beryllium older books oregon modern books, and galore antithetic genres. They’re large additions to immoderate child’s room and tin assistance signifier a child’s involvement successful a taxable successful a mode that accepted textbooks can’t.

If you’re funny successful speechmaking much astir gathering up your child’s library, cheque retired this station connected 50 must-read nonfiction books for kids, and this station connected childhood favorites that person held up implicit time.

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