📚READ ALOUD BOOK LIST: our FAVORITE homeschool family read alouds REVIEW

you guys I am so excited to share a few of our family's favorite read alouds today with you all it was a little hard actually to pick just a few and to think well which ones had I read with most of the kids or which ones were maybe new to our family that I wanted to make sure to share with you today but although it was hard I picked a few to share these are some that are new some that are favorites and I think these are all great options that you can enjoy across a wide age range in your home school for those of you who are new here my name is Amy Sloan I'm a second generation homeschooling mom of five my oldest actually graduated from our home school last year and is now a university student studying engineering but we still have four kiddos hat at our home school in our home in our family and they range at age from 9 to almost 177 and grades currently three to um 11 so there's a wide age range and I know what it's like to try to find books that can appeal to a wide age range something that even mom and dad can enjoy something that is not too much above the younger kids although I will say in our family um we push that a little far and we've been known to read Animal Farm together as a family and that was actually a really fun experience a couple years ago and you'd be surprised how much even young children can pick pick up on with some of those deeper themes um but that being said today I'm going to focus on some books that I have enjoyed with the kids this past year and that have just been kind of Newfound favorites and uh at least one old fav or no maybe two old classic favorites I'm looking over at at my book stack here so to start with I want to let you know about a new series actually so this is like I think seven for the price of one although we've only read the first five books in the series so the first read aloud hit from our for our family this year was the Half Magic series by Edward eager now we actually have only read Half Magic aloud to the entire family my husband read this aloud and it captured everyone's imagination from my you know college student age guy all the way down to my youngest son and John and I enjoyed it as well it is a family story a sibling story it has Fant elements if you are a fan of Elanor es so like the ginger pie series or um if you enjoy um Elizabeth Enright the uh The Saturdays the four story mistake the meland D quartet you will love this series one of the things I love about a good family read aloud especially with a wide age range is it has to have that little quirky sense of humor you know kind of like if you're watching one of a kid movie with the the family but it has that kind of wink and the nod to the older the older people in the room as well and I think that this book is like that it's it's approachable it's engaging um for your younger kids but it's also going to have those deeper ideas and deeper themes in fact I told my husband I thought this was really um asking the biggest question one of the big questions literature asks which is what makes a good life and what makes a happy man and um don't think it's going too far to say that that is actually what this book is about but we loved this book and loved it so much went on to get the whole rest of the series these are only the ones I've already read aloud only want to share here things I've actually read myself and my son uh my almost nine-year-old son Isaac has been in and out of the hospital a lot this year with his Leukemia treatment and one of the things that has been beautiful in that time is a lot of read aloud time just one-on one with me one-on-one time with his dad to read and the series that he and I have spent quite a bit of time reading are some of the other books from this half Magic series so highly highly recommend Half Magic by Edward eager and the rest of the series while I'm mentioning all the books I've read aloud specifically just to Isaac this year it would be remiss of me not to mention The Chronicles of Narnia now Chronicles of Narnia is probably as a series the book I have read the series I've read the most of any book of all time in my entire life um I am a firm believer that this is a series that grows with you that deepens with you and in fact you cannot possibly read it too many times if you are an adult who hasn't read Chronicles of Narnia this is your chance to read it and experience it with your children and if you have read it in the past and you think well I've read it I'll just let my kids read it let me encourage you to take this opportunity to read it again and again with your children we have read aloud this series to our children multiple times in different ways in different forms sometimes oneon-one with a child sometimes in a group setting we've listened to the audiobooks together I have a favorite audiobook version I'll try to put in the in the notes here for the video and every time I read it it gets better and better you cannot read this series too many times if you want a reminder of what's eternally true how do you deal with hard things um how do you deal with beautiful things and where does our hope lie you can't go wrong then with Chronicles of Narnia and um the Silver Chair I'm sorry I'm kind of getting teary thinking about this um the Silver Chair is the last uh book that I read aloud with Isaac we finished it in the hospital his last hospitalization and there is nothing that um just brings brings so much joy and encouragement and strengthens my faith in a fictional sense apart from the word of God as the story of puddle glum in this book I don't want to spoil it for you if you haven't read it or if you've only read The Lion The Witch in the wardrobe please read this series read it with your children read it again and again and um yeah you you can't go wrong with Chronicles of Narnia anytime we're like not quite sure what to read next if you just pick up a favorite Narnia book it's always a winner for everyone okay let me try to get myself back together in our family morning time I try to read aloud a little bit every day to the kids it's really great even on days when maybe uh one of the teens you know has uh work or a class outside the home um to have a book that maybe I read to them when they were younger so they're not going to miss out on anything they know what's going to happen but when they are home they can sit in with everyone else and hear the story and that is what we did in the fall semester with caddy woodlon now if you are a fan of the little house stories or maybe you're not so much a fan and are looking for something kind of similar um I highly recommend caddy woodlon in fact I don't know but I think if I had to choose between caddy woodlon and Laura Les I would probably pick caddy Woodline this is another great sibling story I'm kind of actually sensing a theme so far the first three I've shared all include siblings cousins kind of friendship Dynamics and this is a story set in the frer and it is an adventure story it's a story about what makes um a man a man and what makes a girl a girl a woman a woman it's a story about family it's a story about America it's a story about making mistakes and how we learn from them and you're also learning history along the way but if you have boys maybe have turned up their noses at the Little House series caddy woodlon I know it's like named after a girl but actually her brothers are a huge part of this story um and they are best friends so there's there's siblings that are best friends boys and girls every gender will love this there are still quotes now that have become funny little jokes in our family um after reading it last fall and um it was a delight I actually had it on my 40 Before 40 list um that's a whole another thing I don't think I'm going to make that this year you guys but it was when I remembered loving myself from childhood and it was so much fun to read it aloud with the kids this fall highly recommend caddy woodlon okay first I just have to show you some of these illustrations every once in a while I'll be at a thrift store or a garage sale or something like that and I'll stumble upon a book that I've never seen before and I'm just blown away by the illustrations and that is the case for this one Around the World in 80 Days um a well-known novel by Jules ver but I got this golden Illustrated classic edition and the illustrations are stunning so beautiful so um I mean I got this one used at a at a thrift store something I don't even remember but if you have the chance to find this particular Edition I would recommend it so um I will give a caveat with this so we read this one aloud this spring semester in our morning time and so that is with not obviously most of these have not been with my college um Age kid but everybody else and I loved it because it has short chapters with I which I think is really key for a read aloud short chapters are the best because you can feel like you quickly get to a good stopping point without taking up too much time and then one more chapter can feel like oh yeah kids okay okay I'll read one more chapter and um it doesn't doesn't take too much time um but this was really fun I will so the caveat is it is a piece of literature of its time and so there are um word choices or descriptions or stereotypes that um definitely reflect the bias of the author and so that actually provided opportunities for us to discuss there were things I was able to edit some on the Fly Just minimal things that I was able to edit as I read aloud um just because of the youngest children in the room I wanted to protect their their imaginations but it was actually kind of interesting because the author is a Frenchman and so the stereo types are not just for non-western countries although that is certainly there um but it's also very funny to read his stereotypes about Americans I mean he was really poking fun at at Americans as well so we could learn to laugh at ourselves and some of those stereotypes um but it was interesting because my older kids in particular were able to pick up even on some of the the adjectives he would choose the different ways he would describe different parts of the world and what that reflected about his assumptions about that part of the world so um I will just say uh to be aware of that don't just skim over it but take the opportunity to discuss it if you can with your kids but aside from that it is hysterical clever um a way to sort of get this broad view of the world of his time in a in an exagger ated form to be clear but the descriptions are rich the characters are very unique and delightful and you will be on the edge of your seats um several of us had read the book before so we kind of remembered the ending like the big reveal the big twist at the end but even so we couldn't quite remember how we got to that twist so it was really fun to read this aloud um we all laughed together and enjoyed this story so um I did not do this this year was not the year for it but I could see it actually being a great read aloud if you wanted to also trace the journey on a map maybe do a little bit of geography on the side and turn it into a bit more um of a unit study or a jumping off point but we didn't do that we just enjoyed it and I think it was worth reading here is another book with fabulous illustrations oh my goodness you guys this book is so pretty this was one I worked through slowly surely with my youngest son and sometimes his big sisters would sit in and it is a retelling of Pilgrim's Progress it's little Pilgrims Progress and all of the characters are animals isn't this just beautiful look at this you see it's just beautiful really really beautiful so if you were wanting um a gentle wage and introduce your children to the story of Pilgrim's Progress um this is a beautiful one you can add to your family's collection everyone can enjoy it it is telling the story that is universal to us all the story of the Christian um pilgrimage to Zion and so a lot of those ideas and struggles are going to be familiar the same struggles our children have in small ways are really the same struggles we have as grown-ups right and so we can find points of commonality there with them as we read this aloud and if your family like ours likes to set aside Sunday and do things that are special for the Lord's day um this makes a great Sunday read okay so this last one is a little different it's not a read aloud that you read from start to finish but upon request from my oldest daughter my 11th grader this spring semester we have Incorporated um the Christian Almanac in our morning time so the Christian Almanac was compiled by George Grant and Gregory Wilbur and each day there is a new page spread so I will just open up to let's see I'll open up to April 17th how about that all right so you can see that there is first um on one side there's a brief um story about some character some person or some event from church history sometimes it's related to that specific day sometimes it's not and on the opposing side there is a a quote for each day and then there is a this day in history so you can go through and see this day in history in 1421 72 Villages and more than 100,000 people were Swept Away in an immense flood in Holland you it scooching through it goes all the way up to more modern times 1969 a jury in Los Angeles convicted San of assassinating Senator Robert F Kennedy 1998 a Thai military team collected evidence from the body of Po pot so there are all these other things that you can read about um throughout both history and church history so it's a this day in history as well as a brief introduction to some of the Lesser known um people and events in church history specifically so we've been really enjoying that as part of our morning time routine um and again you could do this at the dinner table or at The Breakfast Table I think anyone can find it enjoyable and um if you miss a day or two it doesn't really matter cuz it's just all in calendar order and you open up to whatever day is next if you want even more fabulous book recommendations definitely check out the playlist that my friend Katie from Life in the mundane is putting together I'm doing this video as part of a collaboration with Katie and other YouTubers sharing some of our favorites and I hear some of them maybe sharing their not so favorites of read alouds from this school year so I will put that link in the description make sure you check out all those other videos as well now Katie is one of the other ladies one of the other mentors that the contributors and made to homeschool which is our online homeschool Community we have come together to create a safe place off the major social media platforms where you can meet other homeschool moms you can talk to some of your favorite um YouTube creators and other homeschoolers we have resources and Live Events and just a really cool community that is developing over there you you can actually get a free one-week trial so if you go to humility and doxy.com slm2 you can find out all about that or check the link down below and I would love to have you come and join us in there be a part of the ma to homeschool Community um I'm often sharing things we reading in there or people will ask for curriculum advice or book advice so if you love book talk definitely come and check out Aid homeschool I did want to make one other comment related to read aloud so sometimes with read alouds we think we have to be the one reading aloud but I want to encourage you to think outside the box and look into audiobooks as a great way to bring more family reading time into your life so you can use Libby or overdrive most libraries have access to e audio books you don't even have to pay for them um of course there's Audible and other online um audiobook options that are great we have um apps on our kids Kindles I have an app on my phone you can access it through your um Echo dot or whatever other smart device you may have your computer there's so many ways to access these audiobooks and if you're riding in the car together or sitting in a doctor's waiting room or maybe Mom wants to do something with her hands or is is washing the dishes can't sit down and actually be the one reading but if everyone is in the room together listening to the same Audi book you're having a very similar experience to that read aloud time you're having a shared story shared memories and it saves mom's voice I actually have some of my favorite Audi books shared in a list so I'll include the ones that our family has enjoyed um down in the description pH that was a lot of books and there's even more I could suggest I didn't even get into the picture books that we read and enjoyed this year because in our family you're never too old for picture books um so many other great books I could recommend but I'll stop there for now and I would love for you to let me know in the comments let me know what are some of the favorite books you have read aloud to your kids this year I'm always adding to my library hold list so tell me who um the ages of your kids why you loved the book and um I hope to add more wonderful titles to my family's list and if you like podcasts you can find me at homeschool conversations with humility and doxology here on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app oh and would you take a minute to like the video and subscribe to my channel it's humility and doxology and I love to encourage other homeschool moms um and point us to the hope and joy we can find in Jesus

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Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2024