Working on Our Reading List for School

"In some cultures they only eat vomit. I've never been there, but I read about it—*in a book*."

source / original source

Slowly but surely I've been building a basic representation of what our homeschool year might look like. While it's impossible to know exactly where we'll go and what we'll do every day, or to include all the conceivable lessons I'd love to get to (so...many...ideas...), what I do know for sure is that we'll be doing a LOT of reading.

Last week I began compiling a preliminary reading list. It's long, and it's not getting shorter anytime soon (that's what she said), but I'm fine with that. Some of the books on the list will tie in with units of study I'm hoping to cover. Some will be used as practice for learning the parts of a story. But most of them are just for the pure joy of reading and nothing more.

Of course, I'm of the mind that learning during reading is automatic and doesn't require a lesson plan, so I certainly don't feel any guilt about not having worksheets to go along. There are a few books with which I want to tie in some specific learning activities, but I think it's more important to make the reading a pleasurable experience for Bear, and for her that means limiting the "school-y" stuff.

I'll probably talk more about our reading selections as we dive into school in September. I'll share with you our thoughts on the books and what we get out of them. Maybe I'll even have Bear do a guest post. :)

We like to re-read a lot of our favorite books during our bedtime reading ritual, so the books we read in conjunction with schooling will probably (at least mostly) be new to either her or both of us. Believe it or not, I've never read Sarah, Plain and Tall, so I'm planning for us to read that one very early. I think I'm as excited about experiencing new children's literature as Bear is (if not more)!

What is some of your favorite children's lit? Anything (classic or contemporary) that I should consider?