Great Reading for Cycle 1

We are having a great summer, but I am also working on plans for our next school year.  As we look ahead, remember to keep things as simple as possible, so you don’t stress to much or burn out.  You have probably heard the saying “When mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy!”  Keeping things simple helps moms and dads stay more joyful along the home school journey! :)  Leigh Bortins teaches CC parents to use the “stick in the sand” approach, meaning that if Jesus could teach his disciples on the beach with a stick and some sand, then we can teach our children that way, too.  That doesn’t mean that you can’t add in fun activities, songs, or games to help them with the memory work, but just don’t make it too hard on yourself and use simple tools that add to the joy of your home school. 

One way to add to our joy in home education in our home has been to read many great books!  I had to learn to trust the classical model and it took me a year to feel like I didn’t have to have a book for every history sentence!  However, I found simple resources to read aloud non-fiction to the kids that I could use each week and didn’t take much time, like the CC timeline cards, Story of the World, or American History Homework book.  Then, I would try to have a great fictional read aloud book going also, but it didn’t have to go with the time period we were studying.  I learned during my first year in CC that I could review something we had already studied or preview an era of history that we had not studied and with the “pegs” of the CC timeline in our minds, we could place the information wherever it fit in.  We didn’t have to go in chronological order on everything anymore, because we already had the timeline in our brains (or we were working toward having it committed to memory)!  It is freeing to know that you can read books that you and your children enjoy.

We used Cycle 1 for our 2012-13 school year and found some great read aloud books for non-fiction and fiction alike.  Here are the main resources we used for Cycle 1.  You can see that the list of books we really read is not huge, overwhelming, or extensive, but fairly simple.  The children read other books for enjoyment in their individual reading time, as well, but I'm not listing those here.

Cycle 1 Non-fiction Resources:
CC History Acts & Facts History (timeline) Cards
CC History Highlights - can be found on CC Connected, on the CC Cycle 1 Tutorial, or the CC Cycle 1 App. for iPhone, iPod, & iPad
Story of the World Vol. 1 - We interchanged between the paperback and the audio version and I copied some of the coloring pages and maps from the Activity Guide for the kids to use
The Victor Journey Through the Bible - we used with our morning Bible study & devotion time

Cycle 1 Fiction Books:
D’Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths
The Trojan Horse
Hour of the Olympics
Tirzah
Black Ships Before Troy
Twice Freed
Detectives in Togas
Mystery of the Roman Ransom

There are many book lists out there that may be a helpful way for you to find books from the library or to add to your own collection.  Some people are still selling books online, although most of the summer book sales have passed.  You may also want to check PaperbackSwap.  It’s a great place to list books to give away that you do not need anymore and you can send them to other people for credit, then when books are available that you have requested, they will send you a book for free!  You just pay the postage for the books that you send out.  I have found many books this way if I am willing to wait for them.

Non-fiction for Cycle 1:  This is the Cycle 1 Reading Schedule Correlation from the author of the Half a Hundred Acre Wood blog, Brandy Ferrell.  You can find more reading lists on her blog, but I've chosen to share this one, because it's fairly simple.  This list gives chapters or lessons from non-fiction books that correspond to the Cycle 1 history sentences and science topics from a few select resources, including the CC Acts & Facts History cards (Timeline cards), WHH - Scholastic’s Everything You Need to Know about World History Homework, Story of the World, Mystery of History, and Scholastic's Everything You Need to Know about Science Homework.  You do not need to use every resource on this list, but you might enjoy choosing one or two of these resources and then you can use this list as a simple tool to guide you toward pages that would add to your enjoyment of learning the memory work.  Only use these lists if they help you enjoy home schooling, but don’t use them if they overwhelm you!  :)

This is a link to Brandy’s blog where she explains the above list and she also posts similar lists for Cycle 2 and Cycle 3.


Fiction for Cycle 1:  Another way to add to your enjoyment of home schooling is to read aloud great children’s literature!  As I said above, you can really choose good “living books” that are well written and get the audience involved in the story and not worry about the time period they are set in, but if you enjoy finding books that somewhat correspond with the history sentences we will be studying, here are some more lists to get you started.  Some of these lists are overwhelming, but just think of this as walking into the library.  Although there are tons of book titles to choose from, you don’t need to choose every book, just find one or two that look interesting to you and your children.

Here is an extensive book list or “book buffet” list for Cycle 1 from Half a Hundred Acre Wood.

Here is another inspiring list of books that would tie in with our Cycle 1 study of ancient cultures next year!  This one is from Heidi at the Mt. Hope Chronicles blog.



 Remember to keep it simple and enjoy reading through Cycle 1!