Jump to content

Menu

Most-often used books in your home library


podoba01
 Share

Recommended Posts

This is a spin-off to some other posts I started. I noticed a lot of you suggest purchasing good books to use in your home library. What books (fiction or nonfiction) do you and/or your children use frequently? I would think the WTM would be an obvious choice on this forum :001_smile:, but what about encyclopedias/dictionaries, read-alouds or other works of fiction that you or your children read over and over, books that have influenced you as a parent/homeschooler that you review frequently, and well, you get the idea! I use the 1000 Good Books list, All Through the Ages, and the Sonlight catalogs as a guide for our library trips, but it's always nice to hear what you love so much!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We've been doing a prehistory unit here for awhile and currently my dd's favorite book is The Complete Guide to Prehistoric Life. It's a fun supplement to all the "Walking With" and "Chased by Dinosuars" series that you can stream off of Netflix.

 

The pictures are literally taken from scenes from the movies. It's really a fun book.

 

 

I love The Elements by Theodore Grey and can't wait till my kids are bit older to appreciate this one more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Many of the books mentioned above: dictionary, Usborne encyclopedia, NG world atlas, etc.

 

In addition, I have two guides to literary terms that I use quite often.

Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory

Guide to Literary Terms (Royal Fireworks Press)

I love both equally so often read from both, when needed.

 

We also have a full set of encyclopedias. I know. So dated. But they are great for spurring interest or last-minute research topics.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is a spin-off to some other posts I started. I noticed a lot of you suggest purchasing good books to use in your home library. What books (fiction or nonfiction) do you and/or your children use frequently? I would think the WTM would be an obvious choice on this forum :001_smile:, but what about encyclopedias/dictionaries, read-alouds or other works of fiction that you or your children read over and over, books that have influenced you as a parent/homeschooler that you review frequently, and well, you get the idea! I use the 1000 Good Books list, All Through the Ages, and the Sonlight catalogs as a guide for our library trips, but it's always nice to hear what you love so much!

 

I'm in the middle of these books right now, and they have and continue to influence my homeschool enormously:

 

CM's Original Homeschooling Series

When Children Love to Learn

Teaching Children

The Well Trained Mind

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My girls (5 and 3) love love LOVE all of our DK First Encyclopedias. We have the First Nature, Animals, Human Body, and a few others. We also have a ton of other similar books (Usborne Look inside your body, etc) - our own little reference shelf. :D The pictures are great, they're perfect for these early years. Mine particularly like to take them when we have road trips: lots of pics to entertain them for hours!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not a book, but we get a lot of use out of our globe.

 

Same here. DD used it so much it came off the stand (repeatedly), so now I keep it in a round basket on our kitchen table (to keep it from rolling away). It makes it much easier to examine Antarctica closely. :D

 

We also use our 4" thick unabridged dictionary almost every day.

 

A few other favorites:

Oxford Atlas of World History

Usborne illustrated math dictionaries

Basher books (Chemistry, Periodic Table, etc.)

DK's How the Incredible Human Body Works

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My boys have read the Internet-Linked World History by Usborne over and over. It is falling apart.

They also have read all of our Greek Myths books several times. They still do.

 

We must have the same boys.

 

 

Mine use Usbornes Internet linked World history and their Science constantly. They also love D's auleris Greek Mythology. Our Thesaurus gets a decent workout by my older.

 

As for book books.

 

Dr. Seuss

Little Bear

Beatrix Potter

D Aulaires (most of them)

Aesop Fables

The Narnia collection

 

Any time I went to the thrift store I took a book list so I own quite a few of "classics" as well as most of the Time warp Trios, Horrible Histories, any Hardy Boys I can find. I also bought lots of the Magic School Bus series.

 

Oh and all the Janice Van Cleave science books. I own 5 Or 6 of them and they are our go to science experiments.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Field guides get daily use here.

 

Dictionary and rhyming dictionary.

 

Holling C. Holling books have been read numerous times.

 

Last year, I would have said the Thornton Burgess books, which ds read over and over for two years... at least! This year, it's Redwall...

 

Golden Children's Bible

 

Richard Scarry's Best Storybook Ever has seen constant use for 8 years. I've had to tape the spine more than once.

 

Andrew Lang's Fairy books.

 

Beatrix Potter.

 

d'aulaires Greek Myths and Norse Myths.

 

James Herriot's Treasury.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not all of these are necessarily schoolish, but here are some of the books my kids read over and over. I think they've probably read some of them 50+ times.

 

If You books (If You Lived During the American Revolution, etc. That might not be the exact title)

Let's Read and Find Out science books

D'Aulaire's book of Greek Myths

Usborne World History

Horrible Histories

Sisters Grimm books

The Penderwicks books

Beverly Cleary books, especially Ramona books

Roald Dahl books

Lightning Thief books

Calvin & Hobbes books

Harry Potter books

Many individual historical fiction titles, like Bound for Oregon

A Human Body Encyclopedia (actually we have 2 different ones that are used a lot)

A Geography Encyclopedia

A History of US (yes, individual volumes are pulled off the shelf and read for fun)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My kids have reread Tales from India, Tales from China, Tales from Japan, Tales from Egypt over and over, they have been a good investment. The are deep, so kids can get multiple levels of meaning out of them as they get older. Also, the Usborne science books for the younger years are so good at explaining concepts, with good pictures that my kids have gone back to them for help understanding things.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll go through our reference shelf....

 

Books that see the most use:

 

the encyclopedia set (World Book)

the atlas (we actually have 5-6 of them of different levels/scopes - the Answer Atlas is particularly useful)

dictionary

Synonym Finder (thesaurus)

English handbooks (Scott-Foresman, Write Source, etc.)

 

For my high school students, Well-Educated Mind, HTRAB, and Invitation to the Classics, as well as the timeline book, are popular, as well as the MLA handbook.

 

For little guy, he goes back to the Usborne big science encyclopedia and the DK history encyclopedia over and over again.

 

All of my dd love reading the World Almanac for some reason, too, and look things up in that frequently.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another book I think is totally awesome and valuable (and I wish I had known about it when my kids were 4) is Kitchen Table Math. So far I have read only book 1. This would be the perfect time for you to read it.

 

Thank you! I will look into this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let's Read and Find Out science books

Usborne Stories from Around the World

Beatrix Potter collection

Winnie the Pooh

Thornton Burgess collection

Any by Robert McCloskey, Virginia Lee Burton, Patricia Polacco, Tomie DePaola

Richard Scarry

Usborne "My First Encyclopedia of..." titles

Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists series

atlas

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not a book, but we get a lot of use out of our globe.

 

I love using the globe, but so far ds is enamored with Google Earth. He loves playing with it and looking up places we read about.

 

Reference book we use often:

 

American Heritage Children's Dictionary (6-8 grade; we couldn't find many if the words ds was encountering in his elementary dictionary)

 

Other books I use to help me teach:

 

Natural Speller

Critical Conditioning

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A dictorionary called "A First Dictionary" meant for elementary students. I saw it at a charity shop and immediately grabbed it. Its the same one I used when I was in primary. Its small enough to fit into a little tiny bag, carry around a lot, and for when I need to explain the definition of something and am not quite sure how to explain it to the kids, I grab that (I find the dictionary you get from google, tends to end up having another word they don't understand in the definition lol, so we could end up on a major rabbit trail if we used that as our basis.

 

Walter the Farting Dog - LOL! My kids are still all in the stage where bodily movements are completely fascinating so we have a couple of the Water the farting dog books, and Zoo Poo.

 

Children Just Like Me - I actually have 2 copies of this. 1. so that I can read it out easily whilst they have the other copy and look at that and 2. Because they love it soo much, So I have one copy that stays on my reference shelf, so as not to get damaged, and the other they are aloud to read at will.

 

Any of the internet-linked encyclopedias

 

Classics like House at Pooh Corner, Charlottes Web etc These get read over and over again.

 

Roald Dahl Books - I find reading these tend to make the kids find reading interesting, so its an author I love to use here. They can see that books can even be funny & silly, with lots of words for things like "disgusting" (dispicable, horrible, filthy, nasty etc).

 

Poetry Books - We get the little summary "best works of" books. I read it out slowly, and then we discuss what the kids think the poem means.

 

Other than those I can't really see particular things being used over and over, as all of their books are read over and over, if they aren't then they are donated, we don't keep unused books around as we don't have the room.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not a book, but we get a lot of use out of our globe.

 

Especially the Geosafari Globe-my dc are playing with it right now!

 

Also, our maps.

 

My dc love animals, so DK Encyclopedia of Animals

Complete Book of Animals

Animal Atlas

Peterson Guides & Golden Guides (insects,wildflowers,amphibians,rocks & minerals,you name it!)

Encyclopedias

 

Magic Treehouse Series w/fact books. My ds has read these over & over & over, and learned tons of facts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...