I really like this individualized approach. With my kid, he pretty much already has a simple time and geographic reference. Like he already can talk about the Russian Revolution, the colonization of Africa, the Greek dark ages, Manifest Destiny...I'm not saying he has deep knowledge of these things, but he has a very, very good basic overview, thanks to all the hours he's spent reading history books. He loves this stuff. I am trying to figure out what the right next step is, so that he's still having fun with it and is also building skills. Right now, he is super aware of how much he knows and can easily veer into showing off, especially since he's the big brother in the house. I don't mean that as a put-down, he is a very sweet kid. I want to follow his interest, and encourage it, but also keep him grounded.

So you don't have your kids do a separate writing program? I have been so torn about that.

See, this is all so helpful, thanks. I don't know who Wes Callihan is and now I'm going to look him up. That Reading Like a Historian program looks really good too.

I've never heard of Reading Like a Historian -- thanks, I'll look it up. I totally agree that there's only room for so much output, and my goals for history could also be met in other ways. I guess I'm thinking about history because my kid loves history and I'm following his lead; I was actually thinking that I won't have him do much output for literature and it'll be something we just read and talk about together. Then again, I WAS planning on having him do a separate writing program, so I'll have to see whether that ends up being too much.

What is TOG?

Haha I'm sure there ARE chants and songs but we're not doing them either. We mostly take the AO approach to art history, by doing picture studies. Although we also have some History of Art books and I heard my son, the other day, giving my daughter a very bossy lesson about different Periods in Art.

So sorry about your timeline!! Ours is just a bunch of papers taped to the wall but I would be so sad to see it go. We have been very AO-ish up to this point to, and I'm planning to continue that way with my daughter (she's going into 2nd grade). So this is new territory for me and I guess that's why I'm posting about it. I feel like my son is ready to be more independent and I think he'd get a lot of satisfaction out of doing more, but I'll have to see how it actually goes.

I'm also really curious about any "extras" that you guys do for history. Like I know @8FillTheHeart you've said that your kids create newspapers about history, which I think is something that would be a huge hit over here. How do you schedule that kind of project? How hands-on do you get with organizing that kind of work? In general, do you assign projects and leave your kids to just do them, or do you supervise at every stage?

Yesterday, I muddied up the math thread by grumbling that there aren't enough threads on teaching the humanities. So, here's a thread on history. I've been thinking about what I want my kids to get out of learning history. Most of this is super long-term and not relevant at their ages at all, but I'm just going to list it, in no particular order. Ability to evaluate the reliability of sources Ability to understand (and make sense of) conflicting points of view) Ability to interpret information in a variety of forms Ability to frame questions Ability to communicate clearly in writing and orally about complex issues Ability to both argue a point of view AND convey objective facts Ability to draw parallels and connections between historical trends Ability to differentiate between causality and coincidence ...there are probably lots and lots of other things I'm leaving out. Right now, most of that is way, way off in the distance. Actually my main goal this year is to continue to have interesting talks about history but also to teach my older kid to ground himself. My rising 4th grader loves history and reads history for fun; he has a great memory for dates and facts, and he's able to make interesting connections between ideas. This makes sense to me, because he hears my husband and I talking about history and politics all the time; he knows the topic matters to us. He LOVES to join in our conversations, preferably when he can dazzle us with some breezy mention of dates and facts : ) So what I'd like to do is have him do some longer written work than he's done, so far, but to keep that written work very simple and factual. The written work, as I see it, is for discipline and perseverance, and for learning skills like paraphrasing and research. (Not fancy research, just reading our own reference books and writing, say, a short report on Theodore Roosevelt.) Then, we can have fun talks about history and make connections and draw parallels etc. We are doing modern history and will be using a spine plus a lot of living books to supplement. I am planning about a month on each topic and thinking he'll write a short report on something of his choosing each month. What are the rest of you doing for history?

Wow, what interesting results! Have you done narration with them? I would start there and see how it goes. If nothing else, seeing how they narrate might help you figure out where the reading comprehension is breaking down. I mean, is it a lack of vocabulary, is it trouble with certain kinds of sentence structure, is it that there are lots of new concepts in the reading, etc etc etc. I feel like my kids understand readings better when they already know the subject matter a little bit. Like, the first time we read a book about Vikings they might be a little thrown, because everything is so new, but the second book we read about Vikings is a lot easier.

Thanks! I'm requesting books now. and I see that some of these have cartoon versions too, which could be fun if they like the books.

Any suggestions about pretty simple French picture books to read to my kids? They don't speak French; we do some limited conversational French, and I'm planning to step it up. But they really love being read to. I don't mind translating as I go, because what I mainly want from this experience is to give them a positive association with reading in French, and to have them hear plenty of language. So far we've read some Babar books, and a few other random books that I've taken out of the library. Our library is open again but only for pick up, so I can't browse the shelves the way I used to. I'm looking for books with a strong story and characters. They are 8 and almost-7 but I am happy to read them stuff aimed at much littler kids, because of the language difference.

I think sometimes picture books, especially older books like The Little Engine That Could, have trickier vocabulary than chapter books. Maybe she'd feel better about reading simple chapter books, or selections from readers? I also agree with reading aloud as much as possible, and maybe explaining as you go along, even when nobody specifically asks what things mean. Is there also a way to have her help the littler kids with some areas of their lessons, as a way of boosting her confidence?

I require some output (right now we're pretty much on break, but I will when we start up again). But I mostly use "output" to reinforce other skills. So, I often have my kids do oral narrations after history readings, because I want them to work on their narration skills. And we do sometimes do science demonstrations, mostly as a way for them to practice their planning skills -- they help me make a list of supplies and they do a lot of the set-up and clean-up. We also have a very informal time line for history -- each item is just a picture with a few words and a date, like, "first powered flight" or "Bach born." They enjoy it and they have fun looking back at it, but I am always the one to suggest it. My kids love, love, love acting things out, or having little figurines play out scenes from books or from history. So sometimes we do that, but I don't really count it as output because you never know when the characters are going to suddenly change history and start doing crazy stuff : ) I kind of had forgotten about the kind of open-ended messy play everyone is describing here. I should make room for more of that. My kids do paint and cook some, but I wish we were all doing more with our hands, in general.

This feels like quite a challenge! I agree with @Dreamergal that Migrations looks beautiful. That combination of ice and birds is flight is lovely. Yesterday I started reading Age of Innocence. I've never read anything by Edith Wharton before and I'm surprised by what a page-turner it is; I expected it to read more like Henry James. I'm also surprised at how didactic it is. But I'm only a few chapters in, so I won't say any more.

It feels very easy to read. But I wonder if it would be harder to read a handwritten version? I know when I was younger, I used to "check" my own spelling just by writing out a word and seeing whether it "looked" right. I can't really do that as well now. I think our eyes have gotten really used to skimming printed text.

One thing I've found is that you don't have to do everything all the time. Even activities which you do on a short-term basis can have a positive impact on your kids and your family. For example, I'm always kicking myself for not having my kids memorize poetry. Last year we got on a streak of working on that every morning, and it was a lot of fun. Then other things got in the way, and we stopped. I went back to kicking myself for not doing it, and I spent a lot of energy trying to create schedules which I did not follow. Then recently I realized that both kids had actually gotten a lot out of the time we spent memorizing poems. They remember the poems we looked at, and they have nice memories of it. The same goes for some of the "picture studies" we did while following Ambleside. So, even though I haven't been consistent with it, it still had an impact. I had always figured that consistency was the most important thing in schooling, but lately I'm thinking that it's not as simple as that. Maybe it's okay if some of the "extras" are happening just once in a while. For me, that idea is really liberating

Thank you for this list!! It looks great. Years ago I read a couple of detective novels by a Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. I had google because I had forgotten their names, but I still remember loving those books. They're police procedurals, set in Sweden and (I think) not Stockholm. The characters are complex and interesting; there's also a lot of detail about the environment. I had a lot of fun also seeing what people were eating and drinking, what kinds of vacations they had, all of those little details of ordinary life.

Thank you so much for that Simenon link! I'm excited to look for Tropic Moon.

That makes so much sense. Poor kid. I really sympathize. It sounds like sending him fun books is a great idea. This way, he'll have plenty of positive associations with reading. Side question, but I think you said he was 7 or 8? Do you think kids go through a change around that age where they get more rebellious, or at least more aware of adult power? When my son was a little past 7 he suddenly got really resistant to anything he saw as "school," even things he used to love. Now that he's getting closer to 9, he seems to be coming out of it...knock on wood...

Coming here to say that I finished reading "Lord," by Joao Gilberto Noll, and I give it one thumb down. It's a novel about an elderly Brazilian writer who travels to London because he's gotten a mysterious grant to do an unspecified project. He goes into a fugue state almost as soon as he gets to London. I thought it was going to be psychological and romantic. I really love Knut Hamsun and I really thought this was going to be like that and it was not. So much needless grotesque imagery, so much unnecessary sex and violence, maybe I'm a prude but I thought the book was very shallow. Anyway now I know. Now I'm looking for my next book. The Jungle has also been sitting on my shelf for a few years, waiting to be read. Maybe I'll try that...

That's a good idea, thanks! We have her Nature Anatomy and it gets a lot of use. I'll look for the others.

I guess it would help to figure out what, exactly, he hates about reading. Is it the book report, or the reading itself? Is the act of reading hard? Does he get bored with the books he's reading? Etc etc. In my school district, a lot of the teachers let kids pick their own books -- but the kids still don't like reading, because they have to write book reports. The teachers seem to have really high and unreasonable expectations for output. I know at least some of the parents are basically just writing the book reports FOR the kids. So the whole thing is a disaster.

I think Dog Man was a great idea -- my kids love Dog Man. Maybe some joke books, and books about whatever he's interested in?

Thank you!! I had not even thought of gardening books, which just goes to show -- we're in an apartment with no outdoor space. I'll look for the Rodale now. Yesterday I looked through the library catalog and put a hodgepodge of things on hold, including a book called "Bizarre Botany" and a Deborah Madison cookbook called "Vegetable literacy cooking," so we'll have a nice array.