I've read almost all of his books, including taking a course in college on him and his works. Don't get me wrong, he's a great author and I respect him and like most of his works (I'm not a big sci-fi fan, so those books haven't been re-read ;)). He was, however, a crusty old Oxford Don who saw women as an entirely different species, and I (and most critics... and I don't mean "critics" as in "people who hate him," I mean it as in "people who study his work and draw academically-oriented conclusions... also) think that it comes out in his writing.

He never goes to Lucy's world. if you really want to know what happens... they all die (including the parents) and go to Heaven except for Susan who was too into boys and lipstick to be "saved" (Lewis wasn't a big fan of women, and it comes through in most of his books)

I put them on my ipod, and have a stereo dock in my kitchen that I can listen to while I cook and clean. Sometimes I move the stereo dock into the living room in the evening and listen while I sew or knit.

I have only seen the slideshow (my library showed it a few years ago), and thought it was very interesting. I keep meaning to rent the movie, but I don't seem to ever have the time!

Thank you for sharing! I will look into this.

Thank you everyone, for your helpful responses! I am just starting to research things (my daughter isn't near school-age yet!) and everything posted looks like an excellent start.

There are so many curricula, books, lesson plans, etc for homeschoolers... but it seems like most of them present a very Christian worldview. How do other atheist/secular parents pick and choose? Are there any good sources for finding secular material, or at least material that it's really easy to take the religion out of? (And to be clear, I'll be teaching my children about religion: it's not that I'm anti-religion. I just don't want lesson plans based on scripture readings or ideology that I don't agree with).

I think they would be appropriate for a 4 year old, but you might want to read them first. Some of them deal with surprisingly heady topics: the Samantha books have child labor, Kirsten's best friend dies and her house burns down in the last book, the Addy books have some racism and I believe a slave is whipped in the first book. They're children's books so nothing is too awful, but you might want to be prepared to talk about some of the not-so-happy points of history.

Sneakers. I call tennis shoes something very specific: those white canvas Keds things that were popular in the 80's. They got dirty so quickly and then looked awful! Nike, Reebok, New Balance, etc type shoes are sneakers to me.

I am interested in giving my children a classical education because I think that in order to understand the present, you have to understand the past. This goes even further than just knowing history, although obviously I think the history-centric curriculum is great. I particularly enjoy how the history is not disjointed, the way it usually is taught in schools, with entire continents ignored and huge gaps. As for the other subjects, I guess I'm just a traditionalist. Learning Latin teaches so much about English. Logic and rhetoric teach us not only how to get our points across, but also how to understand the points that other people, both past and present, make. All the nitpicky stuff that has been taken out of so many public school curricula, like grammar and spelling and music appreciation and art criticism, lead to a deeper and richer understanding of the world. We are not religious, but by teaching our children about the religions of the world, and what they believe, and their texts, we help them to understand history, art, and literature. A classical education obviously isn't for everyone, but I think it will turn out the most educated child that can reasonably be expected. Now, the trick here is that there are all sorts of things that "educated" could mean, and that's kind of the point... all homeschool parents have to pick out the program or ideology that they think will best prepare their child for the world. So I guess it depends on how you see the world!

How funny, I was just logging on to ask this same question, but figured I'd stop at the "Today's Post" link to see what other people were talking about. I'd really like to implement a Froebel pre-school curriculum, but am finding no information! I've read "Inventing Kindergarten," which inspired me but offered no curriculum guidance (I do recommend reading it), and the Froebel Foundation's web page hasn't been updated since 2002 it seems. I'll be following this thread closely.