A WTM education without access to a library?

[Aiden]

I've been playing this whole home education thing mostly by ear--my daughter is only 3, so I have time to figure this thing out before it starts to matter too much--but my assumption has been that I will buy pre-assembled curricula (maybe one package encompassing multiple subjects, maybe different packages from different companies for different subjects). I'm in the process now, though, of reading TWTM. I just finished the two chapters on history and science in the grammar stage. I absolutely LOVE what I'm reading, and I'm almost ready to jump in and put together my own curriculum using the methods and books cited.

 

However ...

 

Almost every paragraph contains a reference to "trip to the library" or "your librarian can help with this" or "plenty of books to choose from in the library."

 

I don't have a local library, at least not one the carries books in my language. My husband is a diplomat, so we move to a new country every 2-3 years, and sometimes those countries will have library resources in English, but more often than not, they won't.

 

I do have a Kindle, and I'm open to borrowing books via Kindle when the time comes if necessary, but for my daughter's early school years, I prefer to have a physical book in hand while I read to her (myriad of factors here: the Kindle's fragility, the illustrations being better in print, and my assumption that many children's history/science books won't be available on Kindle). The only way for me to get those books is to buy them, have them shipped to me, and hope she likes them (with this method, there is no "wait and see what piques her interest, then find books about it," because her interest will have waned while we wait for the books to arrive). It'll get easier as she gets older and I'm more comfortable using the Kindle for her school reading, but for now, I feel like this international, mobile lifestyle really limits my ability to put together my own package of books.

 

Despite how amazing a do-it-yourself WTM education would be, I find myself shying away from making the attempt because of the logistics of doing it in my situation.

 

Has anyone done this on your own without access to a library? If so, how? Did you just order all the books listed in TWTM--or how did you choose which books to order, without seeing them in person?

 

Or, in the absence of library access, did you find a "big box" education company that works well within this framework? I've considered Sonlight, which we're using for preschool and PreK, but even before starting TWTM, I'd decided not to stick with it past K, partially because it doesn't follow the history cycle I want and partially for other reasons. I'm considering TOG, but I'm still hesitant for reasons that I'm finding difficult to articulate (despite having looked at the free samples on their website)--I think because I can't quite tell how well it will fit with my conservative but not fundamentalist Christian beliefs.

 

I'm sorry for the long post. I'm just trying to figure out how to implement a plan that I believe would provide my daughter with the best possible education ... while also filling in the numerous gaps in my own education! Thank you for any words of wisdom, advice, or encouragement you can offer!

[SarahW]

For a few print books - Kids encyclopedias on various topics. Osborne sells a variety of good-quality ones, though not everyone likes their format. For different subjects a different series may be better. When the kid asks "why?" or "what is?" you can just turn around and grab a book and open to the page on that topic.

 

My kid often has science questions I can't answer, so I got a series of science encyclopedias. They're older, they still talk about old-style tv signals, for example, but they're good enough. The other day when putting together his snap circuits he asked a question about electricity. I said, "why don't we look in your science books?" Then I went to his room, got the book that listed electricity as its topic, opened up to the table of contents, and selected the chapter that answered his question. This is also known as displaying an example of good research skills.  :laugh: 

 

Usually, though, it's more effective for me to just type his question into youtube and find an appropriate video. I don't like that very much, but my kid is very much a 21st century person, and comprehends youtube videos better than I.

[PeterPan]

Well just my two cents, but I wouldn't shy away from SL just over the history cycle thing.  It's MUCH more important that you find a way to interact and teach that brings your dc alive than it is what the particular history cycle is.  And yes, in your situation SL would be extremely helpful.  Awesome books no matter WHAT curriculum you use.  Just don't use the guides if they bug you, kwim?  You could use them to keep books flowing your way, and then use say the online self-paced history and Bible lessons from VP if you wanted.  

 

Will Rainbow Resource ship to your country?  If they will, then you'll be able to get a lot of nice things for that age.  For instance, the Let's Read and Find Out books are wonderful and the Usborne lift-a-flap books.

 

We didn't use the library much until a year or two ago.  I had health problems and it just wasn't practical for us.  Then they changed homeschoolers to cards with no fines, hehe, and it became practical.   :lol:    If I had to pick the best of the best, the ones that would be *most* likely to click with kids, I'd say Sonlight.  They just really nail it, and you can't go wrong with a box of SL books.  

[PeterPan]

Btw, have you seen this?  Teddy Robinson Storybook, The  The little girl who owns the teddy bear and stars in all the stories is Deborah.  For some reason I was thinking that was your dd's name, but now I'm realizing it's yours!  Oh well, still might be fun.  I used to read my dd a series of books where the heroine had my maiden name.  That was fun, because the heroine had terrific adventures.  :)

[Aiden]

A lot of people like Calvert.  That's an all in one boxed curriculum.  You'd still probably want to get some additional books for reading, but that includes most of what you need.  I have only seen it and have not used it, but it seemed thorough. 

 

There is also something like K12.  That's something that could be accessed anywhere in the world assuming you will always have access to a computer.  I believe that includes all the books and supplies for all the courses. 

 

I've looked at Calvert. I was a little turned off, though, when I realized that my 3yo was already--without me having deliberately taught her--doing their K work. I assume it gets more rigorous later on, but my initial impression was that it was too easy. And I don't think I want a truly all-in-one package. I want to be able to customize the math and the LA to her level--that's one of the problems I have with Sonlight; I'd have to buy their LA whether we used it or not--and I know my husband will be pretty picky about the science (and the math ... he's an engineer ... though I do think that he'd like TWTM science suggestions, if we decide that we can implement them effectively).

 

I'm sure that whatever I use, I'll check out the Sonlight book lists, and the TOG ones if I don't use that, to see if there are additional books I want to make available to my daughter. I really like what I've seen of SL's fiction selections, and both the fiction and non-fiction that TOG uses.

[Aiden]

Btw, have you seen this?  Teddy Robinson Storybook, The  The little girl who owns the teddy bear and stars in all the stories is Deborah.  For some reason I was thinking that was your dd's name, but now I'm realizing it's yours!  Oh well, still might be fun.  I used to read my dd a series of books where the heroine had my maiden name.  That was fun, because the heroine had terrific adventures.   :)

 

I don't think I've ever seen those stories! It looks adorable, though, and my daughter loves anything animals--her favorites are Curious George, Paddington Bear, Leapfrog, and (sometimes) Winnie the Pooh. It may be just up her alley, and she has a birthday in a couple of months ...

 

Thanks!

 

[Hunter]

How do you feel about reading aloud a lot in K-3? YOU would be reading from the Kindle, not her. A lot of the classic public domain books were written to be read aloud, so work well as Kindle reads.

 

Traditionally a classical education did NOT use a bunch of books. The Bible and Aesop were sometimes the only books children had. Maybe Grimms Fairy Tales or Pilgrim's Progress depending on the family's denomination. Once retellings of books like Shakespeare and the Odyssey became available, those were added to the list. The book lists were short. though.

 

A lot of international homeschoolers use Ambleside Online. The forum has a lot of international members. https://amblesideonline.org/forum/

[prairiewindmomma]

I think this is where 1 volume encyclopedias come into play--the Kingfisher science and the DK history one can fill in so many gaps. Add the what your ___th grader needs to know in, and let the internet/ kindle fill out the rest!

[Rachel]

At the GHC, the Peace Hill Press booth (publishers of WTM) was advertising that beginning this fall they would offer K and 1st grade school in a box. I don't know the pricing, but that would get you through the first couple of years.

 

There are several people on the boards who live outside the US, I'm sure they have tips too.

[Courtney_Ostaff]

I think if you prepped well, it could be done.  You could order your spines ahead of time, get some serious lesson planning in, know what books you want by week, and buy used editions ahead of time.  There's a book swap site where I swapped many of my trashy romance novels for Lets-Read-And-Find-Out books for my daughter, for instance.  You could swap out from year to year. 

[Gentlemommy]

I'd get anthologies...like this one

http://www.amazon.com/Century-Childrens-Treasury-Treasured-Holidays/dp/0679893148/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1400462961&sr=1-4&keywords=Children%27s+treasury+of+poems

 

(Ugh. Hang on, I'll link more in the next couple of posts, but my iPad is being annoying and keeps erasing my reply when I switch screens)

 

And at age 7/8 or so, start relying on the kindle books. There are SO many free kindle books. Every subject. Literature, poetry, history, science, arithmetic, biographies....seriously. A really wonderful education can be had for free with an E-reader. Also, at this age, I'd get some really great children's encyclopedias...science and history, art, math, and general. A children's atlas with nice, bright pictures. Ok, I'll link some more things...

[Gentlemommy]

We have this one and it is falling apart because the kids have loved all the stories in it so much. I found it for $5 at a bookstore on clearance!

http://www.amazon.com/HarperCollins-Treasury-Picture-Book-Classics/dp/0060080949

[Gentlemommy]

Something like this for art...if there is an interest, then you can go more in depth. My kids love looking through our art encyclopedias, just looking at the paintings.

http://www.amazon.com/Art-History-Elke-Linda-Buchholz/dp/0810994429/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1400463331&sr=1-3&keywords=History+of+art

[Gentlemommy]

Here's some science, history, and geography encyclopedias.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=kingfisher+history+and+science+encyclopedia&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Akingfisher+history+and+science+encyclopedia

[Gentlemommy]

Ok, last one! Here are a bunch of treasuries. I prefer buying things like this, usually I can find good ones (with beautiful illustrations and the original authors writings, not abridged) at the thrift store. I've bought several over the years for under $1. Between a few of these and a few encyclopedias, I could easily homeschool out of one box for several years. Once these were outgrown, I'd put most everything on a kindle/iPad.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Children's+treasury+of+literature&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3AChildren's+treasury+of+literature

[Aiden]

At the GHC, the Peace Hill Press booth (publishers of WTM) was advertising that beginning this fall they would offer K and 1st grade school in a box. I don't know the pricing, but that would get you through the first couple of years.

 

There are several people on the boards who live outside the US, I'm sure they have tips too.

 

I saw on Facebook where they said they were releasing a K one this summer. I'm keeping an eye out for it, as I'll be doing the K planning much earlier than normal--we'll be moving next spring, so I want to do all my online research before the end of this year and have an idea of what I want to look at if I'm able to go to any conventions in the States next spring/summer before we move on to the next post. I currently have 2 K options that I'm considering, but I'm really looking forward to seeing what PHP comes out with.

[Aiden]

I think if you prepped well, it could be done.  You could order your spines ahead of time, get some serious lesson planning in, know what books you want by week, and buy used editions ahead of time.  There's a book swap site where I swapped many of my trashy romance novels for Lets-Read-And-Find-Out books for my daughter, for instance.  You could swap out from year to year. 

 

This is kind of what I'm thinking if I do it on my own, or even if I use Tapestry of Grace, since I may not want to order/use every single book they schedule (and since I hear that SOTW is a secondary resource, so I may want to use that instead of one or more of their primaries).

 

Having things shipped to me isn't a problem; I have access to the APO/DPO mail system. It just can be slow, so I can't count on realizing today that "oh, she's unexpectedly interested in spiders; I'll have a book here in 2 days"--it'd be more like a week at the shortest, and depending on the post, maybe a month (or more, sometimes).

[EndOfOrdinary]

I have been amazed at how well an iPad and Netflix have supplemented a library for us. I would not have thought that before we moved into a much more rural area where library trips have to be planned and involve visiting for the whole day. It is a wonderful library system, just not exactly readily available.

 

My son has discovered many of the subjects he is interested in by watching Netflix documentaries. Much like the try-it-and-see approach, only instead of reading initially he is listening and watching. Many of his initial forays into learning a subject happen with free apps I find. He can really explore a topic to see if this is a passing fad or a stronger desire I need to listen to.

 

Many apps are set up like multimedia encyclopedias. Nature Tap not only shows my son a photograph of the bird, but it's range, mating habits, foraging methods and then plays the call. He can turn it into a game where they play the bird call and he has to guess what bird it was. He has spent hours with it and can go about naming stacks of birds outside now. It is nature study, only digitally. We have Latin apps, Spanish apps, grammar apps, history, you name it. It bridged a major gap for us.

 

It does not replace reading, but it has been a level of knowledge exposure which the library would have offered, only at home.

[Aiden]

Ok, last one! Here are a bunch of treasuries. I prefer buying things like this, usually I can find good ones (with beautiful illustrations and the original authors writings, not abridged) at the thrift store. I've bought several over the years for under $1. Between a few of these and a few encyclopedias, I could easily homeschool out of one box for several years. Once these were outgrown, I'd put most everything on a kindle/iPad.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Children's+treasury+of+literature&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3AChildren's+treasury+of+literature

 

Quoting one post to reply to all :)

 

We actually already have the Harper Collins treasury--it was included in SL's P3/4. My daughter LOVES that book. We finished the scheduled readings from it a little over a week ago, and I put it in her room with her "bedtime books." Since then, she's chosen a story from that book every single night for her bedtime reading. I was pretty relieved, actually, because the only times my husband had read her "school" books to her had ended up being days when the stories were from other books and a little too advanced for her. I think he was second-guessing whether P3/4 was a good investment. But he's the one who does the bedtime reading, and now he's definitely seeing that some of the stories are favorites!

 

The SL preschool/PreK programs have been really good for giving me children's literature to work with. I think my more specific concern is with history and science books--SL goes heavy on fiction and light on nonfiction, from what I can tell, and for content subjects, I'd rather the reverse. That's one of the things that's drawing me to Tapestry of Grace, that they seem to have compiled a bunch of good, age-appropriate nonfiction. I'll probably continue to peruse the SL website for literature selections, though, even if they just get put in a basket for "free reading time."

 

The other books/lists you linked look pretty good, too. If we put together our own science program--and maybe even if we don't--we'll definitely use encyclopedias. Maybe use an internet-linked one as the spine, since it'll have built-in "extra exploration," and have another one or two on similar topics for supplemental reading? If she really goes crazy for a subject, she may still be interested after waiting for another book or two to ship from the States ...

[Aiden]

I have been amazed at how well an iPad and Netflix have supplemented a library for us. I would not have thought that before we moved into a much more rural area where library trips have to be planned and involve visiting for the whole day. It is a wonderful library system, just not exactly readily available.

 

My son has discovered many of the subjects he is interested in by watching Netflix documentaries. Much like the try-it-and-see approach, only instead of reading initially he is listening and watching. Many of his initial forays into learning a subject happen with free apps I find. He can really explore a topic to see if this is a passing fad or a stronger desire I need to listen to.

 

Many apps are set up like multimedia encyclopedias. Nature Tap not only shows my son a photograph of the bird, but it's range, mating habits, foraging methods and then plays the call. He can turn it into a game where they play the bird call and he has to guess what bird it was. He has spent hours with it and can go about naming stacks of birds outside now. It is nature study, only digitally. We have Latin apps, Spanish apps, grammar apps, history, you name it. It bridged a major gap for us.

 

It does not replace reading, but it has been a level of knowledge exposure which the library would have offered, only at home.

 

That sounds great! We do have Netflix (at least until they figure out that the VPN masks the fact that we're outside the US) and can watch videos from Amazon as well--lots of documentaries on both. They aren't really age-appropriate right now, but they will be by the time I'm concerned about. So maybe an internet-linked encyclopedia, another encyclopedia (or books for topics I expect her to be interested in), plus documentaries and iPad apps ... she already operates her father's iPad much more easily than I do ... This is definitely something I can do, as long as we continue in countries with good internet access, which we should have for at least the next 4 years or so.

[Hannah]

I think if you prepped well, it could be done.  You could order your spines ahead of time, get some serious lesson planning in, know what books you want by week, and buy used editions ahead of time.  There's a book swap site where I swapped many of my trashy romance novels for Lets-Read-And-Find-Out books for my daughter, for instance.  You could swap out from year to year. 

 

 

Paperbackswap is only for the USA (which would work if the embassy is covered by the US postal service - ETA: I see you are), but Bookmooch.com works well internationally.  I was very active for a few years and built up a good collection of books for science and history. 

 

For science for grades 1-3, we enjoyed

* Read-and-find out series

* Magic school bus DVD's and books.  (I did not do full units, but the books often lead to rabbit trails)..

* Usborne books (recommended by Sonlight)

* Sonlight Inquisikids discover and do DVD's which go with the Usborne Science Activities (Vol 2 with K, Volume 1 with Science B and Vol 3 with Science C) for experiments.

* Random books as I found them 2nd hand

We also have a 2nd hand set of the childcraft and young scientist encyclopaedias. 

 

For history we do Story of the World.  We do the activities from the guide with friends.

On average we have one additional recommended literature or picture book per chapter.  Audiobooks are easy to download, so we've added a lot those. Here's a thread with a list.  There are also loads of free activities available online and we've googled for illustrations.

 

I used to be quite envious of people fetching 100 books per topic from the library each week, but with a bit more effort and planning it is doable without a library.

[basketcase]

Depending on where you are, British materials are sometimes easier to come by than American. When we were in Prague, I could get Usborne materials, for instance (yay!)

 

Frankly, as someone who spent years as an ex-pat without the amazing benefits diplomats get, I think you shouldn't worry. You'll feel the lack of a library but will quickly figure out which books are really necessary.

 

We used to bring empty duffle bags with us on visits to family in the US, then fill them up with a year's worth of kid clothes and as many books as the weight limits would allow. Also some twizzlers and Reese's. For us it was cheaper than shipping. Good times.

 

Since you get shipping benefits, your life won't be that different from those who don't have a library close by or don't like to use one. We just buy a lot of books. Amazon is lovely. You can do it!

[Aiden]

Paperbackswap is only for the USA (which would work if the embassy is covered by the US postal service - ETA: I see you are), but Bookmooch.com works well internationally.  I was very active for a few years and built up a good collection of books for science and history. 

 

For science for grades 1-3, we enjoyed

* Read-and-find out series

* Magic school bus DVD's and books.  (I did not do full units, but the books often lead to rabbit trails)..

* Usborne books (recommended by Sonlight)

* Sonlight Inquisikids discover and do DVD's which go with the Usborne Science Activities (Vol 2 with K, Volume 1 with Science B and Vol 3 with Science C) for experiments.

* Random books as I found them 2nd hand

We also have a 2nd hand set of the childcraft and young scientist encyclopaedias. 

 

For history we do Story of the World.  We do the activities from the guide with friends.

On average we have one additional recommended literature or picture book per chapter.  Audiobooks are easy to download, so we've added a lot those. Here's a thread with a list.  There are also loads of free activities available online and we've googled for illustrations.

 

I used to be quite envious of people fetching 100 books per topic from the library each week, but with a bit more effort and planning it is doable without a library.

 

We are covered by USPS, with some assistance from our military friends :)

 

Thanks for the suggestions! Those look great.

 

 

 

To everyone, thank you for your advice and encouragement. It sounds like I should be able to do this if we decide to go this route. Part of me longs for the convenience of a one-box stop (or at least one-box-per-subject), but part of me really likes this idea of picking resources that I particularly think my daughter will enjoy. I have some thinking and some discussing with my husband to do.

 

[Pegs]

We do have access to our library, but it is not particularly well stocked past the picture book section. We do the vast majority of read alouds (a couple of hours a day) from my kindle, and I am starting to look out for a select few quality reference books for history and science content. DS will likely be reading for pleasure within the next year or so, and I expect that this material will be the most difficult to continue to provide for him. Though, I can't see that this would be any different from providing literature for a child in school. There are so many creative solutions to these questions, anyway.

[TKDmom]

I rarely use the library. At least not the way it's recommended in TWTM. I love the SL books for pre-K. There are so many lovely picture books in there. I also really like Before Five-in-a-Row and FIAR for picture books. I would stock up on those for preschool, and just read them over and over. There's no need to have a huge library, and many of the books that dc bring home from the library are not worth keeping in the house anyway.

 

Once kids are reading fluently, the Kindle is great. Like Hunter said, AmblesideOnline is a good resource for international families. I don't like the older history and science books, but I LOVE the literature selections. I guess I don't follow TWTM exactly--I don't think it's necessary to go to the library and get historical fiction for every history subject you study. It's so much more effective for my kids to have a great literature book to read aloud as a family, but to stick with our history spine and the Usborne encyclopedia for history. Then my older kids always have something that they're reading on their Kindles. I make free-read suggestions from AO, but they don't always listen to me. ;) They will often ask me to buy a new Kindle book that they're interested in, and I'm usually happy to comply.

[Steadfast]

Thank you Aidan for this post!  And thanks everyone for your advice.  It is not so practical for us to make a weekly visit to the local library either, and then I have to scrounge to find decent books.  Usually we wait two weeks to get books through interlibrary loan.  Planning gets a bit tricky.  So I'm going to be following this thread!

For history we do Story of the World.  We do the activities from the guide with friends.

On average we have one additional recommended literature or picture book per chapter.

 

Perhaps someone else mentioned this too, but I've found the activity guide for SOTW is such a great resource for book lists to augment history (as well as WTM).  You'd still have to plan in advance but I've found there are some great books there that Sonlight doesn't carry.  Between SL books and WTM/SOTW recommendations, there is such a great world of books!

 

[Ad astra]

Although now I live literally one block away from our local library and greatly appreciate its convenience and money-saving advantages, I mostly check out the literature for kids. I still like to buy all curriculums and references for education new. I just do a lot of research on them before I order. This forum has been very helpful for that. :) I've seen a few other active forum members in other threads who live overseas and are in the similar situation with you.

 

Even with careful research, I already have many materials I've dropped and put away on shelve waiting for my younger kid or resale (or garbage can) because they were simply not a good fit for my DS. I take it as the cost of trial and error and it's worth it IMO.

 

The public library system was not so nice in my home country, where I had lived until last year, so my mom bought me LOTS of children's literature books during my childhood. It was the one thing she did not save money on and I'm forever grateful for her decision. I also bought hundreds of various books for kids in my native language when I was there and shipped them all to the U.S. with our move since it's very hard to find them or too expensive here. I think ordering books in English in the country you reside in would be easier (by Amazon, online bookstores, e-books, etc.) than this.

 

While I highly recommend the literature from Sonlight, FIAR and other boxed curriculums, I much prefer choosing my own curriculum for each subject to buying a whole package due to my DS' asynchronous abilities, material quality and cost efficiency. You can just buy the literature alone from Rainbow Resource Center, which I believe also offers overseas shipping.

[73349]

For the early grades, I think I'd use a local library occasionally even if all the books were in a foreign language. Obviously it's more helpful if you understand the language a bit, but a young child can also enjoy the pictures and make up her own stories.

 

I think you can homeschool without a constant stream of new books. Start collecting reference materials now. A world atlas, a grammar reference book, a nice thesaurus, some of those Usbornes... they'd be good to have even if she does go to school at some point.

 

WRT Calvert, you can skip the K package (which is widely regarded as too easy) and use the 1st-grade box when she's in K if it appeals to you otherwise. But also remember that you can probably put your own box together as well as anybody else can do it for you.

[Aiden]

My Father's World was created for this kind of situation by a family spent many years overseas. Their cycle isn't exactly WTM, but it is closer than SL.

 

I've looked at MFW's website several times. Each and every time, I think it looks absolutely wonderful, a great program ... and somehow not right for us. I cannot for the life of me put my finger on why, but every time I think about ordering a package from them, I feel a check in my spirit that it just isn't right for us.

 

I am beginning to find some individual subject curricula that I think will work well for us, though. For at least the elementary years, I expect I'll be buying not one big, multisubject box  curriculum, but a bunch of smaller, specific-subject boxed curriculums--SOTW + activity book for history (though I'm looking hard at a K-level American history for a foundation since my daughter isn't exposed to all the American traditions in daily life), a science boxed set, math, etc. It'll take some work to decide on the literature/extra reading I want to buy, but if I get my main stuff early enough, I should have time to look through it and order appropriate supplementals ... I hope ...

[Anacharsis]

You might enjoy The Internet Archive. They have one of the largest collections of public domain works on the internet. There is also Project Gutenberg, which offers many works in a Kindle-friendly format.

[Laura Corin]

I did it in provincial China.  Any time we went to an English-speaking country, I would travel with an empty suitcase and visit second-hand book shops to fill it up.  In addition, we did find one book shop in Hong Kong that would deliver to our city.  

 

It went fine.

 

L

[NittanyJen]

Another place that will just ship you a library for the year is BookShark. I'm not sure how perfectly classical it is in terms of grammar/logic/rhetoric developmental stages, but in the brief glance I had of it, it was very literature rich. It did follow history cycles (though remember that is not specifically classical; that is just SWB's implementation of classical-- people get confused about that :) ). I saw that it will allow some customization of choosing your child's math and spelling levels as well, including switching to Singapore math of your desired level, a nice option in a boxed curriculum, and it even provides a 4-day per week schedule for those who like their planning done. It includes a huge number of read aloud books and self-reading for literature and pegged to history for the year.

 

If you can get it shipped to you overseas, it might be a workable solution, though they are not super cheap (but all-inclusive).

[Aiden]

Another place that will just ship you a library for the year is BookShark. I'm not sure how perfectly classical it is in terms of grammar/logic/rhetoric developmental stages, but in the brief glance I had of it, it was very literature rich. It did follow history cycles (though remember that is not specifically classical; that is just SWB's implementation of classical-- people get confused about that :) ). I saw that it will allow some customization of choosing your child's math and spelling levels as well, including switching to Singapore math of your desired level, a nice option in a boxed curriculum, and it even provides a 4-day per week schedule for those who like their planning done. It includes a huge number of read aloud books and self-reading for literature and pegged to history for the year.

 

If you can get it shipped to you overseas, it might be a workable solution, though they are not super cheap (but all-inclusive).

 

BookShark is the new, secular version of Sonlight. I know from the SL forums that at least a few SL users are switching to it (while making fun of its unfortunate acronym, BS) so that they can get SL without the Bible and LA components. It is something I would consider using for book suggestions, though the reasons I'm switching away from using primarily SL also apply to BS. Apparently when they removed some of the missionary stories to make it secular, they replaced them with some good secular literature, so there are a few good BS books that SL doesn't have.

[NittanyJen]

Has anyone used Oyster yet? It is like Netflix for books-- you pay $10/month and can read their library of books on your Apple or Android device. But I don't know whether there are kid titles included.

[shawthorne44]

I don't think you will find a boxed books set that matches precisely what you want.  But, I can't imagine anyone reading JUST the books in the set to their kids.  So, find a box that seems to have lots of good books, and then add where you think it is lacking.  

 

So, maybe, get the Bookshark core and then add in a bunch of Usbourne and DK nonfiction.  

[NittanyJen]

Update: Oyster does have a fair number of books many of us tend to use for history and/or literature by late elementary/early logic stage.  I didn't browse too carefully for early elementary, but you can check the website; there is a page there for browsing the children's selection.

 

The deal with Oyster is this:  You pay $10/month, and for that, you get unlimited access to their library of books.  You can only have 10 at a time for OFFLINE reading, but there are no due dates or fees, and you can see the other books online, or change them out any time you want.  You can mark books for reading later, too.  

 

You do need a US based email address and credit card, but you are allowed to use it outside of the US, according to their website.  You download the app to any Apple, android, or Kindle Fire device, but you sign up on the Oyster website, which is where you enter your credit card information.  You can sign up for a free month to start (you still have to enter credit card info though).

 

It looks awesome to me, and I think looking at the books DH and I will read and that we will read for homeschooling, it will save us money in the long run, even after using the library (ha ha esp with cutting down on late fees at the library.

 

It's still another option for accessing a library of books-- browse the website to see if the selection appeals to you.  Watching the Facebook group, they seem to keep adding publishers (they recently added Simon & Schuster).