Lots of Literature (Blogging Through the Alphabet)

This post contains affiliate links - using affiliate links from Homeschool Coffee Break helps fuel this blog and our homeschool - thank you! 

After so many years of homeschooling, I've had plenty of opportunities to try curriculum and explore all kinds of resources, so during this Blogging Through the Alphabet tour, I'm highlighting some of the many homeschooling resources that have been stand-outs. Sometimes it will be a walk down memory lane as I share something we enjoyed many years ago, and sometimes it will be something we're using currently. Sometimes I'll focus on a specific curriculum, and sometimes on a subject area. And I imagine I'll have to be a bit creative with a couple letters of the alphabet! This week it's time to have a look at our reading lists and talk about literature.

When I was still very new to homeschooling and my kids were little, I had a naive idea that my kids would all enjoy reading and would love to read books and discuss them. Okay, that didn't exactly turn out like I'd hoped. My boys were never huge fans of reading, and wanted to get away with reading only the minimum required. My daughter does like to read, but she tends to take her time with books, especially if it's not something that grabs her attention immediately. So no Lit majors in our family. But I believe that being familiar with good literature is important, and some literature is required as a component of high school English credit in our state. Here's how we have tried to strike the balance.

In the middle school grades, the boys did all-in-one Language Arts curriculum that included grammar, composition, and literature. At this point I don't even remember exactly which novels they read and at what grade, but I do know that it was only one full-length novel per year. Kennady was a lot more willing to read and we also got the chance to review a new-to-us Literature curriculum, Lightning Lit & Comp for Grade 7, which was a great fit for her. She enjoyed some great stories and was excited about diving into the accompanying composition and grammar study. The writing exercises - several to choose from! - in each unit challenge the student to try their hand at writing short stories, poetry, and other compositions using the techniques they are learning about. She basically begged me for Lightning Lit & Comp for Grade 8, so I was happy to comply!  We enjoyed the following middle school reading lists over those years:


Seventh Grade Lightning Lit
(See our review here: Lightning Lit & Comp {Schoolhouse Review Crew}!)
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky by Stephen Crane
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot


Eighth Grade Lightning Lit

(See my description of this course in a Virtual Curriculum Fair post from three years ago: Middle School Monday - Lightning Literature and Compositon!)

A Crazy Tale by G.K. Chesterton

Treasure Island by Robert L Stevenson (also studied when we reviewed Progeny Press study guides)

A Day of Pleasure by Isaac B. Singer

Wakefield by Nathaniel Hawthorne

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (also studied when we reviewed Moving Beyond the Page)

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

  

Other favorite middle school reads . . .

Thick as Thieves by Susan K. Marlow

A Cry From Egypt by Hope Auer (See our review of this book!)

A Stand at Sinai by Hope Auer

The Hunger Games (series) by Suzanne Collins

The Mysterious Benedict Society (series) by Trenton Lee Stewart

The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien

Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis

Diary of a Real Payne - Book 1: True Story by Annie Tipton (See our review of this book!)

Heidi by Johanna Spyri

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter

Lydia Barnes series by Heather Gemmen Wilson

. . . and classics like Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden series.

However, as much as we loved Lightning Lit & Comp in middle school, we found their high school level courses too much to complete alongside everything else we've had going. We reviewed a couple of them, and did a little pick-and-choose method of making use of the study materials for a couple of the novels. I do continue to recommend Lightning Lit for middle and high school students, with the caveat that the high school courses are in-depth and best for students with a genuine interest in detailed literary analysis and the time to get into it.

We reviewed and used some of Shakespeare Comedies & Sonnets. See our review here: Lightning Lit & Comp Shakespeare Comedies and Sonnets. Earlier we reviewed and used some of Lightning Lit and Comp: American Mid-Late 19th Century. See our review here: Lightning Lit for High School. We purchased and used some of Lightning Lit and Comp: British Early-Mid 19th Century.

As you can see in the middle school reading lists, we also used a Progeny Press study guide one year. We found the same situation - the high school level guides were more involved than what we could handle. We reviewed The Scarlet Pimpernel E-Guide for high school level from Progeny Press, and enjoyed the parts of it we used. If I remember correctly, each high school level guide from Progeny Press would be about a quarter credit worth of study time. They are great guides, and a good choice if you want to pick and choose which books you study rather than get a full curriculum that has a reading list of perhaps a dozen books. Read our review here: Progeny Press - The Scarlet Pimpernel Study Guide.

I do want to explain why I said we didn't have the time to use these literature studies. We use Notgrass for high school history, and both Exploring America and Exploring World History include a full accompanying English and Literature study. All four of my kids have used these courses, and we love the approach of choosing literature from or about the time periods we're studying in history. Still, with reluctant readers or students with an already very full schedule, we found that it was better to do only about half of the novels from each course. We chose the books that we felt were most important and relevant, and the most likely to appeal on some level. So the choices weren't exactly the same for each student. I also limited how much related writing and analysis they had to do. I thought it was better to read and enjoy the story as a whole, so I asked them to do the general comprehension questions and be able to summarize the story and describe the characters. This way we were able to focus on reading for enjoyment and understanding of the story and historical setting. Here are the high school reading lists we've chosen from, between Notgrass and other courses.

Brit or World Lit

Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis

The Cat of Bubastes - G.A. Henty

The Art of War - Sun Tzu

Julius Caesar - William Shakespeare

The Imitation of Christ - Thomas a Kempis

Here I Stand - a biography of Martin Luther - Roland Bainton

Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

The Hiding Place - Corrie ten Boom

Bridge to the Sun - Gwen Terasaki

Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

Eric Liddell: Pure Gold - David McCasland

Animal Farm - George Orwell

1984 - George Orwell

The Abolition of Man - C.S. Lewis

Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

The Lord of the Rings trilogy - J.R.R. Tolkien

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson

The High House - James Stoddard

Dracula - Bram Stoker

Around the World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne

American Lit

The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Narrative of the Life of David Crockett - David Crockett

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Frederick Douglass

Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe

Company Aytch - Sam Watkins

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

Humorous Stories and Sketches - Mark Twain

Up From Slavery - Booker T. Washington

In His Steps - Charles Sheldon

Mama's Bank Account - Kathryn Forbes

Christy - Catherine Marshall

Miracle in the Hills - Mary T. Martin Sloop and LeGette Blythe

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

The Giver - Lois Lowry

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane

The Call of the Wild - Jack London

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

The Last of the Mohicans - James Fennimore Cooper

The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald

One other curriculum I have to mention is Illuminating Literature: When Worlds Collide by Sharon Watson.  We reviewed it and thought it was wonderful, and honestly I'm still bummed that we haven't been able to fit the entire study into a school year! I'd love to be able to use it for a co-op class. That way I could do it next year, even if Kennady doesn't have the time in her schedule! See our review here: Illuminating Literature: When Worlds Collide




Do you have some favorite literature studies you've used in your homeschool? Do you follow a curriculum or just read what you like? Leave a comment and let me know!

Blogging Through the Alphabet again? Yes, I'm taking the challenge, along with several other Crew members, including our co-hosts for this round - Amanda at Hopkins Homeschool and Kirsten at DoodleMom's Homeschooling Life. The link is open from Thursday to Wednesday each week, so join in if you'd like!

This post is linked at Blogging Through the Alphabet for Week 12, Letter L.

This post is also linked at Homeschool Blog & Tell at The Homeschool Post; at the Homeschool Linky Party on the Homeschool Review Crew blog, and at the Encouraging Hearts & Home Blog Hop hosted by Apron Strings & Other Things

  

 Don't miss a coffee break! Subscribe to Homeschool Coffee Break by Email!

 ©2006-2018 Homeschool Coffee Break. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. http://kympossibleblog.blogspot.com/ 

 We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.