Our family are book lovers who have learned together for over 10 years. The foundation of our education curriculum is the reading of good books coupled with thorough mathematics. We focus on reading good, classic, "living books" rather than a textbook or workbook approach. Over the years, we've found many recommendation lists. All suggest many quality books for each age level, all focusing on various historical periods or other broad themes.
A wonderful problem exists for teachers - there's too much good material to teach! As we were confronted with a dozen or more solid reading-based plans, each recommending hundreds of books, choosing what few books to read each year became a fun, but difficult, problem. We would see what books the various lists had in common for a given reading level, what we could find affordably online, and what we could find at the library. We'd narrow down further based on the type of work - classic literature vs. biographies vs. general narratives, etc. and then the historical period the book covered - ancient vs. middle ages vs. modern, etc. In this way, we planned very personalized, interesting reading. This is a difficult yet rewarding process. It works but there are other helpful methods.
Rather than forming your own personalized plan, another idea is to just pick one of the many published plans and ignore the others. Some of the plans we recommend are from Sonlight, Veritas Press, and Robinson Curriculum. Another solution is to use one of several book guides that help categorize books. These include Honey for a Child's Heart, The Book Tree, All Through The Ages, and Invitation to the Classics. These are flexible and helpful but still require a lot of page turning, indexing, and offer no direct online access to book vendors or libraries that can help quickly determine what is available at a reasonable cost.
The best solution is an online book list that can be easily searched and sorted by different criteria of reading level, historical era, type, price, etc. There are many online lists, though most are static lists you cannot easily search or sort. Many bloggers maintain lists of favorite books. Several sites provide more powerful search and sort capabilities. One popular example is Library Thing, tagging books for various categories. Another powerful site is Every Good Book providing searching and sorting of classic books, based on the book's time period, type, reading level, popularity, and even cost.
Whether you're a teacher, homeschooling parent, student, or simply an avid reader, you'll find http://www.everygoodbook.com/ very helpful in choosing the right books. About 1000 books are listed of various types, from all historical time periods, at all reading levels. Each book's listing features a short description and convenient links to online book sellers and your local library. The site has limited graphics and very few advertisements so it runs fast and responds quickly to your personal searches.
Teachers and homeschoolers interested in lesson plans beyond reading and literature should also visit http://www.everygoodpath.net/ for detailed plans for the whole school year. The resource reviews, lesson ideas, and personal insights from experienced teachers are particularly helpful to new teachers or parents learning how to start homeschooling.
With these tools, you'll have more time for learning, reading, and enjoyment and less frustration working through the overwhelming number of educational options available today.
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