Books, books and more books - Tapestry of Grace

I am a bookaholic.

I LOVE books - buying them, looking at them, reading them.

To be fair, I don't have as much time to read as in days of yore.  But, I try and make the time to read, nonetheless.  And, failing that, at least I get to buy books for my CHILDREN to read!!!

I have a few different book categories I want to share about on here, whilst I am doing a sort out of my bookshelves.

School books, and my own personal reading.

I will start with school books, first.

I took a picture the last time my order came with our books for Tapestry of Grace, year 3, Unit 3.  Now, if you want the exact list, you need to look at it here.  I am not allowed to share it on here, for copyright purposes.  However, I want to just review a few of the titles that are used.

I love the titles that Marcia has chosen, when creating the curriculum.  There is a tremendous variety, and it includes some absolutely beautifully illustrated titles.  I always get exceptionally excited when they arrive - "oohing" and "ahing" over their contents.

I love the variety.  The different styles of presentation within the books.  They really make the subjects come alive.

There are picture books, chapter books, "choose your own adventure", comic style and illustrated history books, to name a few.

One of my favourite picture books for this unit, is this.

This is a lovely story about a little girl who lives in a lighthouse.  Although fictional, it gives factual details about female lighthouse keepers, at the back of the book, which lends itself to further study.  It triggers off discussion about many different topics, including fear, courage, patience and love.  The illustrations are lovely, and it was lovely to read aloud to my younger two school-aged children.  The older two loved it as well, and came back to me filled with questions and wanting to talk about it.

Look inside it here. 

This one is a children's favourite.  They absolutely LOVED these stories, and laughed long and hard at the craftiness of Brer Rabbit! It triggered much discussion about the right and wrong way to behave towards others,and what the Bible teaches about people who are not honest. Again, the illustrations are simply beautiful.

This one was a favourite of Joshua's.  It is in the "choose your own adventure" format, which I loved as a child!  It allowed him to explore all the different perspectives of slavery in the Confederate states.  It was a terrific way to learn, whilst enjoying learning key historical facts about that time.

This is an exampe of one of the "hands-on" titles used in Tapestry of Grace.  It covers many different hands-on activities that would have been done during the time of Laura Ingalls.  It then ties in with the reading of Little HOuse on the Prarie for the slightly older children, and this lovely title below,  for the younger ones.

Finally, this one takes the format of a comic book.  Once again, Joshua was a great fan of this style, and there seems to be at least one in this format every unit. 

Although it wasn't covered in great detail in Tapestry of Grace, we also looked at the life of Mary Seacole when learning about Florence Nightengale.   If you don't know she is, she is worth learning about, and often overlooked in favour of Florence Nightengale.  Yet, she perhaps did more good as she went out onto the battlefield to help the wounded men.  So, if you are looking for someone interesting to study, go and look her up!!! There is an interesting documentary about her on youtube, as a starting point.

So, if you are looking for interesting books for school, it's worth looking at the Tapestry of Grace list.  If you REALLY want to use some interesting books, then start using Tapestry of Grace for yourself!!!  If you follow my link on the sidebar, then you can find out more.

Next up will be a review of some of my own books...I am already separating them out into subjects!