Book Reviews
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26 Australian Picture Books for Remembrance Day
Remembrance Day, the 11th of November 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the Armistice which ended the First World War. Tomorrow at 11am a minute’s silence will be held around the Nation to remember those who have died in Wars. When attempting to explain War with children, the why’s and how’s are often more easily understood through books, picture books create a space to discuss and ponder, to begin to grapple with the enormity of the sacrifices made and the complexity of issues. Online Database of Australian Books Be sure to head on over to our Online Database of Australian Books to find more books about our War Years.…
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5 Board Books for Little Catholics
As the commemoration of the Birth of Our Lord approaches, I’m confident many of you, like myself, are scouring sites looking for gift ideas, including book recommendations. Over the years we have discovered some treasures that I’d love to share with you. 5 Board Books for Little Catholics is the first in a series of posts I’ll be sharing over the next fortnight, so be sure to check back. I’d like to say a special thanks to The Bleeding Pelican, Shower of Roses, Family in Feast and Feria and Ordinary Lovely who have been instrumental in assisting me in developing my collection of Catholic titles over the years. Thank…
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12 Books To Experience Roman Britain
This year Jelly Bean (12) is using Our Island Story – HE Marshall as her history text, she loves the way history is bought to life by this author. A large component of our history studies always includes a selection of living books and thus I set out to gather what books I could source for Roman Britain. I focused my energies towards finding chapter books suitable for a twelve, soon to be thirteen year old girl. As Our Island Story is an extremely comprehensive study of Britain my first collection of living books correlates with the first five chapters from the coming of the Romans through to the rise and fall of Queen Boudica…
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Early Australia, Arrival and Settlement: Our Sunburnt Country
Last year I began a long intended project, to compile a list of Australian history living books organised in chronological order. I have organised the time periods around the chapters of Our Sunburnt Country, one of our favourite core books of Australian history and included recommendations of both picture and chapter books to accompany each chapter. This week a local friend asked for my recommendations for pre-European settlement and it was so easy to just send a link so inspired anew to pick up ‘the pen’ and continue on. Previous posts in the series are, Land of the Dreamtime and European Discovery of Australia. I’ve tried to mainly share in print or recently in print books, though some of the out of print (OOP) books…
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7 Catholic Fiction Books For 7 – 12 Year Olds
Our home bulges with literally thousands of books, many of which have been gifted from my homeschooling mother’s collection and many from local book sales in which children’s books are free! We are extremely blessed to own many treasures but the one genre we’ve had to consciously seek out and purchase books for is, Catholic Fiction. Whilst we’ve plenty of saints and spiritual books, novels written by Catholic authors in which our Catholic Faith is seamlessly interwoven are few. Filling this gap has been a challenge as the prices are high and finding Catholic authors is difficult. Over several years we have slowly built our collection, gifting our children with Catholic…
- Blog, Book Reviews, Home Education, Home Education - Language Arts, Home Education - Leaping into Literature, Learning
Diving Deep: Leaping into Literature
We started strong this week with our Leaping into Literature, only to take a deeper dive when a beloved family ritual, The Bookworm made a reappearance. Instantly an intense book reading marathon engulfing the entire family ‘sprang up,’ therefore the time I’d normally devote to reading picture books was derailed into librarian tasks. I’ll explain our Bookworm ritual in further detail later this week so stay tuned. All the picture books in our family library are grouped into theme boxes; animals, Australian, history, geography etc, this week and last we have predominately focused on animals, hence why all the books in the following list are centered around this one topic. Recall the…
- Blog, Book Reviews, Home Education, Home Education - Language Arts, Home Education - Leaping into Literature, Learning
A Firm Tradition, Our Fourth Year: Leaping into Literature
Hard to believe it’s Term 4 already! For the past three years Term 4 for us has included our annual tradition; Leaping into Literature where we immerse ourselves in reading through a huge slew of picture books and the older children have time to dive into towering piles of novels. This year however I’d made the decision we would miss Leaping into Literature to continue ‘slogging away’ at Language Arts as I felt ‘pressured’ because my goals for Language Arts haven’t been meet. However it appears that once a tradition is set, it just can’t be unbroken, so we’re Leaping into Literature after all 🙂 We’re a few weeks late beginning the bookfest, but…
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Our Sunburnt Country: European Discovery Of Australia
Our Sunburnt Country is one of our favourite core books of Australian history, it covers Australian History from pre-European contact through till the end of World War 2(see pg 7). As the consumption inclusion of living books form the basis of our learning I have collated a selection of complementary picture and chapter books to accompany each chapter of Our Sunburnt Country to broaden understanding and capture interest, on the request of one of our readers. My complementary booklist for the first chapter, Land of the Dreamtime is already available. ‘New Visitors To An Old Land,’ the second chapter of Our Sunburnt Country, focuses on the several European contacts with Australia prior to European settlement in 1788. The majority of European discoverers…
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Our Sunburnt Country – Land Of The Dreamtime
One of the pleasures of blog writing is ‘meeting’ people I would otherwise have never ‘met’. I particularly love when readers email me and we end up striking up a friendship as Sherelle, a regular commenter and emailer from Queensland and I have. When Sherelle emailed me with a request for “ideas for complementary activities/worksheets to go with Our Sunburnt Country – Arthur Baillie,” I was keen to assist and offered to organise a booklist of complementary picture/chapter books. Our Sunburnt Country is one of our favourite core books of Australian history, it covers Australian History from pre-European contact through till the end of World War 2(see pg 7). I have chosen a selection of recommended picture and chapter…
