Year in Review: Our Favourite School Books

JJ(7)'s Year 1 Books

Today I pulled out all our books from the school year just ended and stacked them on the table. What a good feeling it was to realize what we had read through! Most of these are part of Ambleside Online's wonderful curriculum for Years 1 and 3, with a few books added in for Canadian content and special interest, and a few books taken out to compensate for what we'd added in. Everything we read was narrated, whether by the individual student, or by both of them (or all three! My extroverted 4-year-old loves to take his turn narrating the readings we do together as a family.).

Some of them are books we will continue to read in the next school year (Probably. Plans are not set in stone yet!):
The Blue Fairy Book
Canadian Wonder Tales
Great Canadian Lives
Mathematicians are People, Too
The Story of Canada (Marsh)
The Story of Canada (Brown, Harman, Jeanneret)
Trial and Triumph

Some of them were books that we didn't complete. The term ended, and we moved on:
Children of the New Forest (SA(9) may yet finish this on his own.)
Hamlet by Bruce Coville
The Jungle Book
Just So Stories (One chapter to go...JJ will finish it on his own.)
Leonardo da Vinci by Emily Hahn (I suspect I got the wrong book in this case...it was very heavy for Year 3. We read through half, and moved on.)
Sebastian Bach by Opal Wheeler

But the majority of the books on the stacks were the ones we finished, whether together as a family, or separately. Because we did several Year 3 books together, I ended up taking out a number of the Year 1 books in order not to overload JJ.

SA(9)'s Year 3 Books

Together:
A Drop of Water 
Cartier Sails the St. Lawrence
Madeleine Takes Command
Pagoo
Pilgrim's Progress (We finished Book 2 this year)
Secrets of the Woods
Tales from Shakespeare (We did the chapters scheduled for Year 3 together.)

SA(9):
Bard of Avon
Our Island Story (He completed the chapters scheduled in AO's curriculum through Year 3.)
The Adventures of Marco Polo by Russell Freedman
The Heroes
The Princess and the Goblin

JJ(7):
Fifty Famous Stories Retold
James Herriot's Treasury for Children
Paddle-to-the-Sea
The Aesop for Children


The Favourites

For fun, I asked all of them to choose their favourite school books. They each started with one, then thought of more they considered favourites. In the end I let them choose as many as they wanted. I also asked them to choose their least favourite book. JJ had no doubt about his pick, but SA assured me earnestly that really, he liked all his books, and his least favourite was still a good book.

SA(9):
The Princess and the Goblin 
Madeleine Takes Command
A Drop of Water
The Heroes
Sebastian Bach
Mathematicians are People, Too

Least Favourite: Leonardo da Vinci by Emily Hahn

JJ(7):
James Herriot's Treasury for Children
Madeleine Takes Command
Fifty Famous Stories Retold
Paddle-to-the-Sea
A Drop of Water

Least Favourite: The Story of Canada by Brown, Harman, and Jeanneret

MM(4) also insisted on choosing his favourite:
The Blue Fairy Book

And why not? I'll include my own favourites of the year. You'll notice some overlap with the boys picks...it's just such a pleasure to share books when they are loving them too. I was learning as much as they were.

Madeleine Takes Command
Cartier Sails the St. Lawrence
Secrets of the Woods
The Blue Fairy Book
The Heroes