In this article, you will find the best homeschool books that include a vast world of details about programs, methods, techniques, and advice.
The Best Homeschooling Books at a Glance
- The Call of the Wild and Free
- Home Learning Year by Year
- Busy Homeschool Mom’s Guide
- The Well-Trained Mind
- Complete Guide for Homeschooling Parents
- Differently Wired
- Teaching in Your Tiara
The Top 7-Homeschooling Books Reviewed
1. The Call of the Wild and Free: Reclaiming Wonder in Your Child’s Education
The book The Call of the Wild and Free focuses on guiding kids to experience childhood while engaging in homeschool learning that is modern and high-quality. Ainsley Arment published this book based on Henry David Thoreau’s quote: All good things are wild and free. She believes that a quality homeschool can provide kids with challenging, intellectual instruction while still nurturing the child by focusing on nature, hobbies, and interests. Besides, homeschool should enhance children’s natural curiosity about different subjects and the joy and wonder of childhood.
What Makes It Unique
This book is inspirational, whether you are well into homeschooling, are an educator or parent, or are just beginning your journey to homeschooling. Besides, it is informative and a great place to advise what teaching method to use. Arment emphasizes to keep learning fun and enriched, from surroundings, others, and themselves.
2. Home Learning Year by Year: How to Design a Homeschool Curriculum From Preschool Through High School
In the book Home Learning Year by Year, the author provides homeschoolers and potential homeschool families with comprehensive information. Besides, it includes structured plans they need for educating kids at home. The book is based on a traditional school blueprint with traditional grades and structure. Hence it uses the pre-K through 12th-grade structure.
What Makes It Unique
Home Learning Year by Year covers important homeschooling standards. These standards acquire at each student’s level. While the homeschool educators have to plan what key subjects to teach during each grade level, they also need to consider getting the recommended homeschool textbooks and text material. Besides, a homeschool standard should acquire an extensive knowledge of an effective homeschool education.
3. Busy Homeschool Mom’s Guide to Daylight Managing Your Days Through the Homeschool Years
Author Heidi St. John gives her light-hearted take on homeschooling. While she juggles a busy schedule, including life as a published author, she also has a seven children’s wife and mom. St. John shares real-life experiences and shares how to keep a challenging schedule while being a little easier on yourself.
What Makes It Unique
The book Busy Homeschool, Mom’s Guide, was written by a homeschooling mom with kids. She knows the highs and lows of homeschooling and has learned to make lemonade out of lemons. The book is filled with tips and techniques to make even the most challenging day better for the whole family. It is overflowing with fresh ideas, and St. John offers encouragement, ideas, and some laughs.
While this book is easy to read, it is also full of tips about homeschooling tips on a wide range of subjects, from student engagement to organizing the household to help it be more functional. It offers advice from a fellow homeschooler to make daily homeschool, school, work, housework, quiet time, and mealtime a little easier.
4. The Well-trained Mind: a Guide to Classical Education at Home
A homeschool classic, The Well-Trained Mind, offers clear instructions for new and experienced homeschoolers. The Well-Trained Mind helps homeschoolers become more confident in themselves as educators.
This book focuses on a classic educational pattern called the trivium. The ‘tri’ in trivium refers to three, and the focus of the book is the three stages of maturing capacity. The three stages are the grammar stage building block, middle school logic stage, and the high-school rhetorical stage.
What Makes It Unique
This book is a true guidebook that is not only rigorous but also easy-to-follow. Using the trivium as an outline, homeschooling parents can design lessons for all grades and every subject. This is not only the most recent edition, but it is also a top choice for parents who are looking for guidance in educating their children. The Well-Trained Mind gives tools that can be used right away. While this book contains book lists, it also includes an updated curricula. While the reader will find links to current instructional material for students with special needs or disabilities, this book also includes up-to-date online resources, answers to top frequently asked questions, and many other topics.
5. Mary Pride’s Complete Guide to Getting Started in Homeschooling
The search is over for an everything-included homeschool guide. It is meant to be a complete guide for homeschooling parents who need help learning how to be better equipped to create an effective, cohesive school environment. The book is 600-pages long with extensive information contained in it. In addition, this book guide helps homeschooling parents with educational resources they like and trust.
What Makes It Unique
Mary Pride is one of America’s most important experts on homeschooling. While reading this book cover-to-cover, it will help lay the groundwork and equip homeschoolers with accurate information that clears up misconceptions about homeschool instruction. The book is far-reaching and gives families a collection to read and review that is comprehensive. This homeschooling ‘encyclopedia’ includes not only record-keeping but also lesson planning. All tips are based on research and experience.
6. Differently Wired: Raising an Exceptional Child in a Conventional World
The book Differently Wired focuses on the schooling of exceptional students. Exceptional students have skills in different areas, have dyslexia or anxiety, children with ADHD, and students with neuro differences. This book helps all homeschool educators teach kids with all learning differences, emphasizing assisting them in success.
What Makes It Unique
Homeschooling can be intimidating, but when homeschool instruction involves an exceptional student, the search for high-quality resources can be difficult. Homeschooling parents often feel overwhelmed. They struggle to get helpful homeschool support, the right plans for instruction, get curriculum, and books to read designed to meet students’ special needs with programs that work. Therefore, Reber has crafted this book to encourage and educate parents to teach their differently-abled homeschoolers effectively. You will read this book not only one time but repeatedly.
7. Teaching in Your Tiara: a Homeschooling Book for the Rest of Us
Author Rebecca Frech is a homeschooling veteran and mom of seven kids. In her book Teaching in Your Tiara, she focuses on providing new homeschooling families with helpful common-sense advice and years’ worth of experience. She offers step-by-step instructional information on subjects and helps you to find out whether homeschooling is the top choice for your family or not. The book also includes information about the best curriculum for the instruction method you choose. Besides, readers will get a better understanding of the different instructional styles. In this book, parents can get familiar with strategies, techniques, and support materials available.
What Makes It Unique
This book offers key information to new and veteran homeschoolers. While Frech honestly explains things with humor and logic, it leaves the readers feeling more confident and well-informed about the entire homeschooling experience after reading.
What the Studies Show about Homeschooling
According to research done on the effectiveness of homeschooling by Widener Law Review: Homeschooled children achieve levels of academic achievement similar to or higher than their publicly-schooled peers. Several state studies have also been conducted that demonstrate that homeschool students score equal to, or higher than, traditionally educated students on achievement tests.
In a 2008 study, Dr. Brian Ray, who is the president of the Home Education Research Institute, collected 25 years of academic data on homeschool students’ achievement over time. The extensive study shows how students performed on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, Stanford Achievement Test, and California Achievement Test. These tests take language arts, reading, math, and other subjects and measure how they retain key concepts.
