Lincoln and Ivan, 2018 Reading Year in Review

If you've followed along on my blog over the years, you know that at the beginning-ish of each year, I do a review of all the things I read the previous year. And I intend to do that again this year. BUT, I had the genius idea this year that I should do it with the kids too, now that some of them are old enough to read on their own. And it was a lot of fun. First I had them fill out their answers on a sheet of paper, then we gathered up all the books and I interviewed them on film and they held up their books to show while they were talking about them. I'm hoping I can figure out how to upload those interviews here, but youtube is being funny at the moment, so we'll see.

After the interviews, Lincoln and Ivan thought it would be fun to go all around the house and gather up all the books they'd read in 2018, just to see what that pile would look like. And it was crazy! I knew they read a lot, but I had no idea.

I posted pieces of the kids' interviews on Instagram (it wouldn't let me post the whole thing), and I got messages from several different friends who have boys near my boys' ages, who wanted a list of book recommendations because they are always on the lookout (aren't we all?) for new ideas for their boys to read. So I thought I'd just take a minute and compile a list for them, and for my own future reference.

*  Are for books I highly recommend the Audible version of

$  Are my 11 yr old’s favorites

#  Are my 9yr old’s favorites

FICTION

Newberry Award Books

·         The One and Only Ivan

·         Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of HIMH

·         The Egypt Game

·         From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler

·         Because of Winn Dixie

·         The Golden Goblet

·         Holes #

·         Johnny Tremain *

·         Hatchet series #

·         The Sign of the Beaver

·         Call It Courage

·         Charlotte’s Web

·         Caddie Woodlawn

·         The Whipping Boy

·         Julie of the Wolves

·         The Summer of the Swans

·         A Single Shard

·         Out of the Dust

·         On the Banks of Plum Creek (And all Little House series)

·         Bridge to Terabithia

·         Bud, Not Buddy *

·         One Crazy Summer *

·          

Classics

·         Secret Garden *

·         Black Beauty *

·         Tom Sawyer

·         The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn #

·         Anne of Green Gables * (my boys enjoyed listening to this, but I doubt they'd pick it up and read it)

·         War of the Worlds (Illustrated Classics) $

·         Moby Dick (Illustrated Classics) $

·         The Three Musketeers (Illustrated Classics) $

·         Gulliver’s Travels (illustrated Classics) $

·         20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Illustrated Classics) $

·         The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Illustrated Classics) $

·         Journey to the Center of the Earth (Illustrated Classics) $

Fantasy

·         Harry Potter series *#$ (Highly recommend the illustrated editions for  younger readers who might be intimidated by huge blocks of text in regular editions, and the pictures are fabulous!)

·         Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

·         The Hobbit *#$

·         The Lord of the Rings series *

·         The Chronicles of Naria series

·         Fablehaven series $

·         Candy Shop Wars series $

·         Michael Vey series $

·         Spirit Animals series

·         Percy Jackson series

·         Mr. Lemoncello’s Library series

·         Spiderwick series

·         Charlie Bone series

·         Guardians of Ga’hool series

·         Five Kingdoms series  $

·         How to Train Your Dragon series

·         Three Tales of My Father’s Dragon

·         Odd and the Frost Giants *

·         The Graveyard Book $

·         Redwall series #

·         The Green Ember series

·         Alcatraz vs the Evil Librarians series

Other Fiction

·         Bunnicula Series #

·         Mouse and the Motorcycle series

·         The Indian in the Cupboard series *

·         Keeping Score

·         Free Baseball

·         The Thing About Luck

·         Tales of Ancient Egypt #

·         Ben and Me

·         The Liberation of Gabriel King

·         Tuck Everlasting

·         In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson

·         Homer Price

·         Hoot

·         Esperanza Rising *

·         The Girl Who Drank the Moon *

·         Chitty Chitty Bang Bang series * #$

·         Detectives in Togas

·         The Swiss Family Robinson $

·         Navigating Early

·         A Wrinkle in Time

·         Sherlock Holmes and the Bakerstreet Irregulars series

·         My Side of the Mountain series #

·         Greenglass House

·         A Tugging String

·         Just so Stories

·         Grimm’s Fairytales

·         Where the Red Fern Grows

·         The Wild Robot

·         The Borrowers

·         The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet series

·         A Long Way From Chicago

·         The Penderwicks series

·         Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

·         The Red Pencil

·         Elijah of Buxton *

·         The Witches (or any by Roald Dahl)

·         Nick And Tesla’s High Voltage Danger Lab series

       Summer of the Monkeys #

       Old Yeller

       Finn Family Moomintroll

      The Boxcar Children

      Pax $

Comic/Graphic Novel

·         Calvin and Hobbes #$

·         The Adventures of Tintin #$ (these have a pretty difficult vocabulary level, which is why I like them)

·         Garfield

·         Hazardous Tales series by Nathan Hale #$ (These are about historical events, and my kids not only LOVE them, but learn an amazing amount from them.)

NON FICTION

Young Readers Edition books (these are versions of adult books with the same title that have been adapted for younger readers, if you search “young readers edition” on amazon, a bunch will come up)

·         Chasing Space $

·         The Disappearing Spoon $

·         The Journey That Saved Curious George

·         Elon Musk and the Quest for a Fantastic Future $

·         The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind $

·         Omnivore’s Dilemma  $

·         Pay It Forward

·         Irena’s Children $

·         Lion A Long Way Home

·         Hidden Figures

·         The Finest Hours #

·         A Storm Too Soon #

·         Flags of Our Fathers #

·         Wicked Bugs #

·         Wicked Plants #

Biography

·         Little Britches series *

·         Mathematicians are People Too

·         Alexander Hamilton the Outsider

·         All Creatures Great and Small

·         James Herriot’s Treasury for Children

·         Who Was…. series

Other Non-Fiction

·         The Tuttle Twins series

·         Rush Revere series

·         Way To Be! By Gordon B Hinckley

·         Bear Grylls Survival Skills Handbook

       Bomb: The Race to Build, and Steal, the World's Most Dangerous Weapon #$

Glimpses

Science - We've been getting boxes from TinkerCrate this year, and they have been fun. The kids look forward to them each month. This month's box was making circuits to light up paper lanterns.

History - I always feel like History and Langue Arts overlap a ton at out house. For MLK day we had a poetry tea time where we watched the youtube video of Dr. King's entire "I have a dream" speech. Then we made hand print wreaths and pasted a quote on them to hang up in the school room.

Art - Ivan's art class doesn't start up again until February, so he's been working independently for the last several weeks. One of the things he made was this, which he calls "A Tree in Three" it is a tree, and he split it into three sections where he used acrylic paints on top, colored pencils in the middle, and oil pastels on bottom.

Math - My wonderful friend Wynter is working on writing a math curriculum. As she's been putting her webiste etc together she's come out with some really fun activities. One of those activities are these fun clocks that help you tell time, learn to count by fives, AND work on your five times tables.

Friday Fun - We've been meeting our homeschool group at the Springville Library on Friday afternoon to play games. It's been a good option for winter time. The kids can still see their friends, we moms can still see our friends, and no one has to be outside freezing to death.

Heading out on a Friday to play games with our home school buds at the library.

Language Arts - We're a little heavy on the langue arts at our house. Sometimes I think we could list just about everything we do under that category. :) We finished listening to Johnny Tremain. We've been doing copy work exercises from it all month, and having some awesome discussions. This middle grade reader is a bit slow at first, but by the end your heart is swelling with pride and love of country. James Otis's speech about "A man can stand up" tied in nicely with our study of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, and we talked about how what the colonists started clear back in 1776 is something we are still trying to fully realize and bring about today.

We also listened to The Red Pencil, but haven't started any work from it yet. Lincoln and Ivan have both read Finn Family Moonmintol, which is where our copy work will come from next.

Lincoln read the biography of Leland Melvin and completed a biography box style book report. As part of the report he made and flew a straw rocket. Ivan has been reading Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart.

Scripture Study - We begin our school days by singing a hymn, having a prayer, and reading a few verses from the Book of Mormon. This year we are attempting to scripture journal also, by using the "Box-A-Day" method. 

We take a piece of paper and fold it into 16 boxes. Each day, after we read, we draw a picture in one of the boxes about what we read, or something we learned, or thought was interesting. At the end of 16 days, when our paper is full, we get out a lined paper and write on it more in-depth about what we learned/thought was interesting/our testimony....basically anything that encompasses putting thoughts to paper about what we've been reading. Then we stick the lined paper, and the box paper back to back and laminate them together. Hopefully by the time we're done reading the Book of Mormon we'll have a fun little picture journal, and our thoughts about what we read, to go with. 

The first 3 pages of my scripture journal

Up close. I require that we write the verses we read for the day at the top of each box. Then I encourage the kid to either copy a portion of a verse  or to in some way write an explanation to go along with their picture. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

A box from Ivan's journal. I love  how well he conveys expressions, even in stick figures. 

This is the back side of one of Ivan's journals. I have them do this part "free-write style" which means I don't correct grammar or spelling. What I'm concerned with here is content, and narrative voice. I want them to feel safe expressing their deepest thoughts without fear that they will get all marked up with red pen. 

CO-OP Classes - Co-op is about to start up here again next week. I am signed up to teach two classes this semester, Animal Science to Ollie's age group, and Poetry (which is titled Wacky Words, so it sounds more fun and less intimidating) for the older kids class. I'm actually really excited for both these classes, but they will be a TON of work. Their are eight weeks of class. These are my class description write-ups. I did them by hand because my computer was being stupid. But, sometimes doesn't it just feel really good to put pencil to paper? It was a really enjoyable exercise for me. 

Kid Book Reviews