Keller Books is a family-run, used book store.  They set up at a lot of various Catholic homeschooling conferences.  I find it absolutely blissful to get lost in their stacks.  They have tons a vintage Catholic school books and old fashioned classics.   But you don't have to just run into them at conferences, you can also order books on line from them.  So if you are looking for some vintage books, old readers, old classic children's series, old Catholic textbooks, this is a wonderful family company to buy from. 

Latin is something that needs to be tackled systematically.  I mean, we don't live in the Roman world where we would just pick it up through immersion.  Latin immersion camps have actually grown in popularity now, but usually they want someone who has studied enough to be at least considered intermediary in terms of level of fluency. Here are the gentlest ways I found to introduce a study of Latin to your kids.  First of all don't start too young, unless your children really want to try it or seem to have a flair for language.  My own kids were late bloomers in terms of reading and writing so programs aimed at second and third graders really didn't appeal to me.  Plus I think for most kids, going too slowly is boring.  I think it is better to wait to officially start Latin after the child has become a proficient reader in English.  By learning Latin your kids will also learn a lot about English grammar and English vocabulary. Here are five resource...

How in the world can you unschool Latin?  Great read aloud for kids.  Bowditch taught himself Latin! I remember reading the book Carry On, Mr. Bowditch and coming to the part where poor Nathaniel was stuck working a shop due to poverty instead of pursuing his education which he could not afford.  But instead of feeling sorry for himself, he decided to teach himself Latin!  The details are hazy to me now but I think someone gave him a Latin Bible and he somehow got hold of a dictionary and slowly, slowly he taught himself the language.  That's unschooling! But Latin does take an awful lot of discipline to learn.  One has to be dedicated to really going into depth with it.  I've taught Latin at a co-op for several years and believe me, there are kids who take to it like a duck to water. They love the logic, the history, the mystery behind it.  It's like a puzzle to them.  They love the intellectual challenge!  But, of course, the...

I still remember listening to this in the car with my kids and being totally captivated. We are big Jim Weiss fans.  Over the years my kids found many audio tapes and then CDs in their Christmas stockings or received one of his recordings as a birthday gift.  We listened to him in the car or the kids listened to him during quiet time in their rooms or before bed at night after lights out.  They learned so much from him.  I can't even enumerate how much because over the years I'm guessing we got up to 20 or so recordings.  Now you can download the audio.  Since my kids are older we never transitioned to that stage.  We even saw him live twice and the second time we got to meet him!  Weiss used to have his own company called Great Hall Productions but now The Well Trained Mind Publishing Company handles everything.  Listening to Jim Weiss is a great way to unschool your kids in a quality education.  I just love the guy!  He's ...

Unschooling math doesn't mean you just assume your kids will absorb it by osmosis.  A lot of moms seem to think in a very black and white way, either you have to do a curriculum or you don't do anything.  Here's the strategy I employed: 1) Math literature - from Ten Apples Up On Top for basic counting to the  Sir Cumerfrence series  which introduces basic geometry, there are many, many wonderful picture and easy to read books out that that introduce math concepts to kids.  Make a point to read one out loud about once a week.  But don't beat yourself up if life hijacks that plan and you forget for a few weeks.  Just pick it up again when you think of it.  Also, remember that kids love to reread or have books reread to them.  This is an especially good idea with math literature books.  So read them over and over again. 2)  Math Learning Station - where kids can measure, weigh and count whenever they feel inclined to do so....

Like the Dover Activity books , I loved Enchanted Learning for allowing me to be responsive to my children's current interests.  You can have access to free printables, but it is well worth the money to actually join the whole site.  You gain access to so many printables for all kinds of subjects and interests. How to use this resource: This comes under the category of strewing.  You simply print out a work sheet or two you think your children would be interested in and place it somewhere they will stumble upon it.  You could get more creative with this than I was.  You could have a designated cubby for each child so they could get 'mail.'  You could keep a folder in your car and put various worksheets in there, if you are on the road a lot.  There are probably many ways to strew this! I especially used this resource to surprise my kids with fun worksheets at the breakfast table. For instance, right now it's March so you know what that means, do...

One way to unschool math, especially in the grammar school years, is to have a math learning station set up somewhere in your home.  Ours was on the end of a kitchen counter for many years.  It was very simple.  It had a jar of pennies and little cup full of various coins, some kind of measuring instrument like a tape measure, folding yard stick or ruler.  Some kind of scale like a food scale or a spring scale (suspended from the knob of an upper cabinet) and maybe something else, like a clock for learning to tell time or a calculator.  The items varied over the years.  It is best not to crowd the station with lots of things.  Many of these items you might already have around the house. A Tape Measure A food scale that uses both metric and English weights. Jar of Pennies - this is a link to a post I wrote back in 2010.   This is how we used pennies as math manipulatives in our home. Kids love to count, measure and weig...