Yesterday’s Classics Ebook Package Sale!!!

Yesterday’s Classics is a company that republishes classic books for children from the golden age of children’s literature, the era from 1880 to 1920. Many of the titles they offer have been out of print for decades and so have been hard to find until recently. Now they have also made their entire collection of 225 books available as e-books in both Kindle and E-pub format! These are beautifully formatted, complete with illustrations and table of contents. If you don’t have an e-reader you can still read or print the books from your computer.

From now, until Saturday, August 27th Yesterday’s Classics is offering their entire e-book package to our readers at a special sale price of $99.95! If you purchased all of the paperback editions of these books the total would come to $2,495.75! If you purchased each book in electronic format individually the total would come to $648.80! This is a wonderful opportunity to add a huge collection of wonderful children’s literature to a family library!

Though I have to admit I still much prefer to collect and read from printed books I am delighted to add these to our family collection. The ability to print the books and read them from multiple devices makes them extremely versatile, and the price makes it possible to have an incredible selection at your fingertips.

(Note: There are several books in the collection that I don’t intend to offer to my children as they don’t meet with some of the convictions we hold regarding reading material. However, this collection is so extensive that it is still wonderfully worthwile, even if some of the books never get read. )

We are thrilled to offer this sale to you right now as it blends beautifully with our theme for the rest of August over at Noble Womanhood; home schooling using the Charlotte Mason/Christian Classical methods which both rely heavily on real, “living” books, rather than textbooks.

For lots more information on this package, including a complete list of all the books in the package and a free book to download, please click here!

Stories of the Pilgrims Audiobook on Sale This Month!

The classic children's book Stories of the Pilgrims is also available as an audiobook recorded by Jim Hodges.  You can download the unabridged book (including an e-text file of the book) this month for $15.00 (40% off)!
We love this book and were so moved while reading through it last year by the bravery, faithfulness and trust in the Lord shown by the Pilgrims that we named our baby girl Priscilla after Priscilla Mullins. Highly recommended!
Click here to listen to a sample or to order

Free E-Book: Discoverers and Explorers

Here is an old treasure I was delighted to find reprinted as a free e-book: Discoverers and Explorers by Edward R. Shaw. We've just started reading it but I've been impressed with it already. We are using it as a spine for our study on world explorers. Beautifully illustrated and worth just the pictures alone!

Available in Currclick's Free section!

My Audio School

My Audio School is a wonderful new site operated by a homeschooling mother :

"My Audio School exists to give children safe and easy access to classic books, interesting educational radio drama, and television and radio broadcasts of historic events. Each of the over 150 full-length books on My Audio School is displayed in such a way that the child can download the book to Mp3, read it for free online, stream the book at the touch of a button, or listen to individual chapters according to a given day’s assignment. Each book is thoughtfully “illustrated” with beautiful fine art or appropriate photos.

My Audio School also offers a large collection of over 200 radio and television broadcasts, from old-time radio theater performances based on classic books and historic events to newscasts of unforgettable moments in history.

Originally created as an aid for dyslexic students seeking self-accommodation, My Audio School has proven to be a help and a delight to students of all ages and abilities. From the emerging reader to the excelling high school student, My Audio School delivers informative, enjoyable audio content on a large variety of school subjects."

About 25% of the content on My Audio School is free with the rest available at a small yearly subscription. This beautifully done, helpful, timesaving resource is one I am greatly looking forward to using!

Ballantyne Book Review: "The Pioneers" and "Fast in the Ice"

Ballantyne the Brave is an inspiring site dedicated to the works of Ballantyne and G.A. Henty and is especially a wonderful resource for young men.

Click here to read a book review of R.M. Ballantyne's The Pioneers & Fast in the Ice (Both books contained in one volume).

Click here for even more book reviews.

For another introduction to the works of Ballantyne click here.

Note: I was quite interested to read that Ballantyne's books concentrate more on geography, whereas Henty's books are geared more towards history. What a perfect combination!

Holling C. Holling Homeschooling Helps: Paddle to the Sea

If you are looking for a good study on the Great Lakes, Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling C. Holling is a treasure. Paddle-to-the-Sea is a little wooden Indian in a canoe, carved by a young boy up north in Canada. Paddle is sent on a journey to the ocean and the story follows him as he travels through each of the Great Lakes (and has many adventures along the way!). Full of wonderful details, drawings and information on the areas surrounding each lake, this book was much enjoyed in our home. Though it's been a year since we read it, the children have still retained quite a bit of what they learned.

Here are a few free online resources to go along with the book:

Paddle-to-the-Sea with Google Earth: "An exciting new program that uses the travels of Paddle to link real-time Great Lakes data to Google Earth’s mapping application. Tracing the path of Paddle's journey to the sea, it includes themes, key words, and Web sites for each chapter of the book." Click here for more information and to download

Paddle-to-the-Sea Film on YouTube: I saved this old film until we finished the book. While it did leave out many details it was still enjoyable, and it was neat for the children to see little Paddle on the big lakes.

Geography and Paddle-to-the-Sea: This is a helpful post from a homeschooling mother on how she used Paddle with her children.

Living Books With Science and Geography: Holling C. Holling

From Living Books With Science and Geography:

"Charlotte Mason advocated using living books in all of our studies. I love the idea and agree that our children should always read excellent books filled with creativity, challenging vocabulary, and firsthand accounts that will spark their imagination. So when it came time to introduce a new subject (Geography) to my children this year, I started looking for a good living book to add into our curriculum. I discovered an entire series that can be added into Geography and Science by Holling. " Click here to read the rest of this helpful post

We are great fans of Holling C. Holling's book and hope to collect them all. I consider them high on my priority list for our family library! :-) They are beautifully illustrated and packed full of information written in an interesting story form. They have been reprinted and are available from Christian Book Distributors . I love to collect antique and vintage editions of books if possible and older copies of Holling's books are usually readily available at reasonable prices on Ebay or from used booksellers.

Edited to add: Though Holling's books were written many years ago and do contain the values of an older era, his books are not written from a distinctively Christian perspective and therefore they do contain an occasional reference to evolution or promote another worldview in a positive way. I have not read them all, so I'm not sure how much of a problem this is in all of his books. In the books I have read these things were very few and easily edited out or discussed with the children. I try to be extremely careful both with the books I read to my children and those I recommend to others. The Holling books I have read have been excellent for the most part but please do use discernment and caution as you read all of his books.