- Background Information
- Starting With Resources That You Own
- Utilizing Free Resources
- Breaking the Main Topic into Sub-Topics and Choosing Areas of Study
Hands-on projects and wonderful fiction books are my very favorite parts of our unit studies. Particularly with history unit studies, fiction books can be chosen that coordinate perfectly with the period of history studied. Reading great historical fiction can bring meaning and life to a period in history that was previously only facts and dates in a person's mind. While I adore great fiction books to go along with our unit studies, actually choosing wonderful fiction books for read-alouds and independent reading is a complicated process for me.
One of my biggest goals for my children is for them to love reading. Reading is one of the great joys in my life and I want to pass that love on to my children. I also want my children to read classic literature - both classic children's literature and college-prep classic literature.
Given my goals, I take choosing the books we read for read-alouds and independent reading very seriously. We only have so much time and I want to choose really good books for the time that we have available.
So, how do I go about finding wonderful fiction for our unit studies?
Homeschool Catalogs
One of the places that I find great fiction books to coordinate with different periods in history is in homeschool catalogs. I have three favorite companies that have outstanding books, often linked to a particular historical time period. These catalogs also offer brief descriptions of the titles. My three favorite homeschool catalogs for finding great fiction books are:
All three companies offer free print catalogs as well as extensive websites.
Top 100 Lists/Reading Lists
Reading Lists for College Bound Students
Since I want my children to read classic literature, I try to choose titles from "Top 100" lists. I highly recommend a book I first read about at Kris' blog, Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers - Reading Lists for College-Bound Students.
In Reading Lists for College-Bound Students, brief summaries are given for each of the 100 Most Recommended Works which I find wildly helpful. The list is divided into:
- Novels and Short Stories
- Drama
- Poetry
- Miscellaneous.
Since I'm currently planning unit studies for a year of Ancient History study, I went through the Top 100 list very carefully and marked all of the books that would coordinate well with a study of Ancient History. From the list, all of the following would coordinate well with a study of Ancient History:
- Plato, Republic
- Aristotle, Poetics
- Vergil, The Aeneid
- Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
- Euripides, Medea
- Aeschylus, Orestia
- Aristophanes, Lysistrata.
I would like to include at least a few of these titles in my oldest child's reading list for next year but I will need to take a closer look at them before deciding.
Other Reading Lists
Another great source for a Top 100 List for College Bound Students can be found at the CollegeBoard website.
Recently, I found a great list of the Top 100 Children's Books.
Lastly, The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease is a wonderful resource for choosing books.
Picture Book Recommendations
While all of the homeschool catalogs I mentioned above include wonderful picture books that coordinate with different historical time periods, another great source to find picture books on a particular topic is A to Zoo: Subject Access to Children's Picture Books. While this book is pretty pricey to purchase, it is available in the children's area reference section at most any library. I got VERY lucky at my local library's book sale and purchased an older edition for under $1.00.
So, for example, under the keyword EGYPT, there is a list of over 20 picture books. Armed with the list, I could put those picture books on reserve at the library and pick them up when they are available.
Recommendations from Librarians
Lastly, like most homeschoolers, I'm quite the regular visitor to our local library. The librarians know me by sight. While I haven't done so, if I was particularly stuck, I would feel comfortable asking the children's area or teen's area librarian for book suggestions to coordinate with a unit study.
Do you have any great ideas for finding wonderful fiction books for unit studies? If you do, be sure to post a comment. I'd love to hear your ideas.
Future posts in this series will discuss all of the following topics related to planning unit studies:
- Choosing hands-on projects to coordinate with the topics.
- Choosing writing projects or designing a writing menu.
- Deciding if a lapbook or lapbooks will be part of the study.
- Coordinating non-fiction books with the specific topics for read-alouds and independent reading.
- Scheduling what readings will be done each day.
- Considering if there are specific subjects that I need to tie in with the unit study.
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