Homeschooling with Public Domain Books

Do you want to simplify and economize your homeschool? Do you feel pulled in too many directions because there is so much curricula out there? Would you like to NOT have to learn and understand a entirely new philosophy of education in order to get started?

Try homeschooling with public domain books.

I'm not going to reinvent the wheel and make this more complicated for you. There are two incredible websites that make this so much easier to get started today:

 

http://www.gatewaytotheclassics.com/home.php

http://www.librariesofhope.com/library.html

The first link has lots of history books online and you can read them for free. It even organizes them by historical era for you. OR you can join their program Gateway to the Classic - it is currently $50 a year (for your whole family!), and you can create reading libraries for each of your children and you have access to even larger of a selection (example pictured below).

The second link has a really neat 12 month reading schedule you can use, inspiring audio and transcripts to teach you about the heart of education, and then links to books on archive.org broken up into categories. You can also opt to buy softcover collections of all the books to create a rich, read aloud library.

These two website represent a lot of passion and hard work! They also reflect my ideals of education beautifully, and I don't feel like I need to search around and put my own lists together. Paired with your choice of math and some paper for notebooking/copywork - this is all you need.

In case you are wondering "Why would I want to read these dusty old books? Wouldn't new books be better?" These books were written in more inspiring language, before the text of children's books was dumbed down. They still retain elements of faith and family values. These are books you can't find in modern libraries.  Like all classic literature, sometimes they might retain elements which might prod discussion with your children about equality and cultural attitudes of the past. Despite this, public domain books have so much value to offer a modern day education.