At long last, our list of history read alouds for the year is complete!  I spent the summer researching and carefully selecting the books we’ll read in Morning Time this year, using several book lists and other resources.  I checked to see if our little library had each book, and ordered the books that were not available there.

Much of our school time each day is spent reading.  We don’t use text books, but “living books”. Books written by authors who love the topic at hand and who share their enthusiasm for the topic or person they are writing about.  Living books make up the majority of our curriculum.

This year we have a list of 92 books relating to Medieval History that we’ll be working our way through.  Many of these books are picture books and take only one sitting to read through.  But some are longer and will obviously take us longer to read.

We spend about 15-20 minutes reading from our History list every morning during Morning Time. As far as tracking goes, I keep a checklist of these books in my morning time binder and cross it off after we’ve read it.  The kids will often draw pictures or write a little bit about what we’ve read, but I don’t necessarily enforce that every time we read. My main goal is exposure.  I want to get these stories into their minds and inspire them with the incredible stories of both fictional and real-life heroes and heroines.