Watch Me!
The Door Is Not Locked: Finding Freedom in Confession
Like Little Children: Trusting God with Confidence
This Mama's Rule of Life
In the symphony of life, where the notes of work and family often clash, finding harmony can seem like an elusive art. Yet, with a personal “rule of life” routine, I’ve discovered a rhythm that allows the melodies of motherhood, work, and self-care to create a more balanced composition. Here’s a glimpse into my daily routine that keeps the music playing sweetly.
Our Rotating Family Meal Plan
The ULTIMATE Catholic Homeschooling Booklist
Living books for all seasons
Building a robust homeschool library is both a dream come true (you mean it’s my responsibility to buy a lot of books??) and a never ending project, akin to a garden which must be consistently weeded, watered, and fertilized according to changing needs and seasons.
And while I hope this list can be helpful for you, it has been borne mostly out of my own need to obsessively curate an environment of living books to entice, attract, and enrich my children throughout their years of schooling.
A few disclaimers:
Some of these will be read-alouds and others can be independently read. Many will be both. You will have to make the call for your own children based on their maturity and reading levels. There is never an age at which we should stop reading aloud to our children.
I do not own all of these books…yet; this list is my way of keeping track of the books I plan to acquire slowly over the years at whatever pace my husband’s salary can reasonably accommodate.
We still use the library. Frequently. I do not wish to acquire every book we read, particularly when diving deep on subjects of science and history. I lean heavily into purchasing religious materials (which our library doesn’t have), works of fiction that are beautiful and edifying (which our library has hidden amongst the twaddle and liberal propaganda), and high quality anthologies and encyclopedias which we will return to again and again.
A note on “appropriateness”: While I do make every effort to shield our young minds from the pollution of contemporary propaganda running rampant in the libraries of even our very red state, we don’t believe in shielding our children from the realities of life, particularly as depicted in time-tested literature. We subscribe to the GK Chesterton philosophy of fiction: “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” In other words, encountering life’s difficulties via fiction enables children to practice both empathy and resilience. Bad things happen in these books (particularly the latter grades), sometimes terrible things. The content may be beyond the line you wish to draw for your own children in terms of how sheltered you wish them to be. Familiarize yourself with the books in question and make your own call as to your child’s maturity, readiness to grapple with the material in conversation with you, the parent, whose job it is to guide your children in making meaning from these stories.
This list is a work in progress, changing and shifting as I encounter good books and my children grow. If you don’t see your favorite, drop a comment.
I would LOVE to discover new books from you!
Baby Books
Never Touch a Dragon
Goodnight Moon
Ten Little Ladybugs
A Missal for Toddlers
Little Owl’s Night
Touch the Brightest Star
Llama Llama Red Pajama
The Napping House
Brown Bear
Pre-K
Elmer
Winnie the Pooh
The Velveteen Rabbit
Beatrix Potter
Madeline
Eloise
Brambly Hedge
My Father’s Dragon
Mouse Nuns Series
Lyle Lyle Crocodile
Curious George
Blueberries for Sal
Make Way for Ducklings
Are You My Mother?
Green Eggs and Ham
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
Stellaluna
Berenstain Bears/Mercer Mayer
How I Became a Pirate
Mother Bruce
The Monster at the End of this Book
Goodnight Goon
Little Blue Truck
Goodnight Goodnight Construction Site
The Jesus Storybook Bible
Fr. Ben Gets Ready for Mass
I Went to Mass. What Did I See?
Our Lady’s Wardrobe
Our Lady’s Picture Book
The Crippled Lamb
You Are Special
You Are Mine
Because I Love You
Early Readers
Charlotte’s Web
Little House on the Prairie
A Little Princess
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler
Mr. Popper’s Penguins
The Mouse and the Motorcycle
The Indian in the Cupboard
Mary Poppins
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Railway Children
5 Children and It
Mary, Mother of All
Jesus and the Miracle of the Mass
One Holy Marriage
Jack Giorgio, Future Priest
Lily Lolek, Future Saint
Light of the Saints
I-Can-Read Books That Don’t Make Me Want to Tear My Ears Off
Fancy Nancy
Amelia Bedelia
Dr. Seuss
Princess in Black (we just pretend book #10 Prince in Pink doesn’t exist)
Billie B Brown
Hey Jack
The Magic Treehouse
Primary Grades
The Princess Bride
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Heidi
The Wind in the Willows
The Boxcar Children
Black Beauty
The Giver
Ender’s Game
Old Yeller
Where the Red Fern Grows
The Secret Garden
Pollyanna
Anne of Green Gables
Little Women
Bridge to Terabithia
A Ring of Endless Light
McElderry Greek Myths
Usborne Complete Shakespeare (content warning; it’s Shakespeare)
Redwall Series
The Phantom Tollbooth
Because of Winn Dixie
Ella Enchanted
Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer
Robin Hood
The Tale of Desperaux
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Hatchet
Holes
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
Flowers for Algernon
The Rifle
Swallows and Amazons
The Princess and the Goblin
The Courage of Sarah Noble
Across Five Aprils
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
The Egypt Game
To Be a Slave
Sing Down the Moon
Jacob Have I Loved
Afternoon of the Elves
Maniac Magee
Out of the Dust
The Princess Academy
Heart of a Samurai
We Dream of Space
My Name Is Philomena
The Princess and the Kiss
Middle Grades
The Hobbit
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Outsiders
The Hunger Games
The Divergent Series
What Happens Next
The Kate In Between
What Happened to Rachel Riley
Harry Potter (yes, we read Harry Potter)
Corrie Ten Boom
Number the Stars
She Said Yes
The Diary of Anne Frank
Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul (check year of publications; who knows what they slip into in the new editions these days?)
Johnny Tremain
Men of Athens
The Fault in Our Stars
Flipped
Wonder
Mockingbird
Watership Down
Animal Farm
High School
Silence
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Three Musketeers
The Brothers Karamozov
Jane Austen
Flannery O’Connor
John Steinbeck
East of Eden
Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde
Frankenstein
The Lord of the Rings
King Arthur
The Divine Comedy
Confessions
The Consolation of Philosophy
All the Light We Cannot See
Brideshead Revisited
The Great Divorce
The Screwtape Letters
The Abolition of Man
1984
Farenheit 451
Brave New World
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Love in the Ruins
Kristin Lavransdatter
Anna Karenena
The Great Gatsby
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Dune
Hannah Coulter
Redeeming Love
Hopkins
Chardin
Rumi
Johnny Cash
Mary Oliver
Emily Dickinson
Robert Frost
Walt Whitman
Thoreau
Into the Wild
Beloved
The Color Purple
The Red Badge of Courage
Dickens
Shakespeare
Bronte
Les Miserables
The Everlasting Man
What’s Wrong With the World
I will likely also add more theology texts, especially, from these 2 lists of the best Catholic books of all time from Bishop Barron.
Encyclopedias, Collections, and Anthologies
Saints Around the World
Saint Stories
DK National Parks x 2
DK Encyclopedias
DK Anthologies
Dover Coloring Books
What Was Series
Magic School Bus Series
Conservation for Kids
One Small Square
Sir Cumference
Be on the lookout for “Our Favorite Gameschooling Games” and “The BEST Homeschool Subscriptions” and “TV Schooling”
A Perfect Disaster: Finding Joy in the Messiness of Christmas
It’s December 27th and the house is as quiet as the snow that silently blankets everything outside of our windows in the predawn blackness. The only light in the room glows from our Christmas village where it sits merrily on the mantle, high above greedy fingers whose enthusiasm threatens to crack its delightfully delicate rendition of an idyllic Christmas. The sight the villagers look down upon, however, is another story.
Visiting Elizabeth: The Gift of Presence and Friendship
How To Discern Homeschooling
Women Deserve Better than Abortion
At a recent panel on the Dobbs decision, Professor Roberto Dell’Oro, director of Loyola Marymount University’s Bioethics Institute, defended legalized abortion through the first trimester.
God Is in the Details
Our Favorite Catholic Traditions for a Simple, Peaceful Advent
A Catholic Watchlist for Advent
Seeing Through the Veil
What Does the Church Teach about Gender Identity?
It’s Pride Month, and controversies over gender ideology are raging. The release of the documentary “What Is a Woman?” by Catholic political commentator Matt Walsh is causing a stir, revealing deeply disturbing facts about the dangers of pediatric gender transitions. These dangers are the reasons states such as Arkansas, Ohio and Florida are moving toward bans of pediatric “gender affirming” care, with Texas even attempting to prosecute some cases as child abuse.
Netflix's 'Our Father' Grapples with the Perils of Artificial Insemination
Netflix’s recently released documentary “Our Father” follows the rabbit hole down just one of the new quandaries the fertility industry has introduced to parenthood. The documentary details the journey of Jacoba Ballard in her journey of uncovering the truth: that she and at least 93 others had been conceived using not donor sperm, but that of their mother’s fertility doctor.
'Gender Affirmation' for Minors Is Child Abuse, Not Treatment
On June 1, the Ohio House of Representatives followed Arkansas’s lead in passing a bill that blocks medical gender transition for minors, protects parental rights, and prevents biological males from competing in women’s sports. While critics of House Bill 454 claim its passage will “threaten” the mental health of Ohio’s youth, there is reason to doubt these “experts” are considering all the facts.
