Arcara Family: More on literature

I started this series of posts with the intention of showing you some things we have been using for writing this year, but I can't seem to stop talking about literature! This should be the last post about this before REALLY moving on to writing!

As I mentioned before, Teaching the Classics is our spine for our method of studying literature, but it's not a step-by-step 36-week curriculum. It's a method for studying literature, which is great because it's a one-time purchase that can then guide us in literature from grades K-12. However, I have to decide which books for us to read and discuss. There are SO many great books that's it's hard to decide what to read!

This summer, I looked at many resources and compiled book lists for each grade. My main source was the Kolbe Academy Elementary and Junior High Literature program book lists that can be found on their web site. I also looked at the book lists on the Center for Lit site (which produces Teaching the Classics) and Memoria Press.

I put together lists for these sources and then chose 5-6 for each grade to be required books for us to read and study together. Yes, that means I read them, too, which makes about 15-18 books for me to read. These are really great books, many of which I somehow missed out on reading when I was in school, so I'm really enjoying reading them. I just finished discussing The Reluctant Dragon with Matteo. Maria and I are discussing Anne of Green Gables now, and Cati and I are studying Heidi. We talk about the books, the kids fill out a story chart outlining the plot, conflict, characters, setting, and themes, and then they write an essay to sum things up.

I have the kids choose one additional book per month from their list to read just for the sake of enjoying a new piece of good literature. If I don't force them to read something new, they will just stick to their old favorites we have around the house. Of course, once they start a new book from their list, they start talking about how good it is and start trying to convince their siblings to read it, too.

They keep a record of these additional books in their literature journal. It is just a composition book where they write down info about the book, the date they read it, and a rating of how they liked it. Here are a few samples:

Matteo (2nd grade) only included the title of the book, a picture we found on the Internet, and a short sentence reminding him what it was about.

Matteo's literature journal

Cati included the title, author, date read, a gold sticker to show how much she liked it, and a very short summary.

Cati's literature journal

Maria wrote the title, author, date read, and a bit longer summary. She also wrote a sentence explaining why she liked the book and some stickers rating it. (On the first page of their journals, they defined their rating systems.)