Feathers in Our Nest

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Educational Books for Kids {Gift Ideas & Homeschool Resources!}

December 5, 2016 by Aliesha

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our NestI love books.  Our kids love books.  We have SO many books in our home, but we keep adding more!  There’s just no better way to invest in our children’s minds than by buying good books for them!

Today I’ve compiled a list of some really incredible educational books for kids of all ages!  Many of these span various age levels, so you can plan on having these on your shelves for years to come.  Instead of grouping by age, I’ve grouped by topic… everything from science to geography to computer coding to art!  (You may realize that I left history off this list. I think that subject needs a post of its own!)

And what better time of year to buy books than at Christmas?  Stock up for the cold winter months so you have plenty of excellent reading material for those long, dark days!

Be sure to read all the way to the bottom of the post where I have an Amazon coupon code to share with you!

Educational Books for Kids

Early Learning/Skills
Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

This bright & colorful board book is perfect for teaching colors to little ones!

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

This is another book by the same author. It teaches shapes!

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

My kids have all loved books like this one. The bright colors and real photographs are so fun!  There’s always something new to notice.

Language Arts & Handwriting

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

We have this activity book and it’s a lot of fun!  Perfect for preschoolers learning their letters.

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

I’m not even kidding… at least one of my children uses an Usborne Wipe-Clean book every day.  They are fantastic books!  My younger ones love to do this book while I work with Vera on her handwriting.

Science & Nature
Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

We’ve used some of the Usborne Beginners series as part of our science curriculum this year. The text is easy to understand and the photos are gorgeous!  We really enjoyed the Caterpillars and Butterflies book.

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

This book is a great car activity or rest time book.  It has big, beautiful illustrations of undersea scenes, and there are things to find on each page.  Really neat!
Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

We enjoy referencing this science dictionary!  It explains lots of science terms and concepts in easy-to-understand ways.

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

The kids love pouring over this book and learning about the human body!  They can’t even read it yet, but they like looking at the neat pictures!

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

This book is gorgeous!  The hand-drawn illustrations look like they came out of a nature journal.  Vera loves to copy drawings and diagrams out of it.  We also reference this one during school!

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

I don’t have this one yet, but it looks so fun!  It includes prompts and activities for little explorers (probably age 7 and up) as they create their own nature journal.

Geography
Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

This looks like a beautiful book!  We don’t have it yet, but I would love to add it to our collection.  It shows many different homes around the world!  Great for teaching about animal habitats as well as about other cultures.

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

The Usborne Look Inside books are always so cool.  This one teaches geography!

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

We love learning about the states with this book!  The illustrations are graphic and fun.  It’s neat learning about our country!

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

This book has been on my wish list for a while.  I love looking at maps, and this book seems so fascinating!

Art & Drawing

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

When I got this book a while ago, it really inspired Vera to take her art to the next level!  Her drawings became more realistic and she grew in her confidence.  Very easy to follow the step-by-step directions!

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

Ditto to this book.  So easy to follow the instructions and draw people that are actually pretty good!

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

This drawing book will be wrapped up under the tree for one of our children this Christmas!  It looks so fun!

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

We’ve all been inspired by this art treasury.  It includes famous paintings and pieces of art, along with a way to emulate the style or method by which it was created.  We enjoyed the Jackson Pollock chapter especially!

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

This is technically for parents and instructors, but perhaps a motivated older child could read it themselves.  I bought it so I can teach my children how to draw. Very unique method of instruction, and it looks like it will be very fun to do!

Math & Technology

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

I really want this book!  With a husband in the technology field, we definitely want our kids to learn about computers and coding!  This one explains how computers work.

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

This is a bit above my kids’ level at the moment, but I think it will be a lot of fun when they’re ready!  Who doesn’t love stalling at bedtime?

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

Can’t wait to start doing some coding projects with our kids in a couple of years.  This book looks awesome!

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

I get asked ALL THE TIME how _____ works.  I need this book on my shelf for the science questions that are above my pay grade!

Poetry

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

We’ve been reading this poetry book in our homeschool this year.  Some poems are funny and some are serious, but all of them are accompanied by gorgeous photographs of animals.

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

This looks like a really neat poetry book too!  Maybe we’ll get it to read over the summer.

Theology

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

I’m so glad this book is the basis of our Bible curriculum this year!  It explains theology in such good (yet rich) ways.  Even Jude (3) can track with it.  Highly recommend!

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

I just bought this book for our family, but I want to start it already!  It looks really solid and teaches children theology through studying the names of God.

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our NestI’ve had this one my wish list for a while as well.  I think our kids are almost ready for it!

Other

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

One of our children is getting this book for Christmas.  I’m sure we’ll all enjoy it, though!  Love finding really great kid’s cookbooks!

______________________________________________

Whew!  I think this list should help you get started finding some amazing educational books for kids!  I always end up down a rabbit trail on Amazon once I start searching for books.  Not that that’s a bad thing… I often find some pretty great resources that way!

Do you have any of these books?

Today you can use code GIFTBOOK at Amazon to save $5 off any book purchase of $15 or more!  Coupon codes for Amazon are rare, so I’m always excited when I see one like this!

Feel free to pin this post for later!

Educational Books for Kids of All Ages | Non-fiction books to inspire a love of learning! | Feathers in Our Nest

Aliesha Caldwell is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Filed Under: books, gift ideas, gifts, homeschooling

Scripture Memory: Psalm 1

August 13, 2016 by Aliesha

As part of our homeschool, we are memorizing Scripture together all year!  Our first passage was Psalm 1.

At the end of each memory verse, the kids are supposed to perform it for an audience.  They made these videos to share with you!

Jude learned it (mostly) right along with his sisters!

Love seeing them hide God’s Word in their hearts!

Filed Under: homeschooling, videos

Homeschool Curriculum 2016-2017

July 11, 2016 by Aliesha

Today we started our second week of homeschooling for the 2016-2017 year!  I intended to post this last week, but the week sped by, and here we are!

Several people have asked me about our curriculum choices for this year, so I wanted to share what we are using!

Vera is doing a mixture of Kindergarten and First Grade work. Her birthday is in August and she’ll be turning six.

Cordelia (4.5) and Jude (almost 3) are in preschool.  Theodore (almost 1) will be along for the ride.Homeschooling Sonlight Kindergarten / First Grade  |  Feathers in Our Nest

Homeschool Curriculum 2016-2017

Bible / History / Geography / Literature

Sonlight is known for their core curriculum: history, Bible, and literature. We decided to do Core A, which is for ages 6-8.  It covers creation to the fall of the Roman empire.

We can’t wait to dig into learning about other cultures and ancient history!  I absolutely love studying ancient cultures, so I know this will be such a fun year!

I know curriculum can be expensive, so I’m always looking for ways to save. Buying a whole grade package from Sonlight saves a pretty big chunk, we found!  Also, you can use code “AC20330563” to save $5 on your first Sonlight order of $50 or more!

I’ll supplement our history with lots of library books as well.  I also have some neat ancient history coloring pages and I bought the audio version of Mystery of History (Volume I) for us to listen to as we study each part of history this year.

To go along with the Bible/missions parts of Sonlight, I also purchased a few other things: THUMB prayer cards, a coloring book, and a fabric world map.

Language Arts / Phonics / Spelling / Creative Writing

We’re in the middle of the Sonlight Kindergarten Language Arts.  Vera is working through the Kindergarten readers, and when we finish those (probably mid-August), we’ll begin Sonlight First Grade Language Arts.  She is really catching on to reading and it’s fun to watch!  Spelling is incorporated into this curriculum, as well as some creative writing later in the year.  We’ve also been using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  I bought a lot of things at Target that will also help us with these subjects!

Math

We will be using Math-U-See: Primer (the first level) this year.  It looks very simple at the beginning (but important for establishing a good foundation), so we may breeze through it rather quickly and move into the next level (Alpha).  I love that this includes little blocks to help students visualize (and touch!) the math concepts that are being taught.  I think it will be a good fit for us, but we won’t know until we get into it more!  The younger ones may be able to keep up with this for a while too.  I also want all three of the kids to be able to write their numbers by the end of the year.

Science

We’re using Sonlight science level A this year.  It covers Biology, Botany, and Physics.  We’ll read lots of fun science books on a wide variety of topics: weather, tadpoles & frogs, laws of physics, butterflies, plants, and more.  There are science experiments to do as well, but they don’t always correspond directly to what we’re learning about that week, so we may skip some of those or do them on the weekends.  We’ll also supplement our science with other books from the library about the topics we’re studying (not because the curriculum necessarily needs it, but because that will be fun).

Handwriting

I picked Handwriting Without Tears as our handwriting curriculum (my funny younger brother would like to point out that it didn’t work for him… there were tears!), and I bought both the Kindergarten and First Grade levels of this as well.  We’ll work at Vera’s pace and probably will complete both levels by the end of this school year.  I really like the tactile ways that this curriculum teaches letter formation (wooden pieces, chalkboard, etc.).  It looks very good!  I will work with Cordelia and Jude on handwriting as well.  We love using inexpensive dry erase boards and markers to practice our handwriting too!

Art

I’m compiling this myself using some really neat resources.  This will be very laid-back and unofficial.  We’ll spend some of our free time doing art projects and lessons as opposed to it taking up a portion of the school day.

A few of the books we’re using:

–Drawing with Children
–I Can Draw Animals
–I Can Draw People
–The Usborne Art Treasury
-various library books on great artists

I may do a few more posts on our homeschooling schedule/routine and just our day in general, if you’d be interested in that.  Currently, we’re starting at 8:00AM and finishing everything “official” by 11:00AM. Then we read books and have “free play” time until lunch.  It’s working out great so far!

If you have any questions for me, ask away! I’m no expert, but I’ll share what is working for our family!

This post contains affiliate links and/or codes to products or companies I use and love. I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Filed Under: books, homeschooling

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This blog shares our family's story and our journey from newlyweds to a family of seven. We share milestones, we share struggles, we share sweet memories, and we share about our Savior. Keep reading...

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