I need to preface this with a few things. First, we’re excited to homeschool around here BUT we are not yet real homeschoolers, so the following book suggestions are coming from me being really excited and not necessarily from experience. I also need to add that because my kids are students at My Tech High, I have a substantial budget to spend on things like books and microscopes, otherwise we would be much more modest on supplies. With that disclaimer, I have to show you some of our fun new books and toys for our homeschool adventure!
The Wonderous Workings of Planet Earth is going to be the basis for our Field Science program. It covers all the levels of ecological organization and we are using it as our guide as we journal. If you were going to choose just one book, this is my favorite so far!
When I was looking for field guides for Utah, I was sad to find that almost all Utah field guides cover forests and mountains more than our Southern Utah desert. Luckily, we have much in common with our warm neighbors to the south, and match much more closely with books about the Sonoran desert or Southwest Region.
The Desert Life book is also super helpful and full of photographs. And because I deeply love Field Science The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide is full of poems and drawings all about the desert. I\’m just diving into Tom Brown’s Field Guide: Nature and Survival for Children, but so far it has some really fun activity ideas. The Southwest Foraging book is particularly exciting and I plan on carrying that one with me everywhere we go, along with this \’Backyard Birds of the Desert Southwest\’ folding guide.
We\’ve already been able to use that in our backyard and it’s fun to have a laminated pamphlet of ONLY birds that we\’ll actually see (vs an entire book of birds that live all over the place). We have VERY specific wildlife and plants in this desert of ours and I wanted to find as many resources specific to here as I could.
We will be spending much of our home school at the National Parks this year, so this book had to happen. Each park has a Junior Ranger Program and it just seems appropriate that we take advantage of our free National Parks pass and see as many as we can! (I\’m also dying over this Letterfolk National Parks Passport!) We\’ll be going to Yellowstone this fall and I can’t wait to test the temp of the hot pools with a No-Contact Laser Thermometer!! I also outfitted the kids with binoculars, watercolor pencils and sketch books for all of our adventures.
And I\’m officially in LOVE with this illustrator and author, Julia Rothman!! Her books are so fun, everything about them is so creative and I just ordered myself a Nature Anatomy Notebook because I was feeling a little jealous that both of my girls have one. She also has puzzles, other notebooks and posters to go along with all of this!!
I\’ve been stumbling into a whole world of new authors and artists and I just love it ALL. I have a huge weakness for children’s books especially and I just can’t seem to stop buying fun books!! (This entire Welcome to the Museum series is also on my list!)
I was so happy to find a state specific activity book. It is THICK and has SO MANY activities in it! I think this will be something we work through for years.
One of the things I\’m most excited about is this MAPS book (there’s an activity book too!) and our Universal YUMS subscription!! Each month we\’ll be getting a box of international treats and then we\’ll spend some time looking through our Maps book to find out more about what country they came from!
Both girls are also doing KiwiCo Tinker Crates as one of their Engineering classes at My Tech High and Little Sous for Stella’s Family Consumer Science credit. It’s pretty great. I\’m hoping that as Paisley learns digital photography she can help update things here on the blog! We\’ll see.
Have any more homeschool book recommendations? I want to hear about them!!
*Also, YES I get commission on all of these Amazon links…I\’m a hustler and you all did ask!!