NCW Libraries

Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag." In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. Her father distrusted the medical establishment, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse....

"When former teacher Paula Eden adopts Faith and Trevor, she is astounded by their natural intelligence and decides to homeschool them to nurture their brilliance. But as the years go on, Faith and Trevor itch for more independence. When Faith sets her sights on a handsome young man visiting from out of town, Paula grows increasingly desperate to preserve her small family and her plans for the children to carry on her legacy. Luckily, she has a cohort...

As the number of homeschoolers continues to increase, professionals who work with homeschoolers seeking higher education need to develop a plan to recruit, assess, and assimilate these particularly motivated, thoughtful, creative students. Combining her professional experience with insights gathered from surveys of US colleges and universities, author Lori Dunlap provides the information you need to more fully understand this population, along with...

Bia Willcox's Aunt Wanda's Memories of the Amazon Rainforest takes us on a wonderful journey through the Amazon River, exploring the natural wonders of the rainforest, its fauna, and flora. Children will extend their English vocabulary by reading about typical Amazon animal species and native tribes' customs. All the while learning the importance of maintaining the Amazonian eco-system for future generations. According to Aunt Wanda, the future of...

Charlotte Mason was a late nineteenth-century British educator whose ideas were far ahead of her time. She believed that children are born persons worthy of respect, rather than blank slates, and that it was better to feed their growing minds with living literature and vital ideas and knowledge, rather than dry facts and knowledge filtered and pre-digested by the teacher. Her method of education, still used by some private schools and many homeschooling...

Lael Whitehead tells how she took her children out of school and allowed them to learn from life in a natural, self-directed way, without curriculum, grades, discipline or rewards. Whitehead describes the various ways in which her three daughters each designed their own unique educations. She introduces her concept of radical respect as the cornerstone of compassionate parenting. Sharing stories from her own experience, she shows that when children...

Many believe that you need expensive materials, or a formal classroom, for true learning to take place. 100 Ways to Teach your Kids with Fruit sets out to challenge that notion. Parents can teach their children while preparing lunch, going to the park, or on the trip to school! Algebra, chemistry, English, drama, art, mathematics, and so much more, can be found in everyday life! Teachers are often instructed to look out for teachable moments; however,...

Frustrated by a regime of statutory testing, and keen for a midlife adventure, Sue Cowley and her partner decided to step out of the system, and set off on the educational adventure of a lifetime with their children. Road School is the story of their family's adventures around Europe and across China, and what they learned along the way. Part comedy travelogue, part parenting guide, part educational philosophy, Road School asks you to consider what...

What is a good education? What is it for? To answer these questions, Stratford Caldecott shines a fresh light on the three arts of language, in a marvelous recasting of the Trivium whereby Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric are explored as Remembering, Thinking, and Communicating. These are the foundational steps every student must take towards conversion of heart and mind, so that a Catholic Faith can be lived out in unabashed pursuit of the True,...

Thinking about Home Schooling? This is the book, that will give you all of the basic answers along with loads of inspirational quotes.