Living Art Books for Picture Study
December’s theme on the blog is inadvertently turning into posts all about books (there are a few more coming later this month 😊)! Last week I shared a list of our favorite winter picture books, and this week I’m sharing a little project I’ve been working on and am excited to announce today!
The Beauty of Book Lists
I’ve mentioned many times that I love book lists. I find them incredibly helpful when looking for additional reading choices for my kids as well as myself. I appreciate that other homeschoolers/parents have done the work of weeding out the twaddle to find good, living options to grow our knowledge on a given subject. In general and especially for literature, I am so thankful for the book lists from AmblesideOnline that include their main curriculum and free read suggestions for each grade. I have a spreadsheet of all of these, and I’ve kept track of which ones my kids have read, which has been helpful when they’re chomping at the bit for something new to read!
Books with book lists in them are also wonderful to have on hand, and I’ve found the following guides to be particularly helpful for even more suggestions (and many overlapping ones):
by Gladys Hunt
by Elizabeth Laraway Wilson
by Jamie C. Martin
I also appreciate book lists that offer different perspectives. In my Year 5 planning post, I mentioned that when I was looking for books to add more diversity to our curriculum, I found Heritage Mom, Stories of Color, and The Parallel Narrative especially helpful.
And for adding books to supplement our science and nature study, my go-to resource is always the book lists at Sabbath Mood Homeschool.
Art Books?
As I’ve been making different Picture Study Aids over the last four years, many of them have included lists of living books that I felt supplemented that artist well. In some cases, however, I also found books even after I published the Picture Study Aid that would’ve made excellent additions, but it was too late to get it out to the people who had already purchased or downloaded it.
With this dilemma in mind and inspired by the lists I linked above, I decided to contribute my offering to the homeschooling book list world and began working on a living art book archive, which I’m sharing with you today!
I’m starting with the books I’ve included in the Picture Study Aids for now, though I will not be including all of them. Early on in my Picture Study Aid-making days, I wanted to include as many book options as possible so moms could decide for themselves what they considered twaddle or not. However, I will be filtering these out a little more with this archive.
Please also keep in mind that this archive is a work in progress! It is definitely not finished nor do I think will it ever be. I wanted to share what I have so far in the hope that it’s a help to my fellow homeschoolers!
You can find the archive at the link below. I plan to add a link to it in all of the Picture Study Aids going forward. I will be working on it slowly over time as I get books from the library and hear about new ones, so please drop me a line if you know of any wonderful books that you think should be included!
