This summer so far has been a time for me to really sit down and focus on what is most important for me and my family. I’ve made a lot of changes around my routine and ultimately the flow of our days and our house. I work full time at home, homeschool our children and spend our free time together doing activities or talking about things. Our kids are homeschooled in a fashion of unschooling. If you don’t know what that is, essentially we have a few core subjects that we incorporate into our school schedule, but the remainder of their learning is driven by them. They get to tell us what kinds of subjects they want to learn and explore. Then we incorporate different lessons and exploration around those ideas.
But one of the things I wanted to highlight is our use of books around the house to explore those different subjects. Over the years, we’ve collected LOTS of inspiring books from all over the place. But notably the books we’ve purchased from Usborne have been some of my kids most favorite and cherished ones.
Top 5 Usborne Books in our Homeschool
Our 4-year old’s favorite bedtime book is a Lift-The-Flap Numbers book that we pull out a few times a week at bedtime. She absolutely loves going through every single page and counting the numbers, lifting all the flaps and exploring the information that jumps out of every page. This is my favorite thing to see – the excitement on my kids’ faces when they enjoy a book. Especially when they pull it out regularly.
Our daughter absolutely adores learning things right before bed. Sometimes she wants a regular story book, but mostly at stage she’s at, she wants to interact with her book and learn things before she goes to sleep. I find it endearing and exciting to spend this time with her every night.
2. Build Your Own Sticker Book: Dinosaurs
Our two boys have their own favorites as well that include Space Exploration, Sticker Books and learning more about the world around them. Usborne has been our go-to solution for most of our educational books, but we do have a wide variety of print books and online resources we use as well through the days. I’ll share more o our curriculum outlines later on.
5. Shine-A-Light Series: The Human Body
Our kids also love the Usborne Shine-A-Light series where we can sit down as a group and learn about different subjects through these interactive sets. There are lots of choices in this series, but one of our favorites is The Human Body where they can learn all about the different parts of the human body. Each page has hidden pictures that you use a flashlight behind the page to highlight things that are “inside” or “hidden” from view. It gets them asking wonderful exploratory questions and having fun at the same time.
As we continue to refine our lifestyle to be the way that makes us most happy, we are always on the lookout for more books, resources, and community programs to be involved in. As part of this, I made a big decision to join the Usborne team as a consultant because I believe their books, over the years I’ve been using them personally, bring an important experience to the lives of children and families around the world. I’ll be launching my very first Usborne 🎉party🎉 on Facebook Monday, July 11th, 2022. If you’d like to join in on the fun and be entered to win some fun prizes, you can join the group HERE or leave me a comment and I will reach out to you.
My 2022 goal and beyond is to spread my love of literacy and books with more people so they can start their own adventures and write their own story!
Adventures in Literature 