Learning & Literacy Collection (including Homeschooling) Resources

Welcome, learners. You'll find a variety of useful tools here, including for homeschooling, but also so much more!

Merriam Webster defines literacy as "the quality or state of...having knowledge or competence." The Learning & Literacy Collection exists to help our diverse community be competent in navigating the world. It contains materials that are not easily confined in either the adult, young adult, or juvenile collections. You can find guidance here on many topics that can be difficult to talk about such as abuse, death, mental health, sex education, and more. Career information can be found here, as well as materials on homeschooling, outdoor education, and life skills. Because the Learning & Literacy Collection covers such a rich array of topics, this LibGuide was created to help you better navigate the collection. Click the tabs to start browsing. Please stop by any of our locations to have a look in person. It's a one-stop shop for materials to educate, inform, and improve yourself.

Learning & Literacy Collection materials are located at all three of our branches:

• at Eastern at the at the end of the adult nonfiction. You'll find mostly homeschooling and study guides here.
• at Fairmount at the end of the adult nonfiction. You'll find most of the outdoor education materials here, as well as a growing variety of other topics relevant to parents and homeschoolers. 
• at Main in the stacks as you walk toward the teen area from the service desk. You'll find a little bit of everything here. 

The Charlotte Mason Method of homeschooling emphasizes the importance of living books, nature study, and hands-on learning. Her ideas are based on the belief that children are born persons with their own unique personalities, interests, and abilities. This method focuses on the abundant use of narrative literature. Plenty of time is spent outdoors exploring. The development of an appreciation for art, music, and nature. Journalling, narration, dictation, and copywork.

 Traditional homeschooling typically involves the same types of educational materials found in public and private schools: textbooks, workbooks, tests, quizzes, structured lesson plans, and other academic activities. Some parents create their own curriculum, but many other parents choose to employ a premade program. Using the “trivium” model, children move through three main stages of learning: concrete learning (the grammar stage), critical learning (the logic stage), and abstract learning (the rhetoric stage).

Core Knowledge offers suggested content to be taught at each grade level and materials aligned with each content area, around which you can build you own lessons and units.

Montessori is an education philosophy and practice that fosters rigorous, self-motivated growth for children and adolescents in all areas of their development, with a goal of nurturing each child's natural desire for knowledge, understanding, and respect. Montessori teachers set up their classroom to promote safe, independent exploration and learning, often through hands-on activities and lessons. Learning in a space that encourages their natural curiosity, children will feel the freedom to explore and learn about the world around them.

In Unschooling, homeschoolers are focused more on the experimental process of learning and becoming educated, than with “doing school.” The focus of unschooling is on the choices made by the individual child, dictated by interests, learning style, and personality type.

These titles include a high interest "hook", sufficient plot to sustain interest, humor when appropriate and emotional appeal for teenagers.

Often, a reluctant reader isn't a child who simply doesn't like to read. Rather, it's a child who needs support discovering books they love that align with their interests and passions. Featuring high-interest narratives, action-packed adventures, humorous stories, and more, these books will keep even the most reluctant of readers turning pages.