Collecting resources for homeschool is an always-challenging, ever-evolving process. We strive to collect the best materials to support our young learners’ journeys. Sometimes this is as grand as selecting an extensive curriculum that covers an entire subject for a year. Sometimes it’s as simple as finding a fun and educational board game. And sometimes it is just curating a list of Teaching Character Through Literature pack with the hopes of developing your child into a studious and well-rounded person.
Beautiful Feet Books looks to take the burden of book curation off of your shoulders and enhance that selection by providing prompts and supporting questions for each story. Two levels, Primary and Intermediate, are offered, which cover a wide range of readers, from Kindergarten to 6th grade.
This review covers the Primary (K-3) Teaching Character Through Literature package. This package follows a non-secular, Charlotte Mason style of learning. The standard pack includes 12 books, plus the teachers’ guide. The pack can be customized by removing books, and the books containing religious content are marked in case you would like to have a fully secular experience. Be aware, the teacher’s guide is very much tied to bible scripture/study. The website also allows you to purchase books individually. An extensive list of additional books can be found in the teachers’ guide if you would like to expand upon the provided stories.
The purpose of this pack is to influence your child’s love of reading while building valuable steps in helping them shape who they are to become as they continue to grow. I definitely appreciate the vision of Rebecca Manor to use these lesson plans to cultivate reading aloud as “a roadmap for your journey”. As someone who typically keeps our religious and homeschooling learning separate, I was intrigued to see how I could combine the two into our day. For families who do morning baskets or work this pack could easily be incorporated for a smooth transition. The sample pack we were given, curated by the author, was a collection of stories that showed a specific set of people in different social and class settings, and different time periods as they build self-love, compassion, and strategies toward conflict resolution.
Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de La Pena is a homeschool favorite of ours and I was happy to see it selected in this pack as well The Seven Silly Eaters that kept my kids laughing throughout the entire story.
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The sample package did however fall a little flat for my family and I as far as effectively seeing the diverse development of character building through all walks of life. If you are looking to build your own collection and add more inclusive books, even with the list provided, the work is handed over to you, the parent, to curate. While some of the book suggestions are timeless classics, and even a few are childhood favorites of mine, with there being such a plethora of beautiful books written since some of these time periods, I would have loved to see more modern books added to the list. In guiding my children’s moral compass, I wanted more and had to search outside of the guide to give my kids that scope of learning and exposure.
With that said, I think this approach is a great start and Rebecca Manor does address that the books she has included are just a sampling of her personal preference, and that you can reach out with more titles that you think will help add to building an excellent book list. That is something to definitely take into consideration, and I applaud the effort to continue to learn and grow.
Beautiful Feet books has also announced that they “will be releasing a brand-new Geography Through Literature course for grade K-3 and a brand new Nature Study Through Literature course for grade K-3 this year. The geography course will be available this spring and the nature study course should be available this fall”.
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A TRUER MOTHER, LIFE, AND HOMESCHOOL 
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