Our homeschool morning time has become the perfect opportunity to teach critical thinking and discuss topics that we will encounter in our every day lives.
Every morning, my kids and I meet in our living room for an hour of reading and discussion. I felt that it was important to more intentionally pour critical thinking into my tween and teens this year. And that has been the motivation behind my choice of our morning time reading.
This year, morning time has taken on a more solid block of our daily routine. I previously shared our quarter one books HERE…and how this practice is helping save my sanity HERE.
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Now that we are one-fourth of the way through our homeschool year, we’re jumping into a new stack of reading. It looks to be a really great quarter ahead with some books that will hopefully challenge, encourage, and give rise to critical thinking.
HOMESCHOOL MORNING TIME READING: BOOKS FOR CRITICAL THINKING
〈2020-2021 CURRICULUM〉 〈2019-2020 CURRICULUM〉 〈2018-2019 CURRICULUM〉
〈MORNING TIME: QUARTER ONE〉 〈3 NEW SANITY-SAVING TIPS〉
JESUS FREAKS: MARTYRS
After hearing about Foxe’s Book of Martyrs from a few different people over the past few months, I felt like this was an area we should lean into. Jesus Freaks is specifically geared towards teen, so I am looking forward to seeing how they connect with the stories in this book.
ARE YOU LIBERAL? CONSERVATIVE? OR CONFUSED?
This book discusses political labels in a way that kids can understand. Since politics is often discussed nowadays, but not usually fully understood, I hope this clears up any confusion my teens may have. My hope is that it will lead them into engaging in constructive conversations. {There is a supplemental guide to help walk through the book. Click HERE.}
THE ART OF ARGUMENT
This book is an introduction to informal fallacies. Not sure what that is? You’ll find out, along with a ton of real-life application to the fallacies all around us every single day. By going through this curriculum, my teens are able to recognize fallacies so that they don’t fall prey to them.
Since we are discussing this book as a family, I bought the teacher’s edition and one student edition. Looking back, I didn’t need to get the student book since I use this one with all the answers in it. Classical Academic Press also has a companion download with a video group discussion. This is helpful in hearing the fallacies played out among people.
This quarter looks to be rich in teaching my teens critical thinking. My hope is that these books give them pause and arm them with knowledge so that they can respond in an appropriate manner. I am really excited to see what we learn over these next few months!
EDIT: So…I goofed. I’m one of those homeschool moms who figures out how a curriculum or book works while I go through it with my kids. Too much prep work is something I steer away from. For better or worse. This time, it was the latter. Here’s the deal:
In quarter one, we read “Whatever Happened to Penny Candy.” I did not realize that there was an order to the books and jumped to the political one I mentioned above. Then today came and I began reading it to my kids and realized that it was the third book in a three part series.
Scratch this one kids. We’ll read it in a few months. Thankfully, I had on hand book number two: “Whatever Happened to Justice” and we began that one for our quarter two reading. One day in and it’s sooooo good!
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