Homeschooling is an increasingly popular choice among parents as it provides your children with a personalised education.
When it comes to homeschooling, there are books to help you get inspired, learn about different homeschooling methods and philosophies, or just give you the encouragement you need when you feel like nothing has gone right.
Whether you are new to homeschooling or have been in the business of homeschooling for long, this list of 20 best-selling homeschooling books of all time is for you.
It offers guidance on everything from curriculum planning to teaching methodology, these books will give you an overview of homeschooling experience.
If this sounds like what you would want to know, please keep reading.
See The 20 Best-Selling Homeschooling Books Of All Time
There are so many resources and Homeschooling books available, sometimes, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. Let’s quickly take a look at the 20 best-selling homeschooling books:
1. Minimalist Homeschooling: A Values-Based Approach To Maximize Learning And Minimize Stress By Zara Fagen
When it comes to homeschooling it can be difficult to figure out the right approach or style for your family. This book by Zara Fagan makes it easier for everyone, it offers 15 thought-provoking worksheets to help readers purge their tasks, schedule, curriculum, and supplies with clarity and confidence.
This book provides practical homeschooling advice and recommendations, based on the author’s own experience as a homeschooling parent.
It covers topics like creating a simple learning environment, choosing a curriculum that aligns with your family’s values, and balancing work and homeschooling.
Minimalist Homeschooling is a great resource for any homeschooling parent.
2. Rethinking School By Susan Wise Bauer
This book is an informed, practical resource for parents, it is highly recommendable, it offers a comprehensive guide to homeschooling and covers everything from the basics of starting down to the styles and methods that can fit in.
She also breaks down how to advocate for your child when in public school or how to create a homeschool to fit the needs where the public school failed.
This book is well-written and will put you through to understand the school system in a way that nurtures your child’s mind, emotions, and spirit;
- Understand why they have twelve grades, and why they match them to ages.
- Evaluate your child’s maturity, and determine how to use that knowledge to your advantage.
- Find out what subject areas they study in school, why they exist―and how to tinker with them.
- Discover what learning disabilities and intellectual giftedness are, how they can overlap, how to recognize them, and how those labels can help (or hinder) you.
- Work effectively with your child’s teachers, tutors, and coaches.
- Learn to teach important subjects yourself.
- Challenge accepted ideas about homework and standardized testing.
- Help your child develop a vision for the future.
- Reclaim your families’ priorities (including time for eating together, playing, imagining, travelling, and, yes, sleeping!).
- Plan for college―or apprenticeships.
- Consider out-of-the-box alternatives.
3. The Brave Learner: Finding Everyday Magic In Homeschool, Learning, And Life By Julie Bogart
In this book, Julie Bogart distils decades of experience–homeschooling her five now-grown children, developing curricula, and training homeschooling families around the world–to show parents how to make education an exciting, even enchanting experience for their kids, whether they’re in elementary or high school.
This book provides practical advice on how to homeschool with confidence and joy, how to choose a homeschool curriculum, and how to assess your child’s progress. In addition, the book includes interviews with homeschooling families who share their own tips and advice.
Sometimes we wonder how parents nurture a love of learning amid childhood chaos, parental self-doubt, the flu, and state academic standards. reading books will help ease some of this stress
Bogart gently invites parents to model brave learning for their kids so they, too, can approach life with curiosity, joy, and the courage to take learning risks.
Must read:
4. The Call Of The Wild And Free By Ainsley Arment
This is an excellent resource for parents who are considering homeschooling their children. Arment provides an overview of the benefits of homeschooling, as well as its challenges.
The Call of the Wild and Free offers advice, information, and positive encouragement for parents considering homeschooling, those currently in the trenches looking for inspiration, as well as parents, educators, and caregivers who want supplementary resources to enhance their kids’ traditional education.
She offers advice on creating a Homeschool Portfolio, which can be used to evaluate a child’s progress.
The homeschool approach of past generations is gone—including the stigma of socially awkward kids, conservative clothes, and a classroom setting replicated in the home.
The Wild + Free movement is focused on a love of nature, reading great books, pursuing interests and hobbies, making the entire world a classroom, and prolonging the wonder of childhood, an appealing philosophy that is unpacked in the pages of this book.
5. Raising Critical Thinkers: A Parent’s Guide To Growing Wise Kids In The Digital Age By Julie Bogart
In this book, Julie Bogart offers practical tools to help children at every stage of development to grow in their ability to explore the world around them, think critically, examine how their loyalties and biases affect their beliefs, and generate fresh insight rather than simply recycling what they’ve been taught.
This book is a guide for parents to help children of all ages process the onslaught of unfiltered information in the digital age.
Bogart provides practical advice on how to cultivate a love of learning in your children and help them develop the skills they need to thrive in the 21st century.
She defines what critical thinking is and tells us how to help our kids do it using specific activities based on your child’s age.
With Bogart’s guidance, parents can give their children the tools they need to be successful in whatever pursuits they may choose.
Drawing on more than twenty years of experience homeschooling and developing curricula, Full of accessible stories and activities for children of all ages, Raising Critical Thinkers helps parents to nurture passionate learners with thoughtful minds and empathetic hearts.
6. Homeschooling For College Credit By Jennifer Cook DeRosa
Homeschooling for College Credit is a very recommendable book for parents who are looking for a homeschooling book that will help them prepare their children for college.
This book is loaded with lessons on how to homeschool for college credit it motivates teens and brings the goalpost closer and teaches you how to pay cash as you go.
This book will challenge you to reconsider the wisdom of popular college propaganda, and how to make better choices for your family. Even if you’ve never been to college, this book will turn you into a well-informed homeschool guidance counsellor ready to proceed with confidence.
7. A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching A Generation Of Leaders For The Twenty-First Century By Oliver DeMille
A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-First Century is a how-to guide for parents that are homeschooling or those that want to homeschool. It gives you a step-by-step guide to creating a curriculum for kids on the skills they need to learn.
In addition, DeMille provides advice on how to find quality materials and resources, as well as how to assess your child’s progress.
8. The Read-Aloud Handbook
This book tells you more about the benefits, rewards and importance of reading aloud to children.
It also offers proven techniques and strategies for helping children discover the pleasures of reading and setting them on the road to becoming lifelong readers.
Every child can become an avid reader, and this guide shows how to make it happen. In this book, Jim Trelease explains:
- How reading aloud awakens children’s imaginations and improves their language skills
- How to begin reading aloud and which books to choose
- How to create reader-friendly homes, classrooms, and libraries
- How to lure children away from the television and video games Jim Trelease has made reading aloud a special pleasure for millions of people.
9. Daily Reading Comprehension, Grade 6
This book helps your sixth-grade students learn how to understand, respond to, and enjoy what they read. it presents students with direct instruction and practice of the comprehension strategies and skills they need to become strong and successful readers
Even reluctant grade six readers will have fun completing the activities in this reading workbook, and learn to love reading in the process. This book comes with a lot of packages;
Visual Aid Comprehension Pages – These reproducible pages provide students with a visual tool to help the child apply reading skills and strategies to daily passages.
Improved Reading Success – As sixth graders gain more confidence in their reading skills, they’ll have more success in all aspects of school
Follows All Current Standards – When you use this reading workbook for homeschooling or in the traditional classroom, bear in mind that it follows current educational standards
Practice Test-Taking Skills – the author followed an exam format in developing each of the book’s activities, which helps students have more success in all testing situations
Full Year of Instruction – With 30 weeks of instructional materials included, you’ll be able to make use of this book throughout the school year
10. Home Learning Year By Year, Revised And Updated: How To Design A Creative And Comprehensive Homeschool Curriculum By Rebecca Rupp
This is a comprehensive guide to designing a homeschool curriculum, from one of the country’s foremost homeschooling experts.
In this book, Rebecca Rupp presents comprehensive plans from preschool through high school, covering integral subjects for each grade, with lists of topics commonly presented at each level, recommended resource and reading lists, and suggestions for creative alternative options and approaches.
Included along with all the educational basics are techniques and resources for teaching everything from philosophy to engineering, as well as suggestions for dealing with such sensitive topics as sex education.
Home Learning Year by Year continues to be the definitive book for the homeschooling parent.
11. Homeschooling: A Family’s Journey
This intimate, eminently practical memoir of a successful homeschooled family of six children illuminates today’s most exciting choice in education and shows how it works from cradle to college.
Homeschooling: A Family’s Journey is the perfect book for everybody who wishes to homeschool or already homeschooling their kids.
Sharing the concerns of committed parents everywhere, authors Gregory and Martine Millman are consistently practical, informed, caring, and no-nonsense in their approach.
They pay special attention to homeschooling and college, the economics of home-learning, and how a parent can really handle a child’s full education.
Homeschooling opens a window to an exciting, important way of education—and, even more, a way of life—that can make all the difference in your family’s world.
12. The Everything Homeschooling Book
Homeschooling is about learning together with your child. In this book, the author provides you with the encouragement and ideas you need to explore this option for your family.
You will find new ideas and techniques that help keep home education interesting and exciting.
This edition includes completely new material on
- Updated curriculum resources, strategies, and methods.
- Fresh educational activities for grades K-12.
- Information on specific learning styles and special needs.
- Ideas for tackling social issues and social skills in today’s world.
- Typical homeschool days, schedules, and activities.
13. Parenting Gifted Children
This comprehensive guide covers topics such as working with high achievers and young gifted children, acceleration, advocating for talented students, serving as role models and mentors for gifted kids, homeschooling, underachievement, twice-exceptional students, and postsecondary opportunities.
When parents need the most authoritative information on raising gifted kids, they can turn to Parenting Gifted Children: The Authoritative Guide From the National Association for Gifted Children, a gifted Education Legacy Award winner.
The only book of its kind, this guidebook will allow parents to find the support and resources they need to help their children find success in school and beyond.
Written by experts in the field of gifted education and sponsored by the leading organization supporting the education of gifted and advanced learners, this book is sure to provide guidance, advice, and support for any parent of gifted children.
14. Montessori Reading Workbook
This book is highly recommendable for homeschooling mums, it will educate and motivate you more in the aspect of homeschooling.
With this book, children will learn the shape and sound of each letter, just like they would with Montessori sandpaper letters.
The book includes 26 alphabet worksheets meant for children to trace letters with their fingers and learn to recognize beginning sounds.
Montessori pink series activities: children will learn phonetic reading with three-part cards and missing letter activities.
This Montessori Reading book includes:
- Work with letters and a clear and straightforward system to learn phonics: children will learn the shape and sound of each letter, just like they would with Montessori sandpaper letters.
- The book includes 26 alphabet worksheets meant for children to trace letters with their fingers and learn to recognize beginning sounds.
- Montessori pink series activities: children will learn phonetic reading with three-part cards and missing letter activities. We will introduce easy-to-read CVC words with flashcards and games.
- Montessori Blue series activities: the book also includes three-part cards and activities to learn digraphs present in CCVC and CVCC words, and a list of words for children to practice
- A paper movable alphabet designed for children to start building their own words.
- Sentence building: They have also included Montessori reading games and cut-out words to start writing and reading sentences quickly.
They included many Montessori reading tools in this book, which you will be able to cut out and laminate if you want to create your own Montessori reading materials on a budget.
15. Project-Based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners By Lori McWilliam Pickert
This book is an introduction and guide to creating the circumstances under which children can teach themselves.
The book combines children’s interests with long-term, deep, complex learning. This is an essential experience for children: to spend time working on something that matters to them, with the support of a dedicated mentor.
The author gives parents concrete tips for helping children do challenging, meaningful, self-chosen work.
16. Relaxed Homeschooling: How To Unlock The Secrets In Books And Life’s Hidden Curriculum
When building your homeschooling bookshelf, what are the best homeschooling books to own?
The ones you’ll refer to year after year, that will continue to provide relevant advice and wisdom and leave you feeling reassured and inspired about homeschooling.
Is your homeschool full of worksheets and never-ending tasks that are draining the enjoyment of learning from your children?
Relaxed Homeschooling is designed to help you learn how to homeschool in a relaxed and natural way. Its step-by-step guide will teach you how to inspire learning at home through classic literature, life, and experience.
This book is perfect for anyone who is intrigued by, and had wanted to homeschool in a more relaxed, child-led manner but feels like they are lacking in creativity and/or education.
Homeschooling fully embraces the idea of leaving the “conveyor belt” style of education behind and illustrates how to recognize and follow the rabbit trails that spark the interests of your children.
17. Educating Your Gifted Child
This book is about how one public school teacher embraced homeschooling.
What would make a dedicated public school teacher decide to homeschool her own children?
This book will enlighten and motivate you more in the aspect of homeschooling.
How is the current educational system failing our gifted and twice-exceptional students? How can parents advocate for the education their children need and deserve? What options do parents and their gifted children have?
The author of this book addresses these concerns and more in Educating Your Gifted Child.
This book Includes;
- Simple and Practical: This user-friendly guide helps educators build a stable, enriching, and intellectually stimulating environment for children and also includes a list of additional resources
- Immersive Teaching: Shows parents and teachers how children’s learning experiences can be extended to every aspect of life
- Proven Methodology: Used in school settings for 14 years, these easily applicable ideas will benefit parents and teachers in homeschooling, public school, or private school
18. Homeschooling: What To Do When You Want To Quit
Whether you are new to homeschooling or have been at it for several years, I think we’ll all admit we don’t have all the answers.
Sure you can just wade on through your homeschool experience, but wouldn’t you like to feel a little prepared? Ready with a variety of experience, methods, and knowledge to draw on?
Truly, Discouragement hits us all at one point or another.
These negative feelings about homeschooling are the genesis of this book. Despite those very real feelings of wanting to quit, This book addresses nearly every potential frustration point that a homeschool mom faces.
The author tackled the irritations that make you want to throw in the towel for good:
- having toddlers and babies along for the ride
- working from home while homeschooling
- high school
- feeling under-appreciated
- feeling inadequate as a teacher
- having your own emotional meltdowns
- handling things solo as a single mom or one whose husband is frequently away from home
- raising a special needs child
- dealing with a family crisis, job loss, or a move
- being burned out
- feeling the criticism of others, maybe even family members or your own husband
- being totally unorganized with school record keeping
- living in a messy, chaotic, loud house
19. 12 Homeschool Myths Debunked: The Book For Skeptical Dads
Homeschooling can be an overwhelming process in the beginning.
You have to learn the laws of your state, find the right curriculum, figure out how to teach your child and plan out your school year. It’s enough to make anyone want to curl up in bed with a good book and this book is an excellent choice.
The author, having homeschooled for the past decade, is uniquely qualified to guide you through the muddled mess of misinformation that surrounds the topic of homeschooling.
12 Homeschool Myths Debunked tackles the 12 most common myths head-on including those relating to socialization, academic performance, and college admissions.
If you want to discover the truth about homeschooling, then this book is for you
In this book, you will discover:
- The one myth that must be debunked because it keeps people believing all the others
- Why homeschoolers are getting into many of the best colleges
- Reasons homeschoolers don’t become isolated
- How to keep unfounded biases, assumptions, and stereotypes from harming your kids
- Which schooling choice produces the best socialization
- Why do people wrongly assume they don’t have the patience or aptitude to homeschool
- The real reason some kids are socially inept, goofy, awkward, and nerdy
- Stacks of empirical evidence and relatable first-hand experiences
- Why men are resistant to homeschooling and how to change their mindset
20. Teaching From Rest: A Homeschooler’s Guide To Unshakable Peace By Sarah MacKenzie
Homeschooling can be a daunting task for parents. Not only do you have to worry about academics, but you also have to deal with the day-to-day logistics of running a household.
The way the author talks about needing rest and how to reach the rest you need is encouraging.
This is a book that helps feed the homeschooled mother’s heart and soul. The author has a way with words that you may end up reading this book every school year and recommending it to every homeschool mom.
This book is designed specifically for homeschooling parents, and it offers a wealth of advice on how to create a peaceful and productive learning environment.
MacKenzie starts by addressing the importance of self-care for parents. She then goes on to discuss ways to manage your time, set boundaries, and cultivate a love of learning in your children.
Conclusion
Finally, try to remove the clutter in your child’s education by taking a deeper look at how you invest your time and energy.
Homeschooling does not have to mean a crazy, busy life of too much to do, too much to buy, and too much to plan. You don’t have to choose between excellence and sanity while homeschooling – you can have both!
Homeschooling can be a tremendous gift to your children—a personalized educational experience tailored to each kid’s interests, abilities, and learning styles.
But what to teach, and when, and how? Especially for first-time homeschoolers, the prospect of tackling an annual curriculum can be daunting.
This balls down to why every homeschooling mum needs to consider reading a lot of books and getting more experience and motivation from them.
Our combined 20 Best-Selling Homeschooling Books Of All Time is a perfect guide for you, we hope you enjoyed this article, Kindly drop a comment in the comment section.