Book List for 9-12 year olds

My 10 yr. old needed a little more structure in her choice of literature, and while Nancy Drew is fun, we wanted to make sure she has some familiarity with other genres and literature. So my husband who is really behind most of the curriculum choices we make did some research mainly on amazon.com reading the reviews both good and bad for these books and came up with the following list. Neither of us have read all of these books although we have read some of them, so if any of you think any of them may be inappropriate for this age group, let me know. We bought most of them and I'm going to try to keep up with my kids' reading. It looks like a lot of fun. We want our kids to read at least one of the books listed in each genre.

Genre
Science Fiction
	The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet
	Ender's Game
	The City of Ember
	Journey Between Worlds
	Enchantress from the Stars
History
	Number the Stars
	The Bronze Bow
	The Witch of Blackbird Pond
	Sounder
	Johnny Tremain
	My Brother Sam is Dead
	Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
	The Matchlock Gun
	The Golden Goblet
	Hittite Warrior
Biography
	Archimedes and the Door of Science
	Augustus Caesar's World
	The World of Columbus and Sons
	George Washington's World
	The World of Captain John Smith
	Poor Richard
	The World of William Penn
	The Diary of Anne Frank
Mystery
	The Mysterious Benedict Society
	The Treasure of Alphaeus Winterborn
	The Westing Game
	The Ides of April
Fantasy
	A Wrinkle in Time
	The Hobbit
	The Book of Three
	Eragon
	Alice in Wonderland
	The Wizard of Oz
Adventure
	Call It Courage
	Island of the Blue Dolphins
	Treasure Island
	The Sign of the Beaver
	The Great Brain
	The Secret Garden
	Anne of Green Gables
	Tom Sawyer
Plays
	Theatre for Young Audiences: 20 Great Plays for Children
Tragedy
	The Bridge to Terabithia
	Where the Red Fern Grows
Poetry
	The Random House Book of Poetry for Children

Genesis and The Pearl of Great Price

The story of the creation through Noah and then to Abraham through Isaac and Jacob and Joseph is fascinating. It has been awhile since I've read it and it is so interesting. The Pearl of Great Price really adds a lot of insight into the days of Noah, and I didn't realize that there is almost no mention of Enoch in the book of Genesis. It is also amazing how long Adam and the people lived before the flood. Very interesting read. They were actual people with thoughts and feelings. I think the love story of Abraham and Sarah is sweet as well as Isaac and Rebekah, I haven't gotten to the others yet.

Wish I had more interesting things to blog about, but I don't!! That's all!!

Unanswered questions about 9/11/2001

There seem to be a lot of unanswered questions surrounding 9/11. The most blaring I think is why did Building 7 collapse when it wasn't even hit by a plane? Another is why did the twin towers collapse so suddenly demolition style after being hit by airplanes? Can jet fuel really cause that kind of damage, that quickly and cleanly? No other skyscraper has collapsed because of fire. Where is the plane that hit the Pentagon and the plane that made the hole in Pennsylvania? How did all the seats, luggage and passengers disintegrate, but paper passports were found in tact?

Why did it take so long to start an official investigation of the events? Why are there still so many unanswered questions?

Our First Week of Homeschool for the New Year!!

We officially started school this year last Friday for our first Friday Fun Day. The plan is to cover all the core subjects (Reading, Writing, Math, Greek, Science, History, Literature, Spelling) from Monday to Thursday. Then Friday will be an enrichment day where we'll study art, artists, music, composers and play games and do activities. Friday turned out great. The kids loved it, (except for the 1st grader for the first part --he didn't want to play the recorder, but did later after being in time-out for awhile). We set up the desks like a real school and basically played school. We also learned a song in Spanish and a song in French. I decided to go ahead and do both languages this year. The Europeans learn a bunch of languages, so why can't we? We'll see how it goes.

Unfortunately, the rest of the week didn't go so smoothly, starting with Monday. We ended up getting new carpet that day and having a mold clean-up crew come on Tuesday and Wednesday because of a leak in the shower we didn't know about. We were without air conditioning on Thursday, and it was hot, but at least we could use the bathrooms. Also, my kids are so out of the habit of doing anything difficult because of my laxness this summer, that it was a real struggle to actually do any work at all. The 5th and 3rd grade girls basically just did math, a little bit of journaling and one composition this week. The preschooler and 1st grader fulfilled their requirements of handwriting, math and reading each day, because it doesn't take them long at all. But I really missed doing the fun part of homeschool which is reading stories and great literature to the kids, learning history and science, singing songs together, memorizing scriptures and learning languages and grammar. That's the fun part we missed this first week.

The girls took an average of 2 hours working on their math assignments because they are so out of the habit of concentrating. I've decided though, that that math has to be done first thing when their little brains are the most fresh, and we'll keep the fun and interesting stuff for after lunch. Had I had my house together and not under construction, I think we would have done better, but overall I think it was pretty good given the circumstances. I really hope the girls will move along better in math next week, so that we can do the fun stuff, but it may take them another week to acclimate to that math concentrating part of their brains. I just about have to sit with each of them individually to remind them to look at their book and write down the answers to the problems. They have gotten a little better each day though, and it is very rewarding to see the sense of satisfaction they feel when they are finally done!!

I can't wait to get my house and life back together. I feel like we went on another long vacation. Hopefully I can get a lot done this weekend so that we can do all the things I hope to do this week!! By the way, the twins are boys and look good so far-- that will be 5 boys in a row-- I'm a little nervous. I am really going to have to find ways to keep them out of trouble!! My 3 boys seem to get wilder everyday, they really need the fun stuff. They love listening to stories and learning songs. Once we get the house organized, I hope they will calm down a little bit. At least I can send them outside!!!