Tag Archives: books

Book reviews, book lists and recommendations, and favorite bookshelf finds here at The Lowe Farm!

Snakes, Bluebirds, and Dirt Bikes…the Daily Farm Adventures {129}

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The farm is busy with Spring, spring, spring these days! We’ve been working in the yard, starting the garden, and cleaning up the winter compost piles in the weekend sunshine lately. The tractor blew a hydraulic hose and was stuck in the field for a few days. The worst part was that Coal was right there at the fence line with me, opening the gates, and got sprayed too. He wasn’t hurt, but I don’t like using dish soap to wash the dogs that was the only way I knew … Continue Reading…

20 Picture Books of Amazing Women in History and Science

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As you might have seen, The Engineer’s Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood was on my recent Farm Reads list from February. Great book! I’ve also been working on some picture book manuscripts of my own and reading a lot of current picture books as research. So it was really cool to come across the Secret Engineer: How Emily Roebling Built the Brooklyn Bridge. This lead me to a wonderful rabbit trail of new picture books about amazing women in history! So many of them I wasn’t even familiar with before … Continue Reading…

Farm Reads Book List for February 2021

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I’ve always been a bookworm. Really, from childhood. Those Pizza Hut Book It! challenges were my bread and butter growing up. (BTW, did you know Book It! is still around and runs a great summer reading program?!) I go through phases now where I have a lot of time to read, and then less time (or motivation). But I always have a book list to be read and usually stacked up on my night stand. I go through spurts where I’m reading a lot of young adult fiction to preview … Continue Reading…

10 Book Series About Library Adventures for Middle-Grade Readers

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Are you a book lover, or have a book lover in your home? Or are you hoping to make a bookworm out of a more reluctant reader? I’ve stepped out of my historic fiction box lately and found a couple of new middle-grade series that are all about BOOKS. Library adventures, book characters coming to life, the hunt for a famous author, falling into the book’s world…fun fiction adventures to give the kids a mental break between assigned reading. The Book Scavenger Series. By Jennifer Chambliss Bertman The 12-year-old female … Continue Reading…

Reading Log Book Selfies Printable for Summer Reading

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Do you have a daily reading requirement for the kiddos over the summer? Or even during the school year? We do. So after reviewing a ton of book lists and reading log options on Pinterest, I came up with these fun printable Reading Log Book Selfies for our kiddos to use. Based on Instagram and good old-fashion Polaroids (which are all the rage, again!) they are snapshots with either book spines to be completed or blank to insert an “actual” selfie or draw a picture. Then they can be posted … Continue Reading…

15 Great Non-Fiction and Classic Literature Graphic Novel Series for Grades 4-8

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Do you have a kiddo that loves comic books? Or a kiddo that hates chapter books? A reluctant or struggling reader–easily overwhelmed by page after page of text? I do. I have 2 actually. And I am SO GLAD we discovered a variety of clean, appropriate, quality graphic novels on the market today. Fiction, non-fiction, and even adaptations of classic literature that use Shakespeare’s original text! They’ve been a huge help in keeping our dyslexic and reluctant readers engaged in independent reading–when standard chapter books were failing in a flood … Continue Reading…

History, Adventure, and Treasure…The Ultimate Guide to Studying Pirates

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In the spring I mentioned that we would have two family unit studies this summer. One is our Astronomy unit study–which is continuing casually through the whole summer and has been very fun so far! (I’ll have an update on one of our projects soon.) The other topic I chose this year is Pirates. I had no idea they would overlap so much, but space pirates is totally a thing so it’s worked out great! The history of Pirates is an interesting topic because it can involve a lot of … Continue Reading…

The Quest for Truth Sci-Fi Series for Middle Grade Readers…A Review and GIVEAWAY!

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We’ve continued with our slow, steady, and FUN family Astronomy study this month. So far we’ve already seen and documented several moon phases including a full moon and a new moon; visible Jupiter; visible Mercury, and learned to recognize the Big and Little Dipper.  We’ve also watched several space and sci-fi movies as a family, including a special at-home family movie night presentation of Rogue One (which my kiddos hadn’t seen yet) and a splurge on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 in the theater. We’ve been keeping a list of … Continue Reading…

Space and Science-Fiction Adventure Books for 8-12 Year Olds

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When outlining our simple family unit studies, I mentioned that I like to use a fiction read-aloud on the topic as the backbone of our unit. Then I laid out our summer-long Astronomy unit study for you and there were no fiction books! I struggled with finding fiction books in the space and sci-fi genre because it’s not one that I’m very familiar with, personally. It took a lot of searching, chatting with our librarian, and reading reviews on Amazon to find a list of books to consider that meet … Continue Reading…

Summer Star-Gazing…A Simple Family Unit Study on Astronomy

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Have you gotten your FREE Summer Unit Study Planner? I’ve been hard at work with mine, laying out plans for an Astronomy unit study and a Pirates/Maritime History unit study for the family this summer. I’ve put quite a bit of time into gathering resources and planning activities because I enjoy it. We don’t get much for family vacations and holidays around here with the farm to keep an eye on. So we have to make up our own, local, staycation-type fun for the summer. I’m going to share my resource … Continue Reading…

John Deere, the American Inventor and the Man Behind the Tractor Company

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We tend to think of John Deere as tractors and green hats and forget that John Deere was an actual person. A person who never built, or even saw, a real tractor in his life. Speedracer had to do a famous American project one year so the whole family got a big dose of John-Deere-the-real-person for a few weeks. It turns out there’s a lot of biographical information available about John Deere, but it can be hard to get your hands on because it’s buried under all the tractor books! … Continue Reading…

Using Sermon Notes for Kids in Church…Busy Book of Sermon Notes for Young Ladies Review

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Our church recently had First Fruits Revival (hear the messages), which means we were in church several evenings in a row. It was a good chance for the crew to start using their new Sermon Notes books that we got them for Christmas. I posted about them on Facebook after the first night and got a lot of questions, so I thought I’d share some more detail here. It can be a challenge to get children to behave in “big church” as we call the congregational service–as opposed to “children’s church” … Continue Reading…

50+ Resources for Learning About War Dogs and K-9 Heroes

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Have you seen the movie Max, about a Marine Corps dog originally stationed in Afghanistan? As a boy momma, with an equally adventure and animal-loving girl, it was right up our alley for family movie night. We enjoyed it! A little predictable? Yes. But still a quality family movie. And it sparked a lot of interest from the crew about military working dogs. The boys are already crazy about anything military and the Ladybug loves everything dogs right now so this angle on their favorite topics was very fresh for them, … Continue Reading…

Kids Need More Than Book-Learning

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Ok, we’re not even a month into the school year and I’m already over the homework. Sheesh. I’m just the Momma, it’s not even my homework! And the more I read and think and pray, the more oppose to homework I am, except for two cases… The child is not being diligent and getting their classwork finished and has to bring it home to work on it. This would go hand-in-hand with a student with a specific learning challenge that needs extra work. (Um, we have one of those. Maybe two. … Continue Reading…

How To Make Relaxed Summer Learning Plans

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I already introduced you to why we make summer learning plans. Today I’m going to share simple steps for creating your own simple, relaxed summer learning plans. I did this for the first time in 2012 and it worked great–even though we were not strict about sticking to it. It’s an outline, not an itinerary. In 2013 I did less pre-planning and I feel like we got less out of it as well. So I’m going back to my first-year concept. I’m not done (obviously–since I pretty much just started last week!) … Continue Reading…