Aquinas Homeschool Books
Home Catholic Homeschool Blog Recommended Books Our Curriculum Contact Us

What's New

Welcome to Aquinas Homeschool Books!  This is the place for you if . . .
  • you are a Catholic homeschooler or thinking about becoming one.
  • you want to consider creating your own curriculum that meets your children's unique needs.
  • you are looking for a resource that is completely faithful to the Magisterium.
In honor of our 12th anniversary, I decided to revamp the website entirely.  Shoot me an e-mail to let me know what you think.  We are still selling books through Amazon as well as through Christianbook.com for some books that can't be obtained through Amazon on a constant basis.  Moreover, I have decided that now is the time to move into the world of blogging, which will mostly involve musings about our homeschooling adventure.  Pope John Paul II's theme, "Be not afraid," echoes in my head as I try to figure out this blogging thing. 

I am also in the process of expanding our curriculum page to include our favorite books and homeschooling materials over the years.  I plan to regularly review a new book just there on the right.

What's Old

This website!  Can you believe we've been here for 12 years?  I still remember teaching myself HTML and working on this site into the wee hours of the night back in the days when there was very little web design software, widespread use of the internet was just a few years old, and the verbs "to google" and "to blog" had not yet entered the human vocabulary.

Who We Are

Aquinas Homeschool Books was created by me, Carla Hanson, in 1998 with the support of my husband and (now) 5 children. I created this site because I believe that there is a need for a discount bookstore where homeschooling families can find a wide variety of excellent educational resources that are in accord with Catholic doctrine.

In the 12 years since I created this site, a vast quantity of resources have come to exist. The problem, especially for new homeschoolers, now has less to do with finding a good math program or art program or history book. From what I've seen, the problem now has much more to do with sifting through all the possibilities to choose what to use. Therefore, my goal now is to include only a few really excellent resources in each subject area and, along with it, such advice as I feel competent to give. The more I learn, the more I realize that different materials work with different children, and that the teaching parent has to be comfortable with the way the material works as well.  This is the joy of homeschooling--we're not bound to use a particular book or method.  We are free to teach the child, not the book. 

I come not as an expert but as a fellow homeschooler who has found what works for one child and always seeks enthusiastically to find a book or a method or a set of manipulatives or even a toy that helps fulfill the goal of an excellent education.

Philosophy of Education

What is that goal, you may ask?  Rightly so, since that question has colored my choices in both books and viewpoint.  I believe that the goal of education is to learn what is good and true and beautiful.

Most directly, this means learning to know, love, and serve God (theology). Indirectly, this also means learning about God's creation--both the natural world (math and science), and His masterpiece, which is man (history, literature, poetry, philosophy, music, art, and language).

Moreover, in order to understand and utilize these gifts of God's creation, education must include the ability to write well, to speak well, to figure well, and to think logically such that one moves easily and accurately from facts to conclusion, and thereby chooses freely that which is true, good, and beautiful which, in the end, means nothing more and nothing less than choosing to know, love, and serve God.  All of this is just another way of saying that I think the best possible educational system is one based on the Trivium used by the scholastics in the far-from-dark Medieval era.

The difficult part is to master all of the above and still love learning in the end. A child who loves to learn does so with joy and ease. A child for whom learning is drudgery will seek to cease such activity as soon as possible, which is contrary to every goal above, especially since the goals and the means to the goals stated above do not end at age 18 or 22, but continue to grow throughout one's life.

As parents, you are in the best position to find the proper balance between helping a child learn what he should learn, and helping him to retain the love of learning which seems natural to a young child. As Yeats wrote, "Education is the lighting of a fire, not the filling of a bucket."

For more information on finding that balance, please take a look at my blog and the How to Homeschool section of the bookstore.

May God bless you in this worthy endeavor. The road is hard, but the fruits are tremendous.

Book Review Corner
Whenever anyone asks me what to read first when looking into homeschooling, this book always tops the list.  In it, Laura Berquist provides homeschoolers and potential homeschoolers with invaluable information on what a classical curriculum is, what's good about it, and how to go about  creating one for your own children.

This is one book where reading the introduction is definitely worth doing.  In it is a very sane and sensible discussion of the method she uses and how she came to it.  It includes a realistic view of family life as well, which I believe is every bit as important as homeschooling. 

After the introduction, she spends the remainder of the book going through the stages by grade level.  She refers to the primary stage as kindergarten through 2nd grade, the grammar stage as 3rd through 6th grade, the dialectic (logic) stage as 7th through 9th grade, and the rhetoric stage as 10th through 12th grade. 

Under each grade, there is a suggested weekly lesson plan as well as lists of suggested resources to use.  While I'm on the topic, the only downside that I see to this book is the method she uses for history.  Like most schools, she starts with that which the child is most familiar with--American history--and then she moves to world history later.  Now, I understand why this is commonly done, but I strongly believe that it makes more sense to study history in chronological order, starting with ancient Egypt and moving forward over the course of several years to modern times.  I'll write more about that elsewhere.  That said, I do appreciate her use of historical fiction as a supplement to the history text that is being studied, and I don't think that her method is terrible.  I just think there's a better way. 

The resources that she suggests are top notch in every subject, and she gives reasons for many of her suggestions.  Unfortunately, many of the works of literature she recommends are out of print, but they can often be found in the library.  All in all, this book has been a guide for all our years of homeschooling, and reading it is like listening to the advice of a wise friend who has already been where you are going.  If you can read nothing else before beginning this grand adventure of homeschooling (or if you're already in the middle of the adventure but haven't read this book), by all means, take advantage of Laura Berquist's great store of wisdom.
Home Catholic Homeschool Blog Recommended Books Our Curriculum Contact Us

Copyright 1998-2010