I have taken to buying lots of books. I buy literature from a local used bookstore and lots of resource books from mega-bookstores and my local used homeschool store. I like to buy books that I can refer to over and over for ideas and inspiration. I need to jazz up my lessons but I’m not always sure how to do it. Once I have the basic lesson planned, I need to provide a create outlet for expressing the principles we learn.

As I am preparing my lessons for the next year, I thought I would share some of the materials I use most often to supplement our Principle Approach studies.
Alternatives to Worksheets (and More Alternatives to Worksheets) has such great ideas for things we can put in our notebooks that aren’t worksheets. This is very easy to use in our studies because there’s nothing to change at all. It is simply fun projects that don’t involve a worksheet. The ideas work for any subject any time of the year. I have used their projects in math, Bible, literature and history.
Big Book of Books by Dinah Zike is also great. We make many little books for our notebooks with ideas from Dinah. She has books on my school subjects that you can also use to add to your lessons.
How to Get Your Child off the Refrigerator and Onto Learning by Carol Barnier is another highly recommended resource for any parent struggling with high energy children. She is a homeschool mom who developed all sorts of strategies while home schooling her busy son. There are tons of high energy ideas for every subject and lots of practical advice on dealing with field trips and church. I can’t say enough about this great book. Princess G loves every idea I have ever tried from this book. It gets us up from the desk and moving and learning.
365 Reading Activities from Backpack Books has a year’s worth of great activities. They also make one for phonics and crafts (which I also have). They are all good for quick ideas to add to your lessons.
The internet. I can’t believe the stuff I have at my fingertips. Encyclopedias, dictionaries, crafts, and lots more at the click of a mouse. Yesterday Princess G saw a flip book and thought that would be a fun thing to try. In less than 5 minutes I googled one and printed out a neat running dinosaur flip book. That’s just almost too easy!
Daily Grams are an easy way to keep up the grammar skills. Each exercise takes only 5 minutes or so and Princess G really likes them. They begin at 2nd grade (the pink book).
Math Art is also filled with fun ideas to spice up math time with a place value snake, fraction flags and quilts, multiplication house, tesselations and weaving number patterns.
I am working on many projects this month. I will post more of my subject planning soon.

FACE offers this handy guide. It used to be free but now they charge five bucks (it’s free when you place a book order). I have really enjoyed this book and recommend it to any PA homeschooler, not just the ones using the Noah Plan. “What’s the big deal?” you ask. Well, it’s a wealth of encouragement and information.

Of course it covers basic PA philosophy and anecdotes form homeschool life but it’s more practical than that. Joni, a homeschool mom of 5, writes in such a way that you feel you are just getting advice from a good friend. She offers her story–how and why she got where she is. That seems to be a common question. We all want to know how someone has found the PA way of life.

She goes into some detail about the Noah Plan specifically, but she doesn’t focus solely on that. She discusses at length PA in general and how to make it work for your particular homeschool family. It’s a nice introduction to the Seven Principles of American History and Government. Her discussion of NP methodology is easily adaptable to any version of BPA you are using. She discusses NP resources, which you can take or leave.

She also includes sample lesson plans and notebook pages so you can see how NP works at home. (I have created my own version of planning pages for multiple grades that you can download here.) The FAQ’s are also good.The only thing I would change about this book is that I would have made it more about BPA in general, but it is still a good tool for any new families or those who are really curious about what BPA is all about. I recommend it to any PA family. If you don’t use NP, “eat the meat and spit out the bones”. I don’t use NP but mine is well-worn with personal notes, lots of pink highlighting and crinkled page edges. I was glad I sent for one.