AO/HEO Kindle Ready Books

Ambleside Online and House of Education Online…two of my favorite curriculums.

Kindle- my absolute favorite ereader.

Put them together and you get Extraordinarily Awesome I put together a site that has AO/HEO Kindle ready books. It is called NLHome’s Compiling Spot (simply because at first it was for my own use and I didn’t intend on sharing! haha).

When I started with AO Yrs 5 and 7 (Lite), I went about searching for the books as cheap as I could possibly find them –at used book stores, on Amazon, alibris, paperbackswap, used curriculum groups. I did find a lot of good deals and now I have quite a few bookshelves with a good many of the books (some of which I will not part with ). I read on the computer a lot but don’t particularly care for how it fatigues my eyes. I got to the point of printing out a lot of the books we would be using. That got costly real quick. Our printer is a good one but a little on the older side and the cartridges are some of the most expensive.

But when I got a Kindle for my birthday last year….oh! what a treat!

Talk about savings! I have over 700 books on it right now (uh, no, not all of those are for school!). A good number are for school, however. A good portion of them were free or very inexpensive. I originally went looking on Amazon for the books…but I think that people are catching on that they can make a few pennies by republishing public domain books which caused some free books to be much more than free! I started a website that I originally intended to have for just the free books that are recommended for AO/HEO. You can find a lot of them on Project Gutenberg or Manybooks.net (which is a subsidiary of PG) but there are a few other places as well. Google Books used to be a great resource for PDF files (I am finding it difficult to navigate through the site now).

I’m working on updating it (uh, really I am) but right now it is good up until Yr 9.

Free eBooks and Other Freebies

A Thinking Love ebook from Simply Charlotte Mason

• Available from Simply Charlotte Mason this ebook is available in PDF, ePub and even Mobi (for Kindle!).  From the website: "It’s easy to give our children an indulgent love that caters to their every whim. Or a lazy love that follows the crowd and does what is easiest. But giving them a thinking love requires some effort."

NASA illustration

• How to Fly an Airplane (28 minutes!) & Rocketry Acceleration (mini lesson and videos- Slingshot Rocket) from Supercharged Science (Aurora Lipper). The lesson on flying an airplane is from a real flight instructor. The rocket lessons use simple materials that you probably have around the house. Short and fun :)

• That Printer of Udell's free PDF ebook. From Living Books Curriculum, this was a President's Day special, here is what Sheila Carroll says about this book in her email:

"That Printer of Udell's (an inspiring story)

Ronald Reagan's mother gave him this book to read at age 11. Reagan says that it inspired him to become an evangelical Christian and made a lasting impression on his life. After reading it, he felt convinced to become a Christian and was baptized in his mother's church. At age 66 Reagan said that the book "left an abiding belief in the triumph of good over evil."

That Printer of Udell's (1903) is a novel by Harold Bell Wright, who was a minister and later a writer. In his book he created a compelling story of Christian redemption that is still in print today.

The hero of the story, Dick Falkner, comes from a broken home. His father is alcoholic and as a result his mother is starving and ill. After both parents die, Dick goes to the Midwestern United States to take a job. A printer named George Udell hires Dick. Through a series of circumstances both of them decide to become Christians. Eventually Dick becomes a revered member of a Christian community due to his public speaking abilities and optimism. At the end of the book, Dick gets a political job in Washington, D.C."

• Free Resource of the Day (02/24/2011) from Learn Out Loud: The Future of Nuclear Energy by Andrew C. Kadak. (video) From the email sent by LOL: "Get ready for a great debate on the future of nuclear energy in America. Andrew Kadak is an MIT Professor of the Practice of Nuclear Engineering and he argues that in the face of global warming we need to face the "second inconvenient truth" that in order to deal with global warming all non-CO2 emitting energy sources must be used, including nuclear energy. Victor Reis was the Senior Advisor in the Office of the Secretary at the Department of Energy and he argues in favor of growing nuclear power with recycling in order to reduce nuclear waste."

Just one of the guides available

• And last but not least, here are 15 MORE Free Guides That Really Teach You USEFUL Stuff brought to us by Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators.  Facebook Privacy Guide, Automation Guide for MAC Users, A Dropbox Guide (which I've no real idea what is but sounds interesting- makes all your information/programs/files accessible to all your computers), Guide to USB Flashdrive, Windows 7 Ultimate Guide (I still have Vista...I'm resistant to change), Guide to Gmail, Wordpress and others.

Enjoy!

Kindle Lending Club

Well, it's amazing where the internet will take you! I'm doing my paper on what forces/experiences were the greatest that shaped the US Constitution and some how (okay I know how I got there!) I end up at Kindle Lending Club! It's still in the beta phase and I hope that it will soon allow for more than one lend/borrow but for right now I am so excited about this! 

You'd have to read all the FAQ's to get all the nitty gritty details (which I will do another time). But thought it was a great find :)

And in case you are interested in my bunny trail, here it is (all of which has nothing to do with the paper I am working on in the background lol):

searched: how to go plasticless

clicked: How to Reduce Plastic Usage- My Top 10. Ok, 15.

clicked: here (talking about produce bags in #4)

went back to search page and clicked: Martin Higgins (PlasticLess) on Twitter

clicked: KindleLending tweet (Will you purchase more than 40 books over the life of your Kindle? It may be the greenest option: http://t.co/gdkR4kH)

clicked: @KindleLending view full profile

followed KindleLending on twitter

clicked: http://www.KindleLendingClub.com

Found A Compiling Spot!

I think I like to just 'do' things you know? I've started compiling a list of books for each AO year that are Kindle ready. I put a link on my sidebar "AO books available for Kindle by Year (work in progress)". I finished AO Years 1-3 and have started on 3.5 but I noticed that there are not that many extra or different books for 3.5 so it may get 'combined'... in the same column on the page anyway.

I think that the place I have these compiled will work great for compiling my book information as well. It's another 'blog' but that's alright. It won't get as much attention as this one does ;)

Silly me, here's the link to see the newest 'job' I've taken upon myself!