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I Was on the Homeschool Minnesota Podcast! (Plus, a Free High School Literature Curriculum You Need to Know About)

March 26, 2026March 26, 2026 Jessica Lovett

Something quietly remarkable happened recently – I was honored to be a guest on the Homeschool Minnesota Podcast with host Dayle Annand. And I don’t use the word “remarkable” lightly.

Dayle has welcomed some heavy hitters in the homeschool world to the show – guests like Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis, Andrew Pudewa of the Institute for Excellence in Writing, Linda Hobar author of the Mystery of History, and Davis Carman, President of Apologia Science – which means I was in genuinely good company.

If you’ve been around here for a while, you know I’m a words person. English major. Huge book nerd. The kind of person who has strong feelings about sentence rhythm and will reorganize her bookshelves by vibe or subject, not just by genre or author.

So getting to sit down and talk about literature – specifically classical literature for high schoolers, and why it matters, and how we can make it accessible to every homeschool family – felt a little like being handed a microphone at a concert and discovering the song is one you’ve known by heart for years.

It was a good conversation. I absolutely loved meeting Dayle and finding another fellow Charlotte Mason person! Come listen.

▶️ Listen on YouTube: Watch the Episode Here

▶️ Listen on Apple Podcasts: Journey Through the Classics – Apple Podcasts

▶️ Listen on Spotify: Journey Through the Classics – Spotify

About the Homeschool Minnesota Podcast

The Homeschool Minnesota Podcast is the official podcast of the Minnesota Association of Christian Home Educators (MACHE) – one of the longest-standing and most respected Christian homeschool organizations in the country.

Host Dayle Annand brings on guests to talk about the real, practical, and beautiful parts of homeschool life, and she made me feel completely at home. (Which, given that she’s in Minnesota and I am very much not a cold-weather person, is saying something.)

You can learn more about MACHE and find all their resources at homeschoolminnesota.org.

What We Talked About: Journey Through the Classics

The episode is titled “Journey Through the Classics FREE High School Literature Program” – and yes, free is doing a lot of work in that title, in the best possible way. I’m so grateful that Dayle is helping me spread the word!

We talked about my high school literature curriculum, Journey Through the Classics, which is completely free and fully self-contained. No expensive purchases required. No curriculum company subscription. No scrambling to piece together a reading list and somehow also teach critical thinking and essay writing and the kind of deep literary engagement that actually stays with a person through adulthood.

Just good books. Great conversations. And a framework that holds it all together.

Why Classical Literature Still Matters

Here’s what I genuinely believe, and what I talked about on the podcast: the classics are not dusty relics on a shelf that we assign because someone told us to.

They are stories that have survived centuries because they are true in the way that only the best stories are true – true about what it means to be human, to make choices, to live with consequences, to reach for something beyond yourself.

When your teenager reads Homer or Shakespeare or Austen or Helprin, they’re not just checking a box. They’re joining a conversation that has been happening across generations, across cultures, across time. That’s not nothing. That’s actually everything.

Charlotte Mason understood this. She called it “the living book” philosophy – the idea that a child’s mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled (she borrowed that from Plutarch, so good company). Classical literature, taught well, does exactly that.

Why Free Matters

I also want to talk about the free part for a second, because it matters to me.

Homeschooling can be expensive!

Let’s just say that out loud.

Quality curriculum can run hundreds of dollars per subject per year, and for a high school student who needs multiple subjects, that adds up faster than you can say “co-op Tuesday.” I have always believed that an excellent education should not be gated behind a price tag – and classical literature, of all things, should be the most accessible subject of all. These books are public domain. The ideas belong to everyone.

https://homeschoolwithjoy.kit.com/journeyingthroughtheclassicsSo I built Journey Through the Classics to be genuinely free. Not a free trial. Not a free sample with a premium upgrade. Not free, but you have to give me your credit card. Totally Free.

What’s In the Curriculum

We went into detail on the podcast, so I’ll let you listen for the full picture – but in broad strokes, Journey Through the Classics is:

A complete, self-contained high school literature program. It includes reading lists organized around classic texts, discussion questions, writing prompts, and the kind of literary analysis framework that teaches teens how to think about what they’re reading, not just what happened in the plot.

It’s rooted in Charlotte Mason’s philosophy – which means narration, living books, attention to beautiful language, art integration, love of nature, and the conviction that a student who genuinely loves literature is worth infinitely more than one who can pass a standardized test.

But, of course, it is rigorous enough that your student could!

It works for all kinds of learners – the bookworm who inhales novels, the reluctant reader who needs a reason to care, the analytical kid who wants to argue about themes at the dinner table. (If that last one is your kid: Congratulations! And also I’m sorry, those dinners are long. I know because it was me, lol. Sorry, Mom!)

A Little Behind-the-Scenes Honesty

I’ll be real with you: being a podcast guest is a little spine tingling in a way. I am much more comfortable with words on a page than words coming out of my face in real time. My inner editor would like to go back and revise approximately three sentences. But Dayle is a genuinely warm and skilled host, and the conversation flowed in a way that felt natural and honest – which is all I ever really want.

I talked about my background. My editing and professional literature world experience. Why I care so much about literature and language and the way stories shape us. Why I think homeschool families are, quietly, doing some of the most important educational work happening right now. Why I believe your high schooler can love the classics – and why that’s worth pursuing even when it’s hard.

I hope it encourages you. That was the whole point.

Go Listen – And Share It

The episode is about 25 minutes long – the perfect length for a car ride, a walk, or that sacred window of time when everyone is occupied and you get to drink your coffee while it’s still hot. (Almond milk latte, obviously. I’m nothing if not consistent.)

You can find it on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. And if it resonates with you, share it with a homeschool friend – especially one who is staring down high school and wondering how on earth to tackle literature without spending a fortune or losing her mind!

▶️ Watch on YouTube

▶️ Apple Podcasts

▶️ Spotify

There’s a free, beautiful, classically-rooted answer. And now it’s out there in the world with a podcast episode to go with it.

Thank you to Dayle and Homeschool Minnesota for helping me let homeschoolers know about it!

Share this post! Know a homeschool family who needs this? Send them this article!

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Introducing “Journeying Through the Classics” — A Free Charlotte Mason High School Literature Curriculum (700+ Pages)

February 19, 2026February 19, 2026 Jessica Lovett

Why I Finally Built the High School Literature Curriculum I Always Wanted

I’ve spent an embarrassing number of hours looking at homeschool curriculum.

Not just for my own kids — I’ve coached enough homeschool families over the years that “browsing curriculum catalogs” could probably count as a hobby at this point. One I never signed up for but somehow ended up with, like a stray cat that now owns the couch. (Yes, we are the people that save homeless kitties… and cranky hedgehogs that the owners are tired of… and sugar gliders that don’t…er…glide!)

When my daughter started heading toward high school, I knew I wanted something different from what I’d used with my son. What we’d used before was fine. Fine is a word that sits in my throat a little. There were always books I quietly skipped, always a grammar section that felt half-finished that went too far or not far enough, always an essay prompt that inspired exactly no one to greatness.

I wanted a free Charlotte Mason high school literature curriculum that treated great books the way they actually deserve to be treated — not as tasks to check off, but as worlds worth entering.

What Is “Journeying Through the Classics”?

Journeying Through the Classics is a complete, free homeschool English curriculum for high school students — over 700 pages of literature units, writing instruction, discussion questions, and answer keys (Yay, you don’t have to remember *all* those Charles Dickens characters but can still look smart to your kids!), all built on Charlotte Mason’s living books methodology.

It covers high school literature and writing skills for grades 9–12 (and advanced 7th and 8th graders who are ready to work at a higher Book Nerd Status). It’s rigorous enough for a college-prep transcript and joyful enough that you might actually want to sit down and do it. You may even enjoy the books your high schooler is reading, too!

Which, honestly, should be the baseline requirement for any curriculum. But here we are.

Why I Built This Free Homeschool Literature Curriculum

Here’s the thing about having an academic background in English literature and creative writing, graduate school tutoring centers, plus years of editorial work, plus reading more curriculum guides than any reasonable human should: You develop opinions. Strong ones.

About which books we assign because we feel like Serious Homeschoolers Must — versus the ones we’d pull off the shelf again ourselves with genuine fondness.

About writing instruction that actually teaches students to think and be curious, not just fill in five-paragraph templates until everyone loses the will to go on and starts slooowly… slllllliding out of the chair, under the kitchen table. About the difference between busy-work and real learning.

I wanted to build something around the second kind of everything.

I wanted high school writing curriculum that made sense — where students come away knowing how to write for different audiences and real purposes. I wanted literature that was treated as beautiful, not as a task. And I wanted thinking. Actual thinking. Not crosswords. (I know some people love crosswords. I am not those people.)

So I built it. And now it’s yours, completely free.

What Makes This Charlotte Mason High School Curriculum Different

No printing 700 pages all at once.

Each unit is completely self-contained — usually 20 to 40 pages. Print only what you’re using right now. Skip a unit that doesn’t fit your student. Come back to it later, or don’t. It’s the homeschool curriculum equivalent of checking out one book from the library instead of hauling home the entire shelf.

Every book is accessible three ways — including free.

Every unit includes a direct link to a free, legal online version of the book. Prefer a physical copy? There direct links to the best editions, always unabridged, to get for your own personal library or at your local one.

This free homeschool curriculum works on any budget, because good literature shouldn’t cost a fortune — and you’re not stuck buying a whole kit with books you feel lukewarm about that stay gathering dust on the shelf and make you feel guilty for not ever cracking open.

Charlotte Mason’s living books approach, all the way through high school.

No busywork. No soul-crushing comprehension packets with mind-numbing factoids that siphon the joy out of reading. No activities that feel like filler. Students read deeply, narrate their understanding, discuss ideas that actually matter, and write with real purpose. This is Charlotte Mason literature at its most rigorous and most joyful — which, as it turns out, are not opposites.

College-ready writing skills, clearly taught.

Students who complete this high school English curriculum know how to write analytical essays with confidence, cite sources in MLA format, engage critically with complex texts, and build vocabulary the way writers actually do — by reading a lot of really good books. The kind of skills that follow them into college, into careers, into a lifetime of intentional reading.

I’ve been in undergrad and graduate school literature classrooms and I know what is required of feeling confident in them versus feeling like a poser! (Sorry, Millennial Mom slip there..)

Complete answer keys included.

Because I remember the helpless feeling of staring at a discussion question for a book I’d read fifteen years ago, knowing I should know the answer, knowing it was somewhere in my brain. I didn’t want to do that to you. Everything is there. You’re covered. ✨

Who Is This Free High School Homeschool Curriculum For?

Journeying Through the Classics is designed for:

High school students in grades 9–12
Advanced middle schoolers in grades 7–8 who are ready for high school–level literature
Families who want a Charlotte Mason approach to high school English
Homeschoolers looking for a free, complete literature and writing curriculum with no hidden costs
Students preparing for college-level reading, writing, and critical thinking
Families who need flexibility — to work across multiple grade levels or follow a student’s interests

You can move through it chronologically as written, Homer to Helprin, or wander through it in whatever order suits your student best. It adapts to your family, not the other way around.

What’s Included in This Free Charlotte Mason Literature Curriculum?

The complete Journeying Through the Classics download includes:

700+ pages of 34 self-contained literature units
Units covering a wide range of classic and world literature for high school
Discussion questions that ask students to think, not just recall
Essay writing assignments across multiple formats and audiences
MLA citation instruction woven naturally into the writing units
Vocabulary building through context and deep reading
Spelling lists to help students grow confident in their writing
Complete answer keys for every unit
Full-page notebook cover and divider pages for beautiful organization
Free online ebook links, recommended editions for paper books, and library ISBNs for every title

How to Download “Journeying Through the Classics” for Free

Subscribe to Homeschool with Joy and get instant access to the full curriculum download in the password-protected Resource Library.

The complete 700+ page PDF — including all full color artistic cover and divider pages — is free and always will be. No credit card. No catch. Just great literature and the tools to teach it well.

→ Subscribe Free & Download the Curriculum

Already a Homeschool with Joy subscriber? Your download link will be in your inbox this Friday morning. You don’t have to do a single thing — it’s already on its way. 🌟