It’s here! The complete book list for Journeying Through the Classics – our free 700+ page Charlotte Mason high school literature curriculum.
700+ pages(?!?!) you might be asking?
Is that a typo? Nope.
Are you actually nuts, you might venture? No, I don’t think so…
And, this is a free, no-credit-card needed, 100% free? Yes, absolutely!
Why in the world is this free? I’m passionate about helping your homeschool be joy-filled and this is a giant project I’ve been doing to help make that possible, using my educational and professional background to serve the homeschool community the best way I know how.
If you downloaded the Scope & Sequence last week, you’ve already seen the learning outcomes for each unit. Now you get to see exactly which books your student will read over four years.
Spoiler alert: Every single one of these books is available FREE at your local library. (Or should be if your library is worth its salt. Interlibrary Loan is also your friend!)
When I set out to create this curriculum, I had three non-negotiables:
They had to be living books.
Charlotte Mason believed in feeding students’ minds with ideas, not dry facts. These aren’t textbooks. They’re stories that have captivated readers for generations – some for thousands of years.
They had to build actual skills.
Each book is paired with specific writing instruction. Your student will learn research papers, literary analysis, creative writing, comparative essays, and persuasive writing – all using MLA format. By the time they finish, they’ll have been given the full toolbox to write at a college level.
They had to be freely available.
I’m a homeschool mom. I know what curriculum costs! Every book on this list can be borrowed from your library, downloaded free on Project Gutenberg, or purchased used for a few dollars.
No $1,500 literature program required.
Comparable 4-year high school literature programs can be over $1,000:
Sonlight Literature 100-400, ($425 per year): $1,600
Memoria Press Literature & Humanities ($165 per year): $1,000
It was also important to me to choose books that students would love reading and not be forced into trudging through. These books and essays all have a spark of joy about them that make them worthwhile reading.
I wanted each selection to be compatible with my mission of creating an environment of joy and optimism in the home.
Thus, Lord of the Flies is out! No Scarlet Letter, either. Sorry, Hawthorne and Golding! (Actually, not sorry! I read them. Didn’t want to. Never want to again. Wouldn’t wish them on anybody.)
Plus, when you buy a boxed set type of curriculum, you have to purchase all the books in that whole set – you generally cannot pick and choose. Inevitably, you end up with books you don’t want and aren’t going to read.
With Journeying Through the Classics, you are presented with a feast of options and you can decide what you want your children to enjoy reading and what you don’t want to cover.
Ancient Adventures. Your journey begins with Homer. Two epic poems that have shaped Western literature for thousands of years. Think gods, heroes, war, and homecoming.
Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits. Three of the Bard’s most powerful plays – tragedy, comedy, and his masterpiece that asks “To be or not to be?”
The Heroines Who Changed Literature. Elizabeth Bennet. Jane Eyre. Anne Shirley. Jo March. Scout Finch. Your daughter will meet the literary women who shaped how we think about courage, independence, and standing up for what’s right.
Adventure & Mystery Pirates. Detectives. Deserted islands. Revenge plots spanning decades. Your student won’t be able to put these down.
The Fantasy Epics Tolkien. C.S. Lewis. Madeleine L’Engle. T.H. White. The books that created entire genres and still inspire movies today.
The Books That Make You Think. Thoreau on reading. C.S. Lewis on education. Mark Helprin on art. E.B. White on time and place. Essays that will shape how your student sees the world.
And that’s just scratching the surface.
What’s Included in Each Unit?
Every single unit (all 34 of them) includes:
Author Biography – Who wrote this and why does it matter?
Historical & Cultural Context – When and where does this fit in history?
Weekly Reading Schedule – Manageable readings with no overwhelm
Vocabulary Lists – 45 words per unit with phonetic pronunciations
Spelling Practice – Extended lines for writing practice
10 Sentence Examples – See vocabulary in context
Reading Comprehension Questions – Check understanding as you read
Discussion Questions – Go deeper, think critically
Art Integration – Links to suggested supplemental watercolor & chalk pastel lessons
Grammar & Editing Focus – Different skills in each unit
Essay Assignment – Detailed instructions with MLA formatting
Not a subscriber yet? Subscribe here to get instant access to your Resource Library with the Scope & Sequence, the gorgeous book list PDF, and the full curriculum when it releases on February 20.
All 100% free. Forever.
Your high schooler is about to fall in love with reading again.
See you February 20 for the full curriculum release!
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There’s something about February mornings that makes me want to slow down. Maybe it is the way that January forces us to begin school again after the Christmas holidays and February is the peak of the hill we have been climbing, or maybe it is the fact that it is finally cold here in Texas!
I’m a huge believer in Charlotte Mason’s approach to education and seeing the child as a whole person worthy of joy and respect. One of the loveliest Charlotte Mason practices is poetry tea time. Poetry makes your homeschool feel fancy, when really it is simply a way to communicate a feeling without the natural restraints of a page or even of complete sentences.
Julie Bogart of Brave Writer popularized the idea of Poetry Tea Time and made it a huge part of the common homeschool vernacular. I love her ideas! You can get her free ebook guide and make anything you want into a tea time for your family. Some people do it once a week, once a month, or whenever the mood strikes!
We have also used Pam Barnhill’s plans for Morning Time! I think we did every single Morning Time plan she has, starting when the kids were little. The only ones we didn’t do were the ones for preschoolers and any new ones she may have come up with now that my kids are older. Morning Time lends itself to Poetry Tea Time and there is lots of crossover.
To me, Poetry Tea Time just means intentional time to read a poem, drink some tea, maybe do a snack or craft – or both! – together in an intentional slowing down.
There is no time limit. There are no rules. It is just a time to focus on one another and break up the normal curriculum you are already covering.
This year, I had the idea of combining two of my favorite things – poetry tea time and American Girl history – into one magical morning time celebration.
And the timing couldn’t be more perfect. American Girl just released their 2026 Girl of the Year, Raquel Reyes – and here’s the beautiful connection: Raquel is Samantha Parkington’s great-granddaughter! She comes with a heart-shaped locket just like Samantha’s. It is not supposed to replace Samantha’s but of course it is easy to pretend it is her grandmother’s, passed down to her.
If your family has been following American Girl dolls, you know that Samantha was one of the original three historical dolls when the line launched in 1986. Seeing her legacy continue through Raquel makes this the ideal moment to revisit Samantha’s world and celebrate her story.
Charlotte Mason wrote: “Let children have tales of the imagination, scenes laid in other lands and other times; heroic adventures, hairbreadth escapes, delicious fairy tales, even where it is all impossible, and they know it, and yet they believe.”
That’s exactly what happens when we step into Samantha’s world. We’re transported to 1904, to a time when electricity was a new invention, of proper manners, of high lace collars and lots of velvet and silk. And Valentine’s Day is the perfect excuse to make this journey.
Why Samantha Parkington for Valentine’s Day?
Samantha Parkington was one of the original three American Girl dolls when Pleasant Company launched the line in 1986 (along with Kirsten and Molly). For many of us who grew up with American Girl, Samantha holds a special place in our hearts. Her stories of 1904 opened our eyes to history, fashion, and social justice in ways textbooks never could.
While I didn’t have the Samantha doll, I had the “me” American Girl Doll of Today (where you got to choose the hair, eye color, etc.) and since my doll has long dark hair and bangs, my daughter seamlessly transforms my doll into Samantha, using some of her outfits. This was the earlier version of the Truly Me doll or the more expensive and more detailed, Create Your Own doll now.
Samantha’s era – the turn of the century, the Edwardian period – was all about elegance, beauty, and refined social graces. Valentine’s Day celebrations then were elaborate affairs with handmade cards, proper tea services, and careful attention to etiquette.
Setting the Scene
The magic is in the atmosphere. You don’t need to go overboard, but a few Edwardian-inspired touches will transport your children to Samantha’s world.
Pull out your nicest tablecloth (even if it’s just a pretty sheet). Set the table with your good dishes – mismatched vintage teacups from the thrift store work beautifully. Add some lace doilies if you have them. Put fresh flowers in a vase (carnations were popular in the Edwardian era and they’re perfect for Valentine’s Day).
If your girls want to dress up, wonderful! Hair ribbons, lace collars, their fanciest dresses – let them get into character. This is exactly the kind of imaginative play that Charlotte Mason championed.
And speaking of Charlotte Mason, she also wrote: “Poetry is, perhaps, the most searching and intimate of our truth-bearers.” So as we set this beautiful scene, we’re not just playing – we’re creating space for truth and beauty to reach our children’s hearts.
“Poetry is, perhaps, the most searching and intimate of our truth-bearers.” – Charlotte Mason
The Books
Start by reading (or rereading) the Samantha books. If you’re lucky, your library will carry them, or you can grab them on Amazon.
Reading these ahead of time (or during the week leading up to your tea time) will give your children context for the era and make the whole experience richer. They’ll understand why we’re doing things a certain way, and it gives you conversation starters about the time period.
I prefer the original unabridged versions, but unfortunately many libraries today choose to house the abridged versions.
Meet Samantha, the original version and the dumbed down… errr, I mean… abridged version.
The Food
Edwardian tea parties were serious business, but we’re homeschoolers – we can keep it simple while still capturing the spirit.
This is whimsical, easy, and the kids will love making it.
Use heart-shaped cookie cutters on white bread, butter it, and sprinkle with colorful sprinkles. It’s not period-accurate, but it’s festive and fun.
We choose to use sprinkles made with natural dyes due to various reasons, like that it is better for the neurological health of kids. Amazon carries lots of options! So does HEB, Wal-mart, and Natural Candy Store.
Using a mini cake, muffin, or mini donut pan, these tea cakes can be customized to be as simple or as complicated as you want them to be!
This recipe also allows for making doll-sized cakes for your dolls to join in the Poetry Tea Time, too.
And, don’t forget the tea, of course!
For older kids, you may want to let them try caffeinated Celestial Seasonings Victorian Earl Grey for a more authentic experience! Or for smaller kids, Celestial Seasonings Wild Berry Zinger is yummy and lightly pink.
The Poetry
This is the heart of poetry tea time, and for Valentine’s Day, we want poems about love, friendship, and beauty.
School with Mom has an excellent collection of Valentine’s Day poems perfect for tea time!
“Us Two” by A.A. Milne – About friendship between Christopher Robin and Pooh. Simple, sweet, perfect for younger children.
“A Birthday” by Christina Rossetti – Celebrates joy and love through vivid imagery. Rossetti was writing during Samantha’s era, so this is period-appropriate!
Don’t feel like you need to analyze these poems to bits for them to be effective. Charlotte Mason was very clear that poetry should be enjoyed, not studied for parts.
Read them aloud with expression. Let them sink in. That’s where the beauty lies and where they weave into memories in our minds.
Charlotte Mason wrote: “We see, too, that the magic of poetry makes knowledge vital, and children and grown-ups quote a verse which shall add blackness to the ashbud, tender wonder to that ‘flower in the crannied wall,’ a thrill to the song of the lark.”
That’s what we’re after – not perfect recitation, memorization by force, or deep analysis absent of the curiosity that should drive it, but that moment when a line of poetry lodges itself in your child’s heart and becomes part of how they see the world.
The Activities
After tea and poetry, extend the celebration with some hands-on activities that connect to Samantha’s world.
This isn’t just play – it’s practicing fine motor skills, learning about historical fashion, and engaging imagination. Plus, it’s quietly absorbing information about what life was like in 1904.
Having her present during read-alouds, tea times, and history lessons makes the era come alive. And with the new Raquel doll connecting to Samantha’s legacy, it’s the perfect time to invest in your Samantha doll and explore her world together, find a used one online, or share it with your daughter, if you’re lucky enough to have an original one!
There is also Samantha: An American Girl Holiday the movie on Amazon Prime Video! While it is Christmas themed and not Valentine’s Day, but it lets kids explore the clothing and style of the era in a tactile, visual way.
Why This Matters
I know some people might think this is elaborate or unnecessary. Can’t we just memorize poem, check it off, and move on? Sure, we could.
But here’s the thing – we’re not just teaching facts and dates. We’re cultivating souls.
We’re creating an atmosphere where beauty matters, where history comes alive, where poetry isn’t something you endure but something that delights.
A.A. Milne (yes, the Winnie the Pooh author whose poetry we might read at this tea time) wrote: “Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you.”
That’s what we’re doing with this Valentine’s Day poetry tea time. We’re putting our children in a place where poetry can find them. Where beauty can surprise them. Where they can step into another time and place and come back changed.
When we set a beautiful table, serve special treats, read lovely words, and create handmade valentines together, we’re not being frivolous. We’re building memories.
We’re showing our children that these things – beauty, poetry, celebration, friendship – matter.
We are also showing them that they matter to us enough for us to go to an effort to give them a special day.
Years from now, your children might not remember every math lesson or grammar rule. But they’ll remember that February morning when you all dressed up, drank tea from fancy cups, listened to poetry, and made valentines together.
They’ll remember that learning can be beautiful. That history isn’t just dates in a textbook but real people with real lives who loved and laughed and wore pretty dresses and fought for what they believed in.
They’ll remember that their mother thought poetry mattered enough to slow down and create space for it.
Making It Your Own
Here’s the beautiful thing about this plan – you can adapt it to your family.
Maybe your kids are too young for all the historical depth, so you focus on the tea party and simple poems. Maybe they’re older and want to dig deep into the Progressive Era and women’s suffrage. Maybe you have boys who think princess dolls are boring, so you pivot to talking about what boys were doing in 1904 or what new inventions were changing the world! Ice cream cones were invented in 1904! What is more exciting than that?!
The framework is here: beautiful setting, good food, lovely poetry, hands-on activities, historical connection. But the details? Those are yours to shape.
Maybe you don’t do the full tea party but just read one poem over breakfast. Maybe you skip the recipes and buy bakery treats. Maybe you focus entirely on making valentines and save the deeper historical study for another day.
All of that is perfect. The goal isn’t Instagram-worthy perfection. The goal is creating space for beauty, wonder, and connection in your homeschool day.
In our rushed, overscheduled world, poetry tea time is an act of rebellion.
We’re saying no to hurry and yes to lingering. We’re choosing beauty over efficiency. We’re making room for things that can’t be measured or tested but that feed our souls anyway.
And on Valentine’s Day – a holiday that’s become so commercialized where we slap a card on it and call it a day – we’re reclaiming it for something deeper. Not just candy and cards (though those are fine, too), but genuine connection. Time together. Shared experiences. Love expressed through attention and presence.
That’s what Samantha would have understood. In her world, relationships mattered. Courtesy mattered. Taking time to do things properly mattered. And while we don’t want to romanticize everything about the early 1900s (there was plenty wrong going on in that era, too), we can still learn from the intentionality, the emphasis on beauty, and the value placed on human connection.
So this February, slow down. Set a beautiful table. Pour the tea. Read the poetry. Make the valentines. Step into Samantha’s world for an afternoon and see what happens.
As in all my posts, there may be affiliate links. However, ClearPlay et. all did not sponsor or pay for this post in any way – I just love the services.
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As parents, one of our main jobs is to protect our family. We protect our kids from germs and sickness to the best of our ability by cleaning the house, teaching them to wash their hands when they get home from being out and about, teaching them about hygiene, etc. We protect them from physical dangers by telling them not to touch the stove and showing them why, by telling them not to talk to strangers, etc.
Just the basics!
One often neglected place where we don’t remember to protect our kids to the best of our abilities is online.
Why Even Good Websites Aren’t Safe
I remember going on a popular homeschool blog to load our morning time plans when the kids were little. Unbeknownst to me, it had been hacked! There were *ahem* super bad images plastered there on the page! I quickly turned it to a different tab, glad that my kids didn’t see.
Even if we are going to decidedly Good Things online, we cannot be too careful. Decidedly joy-killing stuff when we should be filling our kids with joy.
Yet, there are simple steps you can take to protect your family from things and fortify your home.
As a Millennial parent, when computers and the internet were new, it all felt innocent and exciting. Napster let you record movie quotes to play on your Tracfone answering machine to give friends a laugh! MySpace let you post silly personality quizzes to see which ‘N Sync boy you “were,” and the like. The LOLCats came around and we all hadz cheezeburgerz. We tend to see the internet as something fun, irreverent, and silly, inhabited by friendly nerds. That feeling stuck with me, rubber stamping how I feel about the internet in general, and is hard to shake sometimes.
If I nerded you out and you don’t know what a Napster is, I’m sorry. Kind of!
Point being, as parents, we expect that if we teach our kids that Bad is Bad, that they will avoid it online. However, we are not counting on the fact that even if they are not actively seeking evil online, it is seeking them.
Router-Level Internet Filtering: The Protection You Actually Need
CleanBrowsing is one of the best tools out there! Many times, non-techie parents make the mistake of thinking they installed a browser extension to keep ads or junk off, so therefore they are protected. This is not the case.
Browser extensions are finicky at best and easy to remove, at worst. They get removed accidentally with updates. They turn themselves off when you need them. They don’t have the coverage you expect them to have. And, in addition, they are likely to steal your browsing data and sell it – not fun.
Plus, you forget which computers you added extension protection to… Or get a new gadget in the house and forget to sync it. Too complicated and too unreliable.
CleanBrowsing protects at the router level. For those of you who are not extreme Star Trek nerds, the internet comes into your house from an ISP (Internet Service Provider) like Suddenlink, Optimum, etc. to your modem. The modem connects to a router.
The router is like a sun that shoots sunrays of internet light to all your gadgets in the house.
CleanBrowsing acts like sunscreen, going into the router and making sure that all gadgets connected to the router get filtered even before that internet goes to your iPad, etc. It is easier to lockdown, control, monitor, and is much more simple to operate than juggling all those filters on separate gadgets.
For gadgets with data plans or hotspot capability, CleanBrowsing has an app that you can add directly to those devices to make sure they are covered with your plan on the go!
Before you worry about it, yes, they have a free plan! You can have a paid plan that is very reasonable in which you can customize things. I’ve customized blocks on various providers that like to make popup ads on our Roku, which is nice, but not super necessary.
Layering Your Family’s Online Protection
In addition to CleanBrowsing, we use Nighthawk Parental Controls on our router to control times and what gadgets are actually accessing our internet, as well as Google Family Link, for safe searching and app controls. Just for good measure, we also use Qustodio on some devices!
The main thing you should have is something like CleanBrowsing to protect not only from pornography (whether intentional or inadvertent in things like hacked sites, ads, etc.) but also just from junk hitting your computer.
The amount of random sites lagging onto your browsing would astound you. Cut those off!
Movie Filtering for Family Movie Night: VidAngel and ClearPlay
In addition to that, we use VidAngel and ClearPlay for movies. These two apps allow you to remove language, inappropriate scenes, violence, and such from movies. The cuts are at your discretion. Many times, you can’t even notice the cuts in the movies!
Some people feel that kids need to be exposed to bad language and violence in media so that they can be ready for Real Life as Adults.
I’m strongly opposed to this.
As an Adult in Real Life, I don’t go around hearing tons of cursing or having random acts of violence popping up in my path on a daily basis. Again, I don’t shop at Walmart! But… (Ok, that’s a joke…)
Besides, as adults, we cultivate the life we want to live. If your ideal life doesn’t have bad language in it, you are in charge of that. You can take steps to avoid it as much as possible.
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.” ~Henry David Thoreau
If you want a simple life surrounded by daily Bible reading and Jesus-centric music, do it. Joy will follow.
Watching movies with cursing puts the words in your brain and makes you more readily apt to use them, either verbally or in your brain. It also stunts your vocabulary and makes you sound less intelligent.
My husband and I routinely ClearPlay and VidAngel things we want to watch, even on our own. Yes, without the kids around!
Before you wonder, but why watch things that need to be censored at all – that is a fair point, but there are some amazing movies – I was a Theatre/Communication double major with English Literature and also took extensive film studies classes in grad. school, give me a break here – that are amazing art but don’t need a few extra scenes or words that are added on top for no reason.
Due to my background, I’m not talking about being Amish or prudish. I’m the first to tell you that I’d rather go without lots and lots of things then lose my Spotify plan! But, we can still control our environment in such a way as to cultivate joy in our Spirits.
Marvel movies are a great example. Iron Manis one of my favorite movies of all time and I wanted to show it to the kids. It teaches that caring about others and being self sacrificing (and being really good at science!) can help one to be a better person and beat the odds!
However, I didn’t need the random bad words and dancing bikini chicks there at the beginning, before Tony’s redemption, highlighting his bad boy-ness that he activates hero mode there near the middle of the movie. His snarkiness alone communicates that just fine without them!
And just like that, Boom, Bikini Chicks have Disappeared!
Classic films like ET have tons and tons of language – and insults that I don’t need my little parrots mimicking! You may not remember that, because if like me, you saw it on TV when they used to take these things out, but it is still an amazing movie without it. Same goes for Back to the Future.
Here is what it looks like to use Clearplay, for instance.
Here is the main screen that pops up.
Then you can go more closely into the different blocked areas and see what you want exactly to block.
Yes, it bleeps out words for you, the parent! Isn’t that nice of them?! I thought so…
And for some of us, there are films we saw when we were in high school or so, that we may want to share with a spouse that are brilliant – looking at you, Wes Anderson!! – but have way too many things that we don’t want in our brains anymore. Like millions of repeated bad words, which really don’t even make sense in the context of the sentences they are used in.
My mom once told me that using the same bad word over and over again just makes you sound like you don’t have the imagination to think up a new adjective or word to use. Like, if we replaced a bad word with the word “pink” to describe a pony.
Would you sound smart if you said, “That pink pink pink pinkin’ pinkerty pinkest pink pony!!!”
Right, you would not sound smart. Case in point!
At a certain point, those things become undesirable. I used to have a giant Ignore button in my brain that things wouldn’t register. That is bad! You want your conscience to care. You don’t want to dull your senses. Now, I feel a magnetic revulsion from anything too violent or with too much language.
When my kids were little and all we watched was Mr. Rogers, Wild Kratts, the Wiggles, and the Wonder Pets, my spirit got sensitized again and I don’t want it to go back to the way it was when I was completely fine and dandy with going to Air Force Oneat the movie theatre as a kid.
The way to do that is to watch what you yourself watch.
VidAngel has Psych (which isn’t too violent generally but does have lots of random words popping up!) while ClearPlay has Marvel and more Disney movies.
What we do is have them on a Chrome extension and then send them to our Roku via wireless connection. We don’t have a TV, only a projector, but it is even easier to do if you have a more simple set up. Sometimes for more special effects laden movies, we hook up the HDMI to a laptop since the RAM suffers with heavy CGI.
Protecting Your Family Is Simple
You don’t need to be a tech genius to keep your family safe online. Start with router-level filtering through CleanBrowsing, add movie filtering tools like VidAngel or ClearPlay, and layer on additional parental controls as needed for your family.
The internet doesn’t have to be a scary place.
With a few simple tools, you can create a joyful, protected digital environment where your kids can learn, explore, and grow without stumbling into things that steal their innocence.
If you’d like to create a specialized plan for your home’s internet and media or need help knowing where to start or how to set it up, set up a coaching session with me! I’d love to help you in any way I can.
Homeschool With Joy 