I did it...full time homeschoolers now!

[cookderosa]

I second the Robinson Curriculum Booklist. My youngest is 11 and she still loves the Arthur Scott Bailey books and so do I. I don't think there is a Horatio Alger book we didn't warmly embrace, and we are working through the Historical Fiction novels of G.A. Henry (nearly 100 of them). I look for good moral content, excellent vocabulary, and incredibly long sentence structure. Most of our favorite books were written before 1930. My oldest, 16, is working her way through the Great Books of the Western World now. To get there, she read 2hours a day minimum, even when she was young. We have DEAR Time, which is Drop Everything And Read. We are all in the same room, reading our own book to ourselves, but modeling great love of reading! When I'm in my studio working in the evening, I'll have the youngest come read me a story out loud. You can really hear when they struggle on a vocab word, or improve their reading by adding inflection and expression to their reading. It is quite fun. Don't dismiss audio books--I've picked up several at the library book sales selling the Classic

We must be cut from the same cloth. +1 to everything you just said, and I'll add that my kids have read the entire Tom Swift series (not the Jr. series which is science fiction) all written in about 1900, in fact we own originals of all but 3 which I printed and bound.