After a friend asked me yesterday how many books we use in a year of school, I got curious and counted.  I didn’t count this year’s books, because in my opinion, Kindergarten is “lighter” than later grades, so instead I counted the books (and workbooks) we’ll be using for 1st Grade..

Going through my recent Sonlight order of Core K (it sounds like we’re doing Kindergarten again, but it doesn’t work that way, trust me!),  Readers 2 and Language Arts for Readers 2 (which we won’t be starting on at the beginning of 1st Grade, but I had to count either those or Readers 1; since Readers 2 and Language Arts 2 was in the same shipment, they’re in my tally), Horizons Math 1, Science K, Bible K, Electives K, A Reason for Handwriting Book A, and A Reason for Spelling Book A, I came up with approximately 75 books.

This total includes eight individual workbooks(2 math, 3 language arts, 1 vocabulary, 1 handwriting, and 1 spelling) that we need two copies each of, but none of the teacher guides or worksheet packs.  It also includes a few resource books that will be used over the course of many years, including a student dictionary, a children’s encyclopedia and Sonlight’s Book of Time.

Stopping to count our books reminds me what a daunting task homeschooling is, what a great book list Sonlight has put together, and how much I love books and reading.  Whenever I think about it, I’m terrified and elated at the same time. Interesting combination, but so far, it seems to be working for me!