Sleeping Bear Press - A Teacher's Best Friend

Ticia over at Adventure's in Mommydom mentioned an alphabet book about Texas she picked up last week. She also mentioned there was an entire series of alphabet books, encompassing all 50 states. Needless to say, I popped over to my library's online catalogue to check it out.

Having some trouble locating the books by title, when I didn't know all of the titles, I plugged in the publisher's name - Sleeping Bear Press, and was very impressed with the list of books, that appeared. Not only were the states covered, though my library didn't have all of them, but there were also alphabet, and number books, covering quite a few other topics, from cowboys and princesses, to world geography and astronomy.

Of course, Sleeping Bear Press puts out more than alphabet books. They also have a number of very intriguing, historical fictions, and some titles, that seem to be just for fun, like Moose on the Loose by Kathy-jo Wargin. It wasn't long before I had reached the hold limit on my library account.

B is for Big Sky Country, A Montana Alphabet, by Sneed B. Collard III, arrived first. I previewed it last night, and read it to the children, this morning. It has a few short sentences about Montana, accompanying each letter of the alphabet, with more detail provided in a couple of paragraphs to the side of each page, making it appropriate for a wide age range of children. And, I found that in 26 letters, Collard captured the heart of Montana pretty well.

The very best part, and what I'm even more excited about, is that after a quick visit to the publisher's website, I discovered the free, printable, cross-curricular, teacher's guides that go along with many of their books, including all 50 of the state books in the alphabet series. Not only have they done my work for me, they've done it in an informative, imaginative, and entertaining fashion. So, a big thank you to Sleeping Bear Press from one Almost Unschooling Mom!

It's great to be a homeschooler.