While the Noah Plan®(1) Curriculum Literature Guide is written for private Christian schools, it is a helpful resource for Biblical Classical homeschooling families. In this article, I’m sharing with you about homeschooling with the literature guide—especially with a large family in mind.

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If you’re new to Principled Academy, our family has been homeschooling with a Biblical Classical Education the whole way through. God has blessed us with 10 children to love, nurture, raise, and homeschool. At the time of this article, we have four homeschool graduates. Our fifth child is graduating from our homeschool at the end of the 2025-2026 school year.

As a quick backdrop: Teaching with materials from the Foundation for American Christian Education has developed over the years. I’ve had to adjust as I learned how to use these resources. And adapting to meet the needs of our family dynamics has had its learning curves. That being said, this article is based primarily on how things have settled for our family. A few example lesson plans offer inspiration, and a guide to writing lesson plans follows.

How the Literature Guide is Structured

The Noah Plan® Curriculum Literature Guide opens up with six literature goals, which are helpful to keep in mind throughout the school year. It then moves into defining literature with an elevated view, which wraps into a big picture about cultivating reasoning through the grade ranges (i.e. kindergarten, primary school, middle school, and high school). Afterward, there are suggested quarterly overviews for K-12, which is can be a helpful guide for planning a school year.

To wrap up the introductory section, instructions for using a F.A.C.E. syllabus equips teachers (i.e. parents) for teaching literature with a Biblical Classical Education. Sample student lessons see the reader out the “introductory section” so he or she may enter the “Learning the Literature of the Bible” section.

Learning the Literature of the Bible

This is a part of the first quarter for our homeschool in grades K-8th. In our homeschool, we treat the first quarter, consisting of nine weeks, as the Foundations Week. Teaching the Bible as literature serves as a reminder to older students, and they gain a deeper understanding as they mature. Teaching the Bible as a literary study is helpful for:

Understanding the plot, setting, character, and theme of God’s hand in history.
Observing the “internal to external” and “cause to effect” (Read: Teaching from Truth: Renewing and Transforming with a Biblical Classical Education for a detailed explanation of this concept).
Considering sinful man’s response to our Holy God and how God works all things together for His plans and purposes.
Learning why man suffers under tyranny or thrives under God’s idea of liberty for the individual and nations.

We can approach teaching the Bible in this way regardless of how old our children are. Since we know our children best, we can explain the lessons to them at their individual comprehension levels.

This section wraps up with a note about teaching the books of the Bible by identifying the author and literary elements. Then readers flow into the “Elementary Literature Program” section.

Something we’re leaning toward doing is studying the Bible this way as a family vs. in our formal homeschool lessons. One resource we’re using is the Judah Bible Curriculum (<– not an affiliate link). The Judah Bible Curriculum is a Biblical Classical resources and has instructions for setting up a notebook and themes to teach.

The Elementary Literature Program

Having a growing family offers the ability to do “together school,” for some subjects. Of course, some subjects are taught one-on-one, such as spelling. But for the purpose of this article, I’m sharing with you how I save time while teaching our family.

Nursery Rhymes, Lullabies, and Poems

The Noah Plan® Curriculum Literature Guide‘s elementary literature program primarily highlights nursery rhymes, lullabies, poems, and the reading of whole books that serve a particular purpose. And that purpose is to teach from authors that promote liberty. These key authors are English and American because the biblical roots of liberty in nations begin in England and are more fully expressed in the founding of America. Some parents are caught off guard by the surprising companionship of literature. But it shapes our children’s minds and hearts just as much as in-person companions can. Therefore, it’s important to teach from literature that helps them develop a love of liberty and shapes their character to sustain and promote it.

Having several children gives me the ability to exercise my creative muscles—figuring out what works best for our family’s flow. It’s a life skill fur sure. I’m able to easily teach nursery rhymes and lullabies to our Kindergarten through first grade crowd. Sometimes, our older ones voluntarily enjoy reading these and singing them to our younger ones, which reinforces the lessons they were once taught. When it comes to poems and reading whole books, I find it easy to teach our family all together.

How I Approach Teaching Poetry to Our Large Family

We started a tradition: “Tuesday Tea and Poetry Mornings.” On these mornings we enjoy eggs, turkey bacon or beef sausage links, fruit, toast, and some special home baked cookies. On some fall and winter mornings, we sometimes switch out tea for hot cocoa (here is an oat milk version some of us enjoy).

I read selected poems. Sometimes I have our readers take turns reading poetry. But generally they’re all enjoying their breakfast, so I do the reading. We focus on God’s Principle of Individuality and how that’s seen among the poets and their poetry.

Learning on a Timeline

Sometimes, we go down the list of poets on pages 121-122 of The Noah Plan® Curriculum Literature Guide, which is a timeline of liberty taught through poetry.

Summer Poetry Lessons

In our family, we choose to homeschool year-round. This gives us flexibility for breaks, vacations, and sick days. During the summer months—when we do a lighter load of schooling—we’re focusing on the sequence of historical poetry (listed on page 125).

Furthermore, the Noah Plan® Curriculum Literature Guide explains how to present teaching and learning classics with a Biblical Classical Education. Particular classics are great for all of our ages to listen to as we various forms of literature as a family.

Branching Off to Teach Grade Specific Poetry

Some literature is taught formally to a grade. Again, in our family this is generally handled in a “one-room” schoolhouse model. I’ll group the elementary aged kids together and we’ll focus on recommended reads.

If we’re reading a biography or autobiography about a liberty-loving poet, we’ll tie in the story with his or her poetry. Katherine Lee Bates is a perfect example.

Tying Poetry in with a Biography

Katherine Lee Bates Girl Poet by Elisabeth P. Myers is a delightful biography of Katherine growing up as a lively young girl with a vivid imagination. Toward the end of the biography, we learn how she was enraptured by her surroundings and felt inspired to write the moving poem, “America the Beautiful.” In this kind of instance, we’ll branch off into learning the poem. And in this case, the song based on Katherine’s poem.

Teaching Middle School Ages Poetry

In the literature guide, Shakespeare and Elizabethan England take center stage. This is when the guide highlights drama. On page 163, there’s a “Drama on the Chain of Christianity®(2) Timeline.” This timeline takes us through drama in General Revelation and Revealed Law, leading up to the 21st Century of restoring character through the arts. This is done because the arts are restored to a biblical worldview.

The literature guide also recommends teaching on The Age of Mythology in middle school, when it comes to teaching the classics.

On pages 193-194, the guide wraps back around to teaching the literary types. However, we treat this as Foundations Lessons in the first quarter. So, as our middle school and high school students progress, we layer the information on page 195 regarding how to read poetry with emphasis, distinguishing between prose and poetry, and identifying the music of poetry. Their lessons are also layered with a deeper understanding of essays, and instruction for writing them.

Enjoying Literature as a Family

Classics, biographies, and autobiographies inspire, encourage, and teach us by reaching our hearts. I’ll read some of these aloud and go through formal Classical Literature Studies. But some of them are selected as a read aloud for before bedtime, and our Classical Literature Studies are more informal with discussions. If there is a film or a local play based on stories we’re reading, we might enjoy those as well.

This is how I approach teaching literature using the Noah Plan® Curriculum Literature Guide in a “together school” model. However, some recommended literature for middle and high school is another thing altogether. The literature guide offers suggestions for teaching the classics to middle and high school aged students.

1: The Noah Plan®is a registered trademark of the Foundation for American Christian Education.

2. The Chain of Christianity®is a registered trademark of the Foundation for American Christian Education.