I Heart the Wednesday Hodgepodge

"Notes from our Hodgepodge Hostess: Happy Valentine's Day Hodgepodgers! Here are this week's questions...answer on your own blog, then hop back here tomorrow to share answers with the universe. Here we go-"

1. What do/did you call your grandparents? If it's something unusual tell us the story behind the name. If you're a grandparent what do your grands call you? Who chose your moniker?

When we were very little, it was Bamma and Bampa, just because we couldn't say Grandma and Grandpa. But we did eventually learn how to say "g." 

2. Ever taken a road trip along the California Coast? If so what was the highlight of your trek? If not, any desire to do so? If you were to take a trip along the California Coast what's one attraction you'd have on your must-see list?

Mr. Fixit and I were just talking about how both of our mothers coincidentally took similar trips, driving with friends to California around 1960, before they were married (and you have to realize how far southern Ontario is from California!). 

3. What are three things you don't know how to do?

Drive. I mean, I sort of know how, but I don't because I drive terribly and I'm scared to.

Income taxes. Mr. Fixit does them online.

Barbecue. Mr. Fixit's department.

4. Tom Peters is quoted as saying, 'Celebrate what you want to see more of.' If that's true what will you celebrate and more importantly, how will you celebrate?

Um...more space in the house? We are celebrating that by continuing to clear out, donate, recycle, sell off a lot of things that have lost their usefulness.

5. Thursday (February 16) is National Almond Day. Do you like almonds? Which would you prefer-an Almond Joy or a macaron? What's something you make that calls for almonds?

I love almonds, preferably chocolate-coated or maybe tamari-flavoured. But I don't make anything with almonds because of family allergies.

6. What does Saturday morning look like at your house?

Errand, grocery, and yard-saling morning. At one time it was take-the-girls-to-dance-class morning. Sometimes even get-groceries-while-they're-in-dance-class morning.

7. Share with us a favorite book you've read this winter.

According to GoodReads, I've read 15 books so far this year; but some of them are sort of adult picture books (decorating and so on). How to Get Dressed was a fun read on OverDrive. Only the Lover Sings was more of a keeper (and I liked that it was short enough to want to go back to again).

8.  Insert your own random thought here.

This week I put 2/3 of our "good" cutlery set into the everyday kitchen drawer. The other third is in the dining room, in case we need it; and the older* everyday stuff is in a bag in storage, in case one of the offspring discovers a sudden need for forks and knives.

(*Older? I wrote that and then realized that, since the "good" cutlery was a wedding gift, it is probably about the same age as the mixture of things from our pre-wedding apartments or the inherited odds and ends that came with the house. I probably should have just said less pretty.)

I also cleaned out the linen closet (almost Zen in its half-emptiness).

I cleaned out a lot of quite old plastic storage containers.

I did quite a lot of laundry.

And I published my new book.

(Maybe it's the adrenaline from that that is inspiring all the cleaning energy.)

Linked from The Wednesday Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.

You know you're moving on...

You know you're moving on from being a homeschool mom when you admit that your teenager is probably not going to use the 20-year-old copy of Writer's Inc. that you saved just in case. Keeners look up their own extra resources. The rest just use whatever copied material the teacher hands out. The odds of the "mom shelf" being used...except by mom...are low.

You know you're moving on from the big-family, Sunday-dinner phase when you decide to use the good flatware for every day, and bag up the other mismatched stuff for future apartments or eventual donation. And when it appears that keeping only eight settings handy out of the twelve would probably be enough.

You know you're moving into this millennium when you actually start rinsing out milk bags for recycling. Because, up till now, who cared?

You know you're moving on when...maybe...you have too many towels.

From the archives: The cost of homeschooling?

First posted February 2012 

Of all the reasons for or against homeschooling, the supposed "real costs" or "missed-opportunity costs"  argument has to be about the second-oldest after the socialization question, and it's just as misleading.

The Deputy Headmistress of The Common Room has posted her current thoughts on this, here and here.  It's also worthwhile to go back to her 2005 post here, because the comments are so interesting.  I originally posted a response to that one here.  (The DHM and I have been friends a long time.)

All I can add, to all that, is this:  first, you may save money by homeschooling.  It depends on your lifestyle, your curriculum, how many kids you have, how much money you were making or spending before, and so on.  As the DHM and others have pointed out, you won't be spending money on extra shoes, band trips, and pizza days either, and you may be saving money related to daycare or other parental work expenses. But most people don't begin to homeschool solely with the intention of saving money.  As in, we can't afford to send you to public school any more, so you'll just have to stay home.  There are usually other reasons involved in the decision--academic, religious, health reasons, bullying, bad teachers, whatever.  So from my admittedly limited economic understanding, this is not something you can approach with a simple comparison of costs.

Second, as far as the actual cost of the actual homeschooling goes--that is, minus the arguments over whether or not the kids' shoes wear out faster, or whether you have lower medical expenses because they're not being coughed and sneezed on by thirty other kids, or how much money you won't have to spend on peanut-free granola bars and juice boxes--the only point that all homeschoolers* can agree with on this, is that we're in control of that cost.  If we have money to burn and count a whole lot of things as "school", we can homeschool very expensively.  If we're broke, we can scrounge and use freebies.  In most cases (see the note below), we are free to decide that this year we will or won't teach a certain subject, will or won't have swimming lessons, will or won't buy a new printer.

Yes, you could put together some kind of an "average" family picture, and say that "most" homeschoolers pay a certain amount for math materials, reading books, computer stuff; or that people who spend a certain amount are more successful at homeschooling than others.  But what's the point?  A glance through any general homeschooling magazine, or through a week's Carnival of Homeschooling, will show such a diversity of approaches and lifestyles that such comparisons would be meaningless.  Even within our own family, every year's expenses are a little different: some years we've just re-used what we had, other years we've needed to buy new materials.

Conclusion?  There isn't one, except that, like the socialization question, the "costs" question is just as red a herring.

*"All homeschoolers" meaning all who live where they are free to plan their own work and/or choose their own curriculum provider, rather than being required to teach a set curriculum, buy required books, etc.

RELATED POST:  Frugal Homeschooling: Let Me Count the Ways

Frugal Finds and Fixes

Fixes: A hole in Lydia's jeans.

I wasn't going for completely invisible, just functional.

Finds:

A thrifted sweatshirt, for a dollar. The coloured-tag dollar deals are one of the best bonuses of the thrift store we go to. It also helps to know what you're looking for, so you can make even short visits more productive. I needed a sweatshirt, I like this shade of grey, and I didn't mind if the label said Large.

Household habits and changes:

We donated most of our marriage-long accumulation of music CD's, keeping just enough to fit into one end-table drawer. We got rid of a VCR, a record cabinet, and a 40-year-old toboggan.

We have also begun seriously stepping up our recycling habits.

Looks funny, but it makes you think twice about putting something in the bottom pail (garbage).

I also put my name on the library wait list for Bea Johnson's Zero-Waste Home book. Any ideas help!

A Superbulous Wednesday Hodgepodge

Notes from our Hodgepodge Hostess: "Here are the questions to this week's Wednesday Hodgepodge. Answer on your own blog, then hop back here tomorrow to add your link to the party. See you there!"

1. What's the last thing you did that someone else thought was super? 

That's a hard thing to answer when you're talking about yourself! Maybe I thought they thought it was super, but they were just being polite.

2. The last thing you ate that tasted superb? 

Oh, that's a touchy question too--because Mr. Fixit and I often take turns cooking, and I like most of what he makes. But if we're really going for superbulous, and in a way that won't step on anyone's culinary toes...we went out for some really good panzerotti on New Year's Eve.

3. Supersensitive, superstitious, superwoman, superambitious, supercilious, supervisor, superficial...pick a super word from the list and tell us how it relates to your life in some way recently or currently. 

Superabundance: the way God answers prayers, small ones and big ones.

Superefficient: I posted "what goes in, what stays out" lists by every garbage pail, waste basket, and recycling box in the house, in preparation for new garbage pickup restrictions. "Green binning" has been around for quite awhile here, but we have never bothered much with it before, preferring to compost our own stuff in warm weather. (The superabundance of backyard wildlife here is one reason we have been cautious about incorporating too-easily-accessed receptacles.) But the choice between that and being supercharged for extra garbage bags meant that it was time to get organized.

4. Do you love easily? If you're comfortable doing so, explain why you think that is. 

Another hard one--I'll pass.

5. Valentine's Day lands on a Tuesday this year. Will you mark the day in some way? If you're celebrating with a dinner out somewhere will it be on Tuesday or will you celebrate over the weekend? 

No special plans yet! Mr. Fixit and I might do lunch out somewhere.

6. What's something you are loving right now? 

New books, and time to read them.

7 Write a three word (or less) phrase you'd like to see on a Valentine candy heart.  

Fully functional.

8.  Insert your own random thought here. 

Sorry for the generally laconic answers in this one: I have been overdosing on the Spartans, I guess.

Linked from A Hodgepodge That's Easy to Love at From This Side of the Pond.

Proofreading Plutarch

The newest Plutarch study guide will be out soon!

Is anti-materialism garbage? And other questions.

If there's anything in the less-is-more, few possessions and no-garbage movement that makes you slightly itchy, you're not alone. Although you may feel slightly guilty about that reaction; after all, it was Christians who popularized the phrase More-With-Less. The Scriptures have plenty to say about how messed up the rich man is, and why we shouldn't love "the world," however you define it. But that can get us into guilty legalism, or a Nathaniel-Hawthorne-esque picture of solemn, black-garbed lives. Or, in this decade, we're more likely to think of stark white, minimally-furnished rooms. Whether the concern is for our souls or for the planet, we seem to end up in the same place. Possessions are troublesome. Clothes are only for warmth and modesty. Brownies should be made out of black beans to justify their existence.

There is nothing new about the argument for and against things that give us pleasure. I think even St. Paul ran into it with his churches (e.g. his letter to Timothy, referring to people who tried to ban too many things). Yes, the days are evil, and we are to mortify the flesh, etc. On the other hand, every good and perfect gift is from the Father, and it is not sinful to enjoy and be thankful for the useful and/or the beautiful. In certain situations, you might find yourself grateful for the invention of disposable diapers or plastic water bottles. Or, equally, for the life of an artist whose work gives you joy. Or for a bunch of flowers on a difficult day.

It is a good thing, I think, for the extreme minimalists to ask big, uncomfortable questions, and for the rest of us to consider the answers they come up with. Is more recycling what's really needed, for instance, or just less produced and bought to recycle? What happens (asked one person) when the recyclables are recycled into something non-recyclable? In our own region, I hope that the current push to blue-box and green-bin more of our waste will be met at the other end by something other than chucking it in the landfill. But how do you really know where anything goes? Did my thrift-donated sweater clothe someone locally, or did it get bundled overseas to be donated or resold? Is a disposed-of laptop now getting picked apart by someone struggling for food in China? Is one endpoint better than another?

Is it a worthwhile pursuit to bring home cheese in a glass jar instead of a plastic package, for the sake of less garbage? Or, equally, for someone else to then post diatribes about the wastefulness of animal products, even in a glass jar? St. Paul knew about this, and so did Jesus when he talked about tithing herbs and straining out gnats. Are we creating the big picture, or are we missing it? Is it better to special-order a refillable pen and bottle of ink, or to simply buy what's on the Walmart shelf and not waste time worrying about it? Are the socks I bought hurting somebody in an Asian factory? Should I have spent the extra effort tracking down some that claim to be all-natural, fair-trade, or both? Or could I have used that same energy and time listening, reading, walking, helping?

Does God mind if we go out after church for a burger and fries?

Are there one-size answers to these questions, or are they all maybe yes, maybe no? If you have any thoughts, I'd like to hear them.

Old meets new (photos)

Over the weekend, Mr. Fixit cleaned out some records, sold the small cabinet that held them, and moved this 1940's Sparton console radio into the living room.

This photo is Mr. Fixit's "man cave," five years ago; the radio has been in the corner there (under the Three Stooges poster) for at least that long. Console or floor-model radios aren't something Mr. Fixit usually handles; they're not a big seller these days, and they're hard to move around (and ship). This was one he just liked and didn't worry about re-selling.

But it was time to polish it up and give it new life upstairs.

This old radio is more compatible with new technology than you'd think. It has an input on the back that can connect with a smartphone. Ponytails came over on the weekend and said she had heard a song she thought Mr. Fixit would like. He plugged her phone into the input and played the music through the radio.

What's for supper? Using all our gadgets

Tonight's dinner menu:

Beef-potato-onion-carrot stew in the slow cooker (thank you, Mr. Fixit)
Bread from the bread machine
Toaster-oven chocolate-chip cookies.

Guinea pig weather report on Groundhog Day

This is what Lydia's guinea pig thinks of winter.

"You can keep it."

February Free Fill-the-bag (because next month it won't be)

Someone in the local paper advised us, tongue in cheek, to do spring cleaning in February, before new garbage restrictions take effect in March.

I'm taking a break from formatting an e-book (tedious but important), virtuously eating Finn Crisp, not-as-virtuously drinking instant coffee, and looking at the list of 60 Things to Toss Out. The first one, wrapping paper scraps, I took care of on Monday. Christmas lights that don't work? --not my department. Next on the list are old magazines and old receipts. I might have a few of those.

Unmatched earrings? I refuse to toss them, on the off-chance that their mates might someday show up. (I hate losing earrings. Don't you hate losing earrings? I stay in denial as long as I can.)

Bathroom products, shoes, scarves? Under control. Hair ties, sunglasses, nail polish? I don't have any. But I do have some old regular glasses that could go.

And then we're back to the paper stuff. "Scraps of mail." "Old paperwork." "Books you don't enjoy." OK. Yes. They have obviously been peering into my file boxes, and I agree. Time for a clearout.

The rest of the list can wait.

(DONE.)

Final book arrived!

Josef Piper, Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation. These are very short pieces (mostly talks) about leisure, music, and the human spirit.

Twenty-four hours

Yesterday's weather.

Today's weather.

Enough said?

Here On My Island (Wednesday Hodgepodge)

Notes from our Hodgepodge hostess: "Here are the questions to this week's Wednesday Hodgepodge. Answer on your own blog, then hop back here tomorrow to share answers with the universe. Here we go-"

1. "The cure for anything is salt water-tears, sweat, or the sea." (Isak Dinesan) Would you agree? Of the three, which has 'cured' you most recently? 

None of those that I can think of! Didn't Isak like chocolate?

2. What's something you can't eat without salt? Do you normally salt your food a lot, a little, or not at all? 

A few years ago, we were very very low salt around here (a medical need), and I had a low-sodium food blog as well. Since then we have eased back into our normal amount of sauerkraut. But I was eating awhile back with some friends from the U.S., and they said that Canadian food generally seemed undersalted. So maybe there's a cross-border difference between "a little" and "a lot."

3. Sands of time, bury your head in the sand, built on sand, or draw a line in the sand...which sandy phrase could best be applied to something in your life right now? 

Sands through the hourglass?

4. A favorite book, movie, or song with an island setting or theme?

This is just for any of the Squirrelings who stop by here:


5. Yesterday-did you run your day or did it run you? How so?

I am at the tail end of a writing project, so I'm trying to pretend like I'm on a desert island without too many distractions.

6. You're on an island holiday. Will I most likely find you parked in a beach chair, shopping in town, on the back of a jet ski, or snorkeling off the back of a catamaran?

No idea, I haven't been on an island holiday since I was three. No, wait, I guess Prince Edward Island counts too, right? Not exactly tropical, but it is an island. But that was a long time ago too.

The beach chair sounds nice.

7. What do you think we humans most take for granted?

Opposable thumbs.

8. Insert your own random thought here.

Mr. Fixit told me yesterday that he is getting pumped to do some more cleaning out (this time mostly mancave stuff). I've already been through a lot of the typical online lists of things to trim down (like the Scavenger Hunt we did last year), but here's another one I found with some fun ideas.

Linked from the Wednesday Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.

From the archives: Notes from a Book Talk

First posted October 2007. Links edited/updated.

(Adapted from a talk I wrote for a support group meeting. Are you sitting comfortably?)

Books fall open, you fall in
Delighted where you’ve never been
Hear voices not once heard before
Reach world on world through door on door
Find unexpected keys to things
Locked up beyond imaginings
What might you be, perhaps become
Because one book is somewhere?...

(from "Books Fall Open," by David McCord)
When Mr. Fixit and I were at the beginning of our journey together, one of us once gave the other one a gift bag with a Winnie-the-Pooh illustration on it and the words, "As soon as I saw you, I knew an adventure was going to happen." That's almost identical to a chapter title in Gladys Hunt's Honey for a Child’s Heart (at least the 1978 edition, which is what I have): "The Pleasure of a Shared Adventure."

Reading is an adventure, and even better, it can be a shared adventure.

What do you need for an adventure? You need some place to go—often some place unknown. Adventures require at least a bit of the unexpected, the unknown, a bit of uncertainty; “things locked up beyond imaginings.” Most adventures don’t happen right in your own backyard. To have a real adventure you need to step outside, push beyond your comfort zone.

Real adventures can include buried treasure, answering riddles, fighting dragons, outwitting giants. They include big problems and big decisions.

Adventures go better with food. Apples, popcorn, hot chocolate…

Here’s a quote, see if you know what book it’s from. "Her own small bedroom now became her reading-room and there she would sit and read most afternoons, often with a mug of hot chocolate beside her….It was pleasant to take a hot drink up to her room and have it beside her as she sat in her silent room reading in the empty house in the afternoons. The books transported her into new world and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She traveled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village."

And it’s nice to have a place to come home to afterwards. Our adventures are enjoyed more when they’re framed in the familiarity and security of home.

What should you expect from an adventure?

Expect it to take time. You can’t have a real adventure in five minutes, and some of the best book adventures are very long. We are often too impatient and we settle for abridged versions or just skip things altogether because they’re so long. But if you take, say, the long unabridged version of David Copperfield, there’s just a huge amount of wonderful stuff in there that hasn’t made it into shortened versions or movie versions. In other words, you don’t really know David Copperfield until you’ve explored the whole thing, and when you’re done you’re tired but you know it was worthwhile.

Expect some degree of danger, risk, opposition and difficulty. Being a reader these days can be a subversive activity, both inside and outside of the Christian community; it can make people angry; it can make a lot more people yawn with boredom. It’s not the books that get banned by school libraries that you will have to struggle to read or even to find; it’s the books that nobody’s actually supposed to be able or be interested in reading any more; that includes some of the treasures of our Christian literary heritage. How many people do you know--Christians or not-- who have actually read and enjoyed Paradise Lost or Pilgrim’s Progress, just for a start? How many homeschoolers will include those books in their children’s education? For some people, concentrating our children’s reading on the dead white guys (particularly dead Christian white guys) is seen as some kind of an act against contemporary culture. And those who don't get outright angry may try to discourage you in other ways. Just like in Pilgrim’s Progress, you are going to meet people with names like That’s-So-Dull and Much-Abridged who are going to try to get you to turn back; but press on, the rewards are there in the end.

And expect to be rewarded when you climb to the top. Who goes on a quest without hoping to bring back treasure? Without even specially looking for them, we can expect to make discoveries that lead to wisdom, teach discernment and critical thinking, inspire us with courage, and build character; or "moral imagination."
Charlotte Mason said that “stories make the child’s life intelligible to himself; Gladys Hunt wrote in Honey for a Child’s Heart that “books help children know what to look for in life.” It helps to know what you’re looking for when you’re hunting for treasure. And besides that there are a lot of little side benefits of reading, like improved vocabulary and listening skills, creativity, and having bits of useful information stored up in the mind.

Again from "that book": 

“All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen. If only they would read a little Dickens or Kipling they would soon discover there was more to life than cheating people and watching television.”

Northrop Frye said that literature is true, more true in some ways than our everyday existence; because when our everyday life is disappointing and superficial or truly horrible, it is in literature that we find examples of true love, true honour, true courage. Reading is more than just escapism. It’s not escapism to find strength by remembering Christian’s defeat of Giant Despair; by thinking of wise words that Corrie Ten Boom’s father and sister told her; by making yourself smile at a lovely line of poetry or laugh at the Pooh stories.

But reading is an escape as well, in a good sense. We rebel against ignorance and smallness and look for something more; we try to remember what we are or should be as human beings. We can escape from the pride of thinking we know it all, and from limitations like not really being able to sail or fly or ride horses, or find a secret garden or a buried treasure. We may not have people in our everyday lives who are as loyal as Charlotte, as resourceful as Laura’s Ma, as wise as Clara’s grandmother in Heidi, as encouraging as Ratty, or as valiant as Reepicheep; but in books, we can do all these things and know all these people.

Expect to have fun. The roads through books aren’t all serious; there is a great deal of humor, delight and pleasure, even nonsense. About a hundred years ago, a parent in England wrote this:
“I cannot count the times I have read aloud the stories in the "Just So" book. During a dreary month of grey skies and perpetual snow, spent in the hotel of a grim Yorkshire village, those stories were our daily bread, especially those that took us to the sunshine of South Africa. And the greatest favourite of all was The Beginning of the Armadilloes. Only Rudyard Kipling or Lewis Carroll would dare to write anything so absurd. Day after day, for thirty days or thereabouts, those two rascals, Stickly-Prickly, and Slow-and-Solid, played their pranks, and day after day we laughed at the same places, and when Slow-and-Solid said to the Painted Jaguar--"Because if she said what you said she said, it's just the same as if I said what she said she said"--day after day we bounded out of our chairs with joy….Let us arm our children for the slings and arrows of later life by cultivating the spirit of innocent laughter.”

Terry Glaspey says that “being in the presence of greatness cannot but change us.” So expect to be changed, strengthened, stretched, widened, given a different perspective as you go on a particular adventure. As characters in books grow throughout a story, we share their experiences and also find ourselves growing and changing. One of my favourite short books is Rumer Godden’s The Mousewife, about an unhappy mother mouse who develops a friendship with a dove living in a cage. The dove tells her stories about the world outside and gives her a lot of new ideas about things she has never seen. Eventually the mousewife finds a way to help the dove escape, but suddenly realizes that she no longer has her friend there to talk to her and teach her things. Then she looks out the window. “She looked out again and saw the stars….When she saw them shining she thought at first they must be new brass buttons. Then she saw that they were very far off, farther than the garden or the wood, beyond the farthest trees….’I have seen them for myself,’ said the mousewife, ‘without the dove. I can see for myself,’ said the mousewife, and slowly, proudly, she walked back to bed.”

How can we get to be more adventurous, and get more out of our reading adventures?

Use the services of an experienced guide—in this case, booklists and books about books, including homeschool book catalogues and online reviews—but use them cautiously. In your book adventures, as in real life, some guides are more to be trusted than others; and some may simply suit your purposes or personality more than others do. What one hiking guide calls a nice little stroll may leave you exhausted; and what one booklist calls suitable for a ten-year-old may be your idea of something better saved for high school, or the other way around.

To have the greatest adventures, seek out the greatest treasures. Our culture tends to cheapen and trivialize reading (formula series, TV-tie-ins, other kinds of books that barely qualify as books); the media tells us we should read mostly because it’s fun. But even fun gets boring after awhile.

To have the greatest adventures, don’t stick only to the roads marked “fiction.” Read some of the history of medicine, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy. Find out what was beautiful, revolutionary and even dangerous about scientific discoveries. Read history, and go beyond “how the peasants lived.” Read biographies, poetry, nature descriptions. Read the Bible together.

There is also the idea these days that there are no specific important books—wrong. Some book adventures are just more rewarding than others, especially the places you know you’ll want to go back to again and take your friends along to enjoy. There are certain real-life places that everyone should try to see once; and there are book adventures that are too good to miss. You may not be ready for them all at the beginning, but you can work up to the challenge.

Which is another good point: to have the greatest adventures, take along some good companions; make it a shared adventure, and everyone who goes along will be in on the shared vocabulary, experiences and “book friends” that you meet along the way. How do you work around different ages? Not everyone who comes along will get the most from a particular book journey, but sometimes what they do bring back will surprise you. There are times in life when you just can’t read with everyone, but even if it’s just you and one other person, you’re sharing that adventure together, and maybe somebody else will decide to come along if the two of you look like you’re having fun.

How do you deal with general reluctance, the attitude that books are hard or boring? I once went to a health-food demonstration where the presenter was asked, "How can I encourage my children to eat some of these foods instead of hot dogs?" She answered, very unhelpfully, that really they should have just been better trained from the start. In the same way, it would be easy for me to say that if your kids are brought up reading with you from babyhood, you probably won’t have a problem with this, and that if you do you should just force it down them; but that sort of answer just makes you want to give up, doesn't it? So a better suggestion might be that you’re going to have to woo them—maybe with the hot chocolate and popcorn, maybe with a particularly wonderful or funny book that you know gets right into the story very quickly. These suggestions might also apply if you really want to involve a spouse or another adult family member; nobody wants to be made to read, especially if they think they’re going to be bored by kids books; so make sure that it’s something that everybody’s going to enjoy. One recommendation is Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It’s nothing at all like the movie and it’s a lot of fun and has lots of things blowing up in it.

How do you cope with busy schedules, and the competing attractions of other media? You can use audio books, maybe during mealtimes or travel; you can use more homeschool time just to read; you can leave books lying around; you can give books as gifts. Even the cost of new books shouldn’t be a deterrent to reading, not with libraries and used books and online books readily available; Emily Dickinson was right when she said that reading is a pretty frugal chariot compared with a lot of the other ways we can find to spend money.

HE ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book.
What liberty
A loosened spirit brings! --Emily Dickinson

To have the greatest adventures, let the adventures find you. "Books fall open, you fall in." We can’t always regulate reading by squeezing it into a READING period; by labeling books according to grade or age; or excluding every word or idea that we don’t think our kids will understand. Again, you have to risk a little. Lines like “bequest of wings,” “loosened spirit” and “take us worlds away” speak to us of flight and freedom; the idea of moving outside our own place and time, being able to see beyond our own lives; that’s what the word education means, a drawing out. As our “spirits grow robust,” we are able not only to handle more difficult book adventures but to use our experiences in the everyday world as well, to survive the “dingy days” and also to change them into something better. “Robust spirits” implies strength and health; this kind of reading is not a weak, wussy thing or just an escape from reality. In Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Cousin Eustace was the cowardly, mean character; C.S. Lewis says it was because he hadn’t read the right books.

What are the right books to adventure with? A great storyteller named Ruth Sawyer gave this list (quoted in Honey for a Child's Heart): 

“Stories that make for wonder. Stories that make for laughter. Stories that stir one within with an understanding of the true nature of courage, of love, of beauty. Stories that make one tingle with high adventure, with daring, with grim determination, with the capacity of seeing danger through to the end. Stories that bring our minds to kneel in reverence. Stories that show the tenderness of true mercy, the strength of loyalty, the unmawkish respect for what is good.”

Let’s have the courage to adventure with books…and…Let’s go there together.

From the archives: What was Lydia doing in the second grade?

First posted 2008. Reposting it because I just came across these Grade Two posts and I'm feeling like that was a very long time ago...  (links updated/edited)

Favourite folk songs: "When I First Came To This Land."


We also (very selectively) use some songs from Festivals, Family and Food (the ones without too much Mother Earth in them), and have also enjoyed the first volume of Michael Mitchell's Canada is For Kids. Crayons likes the video version of Mitchell's "Canada in My Pocket" (about the symbols on Canadian coins).

I also give her short follow-the-leader lessons on the keyboard.

Recent reading: A Pioneer Story (story interspersed with facts on life in the backwoods), Owls in the Family, Understood Betsy, "The Gorgon's Head" from A Wonder Book, The Old Nurse's Stocking Basket, poems from Come Hither, William the Conqueror chapters in the history book, Among the Forest People, Hiawatha's Childhood, Pilgrim's Progress (up to Mr. Worldly Wiseman), Bible stories about Samuel and the temptation of Christ, and two stories from Stories for Canada's Birthday. Today we read the "D is for dory, dinosaur, Dan McGrew, dulse" page from Canada Eh to Zed, which inspired us to watch the Historica Minute about Joseph Tyrrell (finder of dinosaur bones in Alberta), and Crayons showed me her favourite online dinosaur game.

She has been doing pages in the David Thompson activity book, which is not terribly in-depth about his work but has some fun worksheets; we borrowed a National Geographic issue with an article about his travels, and I read some of the basics from an online biography. David Thompson seems to be one of the most under-appreciated of Canadian explorers and mapmakers, but he is definitely worth studying.

Math has been fairly informal, mostly following my own Miquon notes... we're using coins, rods and number tiles to practice making three-digit numbers and also to practice grouping for tens. We're also doing some hundred-chart work, working on adding and subtracting nines, tens and elevens quickly. 

The Gifted and Talented workbooks are working fine for a bit of language work--mostly synonyms at this point. (It was also a good chance to talk about what a Thesaurus is; Crayons likes Mommy's big fat Synonym Finder because it has more words than the children's version.)

Spelling words we practice through the week with Scrabble letters, and then have a test on Fridays. The handwriting workbooks haven't yet arrived (they're in the mail, should be here this week) so she has just been doing copywork, which isn't a favourite as there are still some issues with letter formation, remembering to use lower case, and the general effort required to print neatly. She does a little each week anyway, and I am having her start a fall poem on large paper to go on the kitchen wall.

Crayons has been making nature pictures in a sketchbook (mostly as narrations of nature stories--she is interested in owls right now), and has started a scroll for Pilgrim's Progress.

And we've done a little French--mostly colours and numbers.

Saturday thrifting: we found a mixer

At the thrift shop this afternoon, Mr. Fixit found us a stand mixer, one of the last generation made in the U.S. before production went overseas. It has two glass bowls, and all its beaters and dough hooks. Our hand mixer is twenty-five years old, so it's  time for a replacement. And a stand mixer with a dough hook could also replace our bread machine, if or when that's needed.

A plum-purple purse for me (the photo makes it look darker than it is). An extra, not a need, but a nice extra.

Something else that's better than this snapshot makes it look: a big scarf, a Linnea-in-Monet's-Garden mix of purple and green and all those things. I saw it by accident when I was helping Mr. Fixit carry the mixer parts from the back of the store. My justification is that if I ever get tired of wearing it, it would make a great table scarf.

The thing I was really after and did need: a lightweight denim-type shirt. 

So, a more-than-expectedly successful thrifting trip.

More amazing books arrive

The Sighting, by Luci Shaw, and Rallying the Really Human Things, by Vigen Guroian.

One more still in transit.

Things to eat (photos)

Not every meal can be super-exciting. And some weeks...frozen things and cans are the rule.

Pork meatballs with sauce; reheated rice, frozen veggies

Frozen pasta, improvised breadsticks,veggies

Tonight's chili-thing. (Homemade bread to go with it, but no photo.)

What's for supper? Improvised chili

A need-groceries dinner menu:

What's-in-the-cupboard Three Sisters Chili, served with cheese and sour cream
Bread-machine whole wheat bread
Assortment of fruit and cookies

What's-in-the-cupboard Three Sisters Chili (not meant to win chili cookoffs)

In the slow cooker, place:

1 can tomato sauce
1 can pinto beans
1 can mixed beans
1 cup leftover corn niblets
1 cup salsa
2 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cumin
Some chopped red and yellow peppers

Cook until heated through and peppers are soft.

From the archives: "Frugal is not a bad word"

First posted May, 2007. Links edited, photos added.

Some people have been giving thrift shoppers and other blogging frugalistas  (how do you like that one?) a hard time recently.

"Am I bovvered? Am I bovvered though? Look at my face. Is it bovvered? Arks me If I'm bovvered! Look, face, bovvered? I ain't bovvered!"

The arguments run kind of like this: the Bible doesn't say anywhere to go out and look for bargains. If we're not "really down and out" ourselves (define that as you will), then we're robbing from the poor if we buy something nice at a thrift shop--especially if we resell it and make a profit. (Heaven help the Christian who mentions making a profit on something. Didn't some Christian songwriters go through this one a long time ago?--God gave you this talent, you write this song and it's for everybody to sing, how can you ask us to pay you for copies of it?) Wait, there's more: if we're picking up books or vintage aprons or other frou-frou at yard sales or thrift shops, then that ranks as non-essential anyway, so then we're getting addicted to stuff or wasting the little money we did spend. (Wait a minute, I'm already seeing some contradictions here. If it's frou-frou stuff, then wouldn't it be just as silly for the "really down and out" to buy it?) And overall, we should be willing to pay "full price" for whatever it is, so that we're not ripping anybody off

Now Stingy is bad. But Stingy is not Frugal. Stingy is putting dollars out on pizza delivery and pennies in the offering plate. Stingy is illegally photocopying textbooks. Stingy is not providing what your family needs even though you have the means to do so. Stingy lives next door to Chintzy Hardbargain and down the road from the Misers.

Frugality is making life as beautiful as you can on a little bit of money. Sometimes that little bit of money is all you have, period. Sometimes you have more than that but you're using what's left for something else that's important. Anybody with a credit card can throw money at a problem (full price, I assume); Frugality teams up with Creativity to make the most of what's there. And sometimes Frugality just has to say no to things. I can't bring myself to pay $2.19 a can for something at one grocery store when I know the discount supermarket sells it for half that price. What's full price, then? Store A's price or Store B's?

.

The comment was made on another blog I will not name that Mrs. Frugality wouldn't invite people over "to evangelize to them" if she didn't have the right cake pan, and that she wouldn't go out and buy the cake pan unless she could get it used or cut rate or something. First of all, I would never invite people over just "to evangelize to them." About anything. I've been on the other end of the cake in that respect, and I did not appreciate it. Second, I don't know even the most frugal person who would feel that way about having a perfect cake pan before inviting guests. In fact, most frugal people I know would bake the cake in a casserole dish or something, or make something else, or just have tea and 99 cent oatmeal cookies. People are the point, not food.

And finally, as many people have pointed out in response to this ongoing issue: it's not a crime to shop at thrift stores if your shoes are intact and the stroller you're pushing didn't come straight off the curb. In fact, you are supporting their ministry by shopping there. It happens to be a delightful side benefit of this kind of shopping that we often end up with something unique, vintage, out of print, or otherwise amazing. And isn't that a whole lot more creative than getting something exactly the same as your neighbour's at Stuff-mart?

Un-bovvered doll photo courtesy of Lydia.

Books of beauty (2017 Reading List)

Recently arrived in the Treehouse: Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination, and Spirit, by Luci Shaw; and Restoring Beauty: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful in the Writings of C.S. Lewis, by Louis Markos.

It's a beautiful year for reading.

Shopping at Hampstead House Books (for Canadians)

I got a print catalogue recently from Hampstead House Books near Toronto (remainders, imports etc.), and noticed several things that homeschoolers and other curious readers might like. Remember that their inventory changes quickly, so what's there one month may be gone the next, never to return. I haven't actually seen most of these, just going by the titles and sometimes the online reviews.

Some of what I found:

Freshwater Heritage: A History of Sail on the Great Lakes

The Greek Myths: Stories of the Greek Gods and Heroes Vividly Retold, by Robin Waterhouse

Sacred Art

A Journey into Michelangelo's Rome

Kipling's Just So Stories

Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm

Pride and Prejudice

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

A reprint of Puss in Boots from the 1930's

Learning Resources POP For Colors and Shapes. "Give your little ones (ages 3+) a head start on language skills. Set incl. a 34-pp. write and wipe spiral book with marker, 20 flash cards, activity guide, 100-pic. colour and shape games, 4 double-sided Bingo cards, and a spinner." Also: POP for Numbers.

(I don't work for Hampstead House or get compensated for posting updates: I just like to point out good things.)

Talking about food, for a change

Meals at the Treehouse have changed a lot over the years. This past year or two, we've simplified a lot: maybe making the same main dish we used to, but with less fuss about sìde dishes, and hardly any on-purpose desserts unless there's a special reason. Simplifying wasn't a philosophical or even a health-related decision, just a practical one. If you cook it or bake it, somebody has to eat it, and somebody also has to do the cleanup; and with fewer people here to both eat and do dishes, it makes sense to give everyone a break. I've even learned a few new tricks, such as cooking a pot of rice (any kind), freezing half of it, and then microwaving the leftovers for almost-instant rice another night. The toaster oven also gets lots of use.

I started making a cupboard/freezer inventory this weekend, and I was almost embarrassed to see how long the list was. It's definitely time to do some eating from the pantry. What makes it harder to plan that out, these days, is that with more informal or spur-of-the-moment meals, I'm not "feeding" people so much as just making the food available. (Keeping English muffins, eggs, and cheese in the fridge, for instance, so that Lydia can make her favourite fast meal.)

So here are some tentative plans for this week's dinners. Lunch is often leftovers, and breakfast is up to each person (unless maybe we make hot cereal).

1. On hand: whole chicken, some barbecue sauce, ingredients pre-mixed for whole wheat bread, salad greens. Menu: chicken in the slow cooker, bread in the machine, salad. Bonus: Leftover chicken for sandwiches or pasta (see #4), and some of the bread in the freezer.

2. On hand: frozen cranberries, sugar, jar of chili sauce, ground pork, other ingredients for meatballs, rice, frozen broccoli. Premake: homemade cranberry sauce. Menu: pork meat balls with sauce made from chili sauce and some of the cranberry sauce; rice, broccoli.

3. On hand: bacon, homemade syrup, blueberries, eggs, other ingredients for pancakes. Menu: pancakes and accompaniments.

4. On hand: cooked chicken, spaghetti, parsley, Parmesan cheese, a jar of Alfredo sauce, salad greens. Menu: Chicken Alfredo and salad. There's also a bit of pizza dough in the freezer, so I might thaw that and turn it into breadsticks.

5. On hand: stew beef, and vegetables for stew; frozen whole wheat bread. Menu: Slow cooker stew, carrot sticks, bread, cheese. Bonus: probably some leftovers.

6.  Bonus stew meal.

7. On hand: vegetables, rice, canned beans, canned tomato sauce, salsa, and I think some chicken broth. Menu: either homemade vegetable soup, or some kind of a rice and beans meal, with salad or whatever.

Extra things to make: banana muffins, with the two that are in the freezer; and maybe some granola with Christmas-baking extra coconut.

Here is the Winter's End Project 333 update

Three months, 34 pieces of clothing. (I didn't quite squeeze it to 33 this time.) Most of them are from earlier lists, and a few are new-to-me.

I thought you might need some reasons for clicking on the page:

* you can read why I was inspired by a scarf I didn't buy.
* you can see what a mama squirrel wears inside the nest
* you get to see a happy selfie of me with shorter hair.

Good enough?

Shopping fun with Mama Squirrel

It was time for one of those not-often walking trips uptown. Actually I didn't have to walk there this time, because Mr. Fixit was having lunch with a friend and dropped me off near the stores.

At the bookstore: calendars for half price (we were using a freebie in the kitchen, and I thought sea turtles were nicer than photos of recipes we won't make), and the November/December issue of Faith Today. I was hoping for the Jan/Feb issue, but it's not in the store yet.

At the consignment store: two things I was especially looking for, and that I hadn't been able to find at the thrift store. First, a knitted vest.

And then a grey cardigan. I tried on about ten different ones before settling on this wrap style. (I was feeling very picky, and the others were all too dark, too light, too small, too fuzzy, or too overpriced.)

I stopped at the grocery store and picked up emergency lettuce for Muffin, and some half-priced onion-poppyseed buns. That store always has the best clearance baking.

Mr. Fixit picked me up at the library, where I found a for-sale book about cooking like a cheap mid-century Francophone.

Which made me hungry enough that I came home and ate one of the buns with cream cheese. Bon appetit.