From the archives: Thrifted homeschooling can be fun

First posted March 2007. This was the fifth and last post in a detailed series about putting random, thrifted materials together to create a year's curriculum for a second- or third-grader. (Slightly edited) 

Those are the science topics, and that's a good place to point out that although this curriculum may be based mainly on books, that doesn't mean that it's not hands-on or interesting. So far I've mentioned social studies/nature field trips, math games, and drawing activities embedded in language lessons; now we can also add science activities, mostly from the Science For Fun Experiments book but drawn from the others as well, including making a pop-bottle insect feeder, a juice-can waterscope, cardboard-tube noisemakers, a magnetic racing game, a drinking-straw hydrometer, a cardboard spinning top, a papier-mache bowl, and "plastic milk." If you have very active children, you can "add action" to many other kinds of lessons as well (as the speaker at a support group meeting recently reminded us), incorporating balls, Nerf guns, and even swords into math and spelling drills.

A SCIENCE BONUS

Because a yo-yo book (Splitting the Atom) was part of the shopping bag, I thought it would work nicely to buy a $3 yo-yo and learn some yo-yo tricks, if that was something that interested the student. Splitting the Atom is a bit on the advanced side, but an interested parent might be able to help an elementary student get started. I thought about what you could learn from a yo-yo (it's very much like a pendulum) and did a search for "science with yo-yos" and "yo-yo physics." Ta-da:  an online search came up with Teaching Science wuth a Yo-Yo (by some smart people at Ball State University), which contains four or five yo-yo physics lessons you can print out. I knew I'd found something good when I saw this comment in Lesson One: "You are already beginning to think like a scientist."

MORE EXTRAS

Another book in the bag was Chalk Around the Block, which provides instructions for a variety of hopscotch games as well as marble-shooting, and other games which you could play with a chalked-in outline such as Nine Mens' Morris. (Maybe on an unfinished basement floor if it's too cold to play outside?)

A book called Nursery Rhymes and Songs looked a little too young at first for a third grader, but I found several songs in it that aren't too babyish--actually enough to slot in a new one almost every couple of weeks.

The how-to-draw-animal books have been mentioned already; two are very simple ones and one is more advanced.

MAMA SQUIRREL'S THIRD TRIP

For a total of $2.75, I brought home another bag of books to add to the curriculum; my notes on each book are in brackets. (Can you see already why I picked these out?)

The Christmas Secret, by Joan Lexau (a 48-page novel about a Puerto Rican boy in New York) (Perfect age, perfect length, and perfect extra reading for December since we didn't have any holiday books yet.)

Bedtime Bible Stories, published by Kappa Books (All right, it's not Catherine Vos! But if you want to do something beyond the New Testament studies, this includes Old Testament stories, and it's in nice big print although some of the vocabulary might be daunting for a third grader to read independently. This would also be very helpful for the last four weeks of language studies, when I had wanted to do something based on Bible stories.)

The Rat-Catcher's Son, by Carolyn London (This is a popular Sonlight Curriculum title published by SIM; and strangely enough, this is the second book of Nigerian folktales I found within a month. However, these are told from an evangelical Christian perspective; so they could be added to or mixed with the stories from The Dancing Palm Tree.)

Gage Mathematics Assessment Activities 3B (Bad title, useful book written as a series of "challenges" for students. Activities include choosing board games (from a catalogue) with a certain amount of money and so that everyone in your family can play a game; folding a box from a pattern; finding your way on a neighbourhood map; and finding diagonal patterns on a hundred chart. Some activities are too classroom-oriented or are just time-wasters, but I figured about 18 to 20 of the 30 or so activities would be workable and worthwhile, and that gives you one every other week. Not bad for a quarter!)

Thomas Alva Edison, Miracle Maker and The Story of Thomas Alva Edison, Inventor: The Wizard of Menlo Park. (Two elementary-level biographies, so take your pick. Biography! Thinking like a scientist! Nurturing curiosity!)

A free booklet of activities to help parents encourage reading (Pretty basic stuff: visit the library, find creative times to read together, give books for gifts, have the child predict the ending of a story...)

The Story of Creation and Adam & Eve Story, Coloring, Game & Activity Book (Unused! Maybe something to go with the Old Testament stories if you're using them, or just something to play with. This includes paper animals, people and scenery to colour, cut out and prop up.)

You Can Yo-Yo (Less intimidating for third graders than Splitting the Atom.)

Beyond the Paw-paw Trees, by Palmer Brown (A read-aloud)

Getting to Know Nature's Children: Deer/Rabbits (What it sounds like: elementary-level text, not the most compelling I've ever read but it's simply written and nicely photographed.)

Breakthroughs in Science, by Isaac Asimov (This is the only book that I probably wouldn't use with a third grader--the vocabulary is pretty advanced unless you have a real junior Edison--but I'm including it in the list just to show what a variety of books you can come across when you're hunting.)

WINDING THIS UP

Have I gone on too long about an imaginary curriculum that nobody's really going to use? Remember the original reason for this? I've been able to blather on in this much detail about a bunch of books that cost $4.50 plus $4 plus $2.75 (if you count the third trip): $11.25 Canadian. [Oops! I forgot the four books I "fudged" with, and I know they were more like a dollar or two apiece (some booksales don't have such good bargains), so let's add $5 for those.] Plus whatever you pay for the two teacher resources: as much as $20 used, so let's say we're up to $35 [with the four extras]. If you count school supplies in your budget, let's add another $20 at the dollar store for notebooks, glue etc.: $55. And a yo-yo--be generous again and say $5 with tax, so $60. The China study (completely optional) would add another $20 or so, and A Child's Geography would be $10; so maybe $70. Extra supplies such as magnets or better art supplies would be on top of that; you could end up spending a whole hundred dollars for school, maybe. (Not including field trips and computer printouts, obviously.)

But the cost of the basic books is still under $12 [plus the four extras--still under $20]. If I can find them, you can find them; maybe not in one or two trips, but over time. Usually you have to be a bit more patient than I was; you might keep finding easy readers when you're teaching a sixth-grader. But if you have friends, you can look for each other, and share and trade books too. My best advice is, look for good authors that don't age too fast (the books, not the authors).

As a final note of irony, the only "adult" book I picked up on the original thrift shop trip was Ronald J. Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. We are rich. Let's model careful use of resources in the ways we do, or don't, spend homeschool dollars; and we can learn as much from that as our children do from our school lessons.

From the archives: Magnetic Letters

First posted August 2005

The Squirrels have a pile of magnetic letters and numbers--the kind that aren't supposed to be safe for little ones because the tiny magnets in them might come out. Some of the letters are thirty-five years old and the magnets are still intact, but that's not the point. Because there are parts of about four different sets, it's hard to make one whole alphabet (we have about five capital E's but not one capital I). However, Mama Squirrel came up with some homeschool possibilities for them this week (besides just sticking them all over the fridge, which is what the squirrelings mostly did when they were toddlers).

1. Mama Squirrel and Crayons just sorted out the letters into two (more or less) capital-letter alphabets plus small piles of lower-case letters and numerals. We've done the same thing with rubber letters.

2. Preschool memory game: make a row of about four to six letters or numbers (or more if you want to make it harder). Hide your eyes and the other person hides one or two of the letters. What's missing? (Crayons played a funny trick on Mama Squirrel: she hid one of the letters behind her back and replaced it with another one the same. When Mama Squirrel said she hadn't taken anything away at all, Crayons showed her how duplicitous she had been.)

3. Preschool sorting game we haven't tried yet: take a handful of capital letters and a handful of lower-case letters (we only have a few of those anyway) and sort them into two piles, capitals and lower-case.

3. Grade Three alphabetizing game: Take a handful of letters and put them in alphabetical order, as fast as possible. It doesn't matter if there are doubles.

4. Grade Three fractions game: Take all the numerals you can find and put in them in a container. Draw a line on paper to be the dividing line in a fraction. Pull two of the numerals out and put one on top, one on the bottom. What's the fraction? What does it look like? We had some plastic fraction pieces, marbles and other things sitting around while we did this, so we tried to come up with different ways of showing. Ponytails made 3/2, so she took three of the plastic "half" pieces. Mama Squirrel made 7/9, and there are no ninths in the plastic pieces, so she took seven blue marbles and two white ones, and said that 7/9 of the marbles were blue.

5. The obvious: spell things with the letters. Spill a handful and see who can make the most words the fastest. (Of course the squirrelings may not learn any "i" words, but Mama Squirrel will come up with something else for those.)

Moral: even incomplete things can still be kind of fun and educational, right?

Homeschooling, still frugal thrifty cheap but hard to write about it

I used to post a lot about ways to save money homeschooling--how to recycle, make your own, use the library and other freebies, read thrifted books, visit the neighbour with the bird feeder. Sometimes it was hard to see what people were spending homeschool money on at all, when there were so many low-cost ways to keep K to 6's busy learning.

These days my thrifty-homeschooler posts are fewer, but there are reasons for that.  Although there are certainly more ways than ever to spend homeschool dollars, I think people are also more aware of free online resources.  There are whole websites set up just to let you know about good deals and freebies, and about the whole world of online stuff.  Homeschooling-Ideas.com, for example.

Also, I think I don't mention as much about "ways we do math for less" or whatever, because an eighth grader tends to be using the same materials pretty much every day.  The elementary grades make better "homeschool copy."

Finally, we don't homeschool frugally just for the sake of frugality (if anyone does), so it's sometimes hard to write about it from that perspective.  If you read here much you might possibly know that I've mentioned that the math book we're using (Math: A Human Endeavor) was a chance find about ten years ago, and that I got the workbook through a used source right afterwards,  when the prices were still reasonable, and then The Apprentice ended up using only a few lessons in the workbook because she had way too much other homework in her public school courses.  So math this year is basically free. I didn't give it to Lydia in the sense of dumping leftovers, but because she needed a different kind of math this year and there it was. We also already owned this year's grammar course, writing books, Bible and devotional books, and most of the books required for Ambleside Online Year 8. But I can only say "I found that one at the thrift store" so many times.

If I had to boil down any frugal homeschooling advice I have left, it might come out like this:

1.  Whenever possible, use what's available to you, assuming it's in decent shape and appropriate for your students' needs, rather than going out and spending money on something else.  Lydia has asked to bring Latin back into the curriculum this fall, after a four-year break; so for the time being, we're going to go back to the course that we were using then, reviewing what she learned in the fourth grade and getting to the bits that were too hard then.  It's appropriate for her needs because it teaches ecclesiastical pronunciation and some of her "uses" for Latin could include vocal music.  It's frugal because it's on the shelf and I don't have to print out online textbook pages.

2.  Same as Number One: use what comes your way whenever you can.  We started kindergarten almost twenty years ago with a program that is still used by many with young children.  It required tracking down a lot of specific picture books, some of which (even though the program itself was quite new) had gone out of print.  It seems to me that it would have been better for homeschoolers to have used maybe a few of those lessons with books they could access, then get brave enough to branch out with their own good books, rather than get too devoted to finding everything on the list.

3.  Same as Number Two:  make use of local resources.  I heard only recently that we had a nearby weather research station that gave tours--but then I found out that it's been closed, so I had to scratch that off the field trip list.  Since this is the year that we're doing lot of ecology and weather studies, that was disappointing.  However, we do have parks and galleries and concerts and libraries and a university with an earth museum and a number of other things--not for weather trips, I mean, but for other opportunities.  And some of them are cheap or free.

4.  Don't overuse You-tube, but don't overlook it either, especially for music.  And science help. And math.  And craft tutorials.  But a little goes a long way.

5.  Focus on high-quality, longterm, meaningful units, books, lesson plans, outside activities.  Fewer books, but better ones. More time on Old Narnia, less on the rules of writing.  To quote from someone who has just discovered the power of books:

"In this book, he was gettin' to be Sam and see what somebody named Sam was up to...they give him this book for a present an' he was gettin' to be Sam.  That was his favorite thing about books--they took you off to other people's lives an' places, but you could still set in your own chair by th' oil heater, warm as a mouse in a churn."  ~~ Jan Karon, Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good (the newest Mitford book)

Cartoon found here. 

Frugal First Week (Dollygirl's Grade 7)

So how are we "homeschooling on less" this year?

As the Deputy Headmistress sagely remarked this week, sometimes the best resource is just the one you already own.  We are re-using or recycling several things that the older girls used in middle school:  Apologia General Science (without the Windows 95 disc, though); Powerglide French; The Easy Grammar Plus.  We are playing vocabulary games with a dictionary I've owned since university, and experimenting with a math board game that the Apprentice was given when she was really too young to appreciate it.

Under the mesmerizing influence of Hope for Homeschool's organizing posts, I did buy a bin for hanging file folders, and a beauty-ful purple binder at Staples.  But most of the components of our (very modified) workboxing system have been recycled from four years ago, including peeling a few sticky-Velcro dots from containers that wouldn't work this year--wrong size, wrong shape--and re-sticking them on others.

We are using (or will be using) quite a few things collected at the thrift store.

And several free online resources:  vintage history books, math books that I downloaded as Kindle freebies, printable maps.  Not to mention Ambleside Online, and Donna Young's indispensable website.  And the photo of Grandpa Munster in his lab that I printed out to decorate our science-stuff box.

We bought several packages of lined paper when The Big Mart had a door-crasher sale of 15 cents a pack.

Dollygirl decorated one binder with a collection of stickers, and a (really awesome) science binder with some printed-out photos of dolls doing science.  Really.

But in the end...whether you're homeschooling cheaply or extravagantly, whether or not you have a "good year" isn't just about the stuff.  Because staying positive doesn't cost extra.  Neither does finding a schedule that works for you, and making sure there's variety in the school day and not too much homework.  Also, in some subjects, letting the student set the pace.  I know the classic CM scenario is "You have two pages and twenty minutes; if you can do them correctly in less than that time, you get the rest of the time to yourself." But sometimes it works just as well to say, "Work for twenty minutes.  How much can you get done?"  They might surprise you.

Making a "Herman Munster's Citizenship Class" bookmark, with space for writing in new words or other notes, took a few minutes and a piece of cardstock.  So it was almost free. (If you ever watch The Munsters, you know that being a good citizen is very important to Herman.)

Using the newspaper to pick out a few key current events was (more or less) free.  We had the Premier of Ontario squeezing tomatoes at the farmer's market, a story about a local homeless shelter that's dealing with a health-department enforcement on where its food is prepared (no more home-baked brownies); and the fact that two world leaders don't want to sit almost-next to each other at the G-20 conference.  Every kid understands what that's about, if not exactly why. (I am not meaning to make light of current serious world events; this was just a way to try to bring a very large story into a smaller compass.)

Letting Dollygirl wear her pajamas to school on Friday was, obviously, free.  This was inspired by our first-week handicraft, a pair of doll pajamas.  Dollygirl sewed the bottoms, I sewed the top.  The doll in the pajamas came to school too.

And the cost of Dollygirl's science presentation on lab safety, featuring Polly Pockets who had suffered various dreadful effects of experiments gone horribly wrong?  (Think mermaid tails.)

Like they say on the commercials: priceless.

The why and how of frugal homeschooling, Part Two

Part One is here.

One part of frugal homeschooling is making better use of the books and other materials that you have.

Another part is to take resources--or things that you've never thought could be resources--and use them in ways that they weren't originally intended.  Like this summer when our cutlery box became my jewelery box.  Or the bits and pieces of the Aunt Sarah Scrap Challenge.  Or a Chinese-style sauce made with ketchup.

How does that work for school?

We've had a thrifted copy of Kids' Magnetic Poetry Book and Creativity Kit (Workman Publishing) for years.  Originally I had great ideas for incorporating the included poetry suggestions into our language arts time, but that never really happened.   We did use the magnetic words that came with the book, but mostly on the refrigerator rather than on the shiny blue fold-out panel inside the cover.

This week I was looking for a white board to use for some math review with Dollygirl.  I found a small magnetic board stuck to the washing machine, but I wanted a bigger one.  I thought there was a larger one somewhere in the school cupboard.  When I went to look for it, I saw the Magnetic Poetry Book, and thought of the shiny blue fold-out panel.  It worked!   What a great resource for math, or for other wipe-off work like spelling words!  As a bonus, it's already marked into centimeter-sized squares:  good for graphing, or geometry, or Cuisenaire rods.

We've used many resources for French lessons that weren't intended as curriculum--but they happened to be in French, like magazines bought from the library's discard rack.  We've also used real stuff from around the house:  toys, fruit, and so on...and not just for French, but for math and other subjects.

Magazines in general can be a great learning tool.  A few years ago we subscribed to Canadian Geographic, and that became the core of our high school Canadian geography course.  What could be more current and more relevant?--plus the magazine has a website with expanded articles, maps, and other resources.  Also we had a two-subscriptions-for-one coupon that we shared with another family, which made it even more frugal for all of us.

Recently I came across one of Emilie Barnes' Twelve Teas books.  This would make a great resource for young ladies (even very young ladies)--there are recipes, crafts (such as invitations), suggestions of ways to acquire basic "tea party equipment," thoughts about keeping friendships strong, and illustrations that, while slightly overdosing on lace tablecloths, show ways to make your house homier.  It wasn't written as a "home ec" book, but you could do worse than spend a season trying out some of the ideas.

What else do you have that you could use in an unintended way, or for a subject other than the obvious? 

The why and how of frugal homeschooling, Part One

The why of frugal homeschooling is the easier of the two to answer.  The why is that you (if you're frugal-homeschooling) have limited funds, your family is probably living on one income, or at least less than two full-time incomes, so that somebody can be home to homeschool.

Or maybe you just like a challenge.

The short answer of "how" is "don't spend much money."  But since that's also a silly answer, I'll try to expand that into something more useful.

1.  Use what you have.
2.  Use what you have creatively.
3.  This is the hardest part to explain:  stay aware of your "big picture."  Unless you're naturally serene about letting the unschooling chips fall where they may, you need to keep evaluating, planning, trying to keep in mind whatever educational goals or philosophy you steer by.  Plus whatever family circumstances, special needs, etc. you have to deal with.
4.  In other words, you can use what you have, or what comes your way, as long as it fits into your overall education plan.

In Lloyd Alexander's book Taran Wanderer, the main character Taran meets Llonio, a father who supports his family by taking hold of anything that fate throws in his net--literally.  The family never knows from one day to the next what will float down the river, but they cheerfully take whatever comes, and eat it or wear it or use it.  As Taran stays with Llonio's family, he appreciates their generosity and their creativity, but he also eventually realizes that their way of life is not exactly for him.  He wants to do a little more purposeful seeking, instead of just catching what comes his way. 

I think there's room for both, even in a frugal lifestyle and in frugal homeschooling.  When I wanted to make a particular doll from a particular pattern, I kept my eyes open for certain colours and fabrics.  I never did get to the outlet store that sells rug yarn, but I found something pretty close that also worked.  When I crocheted monkeys last Christmas, I bought yarn in the right colours.  On the other hand, I've sometimes started with a piece of fabric or a ball of yarn, and asked "what could this be? How big is it, how much of it is there, is there enough for this or that?  What else would it work with?  And what do we need right now, who still needs a Christmas gift?"

The same principles apply to menu planning.  What's available? What's the weather like?  What sort of meals does your family eat?  What do you need to add to the shopping list to turn wieners and cauliflower into a meal?  What's still a favourite, what's getting old, and what new things have you been wanting to try?  Sometimes you go shopping intending to buy chicken thighs, because somebody gave you a new recipe, and that is what you bring home.  Or you look in the freezer, and that's what's there.  Or it could happen that chicken is too expensive, so you buy something else. 

One useful exercise to strengthen frugal homeschool muscles is to pretend you are (or maybe you really are) in a situation where, for whatever reason, you are suddenly limited to a few books and resources.  It could be a Bible, dictionary, telephone book kind of thing; or you can go with a more random choice, like the stack of books you just brought home from the library.  From very loose planning ("read the book"), to more structured copywork and dictation, notebooking, dramatizations, or complete unit studies, how many ways can you think of to get the most out of this resource?  If it's a map, are there ways you could add tags or markings to illustrate something you're studying?  If it's a math activity book, which activities can you honestly imagine doing, and (just as important), which ones will provide the strongest learning experiences for your children? 

If it's a book of poems, how will you get the most of out of it?  Have any of the poems been set to music?  Have any actors recorded them?  (Check out anything you can find by the First Poetry Quartet.)  Are there possibilities for acting them out?  (Never underestimate the potential for this--I still remember the Apprentice dramatizing Blake's "A Poison Tree," including the enemy's death throes.)  Can you use any of Ruth Beechick's suggestions, such as turning verse into prose?  Or can you use a poem as a jumping-off point for something original?  Or you can just read a poem slowly and carefully, maybe taking turns on stanzas, copying or memorizing favourite lines.  It's also educational, or just entertaining, to group certain poems together, maybe in combination with art, music, or other readings.  Our church music director once did this as part of a holiday program:  several people of different ages read winter-themed poems by Robert Frost.  Can your students plan a "poetry concert," just for your family or for others as well?  You can see where I'm running away with this...but that's the point, that you can take any worthwhile book as far as you like, use it as far as you can, and it won't cost you any extra.


Linked from the Festival of Frugality #357, and from the Carnival of Homeschooling: End of the Road Edition.

Dollygirl's Grade Six: plans for today

Homeschool plans for Thursday:

Basic Bible Studies: God’s Grace (A), part 1 of 2 (page 22)

Citizenship:  Uncle Eric, chapter 5: How to Learn or Teach Models. A sure way to keep people from learning:  teach them all about the thing, but don't let them touch it, play with it, or otherwise form any kind of relationship with it. Example: when we play a new card game, do we have to go over every single rule first?

Math:  start working on pages 64-65, Repeating Decimals. (working with spreadsheets as described in the textbook)

Copywork:  finish this passage from Leigh Hunt, quoted in Charlotte Mason's Home Education:

"Suppose," says Leigh Hunt, "suppose flowers themselves were new! Suppose they had just come into the world, a sweet reward for some new goodness... Imagine what we should feel when we saw the first lateral stem bearing off from the main one, and putting forth a leaf. How we should watch the leaf gradually unfolding its little graceful hand; then another, then another; then the main stalk rising and producing more; then one of them giving indications of the astonishing novelty––a bud! then this mysterious bud gradually unfolding like the leaf, amazing us, enchanting us, almost alarming us with delight, as if we knew not what enchantment were to ensue, till at length, in all its fairy beauty, and odorous voluptuousness, and the mysterious elaboration of tender and living sculpture, shines forth the blushing flower."

Einstein and The Theory of Relativity chp 3: Learning in Spite of School. Read pages 24-top of 30.

French: Le voyage de Monsieur Perrichon, lesson 8. Review folk songs.  Je Veux Chanter #30, “Alleluia.”

Finish a picture in Je gribouille!   (French equivalent of the Doodle Book series.)

We were supposed to go to the library this afternoon and look for Dewey Decimal books, but there are some life-interrupts conflicts, so it will have to wait.  Also I wanted to have a real tea time this week, but the afternoons have been busy, and tomorrow afternoon is drama club...and Monday is Thanksgiving.  So maybe Tuesday or Wednesday. Or...whoever said you couldn't have teatime in the morning?  That would work...

Frugal homeschooling: let me count the ways?

Now that we're a couple of weeks into this fall's homeschool term, and I'm pretty sure of what we're going to keep using this year (vs. things that, like bad sitcoms, disappear after one viewing), I thought I would try adding up what this year's homeschool materials cost us.

I didn't get very far with it.  Besides, it would be pretty irrelevant.  Most of our stuff came from the thrift shop or was already on the shelf...and out of the books from the thrift shop, I priced a lot of them myself, so I suppose I could have engineered a higher or a lower total.  I could have, but I didn't--I try to put fair prices on all the books, even the ones I'm planning on buying myself.  Just so you know.

And the other slightly misleading thing about saying that we're using a thrifted math book, or whatever, is that usually we didn't make the choice based on cheapness, but more because we found something secondhand that looked like it would both meet our goals and fit Dollygirl's learning style and our current homeschool situation (Mom teaching Dollygirl, and Dad usually working in the next room).  I wanted to use a more "out of the box" approach to math thinking this year, and if I had had to buy something new to make that work, I would have.   But I found Minds on Math already on our bookshelf, and that seems to be a good choice so far.  If we hadn't had that, there were a couple of alternatives we could have tried, such as buying new workbooks for the Key To series that Dollygirl's older sister used..  But we just picked one and went with it.

With all that said, here are some of the frugal ways and means we've found helpful so far this year.

1.  Craft materials:  we are using up some of our own stashed yarn and fabric, and buying carefully when it seems we can't find what we want.  We went looking for "fat quarters" at the mill outlet store, thought they were a bit expensive, but then discovered a huge box of bandanas priced at a dollar apiece.  Did you know that bandanas are about the same size as a fat quarter?  Dollygirl picked out a few that she thought would make good doll clothes, and she's already made Crissy a bandana-print blouse.

 Dollygirl pulled out her old weaving frame a few days ago, along with some thick, fluffy yarn, and decided to weave her dolls a living room rug.  She's almost done.

This week's planned project will be stuffed felt doughnuts. We already have felt, stuffing, and embroidery floss, so we're good there. Maybe we'll make them doll-sized (call it a math exercise in scale).

2.  French:  Although I did spend money last spring on the next level of the curriculum we were using, I just didn't have the interest (and neither did Dollygirl) in jumping right back into nouns and verbs.  I found a school copy of Le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon at the antiques market, I think for about a dollar, and I also made paper people to go along with the story.  We read it, and sometimes I have Dollygirl narrate it or re-read a simple part with me. (I have posted about that before.)  We are also singing French children's songs out of a library-discard book we've had forever.

3.  Poetry:  I've already posted about the two books we're using for Robert Frost, and about the Graphic Poetry books we found.  Poetry is not hard to find, and it's not hard to teach, honestly: mostly we just read it.  Today I read "Birches" out loud, and then I had Dollygirl pick out and re-read her favourite pair of lines, and I showed her mine.  Dollygirl got a cobweb in her face yesterday when she went outside, so she could relate to that part, about wanting to swing on birches, somewhere up above the ground and not where nasty things hit you in the face.  Next time we do poetry, we'll use You-tube to let Mr. Frost read it himself.

4.  Literature:  Dollygirl tried reading The Hobbit when she was too young for it, and I think she got stopped at about "Out of the Frying-Pan."  This time around, she can't get enough, and we are going to be done with it way before the term is over.  We have a junior LOTR fan in the making.  So what's frugal about that?  Just this:  for the first time in history, probably, we are in a position where books, books, books are all around us, at the click of a button, at the dropping of a few coins at the thrift store, at the flick of a library card.  And the large number of North Americans (and others) who admit that they Don't Read and have No Interest in Reading is appalling.  Abraham Lincoln used to walk miles to borrow a book-when you have that much footwork invested in reading something, you make the most of it.   But these days there is almost no such thing as books costing too much or not being available.  Most of us, most of our kids, don't need fancy reading curricula and lesson plans; we just need to spend more time reading.

5.  History, geography, science, and all that:  we bought ONE brand new book in those areas, and that was The Great Motion Mission for science.  And two DVDs, if you count them, about Marie Curie and Albert Einstein.  The real key to what we're doing frugally here is not the books we're using, but the variety of ways in which I'm trying to use them.  We read out loud, sometimes, often discussing and questioning as we go.  (Why was the Kuomintang's idea to get help from the large, powerful Soviet Union probably a bad idea?  Because somebody large and powerful can help you at first, but then they just want to take over.  Right...)  Sometimes Dollygirl reads to herself and reports.  Sometimes I have her do something unexpected like re-read a point three times in a row, until it really makes sense.  Or make a grapefruit globe.  Or go outside and measure a tree (that was for math this morning, but it could have been from the science book).  When it's just you, me, and the books, it's important to keep things stirred up a bit.  And it also helps when grandpa or somebody asks, "what did you do in school today?" 

I could mention other frugal things we've done, like re-using school supplies, but everybody knows that stuff already.  The point here isn't what you have.  It's what you do with it.  It's a clean, re-organized desk space for Dollygirl, and also one for me.  (To quote a Mary Engelbreit saying we have posted, everybody needs their own Spot.)  It's the routine of starting school mornings with a hymn and Bible verses, but jacked up a bit with the addition of (thrifted) puzzle cards--and the additional motivation of trying to solve them along with Dad.  It's the freedom we're trying to achieve this year to take a bit longer on some activities--to throw in a math game or a craft that might take a good part of the morning.  (And it's okay, because we don't have other students waiting.)  The schedule is there, but it's not bossing us around too much.

Frugal?  Yes.  But it's not about the money.  It's about making sure we keep on caring about what we're doing.  Cost of that: priceless.

Linked from Festival of Frugality #354.

Homeschool things to do for Friday

Dollygirl is asking for some extra time today to clean out and organize all those doll clothes she's been acquiring.  Yeah, it's Friday...there may come a point where we just decide to call it a short day and be done.

Opening time: similar to other days, including folk songs

God's Smuggler: read together, narrate.  I think this is one book we will keep reading together as it often does get a bit intense for an eleven-year-old  (i.e. factory workers being verbally harassed; wartime experiences).

Math: see schedule; mark weekend homework in assignment book

Picture study: Emily Carr's early paintings

School of the Woods: read several pages (at least half the chapter) and narrate

Study for dictation

French: lesson 2

After lunch: Dictation; review Grammar & Composition assignment due next week (mini research project)

Sewing: continue doll blouse. We got it measured and cut out yesterday--today we have to make a casing, thread elastic through, stitch the back seam, and then stitch and cut the sleeves.  (They're cut OUT of the sides of the blouse, which you can see if you're brave enough to click on the Tripod link I sent yesterday.)

Virgil's Aeneid retelling:  read the next section and narrate.

Timelines and history pictures: take time to start at least one "person page" for notebook

Extra reading:  write a reminder in assignment book.

Next Friday Dollygirl will be starting an afternoon drama group, so we will have to adjust the schedule a bit.

The cost of homeschooling: right up there with socialization

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

How homeschoolers do things: a letter-writing unit

In this case the point of interest is not so much how we're doing a language unit on letter writing, as the timing of it.

Actually that was accidental.

I had planned to have Crayons do some work on letter writing, starting this week.  Last week we finished reading Jean Webster's novel Daddy-Long-Legs, which is mostly written in letter form.

So there you go.  Crayons' interest in letters is still high; and Judy's letters in D-L-L cover everything from descriptions of her college life, to crotchety whinefests, to apologies afterward; from purely businesslike memos to one loveydovey epistle at the end.  (Sorry for the spoiler if you haven't read it.)  A very good example of how writing style needs to vary depending on the situation.

The book we're using is a hand-me-down from the Apprentice.  It's the Reader's Digest Kids Letter Writer Book, by Nancy Cobb, published in 1994.  The bonus for us is that it's Canadian.  All the address examples, cities, provinces, postal codes are Canadian ones.  I don't know if the book was also published in an American version--maybe someone will let me know.*  (The Apprentice originally got it as part of a kit with stationery, pens etc.)

We read the list of reasons you might want to write a letter ("Help you make a new friend," "Send hard-to-say-thoughts," "Be Serious (write to the prime minister)"), and then compared the first two sample letters in the book: one "friendly," one business-style.  As a mini-assignment, I had Crayons write a short business letter to her dad or someone else that she would normally send a more personal letter.  She wrote a very economically-worded request for a particular birthday present.  (Those double-digits are coming around soon.)

There are lots of other sample letters and tips in the book.  I'm not sure how many of them we'll use, but I know there's enough to keep a fourth-grader going for awhile.

*I did find this reference to a later version--maybe this one is American?  "LETTER WRITER STARTER SET : Have Fun, Keep in Touch, Be Heard, and Get Things Done --- By Letter!"

In which "Cuisinart rods"* become yesterday's homeschool

Boy, do I feel like a relic.

Today was our local homeschool conference.

I presented a workshop about making the most of a limited homeschool budget. As an example of homeschool resources that are inexpensive and versatile, I mentioned Cuisenaire rods. I didn't bother bringing any to demonstrate with.

Later in the day, a couple who had been in the workshop came up and asked me about the rods I had mentioned. I suggested looking for them at one of the larger booths--a very good, longtime vendor--that I knew carried Miquon Math.

Well, they still have rods in their catalogue, but they didn't even bring any with them today! I said, "I'm guessing maybe Cuisenaire rods aren't such a big seller as they used to be?" Yep.

And to top that off, the virtual online rods formerly at the Arcytech site have also disappeared, along with all the other good Java manipulatives they used to have. So you can't even "pretend play" with them.

Hoo boy. Maybe my next year's workshop should be "things we used to use way back when."

*Clarification:  the people at the conference did not call them Cuisinart rods.  I was just joking about that because I posted a long time ago about the crazy names and spellings I've seen for the rods.

Tightwad Gazette Revisited: On Used Things and Hacks

In Tightwad Gazette III, Amy Dacyczyn wrote:

"Even frugal parents who bring home yard-sale toys for their kids still give them only new toys for Christmas.  The new merchandise is given with more honor and enthusiasm, even when the quality is the same.  Kids learn that new is better...."

In the same article ("A New Way to Look at Used Things"),  she wrote:

"Conversely, it's also wrong to assume that used is always a better value.  Each has benefits."

And on one of our Abundance posts a few years ago (linked below), Alison commented:

"This is one of my pet peeves as well. I'd love to be like my grandparents, using household items 40 and 60 years after purchase but as you all have pointed out, that's not easy to do these days even if you are well-intentioned and determined."

Has anything changed since Amy's mid-90's musings on the mystique of new stuff?

As far as we Squirrels are concerned, no.  In fact, I'd say we're even more likely to be spending our money on certain types of used things than we were back then, thanks to Ebay, online used booksellers, and so on. "Vintage" has become a funkier cousin of "used."  And in some ways it is easier now to hang on to older things we still have, because it's now easier to find parts to fix them. 

I think our family has even moved to a level of used-stuff-appreciation beyond what we might have considered normal fifteen years ago...particularly in the area of gift-giving to each other, or in acquiring what you might call more frivolous, optional, or hobby items.  That comes partly out of the fact that what's out there in new stuff (for instance, toys) in our price range is pretty junky.  If you have a lot of money to spend, there are things out there of higher quality; but if you have to choose, say, between one new $10 item from the discount department store, and $10 worth of nice thrift-shopped stuff,  the used stuff usually wins out, and not just because you can get more of it.  When we're buying gifts for people outside our own family, though, we almost always buy something new, unless we know them really well.

And that's the catch.  I don't think our way of looking at stuff is very well accepted outside of the circle of people like Frugal Hacks fans and Treehouse readers.  If you're reading this, the odds are that you're probably a bit out of the mainstream too.  If you go, for instance, onto a forum discussing the Tightwad Gazette books, you'll read a lot of "ughs" and "that's borderline child abuse" and so on, especially from parents who I think are a bit younger than I am.  When we talk to people starting families, they take it for granted that they'll be buying all-new baby gear. Ecology is big and all that, but at the same time, kids growing up in this century are more conditioned than ever to be entitled to all the new toys that they want.  And that includes toys for grownups--electronics, huge amounts of clothing and shoes, new furniture whenever the old stuff gets a bit tired, fancy sports and exercise equipment whenever we make a new fitness resolution, and so on.

Amy pointed out some of the benefits of used stuff, when you can find it:  that, as I said, you can simply get more of what you want (a big bucket of used Lego vs. a small new package), or that you can find an older, better-made item from a used source.  I've heard people complain about newer slow cookers, that they often cook too hot and burn food, and that older ones are actually better.  As the commenter to our post said, you might find something older and still working, and find that it keeps on going practically forever.  (In the case of our older cars, though, current legislation forced them off the road even though they were still running fine.)  Or you might find that you can solve a problem or have more fun without buying anything at all...or just choose to keep using something even if it's no longer shiny or perfect.  I've posted about some of Crayons' "toy hacks," such as the time she took her own toys and set up something similar to a widely-advertised dolls' winter cabin.  At Christmas time, she set up one of her dolls in a shoebox sleigh, tied to (yard-saled) plastic horses...Mama Squirrel contributed a dollar store "snow blanket" for the snow.

And as Amy says, there are times when we buy new because that makes sense.  We bought some homeschooling books new this year because they were what we needed, and because we chose to support a family-run homeschool store with our purchases.   We bought Crayons' new boots at the discount department store, because we didn't have any bigger ones that fit her and we didn't feel like fooling with used boots.  We bought brand-new heavy-duty plastic shelving for storage (on sale), because we were tired of restacking cardboard boxes and we had no source of comparable used shelving.  We bought a couple of new snow shovels (for obvious reasons).  

But we'll keep on buying as much as we can used...both for our own needs, and just to prove that, often, you can get more for less.

Related posts:
Second-Hand Pants Song (link to You-tube video)
Abundance Post: Make It Do
Abundance Post: Wear it Out
Postscript to Wearing it Out

New books at the Treehouse

These books all came in a box from a family out west who are finishing their homeschool years and have decided to part with some treasures. Some of these books are part of the Ambleside Online curriculum (mostly for the upper years), and some are just for fun.

Walking the Bible by Bruce Feiler (a junior version--I'd still like to get the real thing)

"But perhaps the most amazing thing about the Dead Sea was something I didn't discover until we began to walk into the desert hills on its southern shore. Because the atmosphere is so dense in the area, the air pushes down on the water and the water pushes down on several miles of salt deposits underneath the Dead Sea. These salt deposits are pushed down toward the core of the earth and then out toward the shore, where they sprout up in two- or three-story asparagus-like formations. They look like salt lighthouses." (p. 47)

Makers of the English Bible: The Story of the Bible in English by Cyril Davey

"But, in spite of Alfred's schoolboys learning the Lord's Prayer in their everyday language, there were few men who troubled to turn any more of the Bible into English. Books and parchments were too expensive for ordinary people to buy. The young men of Alfred's kingdom had little use for reading unless they became monks or 'clerks"--'clerk' is only a later way of spelling 'cleric', or churchman. Monks and 'clerks' could read Latin well enough, so why should they bother to turn Latin into English for people who, in any case, could not read?" (p. 21)

Long Ago in Florence: the Story of the Della Robbia Sculpture by Marion Downer

"The younger della Robbias kept the workshop open for many years. But no one in the family ever inherited the genius of Luca. No one ever sculptured children with quite as much accuracy and feeling as he did--as if each child was his own beloved friend." (p. 30)

Heroes of the City of Man by Peter Leithart

"Like father, like son: Telemachus must go, if not to hell and back, at least from a deadly threat to assured life. All the way home from Sparta and Pylos, he wonders, 'would he sweep clear of death or be cut down?'" (p. 197)

Brightest Heaven of Invention by Peter Leithart

"Biblically, the belief that one can remake the world through terror and bloodshed is a heresy. Its most fundamental error is the belief that there is someone other than the Messiah whose death inaugurates a new age. The most penetrating answer to the religion of revolution is the insistence that there is only one sacrificial Victim whose blood revives and whose unleased Spirit brings not strife but peace. Only those who trust this sacrifice can have confidence that, whatever their mistakes and errors, they will not, in the end, misconstrue everything." (p. 106, on Julius Caesar)

Linnea's Windowsill Garden by Christina Björk

"Now I'll tell you about my nicest plant. Her name is Busy Lizzie. That's a good name for her because Lizzie definitely is busy: she never stops growing and blooming. This is how I got my first Busy Lizzie: Mr. Bloom had a large plant and he let me take a cutting from it. That means cutting off a little branch, so that it can later take root and grow up to be a new plant." (p. 20)

Kon Tiki for Young People by Thor Heyerdahl

"When tormented by thirst in a hot climate, one generally assumes that the body needs water, and this may often lead to immoderate inroads on the water ration without any benefit whatever. On really hot days in the tropics you can pour tepid water down your throat till you taste it at the back of your mouth, and you are just as thirsty. It is not liquid the body needs then, but, curiously enough, salt. The special rations we had on board included salt tablets to be taken regularly on particularly hot days, because perspiration drains the body of salt. We experienced days like this when the wind had died away and the sun blazed down on the rafts without mercy....On such days we added from 20 to 40 per cent of bitter, salt sea water to our fresh-water ration and found, to our surprise, that this water quenched our thirst." (p. 72)

Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe

She Wanted to Read: the Story of Mary McLeod Bethune by Ella Kaiser Carruth

"On cold days in the winter her eyes smarted from the smoke of the pot-bellied stove. The stove couldn't quite burn up the pine cones that were stuffed into it. When she got to school on frosty mornings, she was glad to stretch her hands out to it. Sometimes, even though she had run and jumped all the way to school, she was cold clear through her gingham dress. Miss Wilson would take her hands between her own warm hands and say, 'I can't let my most faithful pupil freeze.'" (p. 20)

If all the Swords in England: a story of Thomas Becket by Barbara Willard

"As they came within sight of the city, of the sturdy walls, the pile of the great church, the palace, the monastery, a huge throng rushed from the gates to meet them. They sang and shouted and wept, they called for the Archbishop's blessing. They urged him forward among them, bringing him home to his church that had lacked him too long....At every window hung silks and carpets in joyous decoration. The bells of Christchurch clashed and clamored on the clear air of the winter's day." (p. 116)

The Ocean of Truth: The Story of Sir Isaac Newton by Joyce McPherson

"Isaac found a table that spilled over with heavy books, bound in dark green and brown. For a while he enjoyed simply picking up the books one at a time, reading the titles, and stacking the books neatly on a pile. They smelled of printer's ink and leather. One volume interested him. It was by Theodore Beza, the theologian who succeeded John Calvin in the Geneva Church. He was a famous reformer of the last century. The bookseller saw Isaac hesitate with the book in his hand....He held out a book called The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin....'I'll give you both of them for a deal,' pressed the bookseller." (p. 75)

An Introduction to Shakespeare by Marchette Chute

"An actors' inventory of the period is a riot of color: a scarlet cloak with gold laces and buttons, a crimson velvet jerkin with blue satin sleeves, purple hose embroidered with silver. Every company had piles of old costumes stored away to be remodeled for the minor parts and for group scenes, but the actors who took the main roles evidently had their costumes designed for them at considerable expense. Gold lace was lavishly applied to their costumes, with copper lace for the lesser actors, and one London company ran up enormous bills with 'the copper lace man.'" (p. 58)

The Happy Orpheline by Natalie Savage Carlson

"It was difficult for Genevieve to round them all up when it was time to leave. She made them hold hands. She counted them five times and would not trust Josine to do it. She told them that if they did not stay together, she would never bring them back and that she would leave the orphanage forever and that they would never again be treated to chocolate buns." (p. 44)

Schoolroom in the Parlor by Rebecca Caudill

"'Well,' sighed Chris, 'have a good time, Emmy, Debby, and Bonnie in your extra recesses. I'll be sitting right here in the parlor studying how to spell alligator and crocodile and hippopotamus.'" (p. 74)

The Happy Little Family by Rebecca Caudill

"The week before Mother had knitted the cap. It was long and red, like Debby's, with a white tassel at the end. It was soft as a kitten and warm as feathers. It was hanging on Bonnie's nail behind the kitchen stove, waiting for the first frosty day. To see it hanging beside Debby's made Bonnie feel that, at last, she was surely growing big." (p. 71)

Premlata and the Festival of Lights by Rumer Godden

"Then, once again, Prem seemed to see further, to those long ago golden and silver bangles that had been on Mamoni's wrists when they lived with Bapi and, "I'll buy her a silver bangle now," vowed Prem. She knew gold would be too expensive. She forgot everything else and took a windmill....The shopman charged her a rupee more than the peddler, but she could not stop to argue, and pushed her way back through the crowd to where she had passed the bangle stall." (p. 51)

Little Plum by Rumer Godden

"Miss Happiness and Miss Flower were beginning to understand that Little Plum was in the middle of some sort of quarrel, and they did not know what to wish for: that Belinda would stop climbing the ilex tree; that Gem could learn to play; 'That we should all be peaceful and happy together,' said Miss Happiness. The two little dolls were still talking it over that late afternoon when there came a sudden and determined shaking in the ilex tree." (p. 97)

Dr. Dolittle's Circus by Hugh Lofting

Slowly the Doctor opened his eyes and raised himself on his elbow. "Where am I?" he said drowsily. "Oh, yes, of course, in jail."

Then he stared at the man who stood beside him. And at last a smile spread over his face.

"Heavens above! It's Sir William Peabody," said he. "Well, well, William! What on earth brings you here?"

"I might still more reasonably ask you how you come to be here," said the visitor...."What's it all about? They tell me you were seen throwing a woman into the sea."

"It wasn't a woman," said the Doctor.

"What was it then?"....

"It was a seal," he said at last, "a circus seal dressed up as a woman. She wasn't treated properly by her keepers. And she wanted to escape, to get back to Alaska and her own people. So I helped her. I had the very dickens of a time bringing her across country all the way from Ashby. I had to disguise her as a woman so we could travel without arousing suspicion. And the circus folk were out after me. Then just as I got her here to the coast and was throwing her into the sea, so she could swim back to her native waters, one of your coastguard men saw me and put me under arrest.--What are you laughing about?"

Mom goes off to play, or the Thrift of it All

Mama Squirrel's idea of a fun afternoon out is taking the bus downtown to sort through the bookshelves at her favourite thrift shop. Even if it's bitter cold outside...or maybe because it's been bitter cold and it's been too hard to get out much this week, even for furry squirrels. So an afternoon of shopping was welcome...and worth it, especially because she hasn't been able to get down to this shop since before Christmas.

Mama Squirrel arrived at the thrift shop with good intentions, fueled by pretty blogs filled with vintage gingham, ladies' hats, and other imaginative decor. She dutifully trekked around the housewares but saw nothing much besides old zippers and sad-looking picture frames. The half-price deal was all on men's suits, which we don't need. So she quickly found herself in her usual back corner, happily flipping through an unusually large selection of childrens' books.

For $4.50, she brought home an armload of 18 books.  Even with bus fare, that's a pretty good deal; and it's entertainment too.

Mama Squirrel has a couple of sort-of collections going, and the Piece de Resistance of this trip was an addition to the Eleanor Farjeon/Edward Ardizzone collection: The Old Nurse's Stocking Basket (for a quarter!).  That in itself was enough to cheer up a winter day.

The other collection is strictly for fun and nostalgia: a bunch of vintage Scholastic paperbacks from the '60's and '70's. They were the staples of school libraries and classroom bookshelves, and if you follow the lost book requests at Stump the Bookseller, a lot of them are very well remembered (or not-so-well remembered). Those were the days when Scholastic Book Services published a lot of their very own semi-classic titles: everything from the Mushroom Planet books to Norman Bridwell's A Tiny Family (that's one we don't have, though) and John Peterson's The Secret Hideout, to biographies of Harriet Tubman and Marco Polo, and The Ghost of Dibble Hollow (a childhood memory of Mr. Fixit). And The Secret Language (do you remember ickenspick and leebossa?).

Anyway, we added a few to that collection today too: Casey, the Utterly Impossible Horse (do you remember that one?); The Three Dollar Mule, by Clyde Robert Bulla; and two of the above-mentioned Secret Hideout books. Oh, and a biography of Johnny Appleseed. They're fun and they can be good, non-intimidating reading practice for the eight-to-ten-year-old set.

Especially when you get them for a quarter.

And Mama Squirrel filled out the bag with a fat hardcover of the Peterkin Papers (I was pretty sure our paperback was missing some of the stories), King of the Wind, three 1950's science-made-fun books, a couple of colouring and puzzle books, Child of China, and Paddington Marches On.

Oops--no doilies today. I really did try. But I guess my lower nature just took over.