A Good Book Day

Today was a good book day. At our homeschool co-op, someone who is moving had several boxes of free books, so I rooted through those and got a few good ones. Then the little boys and I went to a Salvation Army Thrift store that we noticed last night on our way to Chuck E. Cheese. I was primarily trying to find bigger clothes for Nathan, but I didn't find much. This store did not organize their clothes in any fashion whatsoever--not by size, or even by gender! So that made it hard to find anything. We wandered back to the back, where the books were. They had the smallest children's book selection I have ever seen at a thrift store, and it was mostly comprised of Babysitter Club and Goosebumps books. But I happened to spot Detectives in Togas, a book for which I have been looking for a long time. I've seen it recommended in several catalogues, and Mom told me she thought Nathan would really like it after she heard some friends reading it aloud to their kids during a visit to California. No library we've gone to has had it though, so I was thrilled to find it for $ .25!

Nathan started reading it before dinner, and after dinner he wanted to know if it was a library book. He was quite happy when I said it was ours, and his next question was how much it had cost. When I told him a quarter, he was amazed.

N: "Why would a store sell a book like this so cheap?"

Me: "Well, it's a thrift store--people donate stuff to them, and then they just try to sell the stuff for whatever they can get. People know the things in there are cheap."

N: " But this book is already so exciting! Why would anyone ever give it away?!"

Ahh, yes--we are training him well. You NEVER get rid of books! Books are our friends!

Along similar lines, my friend Christine told me something funny yesterday. We were talking while our boys were having art class. I had watched 3 of her boys before we went to Ohio because she had to take her 3rd child to the ER after he poked himself badly in the eye. Christine told me that as they were driving back home, her oldest son asked her, "Mom, why can't you teach us Latin?" LOL! There's some positive peer pressure right there . . . Come on, conjugate the verbs . . . it feels good. . . everyone's learning Latin . . . it's so cool . . . LOL!

I also had a really positive conversation with our next door neighbor about homeschooling today. I went out to check on the boys this afternoon, and Caleb was helping her sweep her driveway. I went over to see if he really was helping, and Stella and I started talking. She is a high school German teacher, and her husband is some kind of motivational speaker. They are really nice. This is his second marriage. I don't believe she has any kids, but he has I think 4, and many grandchildren, and they are both very close to the grandkids. They're a really nice couple, and they were positive about our homeschooling when we moved in and they asked about schooling the boys.

Anyhow, Stella started off by asking how I was feeling, etc., and then she moved on to how homeschooling was going. I gave pretty general answers because I never know really how interested people are in the nuts and bolts of it all, or if they are going to get really defensive about public schools or whatever. But I didn't get any of those feelings from her, and she kept asking interested questions, so I kept on talking! She asked about how we structured our day, so I went through one with her. She completely agreed with how little time it takes to get concepts across to only one child compared to a classroom full of kids. She also said that one thing that has really changed for her as she has taught over the years is her understanding of how boys learn, and she wished she had been more sympathetic to their need to move and just their different motivations and learning patterns. I thought that was interesting in light of my fairly recent post on the subject. So we had a good conversation, and she was very positive about the whole idea, even coming up with some advantages herself--"I bet you can avoid a lot of the bad socialization issues that I see", she said. Oh yes, that is a prime motivation for homeschooling! I didn't phrase it like that though. : ) It's rare to hear someone who isn't homeschooling talk about the negative socialization that goes on in schools, however, so that was a nice surprise. Hopefully we're being good ambassadors of homeschooling!