This is amazing.....

This book is riveting.  

I have a different, wider perspective on Central Asia and our country's involvement.  

Fun, old books....see 'My little bookstore' post....

I love old books....

The following page is one of the stories that does not appear in the updated version of A Treasury of Little Golden Books.  This is the 1960 edition....

I love the sweet 1950s illustrations in this book.....

Last summer I happened on a whole shelf of old Landmark Books hardcover books.  Here are a few....

Me and my little bookstore....

I used to teach public school.  Not counting practicums and student teaching, I taught for a decade plus one.  A few years into my career a new teacher with a shiny new master's degree moved into the classroom next door.  Her masters was in something reading related and she measured her juvenile book collection in feet.  Like, in the amount of feet the books measured on the bookshelf.  I was impressed.  Hers were mostly paperback and, I suspect, were book club editions--it takes a lot of those skinny little books to make a foot!  During my classroom years I stuck mostly to library books for a regular book rotation in the classroom.  In retrospect, I don't think I had an impressive collection as far as feet goes. I've been home now with my kids almost as long as I was in the classroom as a teacher.  And now, I think, I could quantify my books in feet.  

Much of my time in the public schools was spent in a school with some special grant funding.  We were able to develop a literature-based reading program and an impressive library of book sets for reading groups. I loved to go to our collection stacks in a windowless room behind the school library--vault-like--and consider the possibilities. 

In my years on the homefront and homeschoolfront I've found a similar love of possibilites in the book stacks at the local thrift stores.  The shelves are brimming with books but I am always drawn to the juvenile books.  Newberry books, Caldecott books, science, history--titles that can be built into interest studies, unit studies. So many books!  And many of them 50 cents or a dollar!  Most of the books in our home collection are from local thrift stores.  Hunting for good and/or useful titles (I call it 'booking') became such a hobby for me that a few years ago I decided to launch an eBay bookstore.  

The bookstore--Two Teachers Used/Gently Used Books--has turned our homeschool collection into an exciting rotation of books.  We  have books coming and going, with the kids all too familiar with my  exclamation regarding their questions, "I have a book about that!"  We aren't getting rich around here selling used books, but the benefits have made the venture worth my while.  The rotation of books keeps things interesting, the tax write-off of our home office area has been nice, but one of the best things of all has been Sharon. 

My first winter on eBay I sold a set of books from a Sonlight Core reading list to Sharon in Australia and a correspondence began.  It began with a sentence in a transaction-based email about the weather and grew into many conversations/photos about schooling, children, life, loss and faith.  She was expecting her now three-year-old and our winter was Australia's summer--a hot one. I have treasured her correspondence and phone calls. 

I've been lucky enough in my 'booking' ventures to find 'real' curriculum such as some of our Saxon Math books, Easy Grammar,  The Green Leaf Guide to the Old Testament, A Beka grammar books, Explode the Code, etc., but the gems have been the books for unit studies and fiction recommended by Sonlight and The Well Trained Mind.  I tend to be drawn to the old books as well.  Here are some of my favorite finds....  

This was an exciting book to find.......here it is next to the newer, updated edition....

The vintage copy boasts "48 Best-Loved Stories", while the newer edition claims "36 All-Time Favorites".  Of course, I had to sit up one night comparing the two books to see which stories fell from grace over the years...

These stories are among those that didn't make the cut!

I'm planning to post more old book finds later....I'm struggling with my 'rookie bloggerness' in getting photos posted today.  More later..... :-)  

Nitty Gritty....

I have two homeschool students--Mr. Almost 13 and Miss Almost 10.  This year we have been working our way through Easy Grammar Daily Grams as the foundation of our 'grammar' allotment on the daily schedule. I sold our Easy Grammar lesson books as I found them not to be very intuitive or appealing, but Daily Grams are wonderful.  We used to have a similar program when I taught in the public schools called Daily Language Review.  I love Daily Grams because they offer just that--a daily gram of grammar.  Each exercise includes snippets of skill work beginning with editing and ending with a sentence combining activity.  

 In order to truly assess our children's spelling and grammar we need to observe their writing. Spelling lists can be memorized, test formats can be rehearsed, but authentic writing reveals which tools the writer has in 'hisorher' hip pocket.   The writing samples and assignments I have given the kids over the past year have shown marked improvement and growth.  Some of this I attribute to the Daily Gram exercises.  I have observed growth in sentence structure, and improvement in spelling and punctuation. 

Along the way in our Daily Gram routine we have clearly needed a grammar reference book.  As a collector/seller of used books I have tried several grammar books from my gatherings and have ended up loving Nitty-Gritty Grammar A Not-So-Serious Guide to Clear Communication.  Mr. Almost 13 and I have discovered that this book is able to help and amuse at the same time.  One morning we encountered a preposition exercise and I had him refer to the Nitty Gritty book.  You have to love the description we found--

Use the 'squirrel and tree' trick to help you remember most prepositions.  the squirrel can go near the tree, by the tree, up the tree, across the branches, through the leaves, over the roots, around the trunk, above the limbs....  

The page thoroughly explains and lists prepositions, but the catchy intro cements the idea that many prepositions show position.  As one of the reviews on the back of the book attests, "If learning grammar is about as much fun as a trip to the dentist, this book is the laughing gas. ...The drills on correct speech are so wacky that you can't help but remember them."