We Count Our Blessings (and Books)

Forget wagons and dollies. At our house, like so many others belonging to home schooling book lovers, Santa wears brown and comes whenever we can afford him, bearing packages with treasures of words and pictures and even sounds.

Thanks to four gift cards, a rebate, and a refund, he came a lot this week. Below is a picture of our booty.

Why I bought them:

Mostly for our history studies. Darius the Great, Ancient Greece, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, City, Archimedes and the Door of Science, Augustus Caesar's World, and Cleopatra will all be read for history this summer and into the autumn.

Curious George was to replace a book that was lost in our house or inadvertently turned in at the public library instead of the church library.

David Livingstone was a special request from Ben, who, after hearing me read Gladys Aylward by the same authors wanted to read another missionary story.

The Little Bear Boxed Set was to reward and encourage Bradford, who, at 9, is finally reading books to himself.

The Singing Life of Birds (with CD) and Chronicles of Wasted Time were for me to help keep Mommy Brain at bay.

A Child's Introduction to Poetry was not on the stack because it was hiding in the living room with its accompanying CD when I was rounding up books for the picture. I found books hiding on beds, under beds, on desks, nightstands, and the piano. Despite my earlier doubts, we are truly becoming a book-reading family!

Right now I'm doing a lot of spoon-feeding. Literally, of course, but figuratively, too. Any book I want my children to hear, I read to them. History is me reading to them. Science includes me reading to them. I read the Bible to them. I read fiction to them. I read poetry to them. I teach them to read and spell. I teach them math and tutor them through the problems. It is with immense pleasure that I realize that I won't always have to do that. My children will be autodidacts before I know what is happening, and then my job will be to insure that they learn what they need to learn on their own.