Homeschooling on a Small Budget

Some excellent sugestions on frugal homeschooling from A Wise Woman Builds Her Home:

Times are tough for many and paying for expensive homeschool curriculum can sometimes be very daunting for a homeschooling mom. Just today I was talking to someone on the phone who called for advice of where to get curriculum that would to fit a tight budget . Here are a couple of thoughts:

Click here to read the rest.

Home Library Card/Bookplate

From The Pleasant Times:

Here is a bookplate for your home library, or you can print it out on card stock and use it as a library card for those books that you like to lend out.

Quote of the Week ~ July 26, 2011

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,

And all the sweet serenity of books.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow



Organizing the Family Library

Homeschool families usually have an abundance of books. Said books can often be hard to keep track of and can end up in messy piles of randomness. Here are four helpful articles on organizing your family library:

Library Organization

Media and Books

Bookshelf Organization

A Vision for the Future – The Heritage Library (This is an excellent article on the value of building a family library.There are helpful tips toward the end of the article on book storage and organization.)

Library and Educational Services

Have you discovered Library and Educational Services yet? From their website:

A wholesale supplier of wholesome, educational books, DVDs, CDs, and more. For over thirty years, LES has been committed to excellence in both our customer service and our product selection.

With our variety of Christian, wholesome, and educational DVDs, CDs, books, games, and more—PLUS our personal, superior customer service, we are confident that you will return to LES again and again!

The good news is that, though they are a wholesale company, they include home educators in their list of customers which gives you access to some truly incredible prices!

While there is definitely some twaddle in their catalog I have been thrilled to find excellent living books as well. They have a wonderful selection that does vary, so if you don't see quite what you are looking for check back again.

To view their online catalog you do have to set up an account, but this is free. Be sure to sign up for their e-newsletter as well since in addition to their excellent regular low prices they often have sales that temporarily drop their prices astoundingly.

4 Day Sale on Historical Biographies and More at Library and Educational Services

On sale at Library and Educational Services until midnight July 25, 2011:

Primary Sources of Famous People in American History - Set of 21

Simple text and loads of photographs, original documents, maps, and illustrations shed light on men and women in American history. Each book has 32 pages. Set of 21 Reinforced Hardcover
(Regular Retail Price $376.96) Library and Educational Services Sale Price $19.95! (Save 94%!)

Visit their website to see this set and the other books that are part of their 4 day sale (including a boxed set of James Herriots books for $14.95!) (If you've never ordered from L.E.S. before you'll need to set up a free account before you can view their catalog)

Watch "Divided" for Free Online!

There is a crisis. Christian youth are rapidly leaving evangelical churches for the world. This well-recognized disaster has been the topic of significant discussion in recent years for both church leaders and modern new media. DIVIDED follows young Christian filmmaker Philip Leclerc on a revealing journey as he seeks answers to what has led his generation away from the church. Traveling across the country conducting research and interviewing church kids, youth ministry experts, evangelists, statisticians, social commentators, and pastors, Philip discovers the shockingly sinister roots of modern, age-segregated church programs, and the equally shocking evidence that the pattern in the Bible for training future generations is at odds with modern church practices. He also discovers a growing number of churches that are abandoning age-segregated Sunday school and youth ministry to embrace the discipleship model that God prescribes in His Word.

We watched this excellent film last week and can't recommend it highly enough. Click here to watch online for free

Let's try this again...

It has been a long time since I've updated this poor, neglected blog. Life has been a bit upside down this year and everything not vital for our survival has fallen by the way side (this includes laundry.) I shall give this another try though and we'll see how it goes. :-)