Don't Eat That!

Baby S reached a wonderful developmental milestone this summer ~ she can finally be trusted not to eat every single thing she touches! Oh, she still tastes things she shouldn't sometimes. But now, as long as I am right with her, she gets to squish playdough or scoop beans or string chunky beads for a necklace. She's pretty pleased about it, too. With the temperatures over 100 degrees almost every day this summer, I'm glad we've been able to pull out some of these toys now and enjoy them in the air conditioning.

Pitching In

We had three generations shelling black-eyed peas

The boys picked our first crop of Champanelle grapes! So exciting, and yum!

Moment of Library Clarity

Finally, finally. I've been praying for the answer to organizing our books ~ our many, many books. Grouping by author was absolutely useless, as was grouping alphabetically by title. I even looked into several computer programs designed to help me keep organized, but they just weren't the right fit for our situation. It finally dawned on me to organize them as we use them: by relevant time period! Oh, what a relief.

I put the system in place a couple of months ago while Mike was off from work to help wrangle the kids, and it was a chore getting everything in order! I went through every book and noted on the front flap in which section it belongs. But I'm so glad I did it ~ it is working wonderfully. For the first time in years, I can walk to any of our numerous shelves, find the correctly labeled section, and quickly pull out a certain book. So nice.

We have biographies, history, and historical fiction all organized by historical period. We also have several shelves devoted to what we call "Our World." That can include books about cultures, maps, weather, insects, how things are made, and all kinds of other science materials. Finally, we have several shelves for what we call "Story Books" that hold all the fiction, readers, and just-for-fun materials that don't really fit any other category.

This has been such a blessing, since we are a Charlotte Mason family, and we mainly use books as they correlate to our history studies. When the kids pull a book on their own to read, they drop it in a basket in the school room when they are finished. HW is responsible every day (it's in his ChorePack) to shelve books from that basket. For the most part he does a good job of it, with just a little follow-up from me.

We do have one problem, though. We still, even after a ruthless culling, own too many books. What a nice problem to have, and we feel very blessed, but it is still a problem. Another paring down is in order, and I'm going to have to get tough about it. Until that happens, though, I'll just ignore that stack on the floor, and enjoy my neat and tidy shelves.