This Fall's Book Sale Finds

A year has passed since Liz and I took the challenge to fill a box with books for a mere six dollars. Unfortunately, we can't make the $6 sale this year, so we did the next best thing: yesterday, we stopped by for the half-price sale that precedes the box sale. Our purchased quantity was smaller, but we appreciate them no less. 

The find of the day was procured by Liz:

A four-volume set of 1887 encyclopedias for ten dollars total?! We pored over two volumes of these gems at my kitchen counter. The Dakotas were still Dakota Territory, Cobb County, Georgia only had a population of around 20,000, and the term "lunatic asylum" was normal. 

My 1912 book of James Russell Lowell's poetry came in second: 

Someone I greatly admire, Ravi Zacharias, often quotes entire stanzas of poetry from memory in his talks. Shortly after I heard him say that he enjoys Lowell's poetry, I noticed Lowell frequently in The Cloud of Witness. I'm glad to have gotten this volume for just two dollars. 

Our Friends of the Library group has it's big book sale every September. The sale lasts over three weekends: a regular sale the first weekend, then a half-price sale, and finally the $6 a box sale. It's easy for book "nuts" like us to get carried away, but Liz and I behaved well this time. We might have gone a little more crazy given the chance to fill a whole box like we did last year, but for $6, who can help it?

Here are the books that Liz got:

Other Worlds Than Ours / Light Science for Leisure Hours -1904

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
1941

Grimms' Fairy Tales - 1900ish

Norse Stories - 1900

Graded Literature Readers- 1900

Reading Literature Sixth Reader - 1918

Chatterbox Wild West- 1896

The New People's Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge 4 Volumes - 1887

Seat Weaving - 1940

Renaissance Patterns for Lace, Embroidery and Needlepoint - 1971

How to Sew Leather, Suede, Fur - 1966

I love this excerpt from Jan Karon's At Home in Mitford:

"The weather was making it possible for Andrew Gregory to do a thing he liked very much indeed. And that was sit inside the open double doors of the Oxford Antique Shop, on an eighteenth-century bench that was not for sale, and let the breeze drift in while he read from his rare-book collection.

When customers came in, he preferred them to sit on the matching bench as a kind of prelude to the sale, and talk about politics, golf, the gold market, the royal family, Winston Churchill, Italian old masters, and a dozen other subjects that intrigued him."

Here are the books that I got yesterday:

The Old Peabody Pew by Kate Douglas Wiggin, 1907

A Call to Adventure by Guy L. Bond, 1957

Stories to Remember by Guy L. Bond, 1962

Speeding Away, Open Highways Readers, 1968

The Mystery of the Missing Marlin by John & Nancy Rambeau, 1962

Helen Keller's Teacher by Mickie Davidson, 1968

Face-Off by Matt Christopher, 1972

Hitty, Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field, 1957

Star Spangled Summer by Janet Lambert, 1941

McGuffey's Fifth Reader, Revised, 1920

The Mansion by Henry van Dyke, 1926

Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes, 1906

Poems of Lowell, 1912

A Day in the Life of a Nurse by Connie Fluet, 2005

Last year when I posted on this same subject, I mentioned that some might wonder if we actually read all the books we get. The answer then as well as now is, yes! I have spent much time this year in the pages of books that I got at this sale last year. For me, it's ideal to have several books (maybe five or more) going at a time. I go to the "banquet" and take what I feel like having at that particular time. The morning seems better for meatier reading, while I like to save lighter reading for before bed. 

One more thing: Liz spent under $30, and I spent under $20. There are few things more thrilling than treasures on the cheap!

"Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life."--Charlotte Mason

"Be renewed in the spirit of your mind." Ephesians 4:23

Learning Ben-Style

Who knew that a Charlotte Mason education was a Benjamin Franklin education? 

(From Daugherty's Poor Richard)

Both this Founding Father and Charlotte Mason believed in two simple yet profound learning tools: books and narration. When we read this today, I said, "Girls, look! How did Ben prove to himself that he knew the material?" To which they responded, "Narration!" He read, then tested his knowledge of the information....Charlotte Mason's "art of knowing."

This way of teaching is radically counterculture! It's the complete opposite of how I learned in school, which was, "Memorize these dry facts, then choose the correct one on the multiple choice test." Most so-called "learning" was neither interesting nor worth retaining. I had nothing on which to base ideas of my own. We don't need silly songs or colorful gimmicks that wear us out to "entertain" our kids. The old method of reading and narration is working wonders, not just for my children, but for me. I'm a student right along with them!

I recommend this book to make genetics come alive: 

Did you know that Mendel experimented with over 28,000 plants in order to come to his conclusions about genetics, only to have his research rejected? It wasn't until 35 years after his death that his findings were dusted off and taken seriously. What I love about Charlotte Mason's methods is that not only do they teach students to know, but students will care. School is fun not because of a prize or incentive; ideas and true learning are the prize.

We are spending twelve weeks on the poetry of Tennyson, who I didn't hear of until high school, and by that time, I didn't much care. What a joy to really experience his words and poetry! 

So far, I think our most challenging reading is Plutarch's Lives. We get to spend twelve weeks on Julius Caesar. I read some lines and think, "I'm not sure I even understood much of that!" What I do tell them is that they aren't going to understand 100% of all we read. I ask them to take what they do get, even if it's only a word here or there, and hang on to that. I believe the more we read Plutarch, the more we'll start to comprehend. Some passages are easier than others, like anything else. 

Another especially meaty work this year is Thomas Bulfinch's Age of Fable, a book on mythology. So far, we've only read the author's preface. I love this selection: 

If only our culture were indeed a "cultivated" one in which allusions in this book were occasionally referenced! Boy, do I wish such allusions happened in "polite conversation." May we not completely lose the depth of ideas derived from rich literature and a feast of topics! Benjamin Franklin and Charlotte Mason both felt this way, I have no doubt.

As for math, the feast is also varied and taken in small bits. A young friend told my girls that she is required to complete fifty problems in seven minutes. Why? What if a kid does only five of those same problems in that time? Is this a contest in rushing through material and not caring, or should they linger over the problems and care about why math is useful? 

Did you actually know what "volume" meant, or were you just given a formula and told to spit out a number? Did you care, or were you trying to just get a hundred? Did you truly understand, as a child, what fractions meant...or were they just numbers above and below a line, that you were told to learn to "reduce," just for reduction's sake? Math has to mean something. I remember having to "know" (but not really know) a lot of stuff that didn't make sense, which made me not care about much except filling in blanks and passing a test.

The highlight of our school day is reading Robinson Crusoe. Charlotte didn't believe in watered-down versions, so this is the real, unabridged work. I think it's important to remember that such stories were, in fact, written for children! We read four pages four days a week, and I keep the globe handy. One thing I enjoy most about Robinson is his humanity, how he struggles mightily like Paul in Romans 7, torn between knowing right and wrong, yet doing what he hates. 

Ben and Charlotte were on to something. This kind of teaching and learning is for everyone. Each individual has the autonomy to take his or her own tidbits from the vast feast, rather than having to robotically regurgitate one-size-fits-all material. There is freedom in learning Ben-style!