A couple more points – Continued from yesterday’s post. Today pertaining to the seasoned homeschool shopper.
6. This is personal opinion – as in what I do, and therefore carries emotional sentiment and may not fit as “good advise” for everybody. :- ) If you have been hs-ing a while and you know the direction you’re going, and you already have all your basic resources, buy what you find that will fill-in for the future, even if you may not use it this year. I really don’t need anything for “this year” as often anymore, but I do know what I plan for the future and I enjoy filling in and buying when I find a resource that is just right for what I know is upcoming, when it is something I really feel God’s Peace about – especially if it’s at a great price!
There have been years that I haven’t been able to go to convention or order any resources and I have been grateful for God’s advance promptings that have led me to purchase ahead and provide for future (at the time, but now current) needs. It’s a good feeling when dh says, “Sorry I don’t see how we can squeeze anything out right now,” and I can reply, “We’re OK. We already have all we need for now.” This is especially true because we use “Real Resources” such as timeless Living Books.
We may not be studying Early America this year, but I know it’s coming up and I know we want to read Charles Coffin’s “Sweet Land of Liberty” and William Bradford’s “Plymouth Plantation” when we get there. I know they are living resources that won’t be “not applicable” or out of our philosophy when I get there. Or, perhaps we are collecting G.A. Henty books, or those character classics reprinted by “Lamplighter”, we have the ones we’re going to read this year, but I find others to add to our collection. These are timeless resources that I’d like to have, just to have in our library and read anytime!, not just the year we “study” their topic. If I find them at the convention, and I have the money to buy them, after getting anything I need for this year, I get them.
This could get me on a whole other rabbit trail of building a good and timeless library. I want to have books on our shelves that tempt our children to “read ahead”, meaning they see these books as being valuable to our family, and are intrigued to just pull them off and start reading at anytime, not just because they were “assigned”. That is part of creating a Love for Learning. And, I will save the rest of this rabbit trail for the Environment of Excellence article in our forthcoming “Lifestyle Curriculum” book.
7. Another good question to add for us book junkies that are deviating from “this year’s needs” list to help balance us – is: Do I already have something that teaches/covers this in a way that is do-able for us? Does this new resource do that much better of a job, and fit our qualifications that much better, that I am willing to replace the other one? It’s easy for me to duplicate things, because there’s more than one good thing out there. But since we already have a library of thousands of books, we don’t need to keep adding, just for the sake of adding. A verse that “speaks” to me is “Of the making of books, there is no end.” from Ecclesiastes. And I don’t need to own all of them!!!
Check back tomorrow for Part 3 – After the Convention Shopping.
