The Bookshelves in the Schoolroom, Part 1

If you walk in my front door and stand on the entryway tile and look to your right this is what you see ...

This is one wall in our schoolroom (formerly known as the living room) and these are our bookshelves.  I must say that this is a favorite part of the house for me.  For 2 reasons:  

1) there used to be a terribly blank, boring wall there but my dad built these awesome shelves for me (love you Daddy!) and ... 

2) all of my books are here and I love my books!  Books make me happy.  I like to buy them, I like to collect them, I like to touch them, I like to look at them.  And I've even been known to read them.  

So I'm going to take you on a shelf by shelf journey through my books.  Hold on ... here we go ...

Starting with the bottom left ...

See those 2 red books on the very end?  Those are the dictionaries that came with our encyclopedia set.  I tossed the encyclopedias but kept the dictionaries because they're really good.  The encyclopedias were from 1994, the year our first child was born.  We were young, brand new parents, clearly intoxicated with a new baby and got suckered into buying a set of encyclopedias we couldn't afford.  We were told we were making an investment in our child's education.  Obviously not wanting to raise a dumb baby, we bought 'em.  It didn't occur to us that she wouldn't be able to read for several years and by then the darn encyclopedias would be outdated.  Oh well.

Part of the encyclopedia deal was also a set of My Book House story books.  Ok, I have to admit, these books were worth it!  I have read numerous stories from these quality books to my oldest 2 kids over the years.  It's a set of 11 volumes (plus a reference book) that get progressively more advanced in reading material as you go along.  I've just started reading to my 3-year with the In The Nursery, book 1.  It's full of great nursery rhymes and songs, perfect for this age.  These are great books that I'm sure I'll be passing on to my grand kids someday. 

There are a few books in the middle of this shelf that I will pull out and discuss individually later.  For now, I'll start with this one ...

It's called Fun and Active Devotions for Kids.  This is how we start our homeschool day.  This little book has a thought-provoking question to present to your kids.  There is scripture to refer to and a little commentary to get your discussion started.  I've just opened it randomly to show a sample ... 

It may seem too simple for a teenager, but my daughter still participates and adds quite a bit to the discussion.  The activity may be a bit too corny for older kids (some of the craft ideas for example), but my main objective is to open our Bibles together and get a discussion going.  So I think it's applicable to a wide age range.  

Next time I'll share both Susan Wise Bauer books on this shelf.  Look out ... I have a lot to say about those two!