I have been trying to get organized around here as we gear up for our new school year. Normally, one year flows into another, as we do not follow our district’s school calendar but rather school year-round with light Fridays, breaks when we need them, and a lighter load with just a few weeks off in the summer.
But last Christmas I decided that with a new baby coming in May, we’d go ahead and take off the whole summer, so we plowed through spring doing “regular school” every day and even on Fridays. “Regular school” should probably be clarified in a post by itself, but suffice it to say that “school” and “real life” have much overlap around here, and we like it that way.
Some people have wondered out loud over the years how I manage to keep so many kids’ attention all day long as they sit chained to at their desks from 9-3 while I teach their lessons. [insert howling, knee-slapping laughter] But I digress. That is not how we “do school,” and this post wasn’t going to be about that anyway, was it?
I’m here to show you my new bookshelves!!
A few months ago we found two sturdy bookshelves (this is one of them) on Craig’s list for just $30. If you’re a homeschool mom, you know the kind of happy dance I did over that!
This shelf is nicely organized now, and the others (I already had two in the school room) are still a work in progress.
This past week I hit the library’s annual book sale and found some fantastic deals, further adding to my organizational work load. A selection of these, though incomplete, will be very helpful for Hannah’s Cantering the Country history/geography/science studies this year. We thoroughly enjoyed that curriculum guide when I used it for the “big boys” when they were her age.
I was also happy to add to our collection of these Cornerstones of Freedom books.
And I found a number of other children’s books as well, most of which are excellent and entirely wholesome. A few others, however, I knew to be very good overall but in need of slight editing.
Really, moms, it is okay (and sometimes preferred) to do this to books, provided they belong to your own library:
Overall wonderful picture book with the offending page removed.
Hilarious two-time family read-aloud we have all enjoyed, but it needs a black “highlighter” in certain sections.
Just make sure all the kids know that this is a job for mom only; otherwise they may try to help. 
So, did you intentionally buy books that were the same size and shape to fit so perfectly on your top-pictured bookshelf? haha Looks great!
When I was in college, I got some astonished comments about my personal textbook editing–I covered over certain parts of art in my humanities books (Michaelangelo’s David sculpture and some Venus paintings, for example) with masking tape. Even the students at my Christian college were a little puzzled why I did that. But I was uncomfortable otherwise.
I’m now in the habit of ripping up offending sections of store circulars, especially underwear and swimwear ads. Why have those images laying around to sully thoughts and/or embarrass? It’s probably time to go through our newly-acquired set of World Books and do some photo adapting. The little boys already came across the Venus section and pointed it out, asking why there was a naked woman in their encyclopedia!
Kudos to you for being proactive about editing your library’s contents and for protecting your family. It’s a worthy ongoing project!
Ha ha, most of those were books we already had, like the same-sized Childhood of Famous Americans we got in bulk on e-bay, plus the encyclopedias. Encyclopedias are the worst! We picked up a 1960s set of World Books at a garage sale for $1 about 10 years ago, and I literally spent weeks going through them page by page. Of course, I had a lot more time back then too.
I also recommend taking a sharpie to dictionaries and thesauruses. Good for you on the store ads.