a first for me

For the first time in my life I reached the 40-book maximum at the library. I never thought I'd see the day when I had so many books checked out from the library, let alone ones I'd enjoy reading.

First you might be wondering how we keep track of so many library books. Yes it would be a hefty fee if we were to lose them. And it has happened before. But for the most part this is no longer a problem. Most of our library books are kept in these bins in our living room, with the spines facing up so we can glance to find the book we are looking for, or flip through them to browse. A few of the books are kept in the kids' room in a bin to be used as nap and bedtime stories.

With 40 books checked out, you may be interested to hear what we're reading these days. For the most part we've been reading a lot of non-fiction (mostly about nature), fairy tales, and Bible stories. The following is a list of books we currently have checked out from the library (or that we've had recently) that we really enjoy.

Non-Fiction:

• How a Seed Grows We really like the Let's Read and Find Out series!
• Waiting for Wings
• Sparrows
• Flip, Float, Fly: Seeds on the Move
• A Seed is Sleepy This book (and the next two) have really beautiful illustrations!
• A Butterfly is Patient
• An Egg is Quiet
• The Story of the Statue of Liberty

Fairy Tales:

• Rapunzel
• Sleeping Beauty Camille adores this one and cried when we had to return it.
• Unwitting Wisdom: An Anthology of Aesop's Fables
• The Little Red Hen
• Twelve Dancing Princesses
• Goldilocks We even used the recipe in the back. Delicous!
• Rumplestiltskin

Bible Stoires/Lessons:

• Read-Aloud Bible Stories, Vol. 4 We're looking forward to reading the first three volumes as well.
• The Gospel Story Bible
• The Jesus Storybook Bible
• The Lord's Prayer
• A Child's Book of Character Building
• Big Thoughts for Little People I had the older version of this growing up.

Other Books the Kids Love Right Now:

• Over in the Meadow
• Silly Sally
• The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear Levi expecially loves this book right now.
• A Pocket for Corduroy
• Olivia
• Tallulah's Tutu
• A-Hunting We Will Go

My own leisure reading has mostly been about the Charlotte Mason philosophy of homeschooling. Two of the hallmarks of this method are learning through living books (one of the reasons we have so many books from the library right now!) and nature study. The following are books I've been borrowing from a friend or from the library, or have added to our own home library recently.

• When Children Love to Learn
• Real Learning
• Handbook of Nature Study
• Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You

I'm excited about the idea of studying nature together as a family, and hope that one day we will all keep individual nature journals. I think that there is quite a bit of value in exploring and learning about God's creation, and look forward to keeping this as a main focus as we teach our kids at home.

Now I have to go through all these 40 library books and decide which ones can go back to the library so that we can pick up a few others that I have on hold!