Monday, April 20, 2015

Returning from MACHE with Living Books...

Riley and I had a wonderful time at MACHE, but seeing Levi's face as I walked in the door upon arrival back home was priceless!  Home is always the best place to be :)  Yesterday was spent resting with family and unpacking our new treasures.  I actually cooked three square meals and it felt good! 

Speaking of treasures, I didn't realize Marguerite De Angeli produced a children's Old Testament.  Her illustrations are some of the best!!  It was my big splurge item...





















Books that Build Character is a Beautiful Feet recommendation.  It offers more than 300 titles of books to capture a child's imagination and conscience...   


 I was excited to find a copy of Ann Voskamp's Christmas devotional....


The title The Rainbow Book of Nature caught my attention.  Sure enough, it was published by The World Publishing Company along with A Child's First Book of American History, which is another Beautiful Feet recommendation.  As would be expected, the illustrations are fabulous!   The boys were chomping at the bit to take a look...




















Riley spotted this wonderful old copy of Daniel Boone by Esther Averill.   





















She also found these two Initial Biographies by Genevieve Foster, one of which, has been reprinted and is recommended in Beautiful Feet's new Modern American and World study.   Initial Biographies provide a wonderful retelling of the life of an American President.  Foster wrote four including George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.  They are out of print, with the exception of the Theodore Roosevelt reprint mentioned above, but definitely worth collecting if you come across them. 


We spent most of the first day of the conference scouring the used book sale.  The second day we perused the vendor hall checking out the latest and greatest curricula.  I was able to spend some time looking at English Lessons Through Literature by Kathy Jo DeVore and I'm near certain, I'm going to try this with Ruben next fall as an introductory study of grammar.  I love that she uses quality literature to study English! 

I purchased Your Business Math and the handicraft Knitting DVD from Simply Charlotte Mason, which RileyAnn is very excited about!  The girls have used other Handicrafts Made Simple DVD's and really enjoyed them.  I also picked up a couple fact practice speed drill books hoping they will help solidify basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts for each kiddo. 

By using Charlotte Mason's methods, there is not much curricula necessary to purchase.  One is able to adapt most living books to meet the academic needs of each child by reading, narration, dictation, nature study, etc. to cover language arts, history, and science.   This is why we were able to focus on building our library with great used living books!  ...stay tuned for an updated book sale list I'll be releasing this week.  We have many duplicate treasures to share.

While at MACHE, I rubbed elbows with many Charlotte Mason enthusiasts.  I am encouraged to see Charlotte's methods exploding amongst the homeschool community.   I met several new people and it was super fun to spend time talking to other like minded moms!   Unfortunately, MACHE overall didn't provide any Charlotte Mason speakers this year.  However, as mentioned, Simply Charlotte Mason had a booth in the exhibit hall where we spent a couple hours over the course of the conference and there was plenty of CM excitement building in the used book sale. 

I'd love to hear about your conference attending experience.  Which speakers did you enjoy?  What new books/curricula did you find?  Please leave a comment below...

3 comments:

  1. It's always fun to come home with literary treasures, isn't it? Thanks for sharing!

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  2. Looks like you really found some gems!

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  3. Oh wow. Those are enough to get me to attend our next homeschool convention! #BookLife

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