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amyable
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| Posted: April 24 2007 at 8:36am | IP Logged
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Forgive me if I've asked this before  (I think about it a lot) ... but the thread on building a home library has got me thinking about it again. Plus the beautiful pictures on Cheryl's blog ... I want my whole LIFE to look like these rooms! Of course, that room looks like it's 3x the size of my children's rooms. 
Does anyone here homeschool or plan to homeschool WITHOUT a huge home library? If we are to stay in our present small house (an ever present debate ) we can spare little extra room for more bookshelves without them taking over. And not that I think books are clutter, but they DO get taken off of shelves by toddlers constantly, and strewn all over every room by all the other children, and it is a source of "visual chaos" for me.
While in a perfect world I would LOVE to have a house FULL of books, in reality, I don't know if we want or *should* have more. It definitely would be going against the "simplicity" factor.
Talking to people, I'm apparently the only homeschooler who feels this way.
Am I? 
Is it possible to homeschool without *owning* a ton of books, or at least owning them for the long haul (i.e. not selling them back when done with them, etc). I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place - doing my homeschooling children a disservice by not having lots of books to pick up on a whim, and being overrun by STUFF in a small house.
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Martha
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I think much of that depends on how much time/effort you are willing to expend and the quality of your local library. And time online might be a factor too.
For me, the books will be used for at least another decade and I don't have to be forever hunting for the books I need. It is far simpler to use what I own.
We don't buy everything and we still go the library once a week. But our home books are used mulitple times everyday. Personally, I think much spontanous learning would be missed without our home library. When it's noon and a kid gets a burr to know about bats - I've got the books at hand.  If I only had 1 or 2, my library would be far smaller. For example, all the early elementary books would not be needed. We also don't let our younger children online at all, so that would have to change for the purpose of reasearch and such if we didn't have so many books to choose from.
However, I'm a book lover by nature and hs-ing is all the encouragment I need to feed the need.
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: April 24 2007 at 9:29am | IP Logged
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Alternately, just because you want to have certain books at certain times does NOT mean they must sit out all the time... go ahead and get some good totes or whatever to store the *not needed currently* books in. You'll have them. But they won't be quite so accessible. And be choosey.. only kept those you actually WANT to have regardless of how good other people think those books are. 
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Maturemomg
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| Posted: April 24 2007 at 9:30am | IP Logged
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I had a friend who was homeschooling 5 kids and had about 1200 sq. ft. And her kids were BIG into music- guitars, a paino, an organ, violins, etc ALL in this space!
I always admired here greatly that she bloomed where she was planted. She never complained about the small space, just did her best. (And a GREAT job.) I do know one thing she did (they did have quite a few books, but not as mnay as many folks). She never let ANYTHING come into their home (even a magazine) unless she knew exactly where it was going to go. And most often, she woudl not buy new books (or things) unless she got rid of something else or an older less used book.
She was very organized and had shelves made (by her dad as a gift) to fit spaces. They also had shelves in most every room about 2' down from the ceiling.
My thinking is that is you don't want/need/have room for books, that is YOUR perfectly legitimate choice. A century ago a family was lucky to have one or two books!
Yours in Christ,
Kathy
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Martha
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Oh I second what Kathy and Jodie say too. We just moved from a teeny home to one over twice as big and that is very much what my policy was - only items truely worth having were kept and everything has to have its place.
If something wasn't as good as I had hoped or I couldn't fit it or whatever - I didn't hesitate to rid myself of it or not get it to begin with.
The result is that I have a concentrated home. Kind of like concentrated frozen oj. Only the best is stored and we thaw it out as we need it.
This greatly reduced how many books I have. Only the best and most usefull is worth paying to keep.
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SeaStar
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Books that the kids especially love, and books that we can't get through the library are the ones we tend to buy. If we can borrow it from the library, I don't usually buy it- otherwise we would be overrun!
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aussieannie
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Amy, I hope you don't mind me posting on your thread since I do have a few books, but whilst books have their value, children can naturally be raised in sanctity without them, the perfect example of the Holy Family shows us this. Also, with all my books, I am no saint  and ultimately it is those things that have the stronger weight...
I wanted to post to say that the internet itself is a wonderful, wonderful resource when it comes to saints stories for children. I have always been one to read 'exerpts' from adult Catholic stories to the children, because the lives of the saints are facinating, no matter how you read it to them. Adult stories give lovely details that children's books can gloss over. I remember last year I wanted the children to do a written narration for the feast of St Helena (August 18) I found this on the net, The Legend of the True Cross and I read this beautiful story and the children then wrote and draw - it was lovely.
There are also great links to books such as The Golden Legend a few children's saints books have been adapted from this book. We love it!
Then there are the fabulous links the women share here on this forum, to websites that are jam packed with great stories and activites! Yesterday I was back looking at the thread, "Feast day of the Archangels" - everyone's links and suggestions particularly Jenn's were absolutely wonderful, I have put a few to desktop for further reference and I really do rely on these links for liturgical planning and story reading.
We have so many ways of gathering resources for our families, in that respect we live in blessed times.
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amyable
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Thank you everyone, for your thoughts. I *wish* it were only about what is out and in my line of vision, but alas, we have little storage space either. If we own something, it is out! 
So, what most of you are saying is YOU wouldn't give up your books, but it can be done.
Anne, thank you for the links - I have been looking for "The Golden Legend" for some time! Having high speed internet access is one reason I keep wondering WHY I have all these books (even though I don't have THAT many). Why do I need an encyclopedia? A bunch of "how to fix things" books (esp. when my dh has absolutely no TIME to fix things), cookbooks? We always just go straight to google anyway. 
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Paula in MN
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Amy, while I agree with you about going straight to Google...there is something about holding a book in your hand!
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 Paula
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amyable
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Paula in MN wrote:
| Amy, while I agree with you about going straight to Google...there is something about holding a book in your hand! |
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I do heartily agree - I wish I could do justice to the feeling I have - of this small poorly laid out house being quite my cross to bear. (one of them at least )
I hope I'm not coming across as a book hater. I'm a book lover! I come home from the library (after going there for ONE thing) with more books - just for ME - than I can carry, often stacked up over my face because I tried to control myself and only went there for one thing, remember? (hence no bag or cart)
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JodieLyn
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Amy I wouldn't say I have a huge library so you're not alone.. and I do have to figure out where I can put books to have them.
our house is only 1100 sq ft so...
but we do have some space for storage and I do have some books packed away.. and I'm only starting on buying things and that's slow going too.. I need to thin things out again and get rid of stuff that isn't used and isn't needed for something I want to do
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Paula in MN
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amyable wrote:
I hope I'm not coming across as a book hater.
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Oh NO, not at all!!
I know I have WAY too many books, and I do try to purge them, and to only buy the ones that will be used for more time than the Library would allow us to have them! I keep looking at different websites that have either sections or entire books online, but it is just so hard to read them that way!
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Erica Sanchez
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Amy, we don't have many books here. We are slowly adding by purchasing mostly religious books and sets that I want to pass down to the kids (Little House, etc.). We get many, many books from the library. I don't really think we'll ever have a huge home library, unless we win the lottery I suppose, but I do want to slowly purchase the 'best of the best'. I think the money I could (or should!) spend on books goes towards travel. We've travelled quite a bit with the kids and those experiences are priceless to us. I may just be the 2nd person who feels this way, after you!
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helene
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Each school week we go to 2 different libraries. One library offers a knitting class for my girls. We all go and everyone picks out living books to go with whatever we are studying. The other library has a weekly craft and storyhour. We all go and pick out more books and even dvds and videos. We have been doing this for 10 years and I could not live without the libraries. Let's hear it for Ben Franklin!
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Erin
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Amy
First question- What is the quality of your library? If it is good it will help you immensely in reducing your need for owning.
Also go for quality, only have of the highest quality and you reduce alot of books as well. Having said that we have many books.
When we moved into this house I had to put half of our books into storage, (our house could well be smaller than yours ) and it really made me think more about 'top quality'.
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Mary G
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I do both -- haunt the library and buy books. I try to only buy books that are really good -- no twaddle (and if the kids get any from well-meaning relatives, they get donated pretty quickly). I also go thru our books about once a year and really look to see what can be donated or what can be put in storage for a bit.
We also have bookshelves everywhere -- we got some two-foot high bookshelves that we used as end-tables and now I just moved them to behind a "floating" short couch. This makes the books accessible and keeps the couch from moving too much (except for when the boys launch themselves onto it! ). We also have plastic milk crates that we use on their sides -- these make great bookshelves for the kids rooms and you can put a board on top to make a flat surface for a night-stand.
Now, as far as the library -- our close one (3 blocks away, I love it!) doesn't have many of the books I want so I do alot of requesting online, including interlibrary. This gets us MANY of our books needed for unit studies or somehting we may not ever go back to. If I get a book or series from the library that seems to have value, I might purchase for the home library -- like the Heller books on parts of speech or the Koch nature books MaryM recommends.
Another thing I do to ensure "circulation" of the library books is have them out in baskets for the kids to "browse". Our home library books get increased circulation during the annual (or semi-annual) book review (for what to keep and what to donate) by having me reorganize so that when the child who always goes to a certain shelf to find the books about castles, returns to that shelf, he might see the nature books we've had and he's never looked at or the book about rocks that he didn't know we had!
Bottom line Amy is that there are ways to work around owning every book possibly needed and having no books at home at all. I think there is a happy-medium that allows for families to enjoy books without becoming overly compulsive ... not that I'm compulsive about books or anything... no not me....honest
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Erica Sanchez
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Amy, I should add that whenever I am at Lissa's house looking at her many bookshelves filled with awesome books, I am more than a bit envious!!
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Erica in San Diego
(dh)Cash, Emily, Grace, Nicholas, Isabella, Annie, Luke, Max, Peter, 2 little souls ++, and sweet Rose who is legally ours!
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juststartn
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This thread title makes me laugh...
I mean, shoot, one of the BEST parts of hsing is being able to legitimately indulge myself and DH in our love of good books....lol.
We have bookshelves in every room but the bathroom. No. Really. The hallway doesn't count as a room to me, though. LOL. And the only reason there isn't some sort of shelf in the bathroom is the potential for water damage (I have splashers) and the fact that the bathroom is that small, there is simply NO room for one, not even a teeny shelf on the wall....
Rachel (who does on occasion donate/recycle via the used book stores...but often ends up coming out with more than what she took in, lol)
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4Real Forums : Tea and Conversation
Topic: How few books can we get away with?
