Learning Log -- Miscellaneous

No formal academics today. So tomorrow will be Day 24, which throws off my nice series of fives.

Lots of errands.

• --dealing with labs (Aidan)
• --older siblings being responsible for younger ones
• -- Sean, Kieron and Clare respectively working out on exercycle (Kieron went 4 miles and Sean is doing rehab programs that his dad makes up for him).

Football practice tonight.

My Reading:

• Marva Collins' Way -- finished this. It's a remarkable book, very inspiring. Lamb's Shakespeare Tales for 4-6 years old. She set the bar quite high! I wish there was more about how she did it!
• Less than Words Can Say -- interesting to read alongside MC's Way since it's about the stupidity of the educational (and other) bureaucrats, or else their evil genius for obscurantism, and how the denseness of their prose cloaks or reveals the lack of substance in their ideas.
• The Giver by Lois Lowry. I had heard about this for a long time. It certainly was a thought-provoking read. Suitable for middle schoolers. There are all kinds of study questions and activities designed around it available online, so apparently it is a popular literature selection among teachers in schools.

I found The Giver for a quarter at Salvation Army, and also, in the same price range, a book on Knowledge by Cardinal Newman, The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom, The Literacy Club by Frank Smith (author of The Book of LEarning and Forgetting), an Eyewitness Explorer hardcover book on Flowers, and Mocassin Trail by Eloise McGraw. How cool! But really, the pickings are usually pretty slim in our corner of California -- I lucked out this time, and even then had to wade between earnest books on the Rapture, and torrid romances, and really banal self-help books. Not to mention the Babysitter Club and Dora the Explorer type twaddle in the kids section, and horridly boring community college textbooks. I always miss our university town in Oregon where I could pick up all kinds of first rate books any time I walked into a thrift store. Well, God provides generously; I really can't complain today!

Oh, and also, a German reader. Hooray for used books!