Books, Glorious Books

Katy, TX has the most wonderful used bookstore. While most used bookstores I've been in have mainly used romance books, Katy Budget Books has a huge variety of genres available. We used to live around the corner from the store and it's one of the things I miss most about that area of town.

Twice a year, KBB has a huge sale of their surplus used books. Prices range in price from .25 to $1.00. A sale started today and I drove down there with the kids to be there when the doors opened. I usually concentrate on the children's section of the store since that's mainly what I buy these days. I could have been there all day if I had gone through the whole store.

This is what I bought today.


The grand total for all these books was about $22.00. The most expensive book was the book of Emily Dickinson poems because it was a hardback. It was $1.00. The copy of Homer's The Odyssey is a $35.00 book. I got it for 75 cents. I'm excited about finding Otto of the Silver Hand for 35 cents. There are some books in there that the kids picked out that I would not have necessarily chosen, but for 35 cents each, I figured it was okay.

The cost of all those books new? $305.00 I definitely think it was worth the 45 minute drive.

A Favorite Around Here

We love Stan Freberg. Now, most people of my generation have never heard of him. I certainly hadn't before I met Griff. We have introduced him to our children and they love him as much as we do. We spent several hours in the car yesterday and most of that time was spent laughing at his recordings.

To give you a brief summary, Stan Freberg was a comedian who made satirical recordings starting in the '50s. If you like that kind of thing, you should check him out. Our favorites are:

The United States of America (history of America)
The Very Best of Stan Freberg (Sh-Boom and The Great Pretender are my personal favorites.)

There are a lot of references to pop culture and politics of the era, so it opens up some very interesting conversations. And it is just laugh-out-loud funny.

Enjoy!

Workbox Chart

In a comment to this post, I had a request for a copy of my log form.

This is the chart (log form) I use to record our weekly box activities. As stated previously, I put it in a page protector and use a wet erase marker to fill it in. It can be downloaded in pdf form here.



I thought I'd share what the abbreviations stand for. I hope this gives you a better idea of how I use it.

H: History - all of our history readings for the week
T: Timeline book
W: Writing (the asterisk lets me know that it requires my instruction - in this example, a new IEW unit that needs to be explained - I don't use them for items that need regular instruction, like math)
L: Literature
M: Math
FUN: anything extra that I want to add to break up the school day
FL: Foreign Language
B: Bible
HW: Handwriting
G: Geography
PS: President Slideshow - This was year-long project involving every president of the US, so it got its own abbreviation. More temporary activities would be noted a different way.
HL: Health
A: Art
C: I honestly don't remember. It must have been something we did for awhile, then quit.

Let me know if there are any other questions, or if you have trouble downloading the form.