(no subject)

[rivka]

Last night we went to our first homeschooling event. It was billed as a "curriculum fair;" it turned out to be a massive flea market for homeschooling families to get rid of old books, curricula, games, software, resources, et cetera. (There were workshops, too, but we skipped them because they didn't seem like a good fit.) Everything I saw was very cheap, and it was nice to be able to chat a bit about how people had used things.

The biggest thing we learned is to get a babysitter next time. It was in Annapolis, which is a long way to go in after-work traffic, and when we got there the church where it was being held was swelteringly hot. Alex alternated between desperately needing everything she saw and whining that she didn't want to look at anything else. I would've liked to have more time to page through potential resources, consult with Michael, and sift through the big bins of fiction books. Oh well. There will be more.

The sponsoring group was a fundamentalist Christian homeschooling group, and, well. Mixed in with the sane resources on the various tables would be things like Astronomy God's Way. There's a good-sized secular homeschooling organization in Baltimore, so we won't be dependent on these folks for an ongoing social network. Which is good, because there's only so much biting my tongue that I can do.

At any rate, we came home with a nice little pile of stuff:

• A big set of reading rods, which are interconnectable cubes with one or more letters on them, used for various word construction activities to support learning to read. This came with a book and a bunch of activity cards, $18.


• More Mudpies to Magnets, a book of science experiments for young children, $7.50.


• Family Math, a really neat (and well-regarded) book of games and puzzles to promote mathematical thinking, $2.


• A small set of pattern blocks, $1.


• A Life Like Mine, a UNICEF book about how children live around the world, $5.


• Laminated unlabeled outline maps of the US and Europe, for use with dry erase markers, 50 cents.


• A big, cool, illustrated-with-detailed drawings book about noted construction projects through the ages, $3.


• A boxed set of twelve "BOB books," very very simple phonics readers, $5.


• A Fisher Price toy garage with a bunch of toy vehicles. Alex insisted when she saw it that it was what she'd always, always wanted. and she's sure played with it a lot today. They threw in a big plastic floor mat wth roads and buildings on it for more car play, $4.

We probably could've bought six times that number of random cool books and reference materials, too. The things we actually purchased were kind of random, except for Family Math, which I've been intending to buy for a while.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

And it's one of those plausible lies you get as a little kid and take in and accept on an almost unconscious level.

It makes me really cross.

Why, compared to that, Velikovsky is science!