Something that I dearly enjoy is the reading old books.  My collection started off w/my dear Bigmom's (maternal gr-ma) copy of her McGuffey's Second Reader.

I can still hear her reciting some of her favorites...

Once there was a little kitty,

White as the snow;

In a barn he used to frolic,

Long time ago.

In the barn a little mousie

Ran to and fro;

For she heard the little kitty,

Long time ago...

She passed away in 1977, at 90, and could still recite so many of the stories until shortly before she died. 

So, as the years progressed I added more to my humble colletion.  Then, as I started homeschooling my daughters, I began collecting antique school books and we have actually used many as a part of our schoolwork.  The McGuffey Readers and Ray's Arithmetic, especially.  I even wrote about these as the subject of one of my TOS columns "The Lesson Planner" last year.

Most of the antique books I keep displayed on an antique school desk that my Daddy refinished for me. 

It's a little crowded right now, but until Ty builds (or buys) me the bookshelf he's been promising me for the last several years (eh-hem), it will remian in this little corner of the living room w/my hammered dulcimer music books and other books stacked around it.  It's so nice to just pick up the 1894 leather-bound volume of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and even though I have an entire set of reproduction McGuffey's I still like to look through Bigmom's or even the Fourth Reader I have that someone wrote "Feb. 20th, 1896" inside the cover.  When we want an older view of Ohio history we can turn to our 1933 volume of "History & Geography of Ohio."

I have often thought what my Bigmom and my Grandpa C. would have thought of our homeschooling.  I remember having conversations w/both of them about how odd it seemed to me that they had to BUY all of their schoolbooks!  It was so foreign to me!  Wouldn't they laugh if they knew that NOW WE have to BUY all of our schoolbooks?  lol 

There's nothing like an old book - even if it's a reproduction.  Holding a bit of history in your hands, especially when it had belonged to someone you loved, makes learning more enjoyable and even more interesting.  Not only to me, but it did to my daughters, too.  How cool I would have thought it to be to actually be learning out of the same book MY gr-grandmother used in HER schooling?!  I'm glad my daughters had that privilege.  Wow.  

How special.

Blessings, Kim Wolf<><