Here are two reading programs going on for the summer. If you know of others that are nation-wide, please leave a comment and tell me about it! 

Participating in these two summer reading programs will give your kid a new book or two as well as provide books for other kids around the country! A win-win situation! Both of these programs let your child read whatever book they want (or you deem fit.) They don't have to be from a certain list. Homeschooling through the summer? Be sure to include those books they read for schooling, too!

Additionally, be sure to check your local library for information about their summer reading program!

Barnes & Nobles is giving away books as prizes this summer. Runs from 5/29-9/2.

Scholoastic is "all a buzz" with their summer reading program. Scholastic is donating books to R.I.F. (Reading is Fundamental)

I adore the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. I own a beautiful hardback edition of it. The nature drawings and writings inside are truly an inspiration for all that enjoy nature.

I recently picked up a couple of kits in the Country Diary series and love them so much I had to find more of them.  We own the Paint and the Draw one so far, but will be getting others soon!

I gathered them up here for you to easily find them. Click on the bolded text areas to go to the purchase page at Amazon.

Beautiful kits inspired by the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady.

Learn to Paint Wildlife in the Style of the Edwardian Lady. Includes tubes of watercolors, an instructional booklet, and paper pad.

Learn to Draw Nature in the Style of the Edwardian Lady. Includes colored pencils, an instructional booklet, and sketch pad.

Flower Pressing. Includes a flower press, wingbolts, blotting paper.

Cross stitch. Includes a 8" x 8" 14-count piece of aida cloth, 19 six-strand embroidery threads, a needle, a flexihoop, pattern template.

Calligraphy. Includes a wooden pen holder, a writing nib, 2 fl. oz. bottle of sepia ink.

Herbal Remedies. Includes a china herb bowl and a set of measuring spoons.

Okay so after all that mumbo-jumbo, with me stealing snippets of time to get the book read to make sure it was appropriate for my 9yo...

My daughter already has the darn thing finished!!!

Yes really!  I read a chapter out loud to her yesterday afternoon to get her going  and she read some a yesterday evening. She didn't feel good today so took some time to relax on her bed and read as well.

This afternoon, I go to her room to get her moving so I can take her to photography club and I see the book lying over the bed frame at the edge of her bed. I commented on it, saying something  about that isn't the proper way to care for a book. She replies with a, "Sorry but I couldn't find a bookmark and didn’t want to lose my spot."

So I glance over again and see (and say) that the book isn't even as far along as she was in it! And I pick up the book and it's marked for very early in the book. She says, "That's because I'm reading it again, Mom."

HUH???  I question her (secretly thinking that maybe she turned out and didn’t like the book and just read the ending or something.)  She proceeds to narrate the entire story back to me, detailing certain things that happen to some of the main characters. She also answers a few questions I throw out (thinking maybe she just, I don’t know.. figured the book out or something by reading the back cover???)  NOPE. She read the whole book. Didn't take her very long at all.

Recently this title was brought up on one of my Tapestry of Grace email lists. It was mentioned by a couple of people how they didn't particularly care for the "romance" in the book. Because this book is on the Upper Grammar and Dialectic levels literature selections in TOG, meaning my DD would be suggested to read it (and soon, since we were coming up to that particuar week of study) this caused a flag to go up for me, setting me forth to read this book.

Well, I *just* finished the book and LOVED IT!!! IMO, what romance there was in this book was actually quite innocent (ESPECIALLY by today's standards) and was quite appropriate for the setting of the book and age of the characters. This so-called romance, IMO, wasn't even actual courtship, as it is nowadays... but merely some home-visits by the young man, coming to call on the young lady. Needless to say, at least for our household, this so-called romance is a non-issue in this book.

The wonderful details offered in this text painted beautiful pictures in my mind of the home, the town, the boats, the people. The power of friendship was strong in this book. The heroine does find herself quite caught up in troubles because of it. The matter of disobedience is something that is addressed in the text, and will certainly be a point of discussion in our own home (LOL.)

Anyway, I'm going to have my 9yo UG daughter start reading this book, probably today, in fact. I found some nice background info in a PDF here on the author as well as questions on the book to use as discussion points that we'll be using. (I copied many of the questions to a simple text file to just have on hand throughout the book.)  Additionally, there is a free cyberguide (Word .doc format) for this book here  that offers some really nice links that would work well not only with this book, but also for overall lessons/studies of this time period.

Had this topic not been brought up on the email list, for the good or bad, I might not have read this book myself. I'm so glad I did and look forward to the upcoming discussions with my daughter. If I had not read it myself I'd have just asked for chapter narrations (which I'll still do.) What a great book to bring our current TOG topics "to life"... how the people of that area/time lived day to day, the troubles they faced, their religious beliefs, etc. DD loves when books "take her to a place" and I hope she likes this book as much as I did. I'll have to wait and see.