Ds1 is a stamp collector.  He has many topical collections (and when I say many, I mean MANY) ... tigers, lions, cheetahs, leopards, snow leopards, clouded leopards, pumas, mountain lions, cougars, Florida panthers, jaguars, ocelots, servals, lynx, caracals, margays, bobcats, gray wolves, red wolves,  Australia, Ireland, Iceland, Canada, dinosaurs, dragons, space, Ice Age, socked on the nose, Christmas, USA flags, cats, dogs, horses, Olympics, and pretty much any other stamp that he 'likes'. 

Last evening we attended a local homeschool expo of sorts.  The homeschool stamp club had a table set up in an effort to try to draw new members.  We are down to so few members and have had several families quit the club over the last year (not sure why).  Ds1 took some of his stamp collection to display on the table, as did some of the other kids, and stood at the table passing out flyers and ready to answer any questions.  We have a club meeting coming up on Monday so it would be wonderful to have some newbies attend as a result of last night's expo.

I hurriedly got his album ready for him yesterday (much faster than letting him do it since time was limited) and discovered that he has a LOT to work on.  He has numerous stamps that he needs to get into his display pages (he uses photo slide pages like  this for smaller stamps and 9-pocket pages like this for larger stamps).  I  also discovered that he has a lot more stamps that need to be soaked (removed from the envelope) than I thought.   And he needs to get his stamps to trade all sorted out as well.  All these discoveries prompted me to add an entry to my weekly lesson plans for this coming homeschool year ... I want him to spend at least 30 minutes a week working on his collection.  It's bound to prompt some great educational exploration  as well.