I believe this is the third time I have come to this particular sale. This year, I prepared far better for it than I normally do. I suppose my organizational skills are slowly improving with age, haha.
We have recently decided to completely redo the way we homeschool our children because frankly, what we were doing was NOT working. Parts were, yes, but as a whole there were a lot of issues, both in the fact we had picked curriculum that is time consuming and tedious (not helpful when you have multiple ages to teach) and because we were not addressing a couple specific needs of our children. We also decided that Rich will be teaching math from here on out, as honestly, despite a natural ability with it, I loath math. I do not want to teach my children to loath it as well, and we all know how they pick up on things like that. Rich also decided he wanted to put together his own math curriculum, as he just does not like the available options for various reasons. I will go more into detail on exactly how this is playing out in a future blog. For me, I have decided to do something I thought I would never do, and dive into a fully formed curriculum after hearing some of the amazing things about Sonlight. Again, expect a more in depth blog on this decision in the near future.
So, this year in preparation for their annual sale, during which ALL used items (yes, they carry a few new items) are 30% off, we not only made a list of things to look for, Rich also took a day off from work and we arranged a sitter. Best laid plans of mice and men, the only sitter we could find was my mom, who moved last week, so we decided to still take Ruth and Jeanette to make things a bit easier on her. I have to say, only having those two to worry about, and not my two that are truly challenging at that store, was heaven on earth! It was also strange and nice to only have two kids with us, as it has been a while (you know, over four years) since we only had two children.
So, now for the part I'm sure is all that matters to you, our awesome finds! I think we made out pretty well. We spent about $210, and got a lot of stuff.
We got a lot of math stuff, as this is where most of our need was. Lots of flash cards of varying types (Rich loves flash cards), the "pattern animals" are pattern block cards and something I have been wanting to find. Math wrap up, these things are awesome! There is a third book that goes with the brown and blue books. These are the books Rich found and was just giddy over. He plans to use them as a base for what he teaches the kids. The first book is MIA, so I have a feeling he took it to work with him. Yeah, I love that man. Large Cuisenaire rods, although not a full set, they have proven to be lots of fun, and I'll keep looking for more. The red math board thing is multiplication, Rich was also excited when I found that. It is one that shows the problem, then you push the button and it shows the answer.
Just a couple random things I found, magnets are always tons of fun, and those books have lots of fun songs in them. Now I want to find the CD for the "Wee sing America".
These are awesome. You can build sentences with them. Some have words, others have word pieces to make bigger words.
These were in the math stuff picture, but do you see how many there are here? I paid $19.95 for ALL of these.
We're switching the handwriting we are using, this is what I was able to find of the Handwriting Without Tears that was printing. Not ready to teach Elli cursive since her penmanship needs some work.
These are some random books. "Things That Go" and "Mammals" I found in the clearance section for $1, meaning they were $0.70 with the sale. Elli loves I Spy type books, which the two "Great Search" books are. One book with audio CD for our listening library, a random Dr. Seuss book Ruth picked, "Big Cats" was also for Ruth, and I found one of the Usborne "That's Not My..." books, which are AWESOME for Jeanette with her sensory problems.
This wouldn't fit in the picture with the other books without me getting up and moving stuff around on my bed. However, I think it is awesome enough for it's own picture. Isn't this a gorgeous copy of Huckleberry Finn?!
I am buying all of Tobiah's Sonlight readers separate and not from Sonlight to save money. I know I could do this with *all* the books, but I'm going to be honest, between his readers and the girl's Pre-K books, which I also decided to track down, there were 35 books we did not have, and I just did NOT have it in me to look for more than that. So, this is what I was able to find of Tobiah's. He needs two more books.
This is what I was able to find for the Sonlight Pre-K list that we do not yet have. I had hoped to find more, but honestly, this is better than nothing. That Bearenstein Bears book? Sonlight wants $30 for it. Before the sale it was $6.50.
And, this is what I found after taking all the pictures. Go figure. Rich was excited to find the Base Ten Number set, and it is basically brand new. The Boggle game I fully intend to use for Elli to practice looking for words with, not as a game played in it's intended manor. Although I'm sure we'll play it occasionally as well.
Now a couple pictures of what my girls were doing while I was writing this blog. I love to teach them the "right" way to use manipulatives, then just let them go at it however they want. Ruth was putting on a "puppet show" with the snap cubes.
This is the "race car airplane" Naomi made with the Cuisenaire rods. She is SO detail oriented. She made sure each rod was lined up perfectly.
There honestly may be one or two things that the kids ran off with before I got pictures. I really do not remember. I do not believe so, though. So, all of that for $210 (rounding the change up). I think we did pretty well!
Next time I will do one thing VERY different. I will email them ahead of time with my list of the important stuff (like the books) and have them look before we get there. I meant to do this Friday and it just never happened. This would have been very helpful for two reasons: First, I may have found more. By the time the search for the books happened, it was already around 1pm and they had sold hundreds of things already, and there were a couple books the owner said he thought they had that could not be found, so who knows, maybe they had already been purchased since they opened. Second, I had to wait for about an hour for him to help me search out the books, and I had NO idea where to look for most of them (since this is my first time looking for literature there). That is not usually the case, they usually are not terribly busy and are always happy to help you find what you are looking for. It was PACKED though. I've never seen it so busy! Guess that is what the first day of the sale looks like, though.
All in all, it was a fun trip, and I'm excited about what we found. We'll be going again soonish, perhaps when the baby comes and Rich is off for a couple of weeks, or perhaps before then, so that he can talk with the owner about the math curriculum he wants to put together for the kids. That was the one and only thing we did not get out of our trip yesterday, the personal touch of sharing in the wisdom of seasoned homeschoolers. They were awful busy, though.
