What We're Reading :: June

Lots happening on the reading front here!  Summer reading is in full swing (including one newly-fluent reader and two in the learning-to-read stage), boxes of books coming in the mail for next school year, and Vincent celebrated a birthday so we have birthday books to share as well.

Me
Connie Willis' Passage (just finished, it was only so-so as opposed to her other fabulous books)
Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov (halfway through for a local book club)
Megan Hoyt's A Touch of the Infinite (I'll be bringing this with me to the hospital)
Charlotte Mason's School Education, aka Volume 3 (with my local study group)
And just finished Volume 2 with my online study group!  We'll be moving on to Volume 5 next. :)

Vincent, age newly-11
He is enjoying the stack he got for his birthday last week:

Spalding's two-book series: The Marks of the Bear Claws and The Race for Copper Island
Morpurgo's Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (linked to the paperback, but I bought them used hardcover and the larger format is lovely!)
Lainier and Wyeth's The Boy's King Arthur

Gianna, age 10
The long lazy days of summer have meant she is tearing through her free reading shelf:
Margaret Lane's Beatrix Potter: a Biography
Marguerite Henry's The Wildest Horse Race in the World and White Stallion of Lipizza
The Remarkable Rough-Riding Life of Theodore Roosevelt

Cate, age 8
Cate finally took off reading fluently a couple months ago and can now be seen with her nose in a book pretty much all the time!
Windeatt's Saint Rose of Lima and St. Catherine of Siena (on Sundays)
Caudill's The Fairchild Family series (she loves these and is re-reading)
Lang and Hague's Rainbow Fairy Book
Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the Big Kids are reading her this in the afternoons)

Xavier, age 7
Also reading quite a bit on his own, but he also just loves to page through books and be read to...
Billy and Blaze books (he loves these and uses them for reading practice)
Baum's The Wizard of Oz (the Big Kids are reading him this in the afternoons)
Malcolmson and Burton's The Song of Robin Hood (thanks to our reading it in Form I this year)

Bridget, age 5
Reading to Clara: Go, Dog Go and Hop on Pop (because they're easy enough for her to read straight through)
Reading to herself: The Little Bear Treasury (with someone's help)
The Illustrated Book of Ballet Stories (she can spend an hour paging through this!)

To the Littles
The Complete Book of the Flower Fairies (Clara's current favorite)
Dyer's Animal Crackers and Hoberman's Seven Silly Eaters (the Baby Boys' current favorites)

As a Family
Ransome's Winter Holiday (just started on audio after finishing Peter Duck a few weeks ago -- delightful!)
Pyle's Robin Hood (also on audio, just finished the epilogue today!)
Pyle's Pepper and Salt and Hawthorne's A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (in Morning Basket)

In the Mail
First up: I made a huge order of religious books from St. Augustine Academy Press.  They are one of my very favorite publishers and there were a bunch from their collection we did not own yet, so I decided to take the plunge and buy almost their whole catalog before planning our religion studies for this coming year. I am glad I did!

Sister Philip's The Sacred Heart and Mine in Holy Communion
Most Rev. M. de Langalerie's The Month of St. Joseph
Mother Loyola's With the Church, Volume 2: the Ascension to Advent (we already own Volume 1)
Dom Camm's The Voyage of the PAX
Mother Loyola's Confession and Communion, Heavenwards, Coram Sanctissimo
Canton's A Child's Book of Warriors and A Child's Book of Saints
A Pictorial Catechism and An Alphabet of the Altar

Here's a closer look at the two on the bottom, which are really lovely.

In addition to that box, I've gotten a bunch of Amazon and used online orders:

The Holy Gosepls of St. Luke and St. John (I've been eyeing this for ages and finally bought it for our Morning Basket New Testament reading for next year)
Pope Saint Pius X and St. Athanasius (for my Year 6 students' study of modern and classical times)

Young Jesus of Nazareth and Young Mary of Nazareth (with paintings by the Masters)
Carrighar's One Day at Teton Marsh (an author Amber recommended to me)
The Last of the Mohicans (illustrations by Wyeth)
Gray Squirrel at Pacific Avenue and Skunk at Hemlock Circle (to add to our Smithsonian nature collection)
Can You Find It Outside? (I like this series for my littles)
vintage copies of Ozma of Oz and Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz (I really like the look of the hardcover Books of Wonder copies though!)
Flowers (for our growing collection of hardcover Golden Guides)
Eager's Magic by the Lake and The Time Garden (collecting his Tales of Magic series)
Goudge's The Bird in the Tree (for me!)
The Perilous Journey of the Donner Party (pre-reading this for a free read)
Castleden's The Book of Saints (I believe this is by an Anglican publisher? not sure yet)

My grandfather is selling his home and moving to a smaller place, so he has been trying to downsize. Part of that process is bringing me books he finds hiding in boxes in his garage. :)

One of My Book House volumes (I already have a few from this particular printing thanks to my grandparents' old stash!)
The Family Finds Out, Cherry Tree Children, and The Big Jump and Other Stories (vintage easy-to-read book from the 50s)
the Freemans' Your Wonderful World of Science
All Through Storyland
A couple hardcover Marguerite Henry books: Cinnabar and Justin Morgan Had a Horse
The Contented Little Pussy Cat
Martignoni's Every Child's Story Book
I am a Bear (a sweet oversized board book that I handed off to Drew)

...and a couple complete sets I'm not sure what I'll do with yet.

This Fabulous Century (shown in previous photo)
The Book of History (shown above -- this actually looks very promising for an adult audience!)

Keep? Sell?  What say you?

So: summer is here.  What are you reading, friends?

(All links are Amazon Affiliate links.  That means I receive from Amazon a credit for any purchase made through your click-overs.  Thanks!)

Keeping Company :: Summer 2017

This edition will be a seasonal link-up rather than a monthly one simply because Baby #9 is due the first week of July and things seem to be rather slow in the summertime anyway.  So consider this your one-stop-shop for community with keepers throughout this summer!  I'll be back to a monthly format the first week of September, when I'll ask about your keeping plans for the new school year.

Starting the Discussion

Last month I promised to share our family's keeping from this past school year.  I did that a couple weeks ago!  (If you missed it, head over for the whole write-up!)

If anyone else has written a similar round-up (or plans to this month!), please link up so I can stop over and read through it. I really enjoy browsing through others' work while I'm trying to make keeping plans for the coming year.  I think I have a basic idea of how we'll be managing our notebooks, but I am always looking for tips and suggestions!

I also chatted about nature journaling with Lynn Seddon, the author of Exploring Nature with Children.  With that and the interview I did for Dawn at Pam Barnhill's that I mentioned last month, it has been a nature journal-y spring for me as a blogger!

So far, this summer, there has been lots of little notebooking opportunities here and there...

nature journaling in the shade

Cate just received her very first Reading Log and has already made several entries.  She JUST finally took off in her independent reading and I am so happy for her!  She is very eager and enthusiastic now that she is over her fluency hurdle.  And she loves keeping track of her books and pondering her ratings for each one.  (She has a 1-5 ranking system set up. As you can see, they have all been winners so far!)

I currently keep four commonplace books (I like breaking them up by genre/purpose), and my education-related one always fills first.  So I started a new one once again a couple weeks ago.  I always take some time in deciding what quote to use as the dedication...

This Month's Round-Up

From the May collection:

:: Kelly tells us about some fascinating reading she has been up to in late spring: typology, science, books-about-books...and Richard Armitage reading Dickens.  (Sounds fabulous, right?) She also included my very favorite quote from Hannah Coulter.

:: Amy considers what life means, the imagination in housekeeping, "mere" love, and the rustic scent of the farmhouse.  Beauty in variety.

:: Carol shares a sweet moment with her daughter: fifteen years of keeping, always growing, always seeing the world with new eyes.

And from over on Instagram...

NATURE JOURNALING
erinnadolski - jenbrownsnow - tillberrytales
barefootedarrows - msjschole - adventureadaycm
raising.saints - orchardhousef - angelaboord

f

MORE NATURE JOURNALING
barefootedarrows - charlottemasonmyway - tribecham
thiscraftsmanlife - maricsa81 - corinna_rhodes_
vlcjrogers - hazelnuthatch - sarahjokim

HISTORY, ARCHITECTURE, AND NARRATIONS
windymorning_3 - dawnduran8708 - littledrops5 - sarah.lashbrook - this_little_homeschool

COMMONPLACE BOOKS
sarah_jonna - happylhomemaker1 - sarahjokim

SOME LOVELINESS!
frogssnailsgeckotails - mariasugiyopranoto

And a little highlight of Jessie, one of my favorite Instagram keepers, who shared her son's Word Book and her own Book of Centuries...

Now it's your turn!

The Link-Up

Instructions:
:: For bloggers: Click on the "Add my link" button below, and it will prompt you to include the information for your post.  Once you submit it, your link will be added to the list, and others will be able to click over and read what you have shared.
:: For Instagrammers: Tag related photos with #KeepingCompanyCM.

Guidelines:
:: Remember to link to a specific post and not to your blog's homepage. 
:: Any posts about CM-style Keeping are welcome!  The prompt is optional.  Your post can be as simple as a photo of your commonplace book or your kids drawing.
:: Feel free to add more than one post.  The link-up will be open for a month, so you can come back and add more if you are so inclined.
:: You can grab the button over there on the sidebar if you'd like to add it to your post or site.

An InLinkz Link-up