• My Favorites for 0-3 Yrs

  • If you don’t have a plan for your life, someone else does.Anthony Robbins

    It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. Frederick Douglass

    Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants. John W. Gardner

    An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy. Spanish Proverb

    It is little short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not already completely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry... I believe that one could even deprive a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness if one could force it with a whip to eat continuously whether it were hungry or not... Albert Einstein

    Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. John Dewey

    The historian is a prophet in reverse.Friedrich von Schlegel

    [Education] consists mainly in what we have unlearned. Mark Twain

    The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's time. Sydney J. Harris

    Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible -- the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family. Virginia Satir

    I try not to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.Mikhail Baryshnikov

    An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life. Author Unknown

    Only the curious will learn and only the resolute will overcome the obstacles to learning. The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient. Edmund S. Wilson

    There's nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child. Frank A. Clark

    If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders. Abigail Van Buren

    Education aims to give you a boost up the ladder of knowledge. Too often, it just gives you a cramp on one of its rungs. Martin H. Fischer

    If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.William Blake

    There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million. Walt Streightiff

    Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it. William Haley

    The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. Robert Maynard Hutchins

    Education is not filling a bucket but lighting a fire. William B. Yeats

    The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn. John Lubbock

    The mother's heart is the child's school-room. Henry Ward Beecher

    Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. Roger Lewin

    You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself. Galileo Galilei

    The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. Sydney J. Harris

    But, good gracious, you've got to educate him first. You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school. Saki (H. H. Munro)

    The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.Ralph Waldo Emerson

    It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense. Robert G. Ingersoll

    Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance. Will Durant

    Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you. Robert Fulghum

    We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.Chuck Palahniuk

    Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt and live like it’s heaven on Earth.Mark Twain

    Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. Edward Everett

    You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who educate him. Ralph Waldo Emerson

    The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher. Elbert Hubbard

    Education is too important to be left solely to educators. Francis Keppel

    The formative period for building character for eternity is in the nursery. The mother is queen of that realm and sways a scepter more potent than that of kings or priests. Author Unknown

    Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible. Marion C. Garretty

    To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while. Josh Billings

    The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas. George Santayana

    I am not a teacher; only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead--ahead of myself as well as of you. George Bernard Shaw

    For the unlearned, old age is winter; for the learned it is the season of harvest.The Talmud

    I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. Mark Twain

    My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects. Robert Maynard Hutchins

    Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.Plato

    One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters. George Herbert

    Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials. Meryl Streep

    That best academy, a mother's knee. James Russell Lowell

  • My Favorites for Ages 3-6

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  • My Favorites For Ages 9-12

  • My Favorites for Ages 12-14

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January 23, 2012

Should We Trust Books With Young Children?

I used to freak out every time one of our books got ripped or a page got torn by my kids. I freaked out a lot.

Finally I realized that it was inevitable, and instead of keeping books away from my kids (or watching them every second) I would just resign myself to doing repairs every so often. I’ve decided that it is the price I’m willing to pay to instill in my children a love of books at an early age.

Here’s the pile of books I repaired the other night.

After being used by 7 kids, some of our books are getting a bit thrashed, or shall I say well loved? This is my second copy of this one.

I’ve read to many of my kids from birth, but especially at 6 months and up. At this age, they love board books by Sandra Boynton and Dr. Seuss. Of course they put the books in their mouths, but I just remind gently that we don’t do that. I try to just keep board books in the nursery for the first year or so.

I’ve purchased most our books second hand or at yard sales. Every couple months I get out my heavy duty tape.

I take all the books, covers and pages out of the bucket on my office shelf and I start taping.

I just can’t throw books away if they’re still salvageable. These are stories I loved growing up.

This one needed a bit more than tape. All the pages were coming out, so I had to resort to the stapler.

It brings me joy to see my children sitting for periods of time, absorbed in reading or looking at good books. And it doesn’t take long to read a few stories to the kids every night. The more I read to them, the more it solidifies their love of reading.

What a great reward!

How do you manage books around your young children?

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2 Comments

  1. Karen says:

    The books in our house are well-loved too. I have a basket in the two main rooms (school room and living room) for the books that they were reading that day. When the basket is full the books get put back in the bookcases.

    The little kids board books are kept in the littlest kids’ room. Those are the only books that are allowed to stay in the bedrooms. All other books have to go back to a basket or a shelf.

    I do the same thing you do to broken, loved books – tape, tape and more tape. I usually have a tote where they gather waiting for a rainy day. Then I bring them out and fix them. You would think it was Christmas when the kids find a newly taped book they haven’t seen for 3 months.

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