We're working our way through the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder again this summer! We read them to the older children years ago but I wanted to share them with the younger children. Some of the older ones are sitting in on the reading and enjoying them again. Laura is so wonderfully descriptive. When Mary went blind, Pa told Laura that she would need to be Mary's eyes now so she got in the habit of describing everything going on around them to Mary. I would guess that it is this practice brought on by the tragedy of Mary's loss of sight that makes Laura such a wonderful, descriptive writer! As Ma would say, "There's no great loss without some small gain." Anyway, we are enjoying the books very much. We're presently reading By the Shores of Silver Lake.
My friend Delight is the inspiration for our "bug collections" and ours will never look as professional as hers nor will we have as many species to display, but she has inspired me and our children to make our own displays. She tells stories of going out nightly around the yardlight with her first two sons collecting various moths and she has wonderful display cases filled with their collections from those years.
It is fast becoming a tradition for our family to purchase bug nets for a dollar each in different colors for each of the children from the dollar store early in the Spring. I recently purchased new display cases so the children can each make their own collection. Following is a link to the site I ordered from: Wholesale Riker Mounts. Shipping almost doubles the price but they were still the cheapest I found.
Ruthie is adding tiny hand-written labels to her display. In the past we've filled the display cases as a family project but the children are older now and I think it will be valuable for them to fill their own cases, deciding on layout themselves.
