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Our Antique School Desks and Books

May 21, 2012 By Laura 19 Comments

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Lately, I’ve been putting time into some things I can’t speak much of, yet.  Well, I could. But there has been too many time in my life, when I have spoken too soon, about many things, that never really came to be, in the end. So I am finally starting to remember to keep my mouth shut about some things, until they are a little more certain! How about that, huh? I’m only in my 40’s.  Anyway, just so you know, I’ve been more creatively productive than it has seemed lately. ; ) Doesn’t it bug you when people speak so vaguely? Me too. I’m sorry. I do hope to share  more with you all, soon.

But today, I wanted to show you a couple of home treasures of ours, that I love.  They are some old little school desks. If you like antiques, and/or you like old school things, you may find these pieces interesting.

002_vintage-antique-school-desk This first school desk is one my husband, Michael, picked up at a yard sale he stopped at.  He saw it, and knew I would love it.  Because I not only love antiques, but love all things ‘old school days’ related! He paid $15 for it, and once he did, the seller told him it was made around 1932.   It’s all solid wood, and pretty small, as it seems most school desks were back then.  As you can see, I just have it set tucked in under a wall table.  

 

003_antique-books Just inside the desk, are these two really old books.

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This book, Twelve Ways to Build a Vocabulary, is by Archibald Hart, with a foreword by Johnson O’Connor.   I came across it at a tag sale, on a table with a lot of other books, and bought it for $1.00!  The kids and I love vocabulary, and this book is just interesting to read through.  Printed in 1939, it has an old worn linen cover, fragile binding, and yellowed pages throughout.

 

005_antique_handyman-book This one, titled The Complete Home Handyman’s Guide, was Michael’s grandmother’s.   I couldn’t tell you if she ever read it, but I did have the blessing of getting to know her in the years before she passed, so I can tell you this much; she was as good as any handyman around!  She did all of the work of the greatest of handymen, and well into her 70’s!   Michael said he grabbed this book out of a box of others his parents had. It was printed in 1948.

We have other wonderful old books in our home as well. Some more meaningful than others. But all of them make my nose tingle, when I flip through them. What’s up with that?

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Our second desk is a little more sentimental.  Michael used this desk as a little boy.  He tells me that it originally came from his aunt’s home, who had 5 girls.  He recalls when he was little, that they had about 3 of these little desks, as well as teacher’s desk.  They did not home school, but just used all of the school furniture in the playroom, to pretend with.   At some point, one of them ended up coming to Michael’s family’s home, and he used it in his bedroom, while he was in early elementary school.

 

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Through the years Michael and I were dating, Ido recall seeing it in his parent’s basement. It was of no interest to me at the time. When his parents sold their home and moved away, Michael took the desk, and it then sat in our own basement for years. Eventually, I fell in love with home schooling, all things from old schooling days, and antiques in general. When I remembered we had this old school desk of Michael’s in the basement, I couldn’t wait to bring it upstairs!

 

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Although I have to admit, we truly have no room for it in our school room, and it is constantly in the way! It’s far too small for any of our kid’s to really use. And believe it or not, it’s heavy! Still, I love to see it.  It’s charming, isn’t it?

Well, most of it. There is a reason I have only showed you the desk on this angle, so far.

Here, let me show you the other sides……

009 Can you believe this mess? Guess who did this? Michael! When he was little, and the desk was his in his bedroom, he put all of these stickers on it. He says they were the stickers he got in school from the teachers, and when he came home, he would put them on his desk.

 

010 I think for the years this desk was in the basements at his old home and ours, the stickers is all I saw when I looked at it. It’s pretty much baffling to me. I have always told my kids, “We only put stickers on paper! Never on walls or furniture!”. Guess Michael never got that memo.  Even the kids were like, “DADDY did that? Oh my……gosh!”.

 

011 I told Michael, “Guess who’s cleaning them off? I don’t care if you’re 43 now.” ; )  Of course, they are still on there, so far.  He’s not that afraid of me, much. But I haven’t really put my foot down yet either.  In a way, I find it endearing to know he did all of this as a little boy. I bet he was so cute. And now we have the whole piece in our home, with 4 of his own little children.  But then, did you really look at all of the stickers closely?…..

 

012 What-in-the . . . . . .  Really?  A teacher was passing these out in school?  Lord have mercy. That’s a little disturbing. Don’t you think?  I don’t even get it. What does it mean?  I do know, that every time I look at it, I look for the woman’s arms. Where are her arms? Further disturbing.  Yeah, he needs to clean these off.  It would be nice cleaned up and refinished to it’s natural state anyway. Meanwhile, I keep this side turned to the wall.

 

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Another feature about this desk, is that it’s on boards.  I guess they used to screw the desks to the floor, so the kids weren’t moving them all over the place.  Or something.  I just tell mine to sit still. Anyway, this desk is so different than our other one we showed you, that is all wooden. Isn’t it?

 

014_antique-vintage-school-desk-kenney-bros-ang-wolkins I have no real year of this desk, but we can see on the base that it was made by Kenney Bros. and Wolkins, a manufacturer in Boston.  I did some research online and looked at hundreds of photos of old desks, but never found any just like the two we have. Still, I don’t imagine they are anything that unique or valuable in worth.  They are kind of special to us though, and that makes them worth something.

Could you tell us anything about the two desks we have here?  Do you enjoy antiques, or love old school pieces too? I really do. I bet there are other home schoolers who do, too.  If not, we hope you at least enjoyed seeing ours, today.  Thanks so much for coming by, and visiting us.




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Filed Under: Home Decor, Homeschooling, Language Arts, The Homestead Tagged With: antique-school-desks, antique-school-furniture, antiques, archibald-hart, decorating-with-antiques, home decor, Home Schooling, homeschooling, Kenny-Brothers-and-Wolkins, old-books, twelve-ways-to-build-a-vocabualry-book, vintage-finds

Our Homeschooling Year 2011-2012, Kicks Off!

October 6, 2011 By Laura 9 Comments

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Well, forgive me for the delay with any updates about our new homeschool year we’re in the midst of here!  Once we kicked it off at the beginning of September, we’ve been very occupied finding our groove, with our new schedules.  Things are quite different for us this year! With the kid’s respective ages and levels, life has opened up new and exciting opportunities, of experiences and learning, for all of them.  Not to mention new territories for us parents!  We have a high schooler now, for example, and with it comes all kinds of things.  But the younger ones are also following their passions and gifts, more so than ever.

Some of you may know this, but for those of you who do not, we are year round homeschoolers.  We keep a lighter (academic) schedule in the summer, and begin a whole new school year/grade levels, in September.  It’s always a very, very exciting time, as we love to plan out and begin a new school year!  We’re really blessed that our kids are enthusiastic students, who love school and learning.  This coming school year, was filled with more anticipation than ever, and it’s been as CrAzY and exciting of a ride, as we expected.

I always take the kids’ new school photos on the first day of school.  This year, it was almost a week later, but we got it done.  We have also ‘always’ taken their portraits in the school room, at the side of the cabinets.  But if you follow our blog, you may be aware that we drastically changed our school room set-up, and those cabinets are gone!  You can see the  old and new set up of our school room, as well as the style of school photos we were taking in all previous years, in this recent post.

So this year, I did all of the kids’ school photos outside.  These photos will be in the sidebar quite soon, so that new comers can see the kiddos who make up our homeschooling world.  In this post, we wanted to share with you a little about their (book) subjects they are studying this year, as well as some other little interesting tidbits of information.  In coming posts, we’ll be sharing a lot more, including activities/learning experiences outside of their academics, some deeper thoughts and observations I have had as a homeschooling parent, and lots of other fun and interesting homeschooling related posts. We hope you’ll join us for it all, with discussion and sharing of your own!

 

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This is our oldest daughter/student, Alexis Grace (14). Also known as {A} around the blog here.   She has been homeschooled (not necessarily at home…right? lol),  since 3rd grade, and just started 9th grade this year. We can’t believe we have a high schooler now!  That means I worked hard over the summer, researching, and piecing together a serious 4 year college prep plan for her. And maybe panicking, just a little. The girl scares me, and excites me, and makes us all proud, all at the same time!  She has huge aspirations, and her heart set on really great colleges.  We cannot let her down, and we believe in her, because she is so unique in her focus of her life at her age.   She is so faith-filled, determined, intelligent, tough, independent, and firm on the path she is laying out for herself.  What fascinates me, is it’s all a far cry from anything her father or I ever dreamed for ourselves, or were interested in.  But that’s why each one of us has our own calling, and why it’s important as homeschooling parents, to help shape our children’s character, and foster the calling they feel God has put in their heart, as the work He has meant for them to do, in their life.   It’s all about guiding and supporting them, to be the people they are meant to be.

Throughout this past summer, Alexis taught the 4th Grade Religious Education at our parish (2 weeks), and ran the games activity for the kids of Vacation Bible School (1 week.)  She also earned herself a Catholic High School scholarship, that has covered all of the expenses of her academic and extra-curricular school year. We’re proud of her, and grateful as well!

This school year, as a high school Freshman, Alexis’ courses are:  Language Arts (Alpha Omega /LifePac),  Algebra (Math-U-See), Biology (Apologia), History/Social Studies (Streams of Civilization-Volume 2 Cultures in Conflict Since the Reformation), Latin (Latina Christiana), Spanish (All Bilingual) , Art and Music (Piano – private lessons, and the Recorder – all kids at home.).

Alexis is also playing sports now, for our town’s public South High School! She is really involved there. That is a whole other exciting post. I could easily ramble, so I’ll save it, but suffice it to say it’s been really wonderful for her so far, and exciting for us.  It is extremely time-consuming on a daily weekday basis.  But I’d say we best get used to it and keep making it work.

In the light of sharing all of their subjects in this post, I feel it’s important to mention, that we live our personal faith, which is Roman Catholic. So it’s not a subject the kids study for school, but more something we are always teaching them, and they are always living and learning it as they grow. Just as we still are as adults, actually. That said, they do begin each day all together, with a Scripture, discussion, and prayer.  As a tool, we still really love Living Faith-Kids!!

 

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JackMichael (9), the first-born of the triplets.  Also known as {JM} around here.  He and the other 2 have the same academic subjects of course, being in the same grade level and age.   As I said, I’ll be posting more about what they love to do outside of their academic studies, and I’m excited to do so, because they are all so unique, with their interests and personalities. And yet, the differences from within their unique selves, meld together so well with each other.  It’s fascinating to me, to observe, frankly.  But anyway, for today, here are the subjects all 3 of them have this year:

Language Arts (Alpha Omega / LifePac),  Math (Delta / Math-U-See),  Science (Exploring Creation with Astronomy-Apologia), History/Social Studies (Christian Liberty Press / Our Nation Under God, and, History Stories for Children), Writing Strands, Spanish (All Bilingual), Latin (Prima Latina), Art and Music ( Recorder – all kids at home).

 

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Olivia Faith (9), the second triplet born. {O}, which we tend to call her 1/2 the time, ourselves. The boys especially, refer to her as “O”, a lot. And you know what she calls them, when she’s talking to the both of them? “Boys”. It always cracks me up, because there is such a motherly air about the way she says it. So….our own little baby boom is “O and the Boys”, I guess. It has a cool little ring to it, now that I think about it. : )   Oh, speaking of their names, and {name initials in brackets}, I know we’ve been a little all over the place with it.  The thing is, using initials for any sake of privacy or protection, is pretty irrelevant by now, considering they’ve been on TV a few times now, (related to our Catholic faith) as well as the newspaper, for different things. All times with full names.  On the flip side, I have found myself continuing to use their initials in brackets sometimes, for the sake of brevity.  As you can see, my posts tend to be perhaps a little lengthy, so I need to use all the brevity tricks I can.  : )   The kids are all well aware, lots of people know who we are by name, but the reverse isn’t necessarily true. (Especially around our town, and the people we meet and run into in person.)


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Shane Jacob (9), the last born of the trio.

(Reaching for ‘brevity’ now………..).  Shoot. I forgot what I was going to say. Ummmm. Oh yeah.  You see that beautiful little school desk in the background?  That is Michael’s, from when he was a little boy!!  What a treasure, huh?  That sweet and sentimental little antique is going to be another blog post coming up, that I am planning, as well. There’s some story to tell, and some specific things that are part of the desk, that you will not believe!!  Michael’s antique school desk, is not the only one we have to show you, either. So if you’re interested, be on the look out for that post too!

homeschooling-new-year-5 I am glad I thought of doing a quick ‘class picture’ of sorts, while we were at it.  I sure love my class!!

Honestly, I’ve struggled a little with this homeschooling section of the blog, right along. It’s a lifestyle to us for sure,  but one that is just so normal to us, I think…”What is there to blog about?”.  But I know there is LOTS.  Lately, my realization of that has really broadened, and in the process, I have realized why I am not as active in this section. Which is crazy, because I so passionately love homeschooling my kids, and living this life I do with my family, that it hardly makes sense.  But I see now where it comes from, and I think I’ll be sharing those thoughts very soon too.

So stay tuned!!  This homeschooling section should be picking up steam, real soon!   You should know, we love comments and hearing from all of you! But if you are a homeschooling blogger as well, we especially encourage comments with your blog-linked names, so that we can visit your stories and shared, comment, and connect with you all as well. Our hope and goal is that we are all an inspiration and encouragement for each other, in raising and educating our children, as homeschoolers or not. homeschooling happens to be the route we have happily taken, with a deep love and passion for it. So our posts will derive from that life we live, as a homeschooling family.  But proving a great education, however any of us do, is the more common thread.  So thanks so much for stopping by, and please DO again!  God bless you all!

Gosh, I promise I’ll work harder on that brevity thing, too.

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Filed Under: Foreign Language, History / Social Studies, Homeschooling, Math, Middle School Homeschooling, Reading / Writing, Science, The Big Picture Tagged With: Catholic-blogs, Catholic-families, Catholic-homeschooling-family, Home Schooling, homeschooling, homeschooling-blog, Living-Faith-Kids, triplets

Learning at the Fair; (Come Stroll the Fair Series)

September 13, 2010 By Laura 7 Comments

As a home schooling mom, I often find myself speaking to others with inquiring minds regarding the home schooling choice, that daily opportunities to teach and to learn, are everywhere you turn throughout every day.  Home schooling is truly a lifestyle.  It’s not an activity or a part of any given day, but for most home schoolers, it is literally woven intricately throughout every aspect of their life.  It certainly is for us.  Being and living in that frame of mind, the opportunities to teach, and for our children (and often us as well) to learn are all the more evident in the course of our days at home, or out and about.

So knowing there was probably a lot we could learn at the fair, when we went as a family,  was expected. What we weren’t expecting, was for there to be such an organized and fun program put together by the fair, for the kids to learn.  It was a pleasant surprise, to say the least!! Nothing like this has ever been at the annual fair we usually attend.  Check this out:

Upon admission, each kid was given a pamphlet, like the one above.  As we walked around enjoying the fair, they were to keep their eyes open for various spots all over the fair, for a sign like this one:

(Missing Photo: We’re sorry.)

Their pamphlet had a question in it for each station participating, that they had to find the answer to at that specific station, by listening or watching the demo instructor there, reading the information around the exhibit, etc.  When they were ready, they went up to the head of the station, and the one in charge would ask them the question.  If they gave the correct answer, they got a stamp on their pamphlet for that station.  When all of the stations in their pamphlet had a stamp, (and there were LOTS of them), they went to a specific area to get a ribbon.

I thought it was the greatest thing, for all fair-going kids!  SUCH a learning experience.  It was much like an educational treasure hunt, and the treasures were bits of knowledge. ; )   My kids just love this stuff, so they were on a mission the whole time.    This post only shares some of the stations.

See the sign to the right?  The Birds of Prey was a Kid’s Station.  The question they needed to find the answer to was:

“Why are birds of prey also called raptors?”

There were several birds of prey on display here.   I thought this owl was so beautiful, and fascinating.

His wing span was beautiful and impressive too.

But right after I took this shot, he shot a sharp and forceful stream of urine, that actually startled me.  There was some definite wow factor to the action.  I think I stood there wide-eyed with my jaw hanging, for a second.   They may be wise, but I didn’t see a whole lot of dignity with this one.   Goodness.

The American Kestrel.


I loved watching the kids be questioned, and answer with such confidence.

The answer to the question was:  Because they catch their food with their feet.

Oh!  Another Kid’s Station!

This was in the Agricultural Building.

They didn’t really have to write the answers down, but they wanted to.  They just had to answer the question verbally, correctly.

Maybe because they had new pens that the guys from the Air Force station gave them.

We came to this cow milking stand, where kids could learn how to milk the cow.  It wasn’t a Kid’s Station, but they just wanted to try it.    So I assessed the situation, and learned something myself that I pretty much already new….

You just can’t trust any cowboy you meet.

And I sure did not trust this one.

I saw him help a little girl down from the steps, and I got a little chill.  So before my kids went up, I said to him quite clearly, “My kids can get up and down all by themselves, thanks.” With a little wink for good measure.  I think he caught my drift.  He went back to his shifty-eye-mode quick though.  He let each kid milk the cow for like…a mili-second, and he was like, “Alright clean your hands. ”   Which was fine with me really, because I couldn’t move on soon enough.

At this bird wood carving station, the kids had to identify 3 birds in the display case. They all manged that fine, as we do a lot of bird watching and identifying.

{A} was not doing the Kid Station pamphlet, as she was a little old for it all.  But she went in and named them all to the guy, because she couldn’t help herself.  Her bird-loving grandmother would have been proud.

This was my favorite Kid Station:

I even loved the sign.

{A} was not excited to go take a closer look around here.  You could say she had a bad experience with bees when she was little.  Very unnecessarily, due to another kid’s foolish action, who should have known better.  She got stung all over of course.  I can hardly talk about it without my blood boiling all over again.  I thank God she didn’t turn out allergic to bees, because up to that point that day, we didn’t know!

Anyway….I try to encourage her to face her fears little by little, as she can.  It’s not healthy to let them control you. (I apply the same philosophy to myself, by the way.) So she came in and looked around with us.   She just got the willies.  ; )

I loved this display.  What a science fair project, huh?

Check this out:   This honey comb box had a air vent tube to the outside, and all of these bees were local, and drawn to this honey comb.  They went out, collected pollen and came back to the honey comb.

The question was:   How many queen bees are in a hive?

The answer is one, in case you didn’t know.  ; )

They marked the queen bee here, with a dab of paint, so that exhibit visitors could spot it.

Do you see it?

The satisfaction of getting that stamp, at every station, never wore off.

We watched how glass blowing is done too.  This was one of my favorite shots from the fair.

~~~

Well that concludes our “Come Stroll the Fair Series.”   We hope you enjoyed it, as much as we did!  Did you?

Were you able to attend a fair this summer?  What is your favorite part of the fair?  Is it the fair food?  The crafts?  The rides?  The exhibits or performances?  Tell us.  We’d love to know what brings you to the fair.

Filed Under: Homeschooling Tagged With: bees, birds of prey, education, exhibits, fair, Home Schooling

We are wicked happy to have you here! We invite you to connect with us anywhere you are, too!




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