Library Offers Books for Home School Families

The title of this Peoria article got my attention in a perverse kind of way. Guess I'm just being persnickety. And I can/should only assume that the Peoria library has the best of intentions. And maybe I'm already spoiled by our library.

Home schooled families and families interested in home schooling came together at the Peoria Public Library on Friday.

The mission is to discuss resources available to them.

Due to the cost of private schools and the size of public schools, a lot of families are becoming more interested in home schooling, and the library is providing help.

That sounds good, I guess. But what help does a library need to provide for homeschoolers when a library is filled with Da Dum....BOOKS?

Mary Clayton, a mother considering home-schooling said, “There’s a lot of resources we’re going to need. You know books especially, cause we’re going to start when he’s about two. And there’s a lot of books and we don’t want to buy all of those books, again you know, financially. So they’ll have the resources I think for us.”

My 2 year olds were still in diapers. And since we had ours in batches of 2, there were 2 sets of diapers. I don't know what Ms. Clayton is starting when he turns two, but she might get burned out before he turns 3. I don't miss diapers one little bit, but I do miss the little snuggles reading Goodnight Moon thousands of times...In the great green room, there was a telephone....or the Woods books like Piggies where you could tickle as you "skip down my tummy".
What do you do with resources for two year olds other than the great books just about any library has to read along with? Our library doesn't have so many textbooks available as fun, read-able books like Holling C Hollings natural science books or the Time Warp Trio books out on display or the Nat'l Geographic's fantastic books like The New Everyday Science Explained or full sets of Joy Hakim's History Of US or those Garfield books or the Reader's Digest non-fiction books like How Math Works. Lots of stuff like that along with a full set of the textbooks the local ps kids use that are out on display for folks who use those at any or all points in time. And great and helpful librarians who've done some neat workshops with the homeschoolers. So maybe that's what they were talking about. And microscopes and stuff like that to check out. A library like the Johnsburg Library Homeschool Resource Center. That'd be cool.