Camp El Tesoro "Trees in Autumn" Program

It took something really special to kick my butt out of my self-imposed blogging hiatus and today we had such a great time that I just had to share it!

M. and I spent most of the morning out at Camp El Tesoro at their "Trees in Autumn" homeschool program and I cannot say enough good things about it!  Jane, Heather, Wheldon, and their crew did an amazing job (including Linda - who certainly knows her way around hot biscuits & honey!)

We started the morning out by crossing the bridge and getting to know everyone - we have been out at Camp El Tesoro several times for other events and I think that is still M.'s favorite part of being there!  After getting settled in,  Wheldon, a Master Naturalist, then spent some time explaining to us all about burls, galls, fungi, and moss, among other things.

Afterwards Heather taught us how to use the GPS units and led us on a nature hike to different waypoints where we saw everything from galls and burls to harvester ants to funnel spiders.

Once we were back at the main lodge there were fresh biscuits and local honey waiting for us. After a wonderful snack we were free to choose what activity we'd like to do next and there were plenty to choose from.

Nature journaling, making a hiking staff, making leaf & bark rubbings, and much, much more were available depending upon our interests.  The hardest part was deciding what we wanted to do first.

The amount of preparation and set up that went into the program was obvious and much appreciated.    We've gone to a lot of different educational programs aimed at homeschoolers at a lot of different places and have, at times, found ourselves to be well... underwhelmed with the educational part.  That was certainly NOT the case here and at $8 prepaid ($10 at the door) for each child (with parents free) it was well worth every penny.  M. is already asking when we can go back.

Password: Scholastic

Last week I stumbled upon a fantastic resource in a rather unusual manner.

I had been discussing on one of my email loops how much M. loves to read, how he's already gone through 85% of our small town library's stock of kids/young adult books and how I was on my way to the poorhouse trying to finance his reading habit; basically just venting about a problem that isn't much of a problem at all. In fact, I'm thrilled that he inherited that trait from both D. & I - it's just frustrating at times.

So, as I was considering weekly trips to the downtown library 1 1/2 hours away to curb the withdrawl symptoms, I received an odd response. It was a short email - only 1 sentence from someone I had never talked with before.

"Check out the Scholastic Books warehouse sale next week."

Now, I'm a huge bargain hunter and rarely buy anything without it being on sale AND having a coupon so the words book and warehouse sale really caught my interest. I was definately interested but I didn't have a lot of information to go on. I turned to my best friend - Google.com and found out some amazing news!

I'm lucky enough to live about an hour away from one of Scholastic's warehouses where they store all the books for area book sales. Even better news - they have fantastic sales a few times a year to help clean out those warehouses! The best news - there was one last week! Now as I understand it, these sales are aimed at teachers, school librarians, school districts etc. but they are also open to homeschoolers. They are not advertised very much either, or at least not in my area. We've lived here for almost 10 years and driven past the warehouse dozens of times and never seen word one about it.

It all felt very cloak and dagger-ish, very secret password-ish to us, which only made it cooler for M.

We (myself, M., and my partner in crime - my mom, otherwise known as Gma) hot-footed it down there Thursday morning. I was thrilled with the variety available and the prices where fabulous! I walked about of there with all the books pictured below for less than $30.



So, if you have a big reader in your house or just like to purchase books as gifts, you might want to see if there is one in your area!