Lots of Grace: What's On My Desk?

Well, you have read what was in my cart this week, so I thought you might be interested in what is on my side of the big desk in the schoolroom. Triss and I share a very long desk, and recently Javamom and I were laughing at how high the piles have gotten on my side, covered in stacks of Useful Books.

We are tremendous book-stackers at our house. We pull books off the shelves at the drop of a hat, and hardly ever reshelf until we cannot get to our tables. (Update: Okay, I just realized this is not strictly true. We reshelf once a week, on Tuesdays, when we have people coming to our house for piano lessons. I don't always include my desk in the decluttering process, though.) Someone once told me this is an organizational style, but it doesn’t feel organized to me. You should see my half of the big desk right now.

(If anyone is wondering why in the world I am hyperfocusing like this, it is because I am trying to get organized for our Term 2, which starts after Thanksgiving. I have to reorganize before each new term-- The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, gang aft agley, Robert Burns, you know. This post started out as a tangent I took while laying out schedule variations for the new term. There is so much noisome thought in this head o' mine, it has to come out some way!)

Just for fun, here is a list of the books on my desk, dining table and coffee table right now (Update: Oops, I decided the list would be too long if I included the books on my dining table and coffee table, so this list is just for my desk):

1. Answer keys: Latin for Children, 6th grade SF Exploring Mathematics (what’s this doing on my desk? We aren’t even using this text this year!), 3rd grade SF Exploring Mathematics, Apologia General Science solutions and tests, UCSMP’s Transition Mathematics

2. Two copies of the essay, “I, Pencil,” graciously given to us by a good friend

3. The Mystery of History Vol. 1 (Creation to the Resurrection), lent to us by the same friend

4. Dover Coloring Book on Victorian Fashions, also given to us by the same generous friend (this one is sitting here because I was impressed by my friend’s habit of making copies of the Dover coloring pages rather than letting kids color directly in the books. I would really like to do that, but we do not have a copier at our house. So the book sits on my desk, pristine and unused. I should just hand it to Mariel. She loves coloring this kind of thing.)

5. Books for Triss' Girl Scouts Thinking Day projects on Greece: Black Ships Before Troy, The Odyssey, Susan Wise Bauer’s Story of the World: Ancient Times, Age of Fable, H.A. Guerber’s The Story of the Greeks, the d’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths (Why these are on my side of the desk and not her side, I cannot figure out. Also, Thinking Day isn’t until after Christmas. Surely we can reshelf these for the time being and dig them out again later.)

6. My old planning notebook (I transferred my last two months of the year from this book to my new planning notebook. I think I can file this old one away now.)

7. Truthquest History’s Dark Ages guide, borrowed from our kind Spanish teacher

8. The Grammar of Poetry (Both Triss' copy, which should be with her things, and my answer key)

9. KJV Bible

10. Our Island Story (this should be on Cornflower’s shelf)

11. A lovely advance copy of a book on masterly inactivity, which I am not sure I am supposed to be talking about yet

12. The d’Aulaire’s book on Columbus (I don’t know why this is on my desk. No one is studying Columbus. I think it is something Cornflower is reading in her spare time.)

13. A friend’s copy of The Writer’s Jungle, lent to me for two weeks. I am trying to read it from cover to cover in that time, and it is thick. I definitely want to get this for teaching composition.