Things I learned and Books We Loved in January

Things I learned in January:
December was a really hard month in homeschooling, as you might have gathered from my posts.Too much excitement, not enough work school getting done, and Mom in a miserable mood. To truly finish it off with a bang, my oldest daughter had an emergency appendectomy on New Year's Eve. But January has been full of blessed ordinariness, lots of reading, and renewed excitement about homeschooling.

One thing that has made such a difference is that we now have a better routine for the day. At the beginning of the month, I sat the kids down and asked them what they wanted to get out of our days. Mabel suggested, read more books! Ella wanted to learn to ice-skating. I began to tell them about some of the things I was interested in. I recently purchased a new writer's curriculum called Brave Writer. I'm only a few chapters in, but the kids were so excited when I mentioned some of her ideas like Poetry Teatimes and narrating stories to me while I write them down.

I explained to the kids that in order to fit all this fun new stuff in, we'd have to plan out our days better. We all went up to the computer and made a handy new picture schedule with Microsoft word. You won't believe the difference this has made. They are getting ready in the morning earlier (with only a little bit of prompting), helping me with morning chores like unloading the dishwasher and folding laundry. We've been able to do our Five in a Row, read-aloud during snack each day, have some physical activity, and in the afternoon individual lessons,quiet time, and tidying up. We've also designated one special thing per day: Monday is Music, Tuesday: Art, Wednesday: Writing, Thursday: Poetry Tea Time, and Friday: cleaning (the kids actually suggested that!) I have never been a routine person before, but I am starting to be a believer.

January is also such a great month for reading. Brent and I both have a stack of new books we are working through from Christmas. The older girls are starting to read more on their own! So here were some of our favorites in January.

My reading:

Disclaimer: I really wanted to love this book even before I read it because I love the author's website Story Warren: Allies in Imagination so much. If you haven't heard of Story Warren before and are a parent looking for ways to inspire your kids in faith, imagination, and reading, you should check it out. The author S. D. Smith is also from West Virginia, so even more reason to hope for the best because West Virginians are awesome. 

The good news is that I loved the book. The Green Ember is a fantasy book about Heather and Picket, rabbit brother and sister. When their family home is attacked and their parents taken captive, they escape and find a new home with a group of rabbits who aim to bring back The Mended Wood that has been destroyed. The characters have a lot of depth and I totally identified with their pursuit to find their purpose in the world. The book is also firmly rooted in hope. It made me think of a line from Katherine Paterson's essay Hope and Happy Endings. "Hope for us cannot simply be wishful thinking, nor can it be only the desire to grow up to and take control of our own lives. Hope is a yearning rooted in reality that pulls us toward the radical biblical vision of the world remade." This book does exactly that, but even if you don't want to go that deep with it, it is still an awesome adventure story you and your kids will love. I hope there will be a sequel.

The Spark is a memoir of a family's journey with their autistic son. Jake has a genius IQ, but is non-verbal as an autistic preschooler. Barnett decides to follow her intuition and nurture her son's interest in light and designs, and soon finds that he is teaching himself college-level math and astronomy. This memoir was surprisingly gripping as Barnett takes you inside their families struggles. I read it in two days because I couldn't put it down. Ultimately, it's about finding what is special about your child, but also giving them plenty of time to just be a kid and time for the family to build memories together and play, even when dealing with so many family challenges.

The kids requested that we rewatch the entire Anne of Green Gables mini-series recently. It didn't take much to twist my arm. Now they are obsessed with the soundtrack just like last winter and playing many games of Chase the Cow around the house. My two-year-old son even requests that they play Avonlea. His summation of the movie. "Anne fell down in the mud. She got mud on her face." and "Anne died in the water and the man rescued her."

I got a new-to-me L.M. Montgomery book for Christmas: Jane of Lantern Hill. It's a little more modern than the Anne books, about a girl who discovers that the father she thought was dead, is alive. When he asks her to visit him on PEI for the summer, she comes alive. After life with her domineering grandmother, she finds that she loves being useful and able to care for other people and animals. My favorite scene was when her father introduces her to the wonder of the stories in history and the Bible. She has always been forced to read these books, and suddenly with his interest and love, she finds that she actually wants to read.

I discovered Elizabeth Goudge last year when I read Pilgrim's Inn, and I fell in love with her writing. I picked up The Scent of Water this year and also loved it. Goudge's books are usually set in quaint English villages. In this one, the main character Mary, a Londoner, inherits her cousin's house in the English countryside. The story is also about Mary's spiritual journey, though and Goudge lets her characters grapple with spiritual questions in such a natural way that it never comes off as cheesy or in your face. Goudge is a master of symbolism. I always find myself wanting to look up images from medieval tapestries and bits of poetry when I finish. Such beauty and healing in these books.



Brent's reading:

Brent's favorite book of late (I also really loved it.) was Jennifer Fulweiller's spiritual memoir Something Other Than God. Some blog writers' books just read as a collection of blog posts, but Fullweiller's story of her journey from atheism to Catholism was beautifully written. She takes you through each step of her journey of faith without jumping to the end and writing backwards, so that you actually get to grapple with each question she has. She's also quite funny, which is a bonus. 

Did I mention the girls are reading?

Ella has always been such an auditory learner that she hasn't had a lot of drive to read books on her own. Recently I found her secretly reading Ramona the Pest at quiet time. Now she's finished that and moved on to Beezus and Ramona. I remember reading the whole series in third grade. Sweet to see her enjoying them now.

Ella has also been loving the Sir Cumference books.  This is a whole series of books about math topics like angles, shapes, and graphing, but told with knights and quests. They  make math really approachable and fun. Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland has a special medallion at the back that the knight uses to measure angles and find his way through a labyrinth. The kids took out the medallion and decided to make their own. I, of course, found a protractor to help them.

The kids' favorite read-aloud was The Ordinary Princess by M. M. Kaye. This reads like a classic fairy tale, but a rejected fairy gives the baby princess the gift of being ordinary. She grows up and the whole family is distressed because she can't be married off. She, meanwhile, is charming, witty and loves to escape the castle to play in the woods. When the family decides they will hire a dragon and lock the princess in a tower, to try to trick a champion into saving her and marrying her, she runs away to the woods and eventually gets a job as a scullery maid in another castle, where she wins the heart of the young King who lives there, with her lovely personality and brains and ordinariness. If your girls love princess tales, you should definitely read this one.

Mabel is 6. She showed a lot of early interest in reading, but became really frustrated last year as the stories got longer in her reader. We ended up stopping reading lessons all together. Apparently the best thing you can do with her is stop and wait until she's ready. This has been true from everything from potty training to reading, but it takes me a while to get the picture. This year she has been speeding along in reading. While we took the month of December off from formal reading lessons, she decided to pick up her Elephant and Piggie books and start reading. She has 10 of these and has read them all and moved on to other easy readers. Now she is requesting that we do two reading lessons a day. Thank you Mo Willems for writing easy reader books that are actually easy to read and SO FUNNY!

The Duchess Bakes a Cake

We are finally back to Five in a Row after the holidays and readjustment to school. This may have been our favorite week ever. We read The Duchess Bakes a Cake by Virginia Kahl, which is a funny book about a Duchess who puts too much yeast into a cake with disastrous results. 

The kids were really excited to study castles and princesses. Before vacation was even over, they pulled out Knights and Castles: 50 Hands-on Activities to Explore the Middle Ages and built a catapult out of tp rolls. 

The manual suggested that we act out the book, and the kids were very enthusiastic about this idea. We ended up doing a full production with costumes, memorized lines and many rehearsals, so many that we probably read the book more like fifteen times than five.

 

We performed the play on Monday when Daddy had the day off work, and they did great. Mabel played The Duchess and did a marvelous job balancing on a stack of couch cushions for the dough. Beatrix was the baby Gunhilde and pulled off fake-crying with ease, and Ella was the Duke, the King, the Queen, the cook, and the General, which required many accessory changes and catapulting bean-bags at her sister, which she enjoyed immensely.

For history, we learned a bit about the Feudal system and read a lot about the Middle Ages. From the Knights and Castles books, we also made medieval dioramas. They were supposed to represent The Four Alls: Serfs, Knights, Royalty, and the church, but we didn't quite finish the church. Instead, Trixie made her own free-form diorama. If your kids are creative, a low-temp glue gun and a big bag of wood bits are amazing fodder. Throw in some old tissue boxes, some fabric and ribbon, and lots of sticky sparkly foam. They turned out great. I was only called on to do a little bit of needle-felting when we ran out of little wooden people for the king and queen.

 

For language arts, we're adding in some lessons from the Brave Writer curriculum. The kids were really excited about narrating stories while I wrote them down. We are also loving doing poetry tea-times. On Thursday, the kids decided to bake a cake. They began this project with daddy before I got out of bed, so it was a little crazy that morning, but it tasted great and was a great math lesson. We did not end up reading the poetry in the picture.We actually read Good Masters, Sweet Ladies: Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz. When I checked this out of the library, I thought it would be a little too frank for the kids. These poems do not sugarcoat any aspect of medieval life, but they were really interested in each character's story. For art, we learned about the color wheel and complimentary colors.

   

After the performance on Monday, we had a medieval feast. 

 

Though we didn't end up sewing together a suckling pig and a capon, as suggested in A Medieval Feast by Aliki, we did make our own trenchers out of bread dough and ate without forks.We listened to medieval music while we baked.

The kids decorated loaves of bread that were flavored with rose water. 

They helped Brent chop apples and make a faux mince-meat pie for dessert.

Joy in the Ditches

 

As you might have guessed from my last post, this has not been an easy month at our house. My personality type loves quiet and calm and everyone getting along. None of that has been true this month-- not for one single minute. As a result, I have not been full of Christmas cheer. At one point, in fact, I had to have the entire family get down on our knees and pray that God would give us the ability to be kind to each other. As soon as I said, "Amen!" my daughter said, "Trixie was being annoying."

One day last week,  I was feeling done before I even started. My husband was traveling for work. I had hoped to go with him on his work trip to see the lights in New York City, but it was obvious that the toddlers could not handle the trip, so we had cancelled. I was exhausted and the kids were on overdrive. Finally I decided that I had to get them outside.  The sun was actually shining and it was obvious that they needed to do something with all of their energy. An hour later, I finally had everyone dressed and ready to head out the door. Blessedly, it was a mild enough day that it didn't even matter that the two-year-old was refusing to wear his coat. We set off to walk our dog and were tempted on to a street that we normally bypass because we saw an abominable snowman in someone's yard. When we got closer to the yard, we were delighted to see that they also had a purple hippo, a goose and goslings, a Snoopy and four frogs in Santa hats. 

We walked farther down the street, admiring the Christmas displays as we went, and I saw my daughter pick up a red velvet ribbon. This particular daughter is the ultimate trash-picker. She once convinced her brother and sisters that collecting old avocado pits was the coolest thing ever. She currently has five old tissue-boxes stuffed with odds and ends in her bed. We walked a little farther and my second daughter said, "Can I go back and show Ella something?" They both came running excitedly back to me, "It's a little lace pillow that says Joy." 

Mabel held a white pillow trimmed in eyelet and embroidered with the word JOY. Despite being picked up off the side of the road, it was still remarkably clean. 

My grumpy answer, of course, was "That is not coming into my house!"

But Ella, who always has a solution, yelled, "We need to make a tree for our ornaments! We'll make it on the back porch."

We turned the corner and what did we find? A full barrel of branches someone had cut off of their Christmas tree. "Our tree!" the girls yelled, and ran over and picked out a long branch.

Ella hoisted the tree limb on to her shoulder and we headed home. The girls set up their tree on the back porch and put their two ornaments on it. They added a few found treasures that were destined for the trash at our house and a few homemade paper hearts.

Then the next day we set out on our walk again. 

"Let's go find more ornaments!" the girls exclaimed.

"We're probably not going to find anymore." I muttered.

That day, we came home with an Ariel ornament and a scruffy wooden heart. The kids excitedly showed their dad the tree when he got home.That night when he walked the dog, he headed to the same street and came home with a large glittered ball ornament. 

Today, we set out for a walk again. The girls said, "We have to go back to the treasure street and get more ornaments." I suggested we try a different street, but had no luck, so we headed back to the same spot. I was absolutely positive there was no chance we would find an ornament today, until I  was the one who saw it: a red polka-dot cat on the side of the road. Then we crossed the street and I saw another, a slightly-busted hand-painted plastic ball ornament. 

Stumbling along in the muddy trenches of motherhood, I couldn't see that there was joy lying right there in a puddle on the side of the road. It took walking through the tough parts of life with my kids to see it there waiting for someone to pick it up.

Our Christmas tree has been decorated and lit for weeks now in our living room, but it's the tree on the back porch with all of its shabby, misfit ornaments where joy lives.

Advent: An Honest Retelling

Am I the only one who suffers from Advent amnesia each year? Who dreams of children happily making Christmas crafts and cheerfully putting on coats to attend holiday events as the snow drifts slowly down?

Instead we started the first Sunday of Advent: at home with a broken-down car, children hyped up from vacation, a birthday party, and the first snowfall -- and squabbling, non-stop squabbling.The toddlers have been a mess. The volume and energy has been through the roof.

Then a few days in, I heard a crash in the kitchen. The two-year-old had managed to break a large snowglobe and was standing in a sea of water, broken glass, and iridescent glitter. With an order to the older kids to keep the toddlers and the dog out of the room, I started picking up broken glass, mopping up water and trying to find a way to remove the glitter slick that was seeping into the cracks between the tiles.Then the toddler, who was screaming and trying to hurl himself into the room, grew quiet. I did not know at the time that it was because his sister had come up with the ingenious solution of attaching a dog leash to his belt buckle. Then as the steam was about to pour out of my ears, I hear children's voices float in from the hallway, "Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel."

December is a hard time to be a homeschool parent. It's a hard time to be a public school teacher, a day care provider, or a stay at home parent. Being a parent of young children in December makes it abundantly clear how much we need someone to save us!

Maybe that is what we need during Advent. The world that Jesus came to save was not dressed in its season's best. The candles weren't lit. The world was dark, chaotic, and there was an awful lot of squabbling. There were things that were broken, toddlers screaming, and parents who didn't know if they would make it through the season. It was a world that needed to cry out, "Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel."

So I have this special prayer for you parents out there this Christmas, (which may or may not be based on my own experiences):

When snowglobes are broken and ornaments break,
Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel

When screaming toddlers must be carried out of Hobby Lobby,
Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel

When siblings can't get along and no one wants to share,
Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel

When much-anticipated Christmas events begin and end with epic tantrums,
Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel

When lines are too long and stores are crowded, and everything is just too loud,
Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel

When rolling out cookies leads to Mommy meltdowns,
Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel

When attitudes are bad and parents are feeling grinchy,
Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel

When your lovely educational plans collapse,
Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel

When another Christmas movie afternoon is all you can handle,
Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel

When you threaten to cancel Christmas yet again,
 Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel

In all the chaos and excitement that is December with children, I pray that you will have quiet moments of restoration too, that you will feel the freedom to let go of anything you just can't handle, even if it seems like a lot of fun. I hope that each week will bring a little more light to disperse the gloomy clouds of night.

Rejoice, Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, Oh Israel!

Our Favorite Christmas Books

. "In such a house, one did not suddenly stub one's toe on Christmas and frantically rush about preparing for it at the last minute, as if it were a disaster. In such a house, the whole year was tilted toward Christmas..." The Christmas Pony by Helen McCully and Dorothy Crayder

My husband loves Christmas. You might say that his whole year is "tilted toward Christmas." When we got married, I married into a full collection of Christmas books and decorations, and we've only added to it since we've had children. We both enjoy spending the month of December reading our favorite Christmas fiction and celebrating Advent, so it was hard to narrow down our favorite books. These are the ones we return to each year with great pleasure and anticipation.

The Twenty-four Days Before Christmas by Madeline L'Engle. This was my husband's favorite book as a child. I am so glad he shared it with me, as this short novel has become a whole family favorite and annual read for us. This book features the Austin family from L'Engle's series Meet the Austins, but can be read as a stand-alone. This is a particularly special book because it's about a family celebrating Advent. On each day of December, they do something special: they take out a special decoration, make their wreaths, sing carols. In the book, seven-year-old Vicky is practicing to be the angel in the Christmas pageant, but her mother is due with a new baby right at Christmas time, and she fears that her mother will miss the pageant, and Christmas will be ruined.

 

Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl S. Buck is the most beautiful Christmas book we own, both the illustrations and the story. It's the story of a son who wants to show his love for his father, but doesn't have any money. The surprise he comes up with for his father is so touching and generous. We love this book, and it doesn't hurt that Pearl Buck was born in the same spot in West Virginia where I grew up.

  

This is the classic I most remember from my childhood. The Herdmann family threatens to ruin the church Christmas pagaent, but instead they make it one of the most memorable and touching nights of the year. Funny and true to life, this book is a favorite.

It's become part of our annual tradition to listen to this audiobook on the way home from our Thanksgiving trip to West Virginia. Not surprisingly, this book by Dave Barry is really funny, but it also is really touching too. It's the story of a family and a Christmas play, a dying dog named Frank, and how another dog name Walter and a whole lot of frozen bat poop saved Christmas.

 

This is another audiobook,which we listen to annually. It's the third in the Grandma Dowdel series by Richard Peck. The audio is read by one of our very favorite readers:Ron McLarty, so it is not to be missed. Christmas doesn't come until the very end of this book, but it's worth the wait. If you haven't listened to the whole series starting with A Long Way from Chicago and followed by A Year Down Yonder, you can't miss the first two either.

  

I am always looking for fun books that feature the nativity. We love this one. It's about a little mouse who decides to move into the nativity scene, but when he hears the story of Christmas, he realizes his mistake. He gets a surprise new home in return. Very cute for younger children.

 

A Night the Stars Danced for Joy by Bob Hartman is such an interesting book about a family of shepherds who visit the stable where Jesus is born. Each member of the family brings his or  her own wishes and desires for healing from physical and emotional pain, and they find redemption in their visit to Jesus. There's a lot of emotional depth to this beautifully illustrated picture book.

 

My oldest daughter declared that The Town that Forgot About Christmas by Susan K. Leigh is her favorite Christmas book. It's the story of a man named Matthew who moves to a town that has forgotten about Christmas. Through his healing presence and the carving of a nativity scene, the families in the town learn to connect with each other again and with the story of Christmas.

Song of the Stars is a beautiful picture book by Sally Lloyd-Jones. In this story, all of the animals in the world anticipate the birth of Christ. We love Sally Lloyd-Jones and this picture book is a great addition to the Bible story in the Jesus Storybook Bible also by Lloyd-Jones, which has our favorite reading of the Biblical story of Christmas.

 

We love The Three Wise Women of Christmas by Dandi Daley MacKall because it highlights the beautiful stories of Elizabeth, Mary, and Anna. I especially love that they feature Anna, as she is not often featured in picture books. A great addition to Advent if you would like to learn about all of the characters in the nativity story.

Who is Coming to Our House by Joseph Slate. We received this sweet board book from our neighbors when our oldest daughter was born, and it's our favorite  nativity book to share with toddlers. I love the woodcut illustrations and simple, rhythmic text.

10 More Audiobooks Your Whole Family Will Enjoy

It's that time of year again. Time for holiday travel, which means lots of audiobooks are needed. It's become a Thanksgiving tradition for  us to revisit some of our favorites like Grandma Dowdel and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog. Here are some more of our all-time favorites if you need some inspiration for that next long road trip.

 

Mercy Watson Collection by Kate Dicamillo

Take my favorite author Kate DiCamillo, add in a pig who loves toast with a great deal of butter, plus our favorite audiobook reader of all time: Ron McLarty. You get audiobook magic.There are two different Mercy Watson collections on cd, and all wonderful. Your youngest listeners will especially enjoy these.

 

The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright

We love Elizabeth Enright's books so much, and we especially enjoyed the family adventures of the Melendy Family. Each Saturday, one of the four children go on a solo adventure in the city. Be sure to follow-up with the sequels: The Four-Story Mistake, Then There were Five, and A Spiderweb for Two.

 

Come on Seabiscuit by Ralph Moody!

Even though the grown-ups knew the story from the movie Seabiscuit, we were all still riveted by Ralph Moody's book. Read by Jim Weiss who is one of the masters. Did you know this was one of Lauren Hillenbrandt's  favorite books as a kid and inspired her to write Seabiscuit:An American Legend.

 

Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen

This is a classic Newbery Medal-winning book that you may not have encountered. Such a beautiful story of a family healing from the affects of war and the love of neighbors. This is a full cast recording, which always takes some adjustment, but worth a listen.

Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

Cheaper by the Dozen is one of those audiobooks that the kids will enjoy, but the adults will enjoy on a whole different level. First off, it's very funny, and if you have even a semi-large family, you will definitely appreciate the Gilbreth's family's antics. Wonderful.

 

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Farm by Betty MacDonald

The Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books were some of my absolute favorites as a kid. I have found them just as charming and funny listening to them as an adult, though now I have a greater appreciation for the 1950s descriptions of jello salads.Your younger kids will especially love these, and maybe learn some lessons too. Look for all the sequels too!

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

During our Anne of Green Gables kick, we listened to both the Blackstone audio reading of Anne and the Focus on the Family radio theater version. We enjoyed both, but the kids chose the Blackstone reading by Susan O'Malley as their favorite. I know we'll be listening to these again.

 

Trixie Belden: The Secret of the Mansion by Julie Campbell

Our whole family got hooked on the Trixie Belden mysteries. Unfortunately, only the first 4-5 are on audio. We loved the characters and the fact that Trixie and her friends were a little younger, so the mysteries weren't as frightening as some of the Nancy Drew mysteries. Make sure you listen to them in order. Also led to a slight obsession with 1950s era trailers on the kids' part.You can check out other mystery audiobooks we've loved here.

 

From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler  by E.L. Konigsburg

I'm a sucker for mysteries set in museums and libraries and From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler  by E.L. Konigsburg is the classic that started it all. Claudia and her brother James run away and hide in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. While they are there they find themselves in the middle of a mystery.

Charlotte's Web by E.B White

This audiobook is a rare gift. Charlotte's Web read by E.B. White himself. It's so good.

BONUS:

Find the White Horse by Dick King-Smith
We love Dick King-Smith's books, and though I won't call this a classic, we were entertained by the big white dog Lubber and friends as they try to make it home to the two old ladies he lives with. The ladies were especially funny!

A Discount Guide to a Great Dress-up Bin

Our kids love dress-up clothes. Like many young girls, it all started with Disney princesses. Even though we had not seen any of the movies, one day we walked down an aisle in Target, and my four-year-old suddenly became completely obsessed with owning a mermaid tail. They have all gone through a major sparkle phase, but now they prefer old-fashioned dresses, sunbonnets, and aprons to itchy polyesther.

In one of my favorite books, Educating the Whole-hearted Child by Clay and Sally Clarkson, the Clarksons first introduced me to the idea of making your entire home into a place that inspires love of learning. They do this through discovery corners, such as an audio corner for listening to books, a craft table with supplies, a selection of musical instruments, or a writing desk with fancy paper in another. One of the things they suggested was adding a historic dress-up bin to your home. I have found that dress-up clothes can be a wonderful way to bring books to life in your home. Our kids have been Laura Ingalls Wilder, Sarah Nobel, Madeline, and even Mrs. Rachel Lynde. I know that a book has really captured their heart when it enters into their free play.  So, over the past few years, I've been adding new dress-up clothes to our bin to inspire the kids to interact with different eras of history, cultures, and classic books.

In the process, I have discovered some great ways to put together a Literary/ Historic dress-up bin for not a lot of money.   Since I have spent an inordinate amount of hours thinking about dress-up clothes, I'll share my best tips with you so you can save yourself the effort. (I'm sorry, but most of these are geared toward girls, but if you have boys and do a dress-up bin, please chime in in the comments.)

1) After Halloween Sales: One Christmas when my girls were really into the more commercial character costumes, I happened across a 75%off rack of costumes at Target after Halloween. I was able to get Tinkerbell costumes, Renaissance Princesses, and Angel costumes for $3-$7. The costumes were similar in quality to the dresses available in the toy department at a fraction of the cost. We wrapped them all up for Christmas presents and the girls loved them. I've noticed that Target is moving their holiday sale items through faster each year, but keep your eyes open in the next week or two and you might hit it big. Besides the character costumes, they often have more generic costumes like knights, doctors, explorers that you can find for a great price.

2)Thrift stores: If you use your imagination, thrift stores are full of great costumes. When we were doing our Around the World tea parties, I was able to put together outfits inspired by different countries by shopping at the Goodwill. If you find a small-size woman's dress, it can be a perfect long dress on your daughter. By adjusting the straps and adding a seam or two, they work great. I have been able to find Chinese dresses, boldly-printed sundresses for African dresses, and turn women's wrap-style shirts into Kimonos. I also found a great Laura Ashley red calico dress from the 1980s that made a perfect Laura Ingalls dress. Though I don't have as much experience with boy costumes, in the Civil War Unit Study int he free resources at Schoolhouse in the Woods, they have instructions for making Civil War coats out of thrift store jackets.  They are really brilliant.

3) Etsy: Etsy.com is the best place to find beautiful, handmade historic costumes from Little House on the Prairie to Anne of Green Gables. We purchased several sunbonnets from etsy stores for the same price as the factory-made ones at Old Sturbridge Village. You can also buy matching doll costumes for American Girl dolls. However, there is another way to shop on Etsy that can also save you money. Search for vintage prairie clothes from the 1970s and 1980s. I found an adorable dress for Trixie by searching for "pinafore." The seller guessed that it was made in 1976 for the bicentennial celebration. It was the perfect Carrie Ingalls dress for $12.

4)Ebay: We have also bought costumes from Ebay. We found handmade colonial style dresses with aprons and mobcaps for about half the price of Etsy. The fabrics were definitely cheaper, but suitable for our purposes. You can also look for vintage or handmade clothes on ebay. Try searching for "girls prairie dress," "girls dress pinafore," or "modest girls dress," or strangely enough "Amish dress." Yes, they sell Amish dresses on Ebay. Who knew?

5) Hand-me-downs: A great place to look for dress-up clothes is in your parents' closets. My mom has passed down lots of my old clothes that she still had and the girls have loved having them for dress-up: everything from old prom dresses, simple dresses my Mom sewed me to knit shawls. I also mentioned at church that I was sorely lacking in dress-up clothes for boys and two friends with older boys passed down their costumes to me. So now we have cowboy, knight, and animal costumes for the little guy.
 
6) Unexpected Places: Last year, I really wanted to find the kids fleece cloaks. We had just read The Courage of Sarah Nobel and the girls loved her red cloak. As a mom in New England, I saw the benefit of having warm dress-up clothes. My kids have no trouble running around the house on a frigid day in tutu, but it makes me cold to look at them. I found a toddler cloak on sale at The Capery on Etsy, but I couldn't afford the bigger girl sizes.Then I found the perfect fleece cloaks at an unexpected place: Cracker Barrel. They sell women's fleece capes for $20. We found a red one and purple one, which worked perfectly. For our son, we were able to sew a simple cloak just by cutting a rectangle of fleece, folding over the top a few inches for a collar and adding velcro and a decorative button.

Bonus: If you are going to buy any dress-up full price, these flutter wings are worth every penny. After fighting with wings with wires in them and destroying several pairs, we put these on the Christmas list. They have two straps which go over the shoulders and finger loops, which help them to flutter when you run or flap.The kids love them.