(upbeat music) - Welcome friends to this episode of the "Everyday Educator" podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Bailey, and I'm excited to spend some time with you today as we encourage one another, learn together, and ponder the delights and challenges that make homeschooling the adventure of a lifetime. Whether you're just considering this homeschooling possibility or deep into the daily delight of family learning, I believe you'll enjoy thinking along with us.

But don't forget, although this online community is awesome, you'll find even closer support in a local CC community. So go to classicalconversations.com and find a community near you today. Well, listeners, I'm so glad that you came back for part two of the practicalities of practicum. As you know, from last week, Jill and I had so much to share and so much to love about practicum and so many things that we wanted to tell you guys about this year's practicum that we couldn't fit it all in one episode.

So we're back. I've got Jill Philbrick back with me again. Hey, Jill. - Hi, it's nice to be here. - And I am really excited about the specifics that we're gonna talk about today. But let's go back. Let's kind of set the stage. If any of you missed part one, you can go back and listen to part one later, but we're glad you're here for part two.

What we kind of talked about at practicum last, on the podcast last week about practicum is basically how much Jill and I love practicum. We love the fellowship of practicum, how we get together with our buddies from community and new friends who may be joining community. And even those people who are just kind of checking us out, we love the fellowship.

We really enjoy being inspired. We get inspired from hearing other people's stories of their joys and triumphs and their struggles. We get inspired by looking at new material and sometimes old material in new ways. We get inspired to become better lead learners in our homes as we learn more and more about the classical tools of learning and how to wield them well.

And we're equipped. We get equipped to use those tools because practicum really is practical. We actually practice the things that we talk about so that we can go home with a little bit of confidence that we could reproduce some of these great activities at home with our kids. Now, I know Jill, I want to out you a little bit mostly because I've heard you out yourself like this for years.

I know that you have said in years past, and I've heard you say this at practicum, I always believed I was not a math person or I have never been an art person, okay? And I've heard other people say that and I myself have said this. Why, Jill, do you not say those things anymore?

- Well, it is a wonderful thing not to say those things anymore. - It is, it is. - I will say that when I said those things, I always felt just a little convicted in my heart, you know, to limit ourself and to already decide that God can't reach us in this area, which is totally wrong.

- I know, I know. What were you mostly saying when you said I'm not a math person or I'm not an art person? What did you really mean by that? - That I didn't feel equipped or maybe sometimes worthy, you know, or that I felt that I didn't have the background and I wouldn't have known that it was that I didn't have the background or the vocabulary.

I thought I just didn't enjoy it and didn't understand it. - Okay, 'cause I was gonna say, wow, girl, you are way more noble than me. When I said stuff like I'm not a math person or I'm not an art person, what I meant is I don't like that stuff.

I do not like that stuff. Do not bring that stuff over here to me. I only teach it in my homeschool because I have to. I am not a math person. And what I meant was, I don't like that. I was never good at that. I never understood it, okay?

So you're better than me, you're better than me. - No, I start, I don't. Now I have the vocabulary to be noble. But no, at the time, I was sitting in the mire. - Okay, 'cause I want listeners, if you were sitting out there thinking, yeah, when I say I'm not a math person, I mean, I don't like it, I don't want to like it, I don't want you to help me like it, all that stuff, okay?

So we are you. We have all walked that path. But I think you really hit on something true, Jill. When we look at why we're not an art person or why we're not a math person, it's because we feel ill-equipped to deal with those subjects ourselves. And if we feel ill-equipped to enjoy them and explore them for ourselves, we really feel ill-equipped to lead our children to have any kind of different relationship with those subjects than we have.

- Right, because-- - So we redeemed it. - Exactly, we think, well, it was miserable for me, and so sorry to go, it's gonna be miserable for you too. Here you go. - Right, hate to burst your bubble, this is what it's like, okay? And I knew that I didn't want to pass that on, but before I started going to CC Practicums, I really didn't see any other options.

I didn't know, I did not know how to redeem these subjects for myself. - So what helped you? How did you become a reformed-- - Yes. - Knot person? - Right, that is a great thing. I'm no longer a knot. - Yes, yes. - So I would say that as I came to Practicums and learned more things, I definitely learned to love learning as an adult much more, but honestly, it was those five core habits.

- Huh, okay. - Yes, it really was. The year we came out with the five core habits, I remember there was a slide on the Practicum that had a piece of art, a work, a painting, and there was, if I'm remembering correctly, there was maybe some people either about to fight or had just fought, and there were women over there on the stairs, and there were different colors, and there were some columns that looked ancient, but I remember looking at that piece of art and thinking, all I know is whether I like it or don't like it, and I'm ready to click to the next slide, and here we're gonna actually talk about it for a few minutes.

And so just name the things you can see, and I think, well, I can do that. That's a man, that's a woman, that's a sword, that's a wall, that's a tapestry. Okay, name the colors you see. Okay, great, I know my colors. That's red, well, maybe I don't know my colors 'cause it's that one over there.

What color would you call that, you know? - Right, right. - And so then looking closer, and well, do you see any shadows? Oh my, yes, I do. There's someone in the shadow over there. So that ending and looking closer, and then does it remind you of anything? Well, yes, it can remind me of ancient stories where there were sword fights or women who were either cheering or moaning because the fight was about to happen.

Or maybe it was the lightsaber thing my kids did in the backyard last week. - Yes, yes. - It doesn't have to only be ancient stories. It could be from fiction, from nonfiction, from biblical, from our own experience. And then what story might we tell? Well, I did consider myself a language person.

So my dad told us stories growing up. And so for me to think, oh, well, could I make up a story for this? Well, yes, and I could make it a silly story. I don't even have to make it a good story, you know, publishable story. It could just be one my children and I would enjoy.

Or can I read about it and learn the story behind it? And then how else might I express it? Well, for me, day one might be stick figures. Or we could pose, you know, pose, or we could write a poem about it. So just that gave me enough to think, all right, I can now look at any piece of art and I at least know where to start.

I think I didn't know where to start. Yeah, so that was huge. And then not long after that, we actually took a week to go to DC as a family. And some friends of ours also went the same week and she was an art major. And so just to follow up from what I'd learned about art, she said, "Okay, look at some of these pieces of art "because there's too much to see in one week.

"Just see which ones you like the best "and then spend your time in that hall." And so that-- - That's a great suggestion. - It really was, 'cause there was just no way to do all-- - You get overwhelmed. You are easily overwhelmed. - Oh, yes, well, and some of us naturally, easily.

(all laughing) And I, and it just so happened, and I know it feels that I'm just the same as everybody else, but I really do love Van Gogh. And so that he, his exhibits were there the week we were there. His was the year that his was coming through and it happened to be there.

And there were probably 20 or 30 of his original works there. And I knew where to start. So I could go-- - Oh, yes. - And my family gave me space to not be rushed. It was really the only, I just said, "I just have this one, like an hour or two here." And they were, "Absolutely, take your hour or two." And they wandered and did other things, but I could ponder and look.

And it was so life-giving to have learned how to start and what to think and what questions to ask myself. And it changed everything for me about art and about how I see myself. I no longer thought that I do not belong in an art conversation. - That is huge.

That is huge. I absolutely love that. You belong in the conversation. And listeners, parents, whoever you are, if you're listening, isn't that what we want most? To be able to be part of the conversation. And when we say, "I'm not an art person, "I'm not a math person," what we usually mean is, "I don't think I can talk to you about this "because I don't know where to start.

"I don't know what to say. "I don't know how to respond. "I feel lost." And so for you to be able to say, "You know what? "I belong in this conversation "and here's where I started "and here's where I'm going. "Let me talk to you about that." And be able to appreciate not only the art, but to appreciate your part in the conversation is huge.

- Exactly. And then knowing those five core habits equipped me to do the same thing with math. - Yes! Yes, because math is art. - Oh, wow. - There's shapes. - We're gonna have to sit with that one for a minute. - Right. Think about those symbols. I mean, it's all symbols.

Numbers. Think about why would we even have different fonts on our keyboard if it didn't matter what your four looks like? Why would you choose your wedding invitation to have at whatever o'clock written with this certain font if that didn't speak beauty to you? Why would you want your child not to have a big piece of messy blobs of ink if it didn't look nice when those numbers were ordered?

There is such satisfaction in numbers and letters and they're all combined in math, which is super exciting. So, I mean, in a good way. To know the code, to look at what those things mean and how you can write them. And then, we all have different handwriting. So, my symbol for division is going to look a little different than my child's symbol for division, but we know what they mean.

- Wow. - And then sometimes, you know, I learned in the Math Mat Workshops to, now I cross my sevens. And it has- - Oh, so they don't look like ones. - Right, because I had a lot of that happening and all my life. And even with my own children's, sometimes you can misread your own work and then you start multiplying the wrong thing and you don't know how you got the answer.

- And you can pull the breadcrumbs back because you turned one of them into a piece of cake. - Exactly. And now you're not talking about the right thing anymore. So, you have equivocated. - Yes, yes. So, the idea not only is math art, but it is a story.

I loved when I could see a math principle and find God in it, but I still didn't feel like a math person because I wasn't strong in calculations. So, I saw myself as a person who enjoyed seeing God in things, like maybe the distributive law. And I could say, oh, you know, we're all in this parentheses, but God on the outside is this number that is being multiplied by everything in the parentheses.

And it takes a long time to say all that if you don't have the right vocabulary. It takes a long time to say math things when you don't know the names of the parts. And so, looking at math from a grammar point of view, using the five core habits helps us learn the right names for the right parts.

And so, our children can learn the difference in parentheses, brackets, and braces, braces, not braces, when I didn't really know. I didn't, I would have to review. And it was so simple, but to teach our youngest students the difference in that, just like we would teach our youngest children at home, the difference in maybe different kinds of tools in the garage.

What's the difference between a metric and a standard wrench or what's the difference in the kitchen between a teaspoon and a tablespoon or all these things that they learn the vocabulary for. And so, knowing to be able to name the parts of any expression or equation is a great place to start, even if I can't calculate everything.

And so, I can appreciate what I do know. And I'm again, invited to this table and I am again, invited to a conversation where I do know something. - That is really cool. - Something. - Yes, and I love that. I love that jump that you made from the art, feeling like I can't be part of the conversation to the math, because a lot of us feel that way about math too.

And I know a lot of listeners who have heard that this year it's the MathMap practicum have already decided, okay, A, it's math and I'm not a math person. And B, it's the MathMap and nobody in my house is gonna be using the MathMap this year. And so, maybe I'll just save my practicum time and do something else that day.

So, we are here to say, don't do that. You've now heard that just those classical skills, that the five core habits of grammar are such an eye-opening way to come into the conversation about math. Even if you feel like you're not a math person, you may discover that you can join the conversation when you do the things like Jill was just describing.

Learn to name what you see, a number and a numeral and different shapes and different symbols. If you can begin to name what you see, then you can enter into the conversation. You're talking, you're using the right language and you know what those words mean. And so, you are able to participate and become a math person.

But Jill, the kinds of things that you were talking about with art, like giving yourself time to look at things and to notice differences and to just do, like you're not getting ready to paint the great, the next thing that they're gonna put in the Louvre. You're not thinking that.

You are saying, how is this painting like the one beside of it? - Yes. - And what colors have been used and are there any brush strokes and are there shadow? You're just comparing and you are naming things. It gives me hope that people who would still to this moment say, I'm not a math person, could enter into the conversation by just looking at a page in the Math Map and just saying, what looks familiar to you and what doesn't look familiar to you?

Is that the kind of thing we're gonna be doing at the Math Map Practicum this year? - Yes, we will definitely be doing some of those things. We will be slowing down from the stress of calculate all this correctly now without a calculator and you need to get it right or you're not a math person into look at these colors, look how they overlap, what might that say about the different kinds of numbers we're working with?

Or that's in the, at the very beginning, they're gonna talk about what you'll hear. You'll hear about the domains, which are the kinds of numbers that we use. And if you think about domain, like you might say, well, my domain is the yard. I'm in charge of everything. I do the landscaping, I do the mowing, one person in your family might be their domain.

Another's domain might be the kitchen. Another's domain might be all the IT. Another's domain, the things that they're in charge of. - Right, okay. - And so if we say the domain of natural numbers or the domain of fractions, the domain of, well, complex numbers, lots of different domains, but the simple, the ones we might be most familiar with hearing would be natural or integer or fraction, and it can expand from there.

But they're all kinds of numbers. So if you were doing this giant stair-step layering, you'd have a big category of numbers and then you'd have subcategories and they narrow. So those domains we'll be looking at, they have different colors that correspond. You'll see that at practicum. So we'll just be looking, look at this, look at these colors, look at where they overlap, look at the categories there are.

And even that, it might feel like you're not doing math, but we are, we are learning how to categorize numbers and how to think about numbers in groups. - So we'll actually get to look at the math map and see how it's constructed and how it's put together. And we'll begin to bend our minds around this new system of learning math as a family.

So we're gonna see it. Okay, so guys, listen, that is one reason to go. Even if nobody in your house is gonna be using it in the fall, what a wonderful thing to get in on the ground floor, 'cause how can you join the conversation if you don't even know anything about what you're talking about?

And so being able, so at practicum this year, you're gonna be able to see the math map and how it's laid out and get a feel for the way we're gonna study math together as a family. - Yes, I think the big shifts that will occur, but it might take some, it'll take some laying down of something and some picking up of other things.

So for instance, if we want to, I think, enjoy math the way, more organically, and I don't mean without assessment. When I say organic, I mean, we still need to be marking what we have learned. But I think pulling the calculations into its own category and understanding that is one part of math.

But grammar is a valuable part of math. And comparison of two kinds of equations is a valuable part of math. And having a conversation about where we see God in math is a valuable part of math. And understanding the equation we're looking at and what dimension that is possible is a valuable part of math.

And if we only, I think we shortchange ourself. When we focus only on calculations and we skip or brush past, because there's a test waiting, there's standardized tests waiting. And so we think I need to know these calculations. And the most we branch away from that is for a word problem.

But not to really think through the pondering of math, the joy of math, the discovery of math. And I think it's gonna take a little bit of willingness to de-stress. - Okay, I'm hearing things like that. All right, y'all who are listening with me, I am hearing a lot of things that make me believe I might have some stuff to unlearn.

And to shed, and I think it's gonna make me lighter. I'm gonna be able to travel along the math map better without some of that stuff hanging onto me. But I hear what you're saying. It's gonna take us a while to get comfortable learning math in this old way.

But I absolutely loved what you said. We're gonna be introduced to the grammar of math that is deeper and before calculations ever need to become part of our equation. If you'll pardon all those puns. And we're gonna be introduced to the grammar of math and encouraged to both see and be part of the bigger conversation.

And that's gonna require us to slow down and stop seeing math as an end in itself. - Yes. - That is part of a greater conversation that God is trying to draw us into. - Yes, because it's fun. It's fun to learn new things without, I think sometimes maybe we only think that the value of learning math is to pass a test or to use it.

But nobody feels that way, or maybe some do. We often don't feel that way about reading. We don't think, well, if I'm not going to read Homer, I guess I don't need to learn how to say these words. No, we still want to know how to read words. Or maybe now that I have learned that I do belong in the art conversation, I don't feel that I shouldn't enjoy art and play with art if I'm not going to be an artist.

- An artist, oh wow. - And maybe I am an artist. Maybe just putting stuff on the plate a little neater makes me an artist. Maybe lining up my math letters and numbers a little differently makes me an artist. Maybe arranging how I set up my workspace makes me an artist.

Maybe I'm a mathematician because I have two lungs and I have one heart and I have arms and legs and parts that I can count and pathways that I can follow in my veins. And I can look at the trees and I can see where things intersect and I can follow the power lines and see that they're parallel, but they're curved.

And all those things are so rich. And I don't think God wants us to miss noticing. So we can take, it's not only to pass the test, but it's also just to enrich us as people. - I will tell you, here's the truth. I have been, in the spirit of full disclosure, I have been attending these MathMap book clubs over the last several months.

And I will tell you that I had reformed. I was no longer saying things out loud like I am not a math person. I had stopped saying that stuff. But until, and it was several weeks in to the book club before I really thought, you know, math could actually potentially possibly be fun, okay?

And it took me, okay, me, classical educator, it took me several, it took me, oh my gosh, more than a handful of attendances before I thought, before I kind of relaxed my shoulder muscles and stopped looking for, but do I already understand all about this? And I relaxed and thought, oh my word, this could be fun.

And the last several ones, even when we got into deep stuff, like, you know, imaginary numbers and derivatives. And like, I thought when she, when we started talking about that on the book club, I thought, yeah, I have stopped having fun now. But then when I listened and I thought, oh, wait, I think, I think I see something I never saw before.

That is so interesting. And I remember thinking, if I had had the math map, I might potentially have enjoyed calculus. I have never had that thought in my life before last week, okay, but the math map, y'all, is different. If you will give yourself to the process and listen, all those of you who think, I don't want to see this math map thing.

I don't want to know a new way of doing math. I can barely do the old way of doing math. You just need to let go and take a deep breath and fall. You need to go to practicum so that you can see what math education can be. And I don't mean educating your children.

I mean, educating yourself, because once you start playing with numbers, the way we have taught ourselves to play with words and you start having fun with it, and you start asking different kinds of questions, your kids are going to want in on this. - Yes. - It looks way more fun.

- That happened to us. I was in the pilot. - Really? - Yes, I was in the pilot with my youngest son, who is now in challenge two, and he was in the challenge A pilot. And my older son, who was in challenge one or two at the time, saw us doing math together and said, "Hey, can I do this with you?" And if we had a question, we'd be working through things and he'd sit down.

And so I pulled him off of Saxon and he did the math math with us at home, even though he was not a challenge A student. - Right. - He loved it, loved it. In fact, he kept doing mostly complex. He's done for his high school career, he has done the complex several times, and he did the "Understanding Mathematics" book one year because I thought, well, you know, you're still doing this same level of math and let's just see.

He did that whole book one year for his math curriculum. We dabbled in a little bit of Saxon just to see, but he had what he needed. And now he works for an engineering firm and he did not go to college. It's open to him if he wants to, but he worked with my husband in an engineering firm and he has the math he needs and more.

He grew, we grew, I grew. And I've heard so many times from being a part of this math pilot, so many tutors who were in the pilot said that if they were looking at the complex, which is the level for challenge A that's rolling out this year nationwide, that's the level that was piloted for multiple years now.

If they would look at that and they thought, oh, I don't think I quite get it. They would go to the naturals, which is online free. - Yes, yes. - Look at those pages and after just tracing, and I don't mean just as in minimizing it. I mean, the more simple approach of decluttering and tracing and naming that you find in the naturals, they would have an aha moment and they'd say, oh, now I know exactly what to do in the complex pages.

And so just, and again, not just in a minimizing way, but in a more simple approach, but taking the time to look at a narrower domain of the natural numbers, looking at those pages, tracing, copying, and making comparisons, looking to see what connections and patterns they saw, they could then go to the complex pages.

So that is why no matter what level you choose to do, even if you have a child who's not in challenge A, then do the complex. Even if you have a child going into challenge A, do the naturals, do them. And they're rolling out more than one online free this year.

You can download them, you can use them. They won't have all the resources that you're paying for when you buy the complex level, but there is enough to trace, copy, watch the book clubs, learn about it. I mean, you can look up a definition online too, if you don't have everything.

The CDC has never said we are the only authority and you cannot walk out of this. So you can do that, but there's even a glossary online. There's an audio glossary online. If you don't know how to read the equation. So there's so much equipping there. I did the naturals and it's so valuable.

It's incredibly valuable. - That's so good, Jill. It's so good. What I want people to hear, two things, your absolute enthusiasm for the MathMap and our invitation to meet the MathMap at practicum this year. We really want you all to commit to coming to practicum this year. Whether or not you think you're a math person, whether or not your family is going to be using the MathMap in challenge A or piloting another level or using the free other levels that you have online, even if you don't have any intention of experiencing the MathMap in community or at home this year, practicum is a great time for you to meet the MathMap.

And here's the thing. I think it's really important for us to play with numbers and to immerse ourselves in the MathMap when we're together. Why is it so important to do this in community, Jill? - Well, there's a conversation that takes place in community and we draw on each other's strengths.

I'm a challenge A tutor this year and my class will often say, why is it so easy in community? - Oh. - You know, whether it's the Latin, whether it's the math, whatever it is. And I say, well, are you talking about it at home or are you just sitting there doing it?

Because if we expect our children and ourselves to sit there in a little, I mean, when I went to private school in high school, the first year was just these little cubbies with dividers. That was not even a zero amount of fun. We were on the negative end of the number line for the amount of fun I was having.

We needed snacks to bring me up to zero, you know? - Yes. - Right? And so we didn't, if you don't have a conversation, you're just by yourself. And how are you going to draw on another strength? You only come with what you've got. And so when another person can go, oh, well, what about, or have you seen, or oh, look at this, it sparks more things.

And for adults to do that, when we do it, we can maybe understand a little more why our children need it. If we don't do it, we put expectations on our children that we don't put on ourselves sometimes. And we want to be on a team to accomplish something, but then we might think our child needs to just work alone.

Well, some of us work well alone and some of us don't, but we just, we need to experience a little of what they might be doing. For instance, I did Memory Master one year, actually several years. - Oh, good for you. - I did with my youngest son, he wanted to do it.

So he and I did it together three years in a row. And I will tell you that doing Memory Master with actual expectation that I need to prove this and get it right was very different than me preparing my child for Memory Master. - Yes, good for you. That's a great, that's a great injunction for us to go to practicum.

We're actually doing what it is we're gonna be encouraging our children to do. - If we don't know what it feels like for them to look at it and to compare or to remember to be asked questions, then we can sometimes think, oh, you can do this, just do it, it's not that hard.

- Right, we don't realize how hard it is. You're right, you are exactly right about that. The other reason, the other thing I think that we will absolutely learn from doing the math map at practicum together is it's gonna take some time for us to break our bad math habits.

The habit that says, I look at that and I don't know the full backstory, so there's absolutely no value in me practicing this or tracing this or observing it or attending to it 'cause I don't know what it means. That's a bad habit that we need to break. And we can break it together at practicum.

We can simply trace or simply observe or simply attend to differences or simply compare and recognize after we do that that, you know, we actually have gleaned something valuable for that, from that, even though we did not solve a problem and get an answer for every page of math we did.

Right, we've learned to break that habit with history, with science, with English and Latin grammar in foundations. We don't expect our child to be able to tell us the causes of a war. We just teach them the song that has the dates in it and who the leaders were.

And we're totally fine with that, knowing that later they're gonna read about it. So maybe we can do the same thing with math. Maybe we can say, okay, let's count two dots and two flowers and maybe two pi with theme coming off the top and then maybe two symbols of pi.

- This is, it's really amazing. I really, listeners, I really am, I want to encourage you to go to the Math Map because it is so fundamentally changed the way I think about math education. And man, I'm a hard sell. And I am planning, I am planning as a grownup, as a grandma, to go back and redeem my math education even more than a classical education with my children has redeemed it so that I am ready to fully love and explore math with my grandkids.

And that's why I want you to come to practicum. Jill, why do you want people to come to the Math Map practicum this year? - Well, aside from the incredible joy that math is waiting to give all of us, well, God is, through math, it really is another chance for us to practice those classical skills, which we do in any topic.

Whether it was history, literature, Latin, math, it's a great refresher for what the actual tools that we have are and how to use them. And when we practice it in one area, it can refresh us in every area. So the classical side is obviously a great time to come and practice those skills, even if maybe the topic isn't one that appeals to you right off the bat, but it can open new doors.

You might, it's like trying a new restaurant that maybe you didn't think you wanted to try. And I'm famous for that because I love to repeat what I love and I don't like trying new things. - Yes. - And all my friends know that. (laughing) They have to drag me to new places.

And then I buy the most familiar thing I can find on the menu instead of branching out. (laughing) - So you're encouraging us to branch out. That's great. - Come to a new restaurant, try a new thing. But the good news is we actually want you to look for what's familiar.

We're not asking anyone-- - Oh, that's so good. - To totally try the most absurd thing, but we're saying what's familiar to you and let's start from there. - That is awesome. That is awesome. So you guys come to the MathMap Practicum this year. You will discover how to meet God in math.

You will discover how to redeem your math education. You will discover how to introduce your kids to the skills of learning and how to employ them on math in a way you probably never thought of before. You will discover how to enter the math conversation and maybe realize that you in fact might be a math person.

I hope we'll see you there. Jill, thank you so much for sharing your enthusiasm for becoming a math person with all of us. I appreciate that. - I'm glad to do it. - Guys, I hope that you will enjoy the rest of this gorgeous spring day. I have a book recommendation for you.

It just seems like the perfect thing as I look out into my backyard where everything is blooming and the woods seem so inviting to me. Have you guys ever read "The Secret Garden"? It was made for a day like this, but I mostly want to let you know that one of our newest Copper Lodge Library editions is "The Secret Garden." It is a beloved classic novel and the Copper Lodge Library edition has footnotes that will define some unfamiliar words for you, will give your kids pronunciations of words that maybe they've seen before, but never known how to say.

It will give you historical context. There's all kinds of helps in the Copper Lodge Library edition of "The Secret Garden" that will make your family's reading of it richer than ever before. There's some great illustrations in there, there are wide margins so you can jot down notes, just like you're really talking to the author.

"The Secret Garden" is a great book for the springtime, but it's a great book for families who are looking for Christian themes to talk about, themes like love and redemption and the importance of community. So if you're looking for a great read aloud after you get through playing with numbers this spring and summer, check out the Copper Lodge Library edition of "The Secret Garden." And if you want more information about the Copper Lodge Library and to see what other titles we offer, go to copperlodgelibrary.com.

All right, listeners, go and learn something new with your family today. See you next time.