Encyclopedia

Since our first son was old enough to ask questions about anything and everything, I began encouraging my husband to help our son find the answers to his questions by first looking in one our books before turning to the internet.  I know the internet is a great resource but I wanted our children to think of books as a resource as well and there is just something different about having a book in your hands as opposed to looking at a computer screen.  My husband agreed and would look for answers in a picture dictionary that we have.  He began complaining though after he tried to use the dictionary and three times in a row the thing he was looking for wasn't there (a picture of a groundhog for instance).
We started looking for a better picture dictionary.  As we were doing this we both remembered having encyclopedia sets in our homes when we were growing up and loving to look through them.  Many of our friends shared similar memories when we were discussing our delimma with them.
So, we decided to buy an encyclopedia set for our home.  A quick investigation showed that a new set was not within our financial means.  There are several thrift stores in our area so be decided to look there.  Our first trip out we found a set that was only five years old and most of the books were still shrink wrapped.  We were able to purchase the entire set for $10.

We brought the books home, made room on a bookshelf and our oldest set them up in alphabetical order singing his ABC song.  We now use the encyclopedia set on a very regular basis and usually ending up finding out so much more than the answer to our original question.  The best part for me has been when our 3 1/2 year old was asking a question about firefighters and his face lit up as he joyfully said, "I know.  I will go get the F."