Our Schoolroom Set-up

This week the {Not} Back to School Bloghop is featuring school rooms, so I have decided to follow suit and showcase our Schoolroom. I have just spent the summer organizing both curriculum and our new Schoolroom (formerly our formal living room which sat untouched). The room we are using is right inside our front door.

It is the first room people see when they enter our house, but I think we can keep it neat and not scare everyone off. Linebacker is snooping out the window as usual. It was important to me that we have lots of natural light and can see outside, but we live on a court so there won't be too much traffic to distract us. It is also separated enough from the rest of the house to eliminate other distractions. Here is a view of the whole room from the entrance of our house:

As soon as you enter our room, we have our Homeschool Vision posted on the wall (and apparently we forgot to put the plate back on the switch).

My husband and I sat down and answered some questions and then came together to compare answers and that is how our vision was put together. I wanted to hang it somewhere to remind us, as we enter/exit the room, of why we are doing this....especially on those challenging days.

In the middle of the room sit our desks. I wanted something where we were all together since my kids aren't readers yet and independent work is a few years off still. At the same time, I went with separate desks so that, down the road when they are working more separately we can move them around to different areas of the room.

. The kids each have their own desk, and until Boy Wonder needs his, I'm using it. We have these desks from Ikea (got them on a sale promotion, woohoo!) The chairs are also from Ikea (again, price reduction FTW!). In the main drawer on their desks is their daily learning binder, Dude's geo binder (didn't fit in the cupboard) and their pencil cases.

In the smaller drawer are their Bibles and handwriting binders:

and in the cupboards are their subject workbooks. Dude's cupboard has his Math U See on the top shelf, Bible colouring book and then dry erase board on the bottom, Strawberry has her Bible colouring book, cookie tray and dry erase board in hers.

Opposite the window is a built in bench my husband made a few years ago. We have made it a reading nook of sorts. We used dog beds from Costco as cushions since it was much cheaper then actually getting the real thing.

In this area I have Strawberry's All About Reading Uppercase Poster, All About Reading progress charts, our World Map, a poster I made for reading comprehension, and the ABC character cards that go with The ABCs of Godly Children.

On the long wall I have 2 big shelving units. One is a Martha Stewart Collection from Home Depot and the other is the Expedit from Ikea. These shelving units store every else we use, or will use, or just have. Our Bible and commentary collection alone take up 2 shelves ;) and that's without the 4 in our desks.

On another shelf is all my teacher's manuals that are currently in use, and beside them are the student books that aren't used everyday but are used quite a bit.

These shelves also store all of our "busy bag" style materials. I found these great containers at Target (again, on sale one week) to store everything in.

On another shelf is more of the All About Reading stuff. This one features our review and cards boxes as well as Ziggy!

These shelves are separated into categories (I'm a bit of an organization junkie) and are the extra and complimentary resources for some of our learning. One shelf is math, another Language, Bible/Preschool, and Science/Geography.

On top of these shelving units is where I have our Betty Luken's Bible in Felt resources (they are big and just don't fit anywhere else).

Beside the shelving is where I have some wall storage, and things we hang up. I have the workbox schedules:

Independent worksheets and activity pages:

I have them stored in file envelopes I picked up at Costco last year and then in a wall file pocket chart I got from Scholar's Choice a few years ago. They are sorted by type: Patterns, Numbers, Math, Counting, Alphabet tracing, etc.

Under the window is Dude's All About Reading/Spelling tile board:

Under the other side of the window is our workbox carts, I'm not sure exactly how we will use these yet, but I think I'll be putting in the daily supplies for activities and books they need to work on that are not in their desks already.

On the last half wall we have our morning learning book activities and the whiteboard and chalkboard for copywork.

Well, that's our schoolroom. I can't wait to get in here in a couple short weeks and get going, the kids are eager to start to. I just have a few last minute details to organize and we will be ready to go!


For His Glory!

I am linking up with the {Not} Back to School BlogHop, check it out!

Looking ahead

I have spent the last few weeks getting things planned and in order for the fall. I am really excited to do more formal schooling with Strawberry in addition to Dude and have 2 kids to work with everyday. I have a lot of thoughts for this coming school year, and I think we will have a lot more intensity this year. This year kind of worked as our prep year to get the kids used to doing some formal activities and to start some scheduled times during our day.

I have laid out all my plans and here they are:


I have laid out a plan of action for each child. Daddy and I have to have, what I hope will become, our annual goal setting meeting. We will sit down and make a plan for each child as to what we hope they will accomplish in the coming school year and set some goals for each.

Our plans:

* Contiue using our Children Desiring God curriculum with Dude and Strawberry and include Linebacker informally.

* Continue using Math U See Primer with Dude

* Teach Strawberry to recognize and write her numbers, if accomplished start her on MUS Primer

* I took the plunge and ordered All About Learning Press curriculum last night (already got the shipping notice this morning!!!). Dude will be using All About Reading level 1 and All About Spelling level 1. Strawberry will be using All About Reading pre-reading level. Now, I just have to wait patiently for it to arrive....and check the tracking obsessively.

* I plan to use The ABCs for Godly Children (which was included in one of the e-bundles I've purchased) for Dude and Strawberry.

* I am going to use Expedition Earth (all included in the e-bundle) to help teach some geography

* I want to work through a book list with the kids and have some comprehension questions to go with them.

* There was a good resource in an e-bundle I have about notebooking, and so that is in the plan as well.

* I am going to work in some LOTW and RRSP activities for Strawberry.

* I want to prep some lapbook games and busy bags for their workboxes as well. That way I can plan one child doing a game/activity independantly while I work more intensely with the other one.

* I am also going to try to have a bit of a totschool routine with Linebacker

* I want to include Darlene's prayer cards for children into our morning prayer time. I have them printed and 1/2 cutout, just need to laminate and put on a ring for each child.


I can't wait! I have a lot to do to prep for the year, but I am an organizing junkie who loved school, so that shouldn't be hard for me. I am so excited to get in our new schoolroom with all our new plans and start....Hopefully the kids will be excited, too.


For His Glory!

Homeschool Schedule mid-year changes.

After an extended Christmas break....okay, okay, November until the middle of January type extended break, we are back at it! I took the week before we started up again to re-evaluate our plans and the things we were doing and decided we needed to change things up a little.

We started the year out with this schedule that I blogged about back in September: Our Homeschool Learning, but are now on a new schedule and it seems to be going great so far!

The 1st change I made was to scrap the calendar binders, honestly they got boring and old quick. We now just start by putting the date up on our calendar

Each day we just add the date, and then say the day and month. This is what we are using as our calendar. I just created and laminated the month cards and the number cards myself, and did a different theme for every month.

After we do the date, we pray. This is something I didn't think to add to our schedule in September. The kids each take a turn thanking Jesus for things, usually for Daddy's work, his safety at work, and hoping for a good time with school today.

After our prayer time we sing a song. I try to find it on YouTube to play and we sing along. Today we did "Our God is an Awesome God". They are just learning these songs and are not able to sing a long very well right now but they love it and I think they will know the songs soon enough!

Next we do our Bible memory verse. KDude (age 5) memorizes the verse he is supposed to for Sunday School each week and Strawberry (age 3) is memorizing the verses that I ordered with our Bible curriculum. They are both excellent at doing this and Strawberry surprises a lot of people when she recites a verse complete with correct reference at 3 years old. We do 1 verse a week and it seems to be exactly the right pace for both of them. Once they are readers there is so much more we could do during this time.

After we do our memory work it is on to what they call "Bible Time".

We are still using the same curriculum we started with, which was Children Desiring God's "He Established a Testimony". The only change we have made in the Bible teaching time is that I have complimented this curriculum with Betty Luken's Bible in Felt. It is a little pricey but will be used for so long that it is completely worth it. Just get ready to cut! The 600+ pieces it advertises.....you cut each one of them out. This has really helped engage the kids during the story, instead of trying to picture it for themselves they remember because of the visuals. This week's lesson is about Abraham and Sarah and the birth of Isaac.

The next subject we move on to is Math. We are still using Math-U-See's Primer. On Monday's we watch the video of Steve instructing the week's lesson

Then there are 6 worksheets pages per lesson and we just divide those up through the week. Dude did the first one for this week today, we are doing the first lesson on addition!

We finish off everyday with our Language lessons. Dude has now mastered his letters upper and lowercase. He knows which upper goes with which lowercase letter. He can write them all, and he can find them if I call them out. So, we have moved on to the sounds they make in preparation for reading. I found an amazing site to help with this (and more advanced stuff too). It is Starfall. We have just started with 3 letters per day, and he works through them himself and checks them off on his list as he completes each one. We will likely repeat this cycle a few times until he really gets it.

There you have it. Our new homeschool day. This is the reason I love homeschool, we can just change anything at anytime to make it suit us. This schedule is going really well and we are really learning a lot with it. YAY! So, we will continue like this....until its time to freshen it up again, that is.


For His Glory!

Our Homeschool Learning

After years of looking for and researching curriculum choices it was finally time to decide to actually order something. This actually felt quite overwhelming, I was so concerned that I needed to make the right choices and now there was a lot of pressure.

Daddy is extremely supportive of homeschooling our children, but is more of a pick what you want and than just let me know kind of person. So, really it was all up to me to find something that would work. I looked into so many different things and couldn't decide what to go with.

I asked my really good friend what she was planning to use this year (her kids are slightly older than each of mine) and she gave some great ideas that I thought could also work for us. So, here is what we have gone with (we are only 1 week in, so things could change):

We start out with a calendar binder. I got this idea from 1+1+1=1

They write out the date on the calendar, trace the day and month, graph the weather conditions, the temperature and fill out our 100 days of school tally. They really enjoy doing this part.

Next we do our Bible time. I chose to go with Children Desiring God's He Established A Testimony. It is meant for Sunday School classes but is easily adapted to a weekly format by me.
This curriculum will take us through the entire Old Testament and than there is another one to go through the New Testament. This week the kids worked on Creation and put together a creation timeline.

Next was time for Math. I (with a suggestion from my friend) went with Math-U-See's Primer. It is great so far and I can really see it being the perfect fit. We watched the first lesson on the DVD:

And then Dude does his lesson in the workbook (he really enjoys using the manipulatives:

The next thing we do is Language Arts. Right now, because Dude has mastered writing his letters and is working on lowercase, I decided to add in some sight words using the Dolch Word List (something I had never even heard of until my friend mentioned it).
This week our words were "a" and "and". I am amazed at how well he has grasped these. I sent him to find them in a book the other day and he did very well! Although, I never thought about it before, when I wrote out his cards with the sight words I used a regular "a" and in most books it has the old typeface one. I will have to pay more attention to this.

Lastly, we are doing Science. Kind of. I am just finding a science topic he is interested in and than each day we are doing a science experiment about it. Last week, Dude was facinated by the fog one morning and wondering where it comes from. This led us into the concept of evaporation. So...this week science has been about evaporation! We did our first experiment, pouring water outside and tracing around it to watch it evaporate.
Before:

and our After:

All in all we are having a great time and accomplishing everything we have set out to accomplish. School is taking us about 45 minutes to an hour each day. Not long in time but we are learning as much as I'm sure they are learning at school in the 6 1/2 hours the kids are there. So, we spend in a week about 4-5 hours doing "school" (less time than most kids are there in a single day) but that's the joy of homeschooling! I have realized that there is only so much that Dude can retain in a day. If we try to do too much he won't understand anything, so we do just enough that he is constantly learning. That is only the actual scheduled sit-down learning time, we are constantly teaching/learning all day at home.

They are also learning to be contributing members to our famiy by completing jobs around the house. At age 4 1/2 Dude is now the "vacuum guy" and he is very good at it! He doesn't miss a thing! I am so proud that they are learning so much more than just "school stuff". Strawberry is learning to do laundry, she is my little homemaker in training.

I love Homeschooling!!!!!!!!!



For His Glory!