School Room Updates

Hello there remember me? I am rejoining the blog world after a nice long break. Even if it was unintentional. Between traveling to my brothers for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Epiphany, sickness,  and life in general time just disappeared.

I thought I would show you one of the biggest things I have been working on the past couple of weeks. Our School Room and office! This room is rather small for 5 people to be in all day so having a place for everything is so important. I have been sorting, purging, and organizing and I am finally finished! It is so nice to be completely done! (Well unless we don’t move and then I will make more permanent changes)

Much is still the same. The buffet stores extra school games, science supplies, and the kindergarten stuff. On top of that is the children’s workbox. It holds their work books, Awana books, and other things they want to keep there. Hence the curtain it’s never neat and I can’t stand the mess!

On the top is office supplies, rulers, pencils, paint brushes, etc.

 

This is the other side of  the room. It has seen the most change. I added the expedit shelf from IKEA to gain more storage and the file holders from Ballard designs.

 

My brother and his wife gave us the map for Christmas. It just happens to be the perfect size to fit above the shelf, and perfect for our state studies. We had to switch to a dry erase board from the chalk due to allergies. I do miss my old board! The boxes on the bottom hold taxes, files, office supplies, and play dough. The basket is one that my husband made and the handle was broken. It now works perfectly for all of our flashcards.

My binders fit perfectly on the shelf. We use most of these daily.

I still love the jars of markers, crayons, and paint out of reach. I do keep some on the table within reach now that my youngest is 5, but I love having them up high as it keeps the messes controlled!

We store our science and history notebooks in these files where they are easy to access everyday.

This is my little corner or the Teacher’s desk and office.

Even the inside of the closet got organized! We keep our office supplies in here along with the printer and shredder. I like that my printer does not get as dusty sitting in the closet. My laminator sits on the top shelf along with more CD storage and school projects. The puzzles and games are on the next shelf. The middle shelf holds our paper and printer. The bottom shelf holds our state notebooks, computer supply storage and our file box of prepped lessons. Now when my husband comes in the room he doesn’t have to ask me where anything is, its all easy to locate!

So there you have the new and improved school room office. I don’t mind spending our days in here now that it is organized!

Who says school has to start in September?

That’s a good question I have as my title up there. Who says school has to start in September? The government? Our neighbors? The public schools? Or is is because that’s what we did growing up? Last year when I was so sick I realized that there was no reason to be stressing my self out over trying to do it all. Because if there is one thing I learned well from being ill; I CAN”T DO IT ALL. So I stopped the one thing that I could and that was school in September. Just because that’s what everyone else does does not mean it’s a good thing for our family.

Now don’t think that means we just do one month less than everyone else. No, I still have 180 days a year that I must comply with. It just means we school on a different time frame. I call it the agrarian calendar. It’s the same one our ancestors followed and it follows the harvest. Before the Industrial Revolution when life in America was more rural children were needed on the farm to work. That meant that they went to school in the summer and winter and not in the spring and fall. There would have been to many chores with planting, harvesting, calving and the like. School back then usually started in November.

For our family we start in October, or after the apples are harvested and turned in to sauce and cider. We do not live on a farm so the garden is our only work and we also do not have any animals, save for our indoor cat. This is our first year following this type of school year fully. Last year was a an attempt to see how it would work. It turns out it’s one of the best decisions we made about our school schedule.

I can tell you that it is so nice not to have to worry about book learning or seat work during the harvest. I can focus all of my attention on the tasks for the day and the children are all pitching in where they can to help. I LOVE that fact that we get to enjoy the best parts of summer as our off times. September is the best summer has to offer, cooler temperatures and sunny days. I can also tell you that I am probably the only one in my area following this plan. So when I run out for an errand at 10:00 in the morning I get even more stares and questions than usual. But best of all we are still learning and working together as a family without the added stress of one more thing.

Breakfast at the park

The other day were had a scheduled showing at 10:00 in the morning. This happens to be right smack in the middle of our school day. As I was thinking of what to do I decided upon a breakfast at the park. I whipped a batch of Cinnamon Ripple Muffins to make the house smell good, grabbed some water and some yogurt and off we went.

It was a great time to go to the park, it was still cool, and no one else was there. We played for about an hour and then headed to the library to do our lessons. It turned out to be such a nice change of pace from our normal routine we might just have to do it more often.  

My new toy

Look what came in the mail today!! I can't wait to play with it and laminate all the things we need for school. I have been busy planning the year out and working on workboxes for the children. If you haven't heard of the workbox system you can read about it here.

I am planning a modified version as I don't have room for all of the boxes she recommends using. I'll share it to you when I have it completed. I spent the day tearing out all of the lessons from the children's workbooks and filing them per week in those folders you see in the bottom of the picture. I tear them out for many reasons.

1. The children can print better without having the binding in the way.

2. Miles gets overwhelmed seeing all the work that must be done, even if he knows it doesn't have to be done all in one day.

3. I can keep one of them from working so far ahead they loose to much in retention and end up needing to repeat.

4. It is easier to fill the workbox "folders" with a torn out pace that the whole workbook.

I am feeling much better today and was able to get things caught up around the house. Even Fiona noticed as she said I was walking straight now, where as of yesterday I looked like a little old hunchback as it was to painful to stand straight.

Tomorrow I am going to tackle the history and science lessons. We'll see how far I get.

School room is done!

Welcome to our school room! I started this project back in November. It's taken me forever to finish it, and now we are moving, at least it will show well, although it never stays this clean! I took these photos on a Friday afternoon, just after school was over for the day.  I think it lasted just long enough for me to take them before the children all decided to start a craft project! That is what this room is for, we spend a lot of time in here, doing our lessons, reading, computer, crafting, coloring, and it also happens to be the warmest room in the house. It gets a lot of use. It started out as the nursery with striped yellow walls. I loved it, but it started to look like a circus tent when all the school things moved in and the crib went out. Here is a before picture.

 There were just to many things competing and it was very distracting. So I painted, which took forever, since I had to sand down every stripe or it would show through to the new color. I went with Behr's antique white, it is a lovely soothing color and really makes the accents stand out. The curtains are drop cloths that I edged with red trim, and tied back with soft cloth tape rulers.Most of the furniture is from IKEA except for the computer desk. That is an Ethan Allen yard sale find, I paid 20.00 for it. Someday I'll refinish it as the top is stained, but we need it to much to work on it.
The alphabet is from My Father's World curriculum and it just fits on that wall. My son found the cast silhouettes of Washington and Lincoln at the antique store when we were browsing and I "framed" them with empty frames I found at good will. The bulletin board I made using an old frame and a broken bulletin board I cut down and covered in fabric. I'll show you how I did that soon!

I love the flag in the center, it's an old parade flag that was missing it's pole so I used some spray adhesive and glued it to a piece of foam core and it just happened to fit perfectly into that frame I had in my stash. Behind the curtain is a large filing box that holds all of our paperwork, on top is more storage and office supplies. Inside are things like wooden puzzles, math manipulative's, lacing shapes, leapsters, and coloring books, all easily accessible, but out of sight.

It's so calm and peaceful that my easily distractable son gets his work done in record time, leaving us more time to do fun stuff.

This chalk board was given to me by a dear friend who homeschooled her children, on the shelf above are crayons, markers, colored pencils, pattern shapes, and paint. Below that is our little science shelf, it houses a dead lizard, rocks, arrowheads, feathers, fossils, and whatever else two young boys find fascinating.

Behind the door is the mess! That's where the puzzles, games, printer, teacher manuals, and whatever else one needs in an office goes. The little desk is for anyone who can't sit still at the big table or is staring out the window to much.

Some of the details. I made the pencil art based on something I saw in the Pottery barn catalog years ago.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to rehab this chalkboard? It still works but had those white scratches making it hard to read through. I would love to fix it without painting over the alphabet.

Well I hope I didn't bore you to death with all the photos, I am just so excited to have the room all finished, even the details!

My little artist

This boy constantly amazes me with his drawings.

 Every day it seems like he learns something new and they just keep getting more detailed.

The greatest story ever told

Sometimes my children amaze me.
They do something that is completely unexpected.
Like this :

Miles decided to recreate his favorite scene from the Bible
The amazing part? While describing it to me he pretty much quoted the entire passage of scripture from memory. Those Lego people were bartering for Jesus clothes, poking a spear in his side, weeping and crying, wearing a crown of thorns, and asking for forgiveness.
This boy of mine can't remember how to count to 100 or add 7+6, but he remembers every sotry he has ever read, expecially his favorites, and this one is the best.

What we did Saturday

Fordhook Farm is a Burpee seed company research farm. They open it up to the public a couple of times a year. We just can't get enough gardening. After making the last minute decision to go we had a great time and the rain stopped right before we got there. It was beautiful and lots of fun!

Ever seen one of these? Its a hydrangea of some sort. So pretty!

The girls kept stopping and posing for pictures. Who could resist?!

The Farm from the pond and lower gardens.

Spring house ruins.
So many varieties of flowers to look at.
Interesting sculptures

This one was welded together from old letters. The children called it the alphabet ball.


These sculptures are supposed to represent seed germination, but the children thought they looked like dinosaur eggs.

The boys.

All of the little monkeys at the pond garden.

Another sculpture, I loved this one with the water falling out of the leaf. I can't believe that I don't have any pictures of the kitchen garden! They grow so many different varieties of vegetables. It was fun to get ideas for next years garden!