Life

It has been a very long and crazy 3 weeks. I've not been blogging because we've been living at my Mother in law's house, to help care for my husband's aunt who was suffering from liver cancer. Well, early this morning she went home to be with Jesus. Sunday afternoon I should have time to catch everyone up on what's been going on. We have been schooling but it's been spaced out a bit. It took us 2 weeks to finish letter D week. I am ok with that though. My kids learned so much this week that a workbook would never be able to teach them. 

Week 2

We had a great week. The kids really enjoyed having a theme. I wasn't able to get as many pictures, because Ladybug was cutting a tooth and needed more attention than normal.

Ok, here are just some highlights from week 2.

Letter Focus: B

Number Focus: 2

Bible Focus: Noah's Ark & The Tower of Babel

Theme: The Ocean

Noah's Ark lacing 

This was his first time lacing. You can see the proud look on his face.

Ladybug laughing at the kids doing their work. 

Here are the ocean themed books that we read this week.

They glued blue squares onto their letters. 

Sink or Float Game 

Observing

Ducky got creative and went fishing for some of the items

Monkey joined in. 

File folder game (Crayon color matching)

I put up some gel window clings to go along with our theme. 

Our ocean themed sensory table

Introduction to water beads. I had them guess what was going to happen to the beads. 

Observing the beads after 5 minutes

2 hours later

I was not able to get any pictures of the kids playing with the water beads. They were a huge hit and the kids have been begging me to play with them ever since. I am not going to lie, Mom and Day had fun playing with these right alongside the kids. 

What's on the tray?

Each morning we do "tray tasks." I figured I'd showcase what was on the trays this week so you can get an idea of what it looks like. 

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

 Thursday

 Friday

Student Photo Week

We are still participating in the Not Back to School Blog Hop. This week is Student Photo Week.

It's actually hard to get pictures of Ducky and Monkey apart from each other. They are nearly inseparable.

Let's learn some more about our 2013 star students:

Ducky is:

Energetic

Helpful

Inquisitive 

Spunky

Free Spirited

Ducky loves:
Horses/Ponies
The color pink
Her brother and sister

Monkey is:

Cuddly

Imaginative

Smart 

Funny

Stubborn

Monkey loves:
Trains
Racecars
Monster Trucks

Ladybug is:

Happy

Mellow

Cuddly

Silly

Loving 

Ladybug loves: 
Hugs and kisses

Blog Hop

Our Learning Space - 2013

We live in a 3 bedroom townhouse. We have very limited storage as we have no basement, garage or shed. Our learning space is actually our kitchen/dinning room. Ideally, we'd love to have a  separate area to use. It's challenging having to stop in the middle of a project and move everything just so we can eat lunch. We're in prayer about our housing situation.   We're thankful for the roof over our heads though, do not get me wrong.  We understand that there are many people out there making do with much less. 

Most of the educational materials you'll see have either been from garage sales, or were given to me by fellow educators. Many of these items were gifts as well. When people ask what to get our kids for Christmas or Birthdays, we request educational toys/books/games, etc. 

Okay, now onto the pictures. I was trying to make a video so I could explain everything in detail however, I could not get the kids or the lighting situation under control. For now, I will do my best to show you and explain everything using pictures.

Right side

Left side

This shelving unit houses mostly games, puzzles and manipulatives.

The next few photos explain the shelves using a little more detail:

The top shelf has things like counting bears, pegs, unifix cubes,  lacing beads, lacing cards, tweezers, sorting bowls, etc. 

The bottom shelf has games. It also has our stickers, flashcards, tanagrams and a few other similar items. 

The top shelf holds all of my teachers manuals and idea books. The yellow box on the right hold our items that need to be laminated, or that are laminated and still need to be cut out. 

The bottom shelf hold our puzzles. The kids LOVE to do the wooden puzzles, so any time I am at a garage sale and I see one we don't have (reasonably priced) I try to pick it up. 

This shelf holds our games.

On this shelf we have things like Legos, Kinex, and Mr. Potato Head. We call these our table time toys. They play with them at the kitchen table, to keep small starts away from Ladybug.

Here we have our Playdoh and some more table time toys. There is also a bin of dried beans that we use for sensory play. 

For the last of our shelves we have cardboard building blocks (white box), sensory bin (clear bin above white box), craft foam materials (large clear bin), sorting trans (yellow), wooden building blocks (wooden box with designs ) and our completed worksheets and art projects so far this year (blue bin ) 

Moving to the right of our giant shelving unit we have our workbox system . Above the workboxes we have our kids bibles, devotionals and other faith related materials. 

Next to our workboxes is the craft cabinet and printer.

View with the door opened.

Tons of random craft supplies 

We use these trays for art time. We also use these for our daily tray tasks. 

The bottom craft shelf has our painting materials as well as our crayons. 

Below our craft cabinet is the circle time drawer. It has things such as cd's, calender time materials, story time props, etc. 

I didn't take a picture of the bottom drawer but it has a bunch of different colored construction paper as well as a few old magazines that we use to cut pictures out of for projects. 

Our bookshelves. On the top shelves we have a bunch of wooden toys. The middle left shelf has our workbooks, coloring books as well as our dry erase books. The bottom left shelf is overflow from the big bookshelf. 

On the right bookshelf it is organized by themes. I also have series grouped together. 

Above the calendar, we have an Ikea wire to display our artwork. 

Above the calender, we have cups that hold school items that need to kept out of reach out of the children, such as permanent markers. 

The corner behind our kitchen table. The 3 tier black storage bin houses a lot of out school supplies. The white giant white box is a freezer. 

The file boxes have the kids worksheets for the year. The pink one has our A-Z and Heart of Dakota materials,  the gray one has our weekly theme and B5IAR materials. 

The 3 tiered color shelf is our sensory bin area. 

The top draw of the 3 tier bin has our markers, colored pencils, crayons, glue, dry erase markers, chalk, eraser, etc. 

The second shelf has various office supplies. 

The third drawer is not pictured but it houses all of my school books, as I myself and taking some classes. 

On top of the freezer we have our radio. The blue file bin houses my paperwork such as my planner, record book, and assessment paperwork. 

The red drawer has a bunch of items that we use for sensory play. 

The green drawer has holiday materials

The yellow bin has every color Easter grass as well as colored rice and pasta which is used in our sensory bins. 

Well, that's it. I hope you've enjoyed your tour of our learning space. I'd love for you to leave me a comment and say hello. I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have. 

God bless! 

Curriculum Week