Sunday, August 11, 2013

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




Friday, August 9, 2013

First week

We survived our first week! We're still getting into a groove scheduling wise. All in all we had a great week. 

I seriously enjoy homeschooling, being able to point them to Jesus and train them up in the way they should go. I love to see their faces light up when they accomplish a goal. I am so blessed to be able to witness it every day.

Ok, here are just some highlights from our week. 

Letter Focus: A
Number Focus: 1
Bible Focus: Creation, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel
Theme: None (decided to take it easy this week)



One of Ducky's tray tasks ( Lacing )


One of Monkey Man's tray tasks (Sorting) 





 


We used masking tape to make a large letter A on the floor. The kids took turns walking on it while saying the letter sound. The kids then used Unifix cubes to trace out the letter A. 


Adam and Eve Coloring


Serpent craft 




While doing my back to school shopping I found these adorable sticker books at Walmart. I thought the kids might enjoy them, Boy was I right! This activity was a huge hit. I have a feeling we will be needing more books. 

Whew! We did it. I hope to be able to take more pictures in the upcoming weeks because we do much more that I'd like to share with you. 

Thanks for stopping by our blog. God Bless! 


Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Keep calm



We officially started our new homeschool year yesterday. I had this wonderful plan all mapped out. Nothing went as planned. The day started off bad with Ducky yelling that Monkey Man pooped and took his diaper off. Great. Good morning to you too. I apparently over slept and didn't make it to the gym which meant that we were 1.5 hours behind schedule. The chaos didn't stop there. Monkey Man asked to help scramble the eggs and when I tried to help him adjust his hand to better grasp the fork he threw the tantrum of all tantrums. 40 minutes long. Ducky was quite upset with me because I took the iPad away while she was in the middle of something. Sorry, kiddo, I said 30 minutes! Ladybug was crying the entire time. She is teething and nothing I was doing was helping to soothe her. I was losing control of things really fast. How was I going to school them when all I felt like doing was crawling back in bed and crying myself to sleep. I decided to take a step back and sit down to talk to the children about their behavior. We talked about how God wants us to act and how things could have been handled differently by everyone, Mom included.  After a long nap we finally completed our work. Nothing went as planned and yet, it was ok. There will be many days ahead that don't go as planned. I have to remember that  discipleship is far more important then reading, writing and arithmetic. 

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Curriculum Week

It's Blog Hop time again. *cheers* I can't wait to curl up on the end of the couch, drink some tea and read everyone's blogs. I look forward to it every year. Is it the children's nap time yet? *wink*

nbts-blog-hop-2013
Curriculum Week

We are very excited to start our year. I have lots of fun things planned for the kids and I am looking forward to watching them learn and grow. Although I have a plan in action I am open to following the lead of the child. What works for one kid might not always work for another. Both my children, although very young, have already began to develop different learning styles. That's one of the many things I love about Homeschooling. My kids will get tailored learning. 




Both my children will be participating in this Bible centered curriculum. Monkey will mostly just be there for Bible time, where as Ducky will be adding phonics, math and handwriting work. I will also be supplementing with workbooks and other resources for Ducky. 



 Heart of Dakota has a review every few weeks. Each time one of these weeks comes up will we "row" a new book. This is mostly for Monkey but I am sure Ducky won't mind jumping in and rowing right along. She loved it in the previous years. The nice thing about B5IAR is I can tailor it to each kid, while focusing on the same book.


Weekly Themes

Each week (except for the weeks that we are "rowing") we will focus on a different theme. We will read books, play games, complete Preschool and Tot Packs, make crafts, and other fun things pertaining to the theme. My kids LOVE doing themes almost as much as I love gathering all the activities to go along with the themes.

Do you use Pinterest? There are so many amazing theme ideas on there. When I get some extra time ( ha ha ha ) I hope to be able to group all my theme ideas together.

There are a few blogs that have preschool packs and other amazing printables that we love to use:

1+1+1=1
Confessions of a Homeschooler
Over the Big Moon
2 Teaching Mommies 
Homeschol Creations 
Homeschool Share

Some of the themes for this year are as follows:

Ocean
Camping
Farm
Bugs
Trains
Weather
Construction
Weather
Bears
Pond Life
Zoo
Emotions
All about Me - Our Bodies
Health - Healthy Food, Exercise, Hygiene



Tray Tasks

Each day they will complete tasks that aid in Fine Motor Development. Many of these tasks will also double to help reinforce skills such as counting, color/shape recognition, etc. Here are just a few of the many ideas:

Beading
Lacing
Tanagrams
Links
Wash Cloth Folding
Nuts and Bolts
Tweezer Work
Scooping
Pouring
Sorting
Etc...


Other

Here are just a few more things we will be using throughout the year:

Books (LOTS OF BOOKS)
Puzzles
Workbooks
Blocks
Computer/iPad
Sign Language
Educational Videos
Sensory Bins
Science Experiments
Library
Kid Yoga
Field Trips
Music
and MORE...



Thanks for "hopping" by! Feel free to leave a comment and say hello.
God Bless!








Wednesday, May 29, 2013

What a year

We did not quit. I just took a blogging break. In November we added another member to our family. A beautiful baby girl. We shall call her Ladybug.



It's been pretty hectic around here. With the new addition it was a lot harder to stay on track than I had ever dreamed. It was still a great year. I have seen a lot of growth in both Ducky and Monkey Man.


I am working on a post to outline our plans for the upcoming school year. I do plan on blogging weekly starting in the fall. Thanks for everyone's patience! God bless!

Friday, September 21, 2012

Week 1 - Preschool

I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to homeschool Ducky. This week was so much fun and the look on her face when she accomplished something she was struggling with was priceless! We plan on using Raising Rockstars Preschool as well as the Letter of the Week as our main curriculum(s) but we are going to begin that next week. This week we did a fun Chicka Chicka Boom Boom theme. What a hit! Here are some of moments I was able to capture this week:


Chicka Chicka BOOM BOOM!


Playing with her magnets one morning while I read the story. 


Lacing work


She wanted to illustrate the book herself


She used her marker to make a dot as I called out random letters. She LOVED this activity. 


Uppercase and lowercase matching. You can tell by the look on her face that she knows the j doesn't go with the E.


Daddy was helping her with cutting practice. This is something she had been struggling with. 


They worked for a long time and then... IT CLICKED! She cut!!!
I am not going to lie. I cried I was so proud and she was SO excited that she had to call Grammie on the phone right away and tell her. 


Monkey Man joined us a few times this week. 


Counting and gluing coconuts on trees. 


Board game fun. 



That's it! My baby girl is in PRESCHOOL!!!!


Monday, August 13, 2012

Curriculum Week - Not Back to School Blog Hop


It's time once again for the "Not" Back-to-School  Blog Hop! This week's topic is curriculum so I am going to share a little bit about what my plan is for the year with Ducky. She is currently 3 years old and will be turning 4 in December. We will begin official "school" on September 10th. I know that if she were going to public school she wouldn't be starting PreK for another year. However, after this past year of doing Tot School with her I saw readiness signs for PreK. I plan on following her lead throughout all of this and I am open to change if it's not working out. I've put hours of planning and prayer into this and here is what I've come up with:


Raising Rockstars Preschool (RRSP) from 1+1+1+=1
Hooked on Phonics - Prek
Letter of the Week theme -  corresponding with the letter we are working on each week in RRSP.
Weekly Bible Story - I will read the same story each morning for a full week and we will do crafts and activities to go along with the story.

We will also be doing:
Puzzles
Games
Crafts
Life skills
Music
Sign Language
Library Time
Calender time 
Fine Motor/ Sensory work
Field Trips
and SO MUCH MORE!

I plan on using a workbox system for Ducky. I am re-purposing some Ikea shelving that we already had on hand. I will touch more on this next week when I post the pictures of our school room.

Monkey Man will be doing tot school this year and next. I will be focusing on his speech. We will be playing a ton. He loves joining us for Bible, calendar and circle time.

Having 2 kids schooling at the same time will be a new journey for me but I am up for the challenge.

The new baby is due in late November but is expected to make an early arrival like her brother did 

Thanks for stopping by and reading. I hope you'll be back soon.

Not Back to School Blog Hop