School Area in the Kitchen

I was pretty sad when I gave up my school room a few weeks ago so my children could have more space of their own. Which is awesome because now they can get away from one another when they need a break. It seems to make them like each other more. Maybe they will want to share rooms again one day but until then I had to find a solution for our school stuff. First things first I needed to see what we use on a daily bases and make sure that was in reach and that we didn’t have to search for it. I then put that stuff in a white cabinet that I was using to store some freeze dried food storage items. Then I had to bring my calendar time and white board into the area, I was nervous I wouldn’t be ok with this hanging on the wall, but I am liking it. Here are pictures of what I have done. I am sure I will change stuff around. But as for right now it works.

Here is the area.

Here is the calendar time area, It is in the corner of the room by the back door. the frig is directly across from this wall which is were the calendar is at.

And since we are studying US history this year I placed the big wall map on our table and put a clear vinyl cover over it ( I saw this at a friends house). I believe it cost me $2.97 at Wal-Mart.

So this is the white cabinet that I am using. If you see on the top shelf is our pens, pencils, colors, markers and the pick box has all the pieces to the calendar time area. The second shelf has 2 accordion style files one I keep new worksheets and paper that they use daily and the other is for the papers they have finished and I will file those with the year of schooling. they 3rd shelf has a bible reader a bible and the young persons bible from the Robinson curriculum that we read from daily. There is also work boxes that are there too. I love the work box system! I had to use 1 for each of the boys instead of the way we had it one for each subject so there would be enough room for all the stuff we needed. What I do is inside each box is folders that have their individual work in them they have the numbers like before and they just peel the number off when they are finished with the folder ( below pictured). on the last shelf is flash cards and a puzzle for now.

Well there you have it my school area. As for how long it will stay this way you just never know I may find a new room or we just might keep it this way for a while.

    God Bless

     Jen

Record Keeping

 

Ok so this is something I struggle with. I see all these other homeschool families that do this awesome job at keeping records but I  guess I am just not that good. I LOVE thisgs organized but paper work is just somewhere that I struggle at. I know I know it s very important to do so I grit my teeth and do the best I can.

There is one person I d not have to keep them for any more which is my 8th grader the program does it for me. All I do is print it off weekly and I get a detailed account of what she did her grades and how long it took her to do them. Yeah for computers. She is using Switched on School house . Vinny (5th grade) was using it too but he was struggling a lot with the curriculum so he is back to work books. That is one of the awesome things about homeschool is if you have a child who struggles with one way of learning you can cater to them.

As for my 2nd and 5th graders I use I guess you would call it a journal type records. This is what I did last year and it work and I am going to keep doing it. I just us a spiral notebook and write down daily what they did. Then I store them with that school years things. Like a few worksheets and pictures of project they did that year so if I do get check for what they are doing (which has happened to a few families her in town) I can show we actually do school.

Here are a couple of pictures of what I do. If you notice the Start date was August 29th is because we do school for a week or 2 before I start keeping grades. Its like a run through of sorts.

 

This one is just what it looks like on the inside. It is very informal but it works. On the inside cover of the note book I write the books that they are using and then the abbreviations I use for each one so I do not have to write out each work book name every time I put what they are doing that day. You will also notice that William doesn’t have science or social studies written on his section that is because we are doing a unit study with the both of them. Vinny just has to do a little more in-depth. I have him research more.

What I do at the end of the note book or year I just put it into a 3 ring binder and add other things from the year and label it for the school ear and store it for later use if we want to have fun and look for fun or if I need to show it to anyone. Nebraska is not to strict on its record keeping laws. I feel very blessed that we do not have to turn in quarterly reports or anything like that. phew……

I hope this helps anyone struggling with all the paper work to make it a little more simple. Also that you do not have to go to great lengths to show what your kids have been up to.

God Bless

Jen 

Work boxes system

Here is our work box system. That we absolutely love! The picture above is what we use for our boxes. We found them at Wal-mart for $4.00 each but what I do is put what they are to do for the day and then as they finish the work in the box they put the number on a chart that is on the side of their desks. This has help them see how much work they have done and how much they have left before school is done.

Here is what is in each box.

• Box "1" they have their devotion book a Bible and their journal. The older 2 read their devotion for the day, study some scriptures then they write in their journals. While they write in their journals I start to read for the Bible and Will and Croix listen and we all discuss what we just read.

• Box "2" We have our Math. We use Math-u-see for them. The curriculum we use suggest Saxon but we have switched to Math-u-see because they seem to understand it easier.

• Box "3" we combine a few things because we do not have enough boxes yet. In this one they have they Language Arts, vocabulary words and copy writing. What I plan to do is separate them up a little more so they only have one thing in each box.

• Box "4" Is their reading book that I choose from the Robinson Curriculum that we use. These books are awesome! The kids really seem to enjoy them.

• Box "5" We have Science and History in this box. I want to have separate boxes for these too. For science I found some old science text books from and antique store from a local school and for History we use books from the Robinson Curriculum

So I know there is only 4 boxes but I have a folder that we us as a box till I get a few more.
Here is where they put their numbers after they finish the boxes.
This just happens to be how we store our boxes right now.



I just can not say enough about this system! It has helped us so much. Okay mostly me because I am less stressed about making sure I do not forget about something they need to do that day. Now I have it all set up and no more worries. Also they get done a little faster because well I have competitive children and they are always looking to see what box the other one is on and who will get done first.

Our School Room

Here are a few pictures of our school room.

Tot School

Here are a few pictures of our Tot School. Croix just started having an interest in doing some school things. So I have just started putting a few school things together. This will be my first time starting Homeschool from the beginning. Will went to 2 months of Kindergarten and 2 years of preschool.

I have made many different things for him and am very excited to start using them. I will post them as we use them.


These 2 shots are of his area that we have done so far. I have most of his stuff in work boxes just like the bigger kids do so he still feel cool. I love my new shelf that I put together the other day. I took glass jars and use gorilla glue to glue the lids so they hang down and I can store different small items for crafts and what not. I just love them! It was super easy took about 2 hours to dry then they were ready to use. :)




Dont you just love these beads? I found them at a local antique store.


I just love this Dot a Dot paint. He can use it when ever he wants and it does not make a mess!



Theseare just some block I bought at Wal-mart for $12. They are pretty neat because they not only have letters but they also have numbers, addition, subtraction signs, picture and much more.

The craziness

Ok the craziness all started when decided to jump on the wagon with the workbox system. Well we just started it it and I LOVE IT!! But getting there was the challenge. So I read every blog I could find on workboxes. I went to wal-mart and went searching for the perfect boxes for our room. I found some but I couldn't buy all that I needed they were only $4 each but when you times that by 4 kids it is a little expensive. With using the Robinson Curriculum I don't need as many boxes as most use but I still need around 6-8 boxes per kid. So what I ended up getting was 4 boxes each for the 3 older kids. Fo r Croix I bought a few cheaper boxes they were the size of shoe boxes. So I was happy with all that and decided to just buy a few more later on.

I proceeded to set the system up and I was at a loss of how to do this. This is where the craziness started. I spent hours in the room and just couldn't seem to get it right. So then Vince had the day off and he said how about we go shopping to find something to make the room work. So we spent the morning and afternoon going from store to store and for a few things but nothing that made me very happy. I did end up getting a cube shelving unit that I do like and you can add more to it which is the best part. As I was setting up the unit I had a thought pop into my head and i said to Vince "Hey babe I have an idea" and he said "Yes dear" With that oh no look he has when he know he will have extra work in store. I said" how about we move the school room to upstairs in the little boys room and move the boys to the room downstairs?" He looked at me with that are you serious look. But my darling husband being the wonderful man that he is he said ok where do we start. So that started the craziness.

That evening we moved the beds and everything around. I have the room all set up but I will post pictures later of it. I have to say I LOVE our new room. It makes it so much easier for me to do my house hold chores and am able to keep the kids all under control. You all know the bickering that kids do when mom leaves the room. Well they normally wait till I am upstairs then they stat thinking I can't hear them but I am hoping this will help out. Plus there is more room in this room for us to have our stuff.

I will get to taking pictures of the room i the next couple of days.

We Love the Robinson Curriculum!

Okay so maybe I am jumping ahead of myself here but, the Robinson Curriculum is so awesome for a lack of better words. The curriculum is based on the 3 r's and is all about self teaching. As a mother of 4 this is a great thing to hear. I love teaching my children but it become pretty hectic here most days. We were using the Konos Curriculum which is awesome too, but just not for us. It is just to much planing. Okay that makes me sound lazy but it really is a lot of planing. It is a lot of fun but I just don't feel its for me. I guess I don't have enough self-discipline to do it. I always did the lessons but it got to the point I would scramble each morning just to get it all put together.

So here is our schedule now

• 8:00 am - Breakfast and morning chores
• 9:00 am - Math ( we use Math-U-see)
  
• 11:00 am - Reading
  
• 1:00 pm - Writing
• 1:30 pm - Lunch and free time if done with work
  

Everything is about self-teaching, which is how people learned before we had public schools everywhere. Come to find out people were smarter back then too. Hmmmmm??? That's odd. So anyway here is how we work this schedule.

They first start out with Math. The kids read there lesson and do the work on their own. If they struggle with a problem I just remind them to look back through their work and try again. Robinson says that if you show them how to do the problem it defeats the purpose of self-teaching. I am in the room the whole time being a good example. I will jump in and help if really needed.

Then we move on to reading. We have a list of books that we use and what you do is read them through in order and here is were you learn your science, history and literature. We also do vocabulary words from the books.All these books are classics and are great reads.

Writing comes last. What we do here is I have the children write about what they read and then sometimes I will have a question for them to answer too. What I do then is edit it and they have to rewrite it. So here is their language arts. Oh they also use these McGuffey readers that talk about sentence structure and they learn how to pronounce sounds.

I am homeschooling not just for the fact of I don't like public schools but I want to give my children the best education possible and I just know that this is what God wants me to do is to educate my children.