Our Homeschool Room 2012-13

I'm so excited for this year's homeschool room. This year, instead of trying to pretend I still had a basement family room, I now have decided to make the entire area a dedicated homeschooling space. Here's the details: New shelf from IKEA. I really love the fact that I can add to this unit throughout the next few years. It is so versatile (you can place it horizontally or vertically), and even Dave was impressed with how well put together it was. I have SO much more storage now for all sorts of things that were homeless before. My Pottery Barn bookshelf I have had since Isaac was a baby has a new home here too! This will feature our favorite books.
I found the "Color Outside the Lines" wall art piece the other day and LOVE it's message for the boys and for homeschooling in general.  You have to be a little "outside the box" to do what we are doing!  I also love my "READ" letters!  The globes are collected pieces from the past few years. (I have more throughout the room).

Double click on photos to enlarge

Because my Graham LOVES this sort of thing, we will have a "theme" shelf which will change with each month's new theme. September's theme is "fall". I have another shelf to utilize some other fall-related things.

This part of the room is almost the same as last year.  This year, I painted our table with chalkboard paint (see closer picture below).  I also acquired a fun old chalkboard which was Dave's grandma's.

This is our reading area.  I love having somewhere to read to the boys or have somewhere they can plop down and read their own books.  I love my art line and used it TONS last year.  The boys love seeing their art featured on the wall.  I leave it up for a few days and then put the more memorable pieces in a storage tote.  The not-so-memorable-pieces get secretly taken to the garbage.

My work area.  We are doing World Geography this year, so we have a world map for Isaac to be able to locate countries, continents and such.  This is also where I keep all of our active curriculum.  One basket on the wall is for working files and things I need to refer to often, the other is for Isaac's work that needs to be corrected.

Here is Graham's work area.  We will have calendar time this year.  The white board will be used for Bible verses for AWANA that he needs to memorize each week.

My chalkboard table!

My behavior plan for the boys this year entails them earning coins that they will be able to save up for items in our "store."

Overall, I am super excited for this year.  Isaac will begin each day with independent seatwork while I finish up breakfast, get the baby down for a nap and begin working with Graham.  After his independent time, we will work together on Bible and World Geography.  Lastly, Isaac will end his school day with independent research and report writing time.  He has a list of different topics of interest he can choose from (I am sure we will be adding to the list frequently throughout the year).  He will spend a half an hour each day researching his topic of choice (using the Internet, books we have or library books).  When he has completed each research topic, he will write a brief summary of what he learned in his report notebook.  I hope for this to become a way for him to increase his self-motivation and independence.
Graham will be working with me on All About Reading, Five in a Row and BOB books.  More updates soon!

Our School Room 2011-12 (double click photos to enlarge)

With baby on the way, we had to make some major modifications to where we do school. The old homeschool room has now become Graham's new bedroom (Graham's old room will become baby's room), [you can see it here] and the downstairs family room is now our homeschooling area. I have had to let go of some of my desire to make this room "pretty" in favor of it being useful. But, my goal was to make it a useful room for us, but to still hold on to some cute decorating elements. The big rugs on the floor wouldn't be my first choice, but I have to "try" to protect our carpet somehow.
The hutch we inheirited from our old house in Ankeny. My mom was using it for the past couple of years and I recently reclaimed it. It needs a new paint job, but that will come another day. It holds art supplies, activites and school supplies. The kitchen table was our old table and was in storage. This will make a perfect work area for Isaac. Double click to enlarge.

I have wanted to do this art line for the kids' projects for quite some time. Love the quote.

Graham's work area:

A new addition this year is our chore chart. I have come up with 2.7 million different chore charts and behavior charts over the years. I hope I can stick with this one.

Progress

We are mid-way through Isaac's first grade year, and Graham's 3 year old preschool year! I have lots of things planned for the rest of the year, and I am trying to avoid the mid-year blahs by re-vamping some things and getting re-organized. I took some time this week to re-organize my homeschooling closet. I took out anything related to scrapbooking and am using the whole thing for homeschooling activities. I needed to make it so everything was easily accesible for me. I have found that is the key for me. Not to sound lazy here, but if it is not easy or accessible, I have found I don't bother to do it. My life is busy enough the way it is, I need to SIMPLIFY everything I do.

Graham used his do-a-dot set that I got him for Christmas for the first time today. He loved it! It is such a good activity for fine-motor skills and color identification. It was also good for Graham to use self control as he colored. He likes to just scribble when using markers or crayons. With the do-a-dot printables I found online, he had to identify which color to use first and fill in the correct circles.

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Isaac is improving in his reading, although sometimes it is hard to see the overall progress. I know he is reading longer books, reading brand new material much better, sounding words out on his own and identifying long and short vowels better. I have realized how complex the English language really is. There are really no "absolute" rules with English. I wish I could tell him that EVERY word that has two vowels is ALWAYS long, but that is not true. There are exceptions to everything.
We plan to continue are current curriculum for reading, phonics, spelling and math. I plan on trying to find something new for handwriting, possibly, "Handwriting without tears," but we will see. I also would like to find a better daily devotional to use with Isaac.
Next week we will be starting a LEGO lapbook, this should be really fun for both of us.
Other unit studies we plan to do are: space, pirates, pioneers (may concentrate on Lewis and Clark and follow with a field trip to Bismarck) and Butterflies (in the spring we will do another painted-lady butterfly cocoon study). I would also like to do another spring trip to the farm during calving season, but I don't know if we will do a lapbook/unit study for that yet or not.
I plan to try to make Graham's preschool time more structured and to do a better job of keeping him busy without television!

Our homeschooling room 2010-11

Double click the first image to see large. The carpet is coming out and being replaced with heavy-duty laminate sometime soon...can't wait!



my manipulatives storage...they make me happy to see them all organized on the shelf!

My homeschooling/scrapbooking closet (scrapbooking stuff is currently at my sister in law's house). This thing took me a week to organize. Take a look at my toy bin organizer thing that I scored at a garage sale for $5. It is empty now, but I have big plans for it.

Our workbox system:
To the left of Isaac is boxes 1-6. After our together teaching time, he must complete each box in order. Most boxes contains work he must do independently, but there may be a box or two he needs help with.



When he is done with each workbox, he takes the numbers off the box and puts them on these strips. It helps him feel like he has really accomplished something (like checking something off of a list).

Working hard on cursive this year:

Being crazy: