Week In Review

Just dropping off a few pictures of our homeschooling days.  It is hard for me to have very many pictures because I have a certain 3 year old who freaks out if he sees my phone and I don't give it to him to play games on.  :)

We finished up our studies of Ancient Egypt.  We did a lot of fun stuff, but the only thing I managed to photograph was using sugar cubes to build pyramids.

We also built the Nile river in a container and flooded it periodically to see if we could get grass to grow (we could not, but with my black thumb, this is no surprise).  We talked about canopic jars, made scented oils, and went and looked at the mummies at the musuem.  A good little unit!  

I started doing Matthew's reading lessons a little differently.  He gets bogged down with work on paper, so we've been doing reading on various other surfaces.  After I got tired of using the whiteboard, I decided to draw on our glass table with paper taped underneath.  Worked really well, and he was thrilled to be able to write on a generally forbidden surface!   

We are working on memorizing some basic math facts in our math lessons, so we have been playing lots of games to get in a bunch of practice.  Here's a mama-created game where the dice says +1, +2, etc. so that the kids have to add to the number they're on and get to the end.  With some fun additional rules (you get sent to the start again if someone lands on the space you're occupying), this game lasted quite a while and kept their attention.  And even the littlest one joined in.  

All in all a good week.  This week we're moving on to study Jewish people (time of King David-ish), hopefully we'll get a good handle on those math facts, and we'll make some good progress with our reading.

Getting Organized!

Forgive my quiet over the past little bit.  The kids switched swim schools this month, and their new school required two weeks worth of everyday swim lessons before they could start with their regular once-a-week class.  It's amazing how much harder life is with a 30 minute swim class happening at 11:30 every day!   I felt like I never could get anything done.

But swim is over, now scheduled for a reasonable once-a-week time, and life can resume.  Whew!  As we've started the school year, I'm discovering that our schedule/curriculum seems to be GREAT, but my organization skills seem to be severely lacking.  So I've spent some time this weekend remedying that.

Solution 1: Vertical open storage in my kitchen

I am fortunate that my kitchen is large enough that those cabinets in the left of the picture can be used exclusively for school storage.  That is great, because I'm kind of a school supply collector and I have a lot of junk.  But not so great, because it meant that every time I wanted something, I was having to open doors, and then I was annoyed, so I was just leaving crap out on counters, and my kitchen always looked a wreck. Ugh.  

So I cleaned out those colorful drawers (which will go to a closet until I decide I need them again), went to IKEA, and got organized:

My counters are cleaned off (-ish) and everything has a space and is off the floor.  Well, except for that darn white board.  Whatever.  The basket on the counter holds our paper.  On the shelves we have:

1st (top) - Expanding file folder things for holding completed work.  I eventually hole punch it and put it in a binder, but that's too much work for every day, so the file folders work well.  Bonus: They were $1 each at Target.  Also, two containers holding frequently-used manipulatives.  Flashcards, math cubes, counters, etc.  

2nd - My planner (love that thing!), and a file box holding all the manuals and workbooks we use every day.  

3rd - Pencil sharpener, date stamper (I stamp all completed pages in workbooks and such for accountability purposes), and a caddy of school supplies - pencils, crayons, markers, glue, scissors, etc.  

4th - Basket of white paper, Basket of junk for Jake. 

5th - Baskets for Matthew and Hannah.

The kids each have their own baskets because they're expected to work quietly on stuff in there if I'm working one-on-one with a sibling.  They're full of quiet activities like coloring, puzzles, etc.  I don't usually work with kids individually for more than 10 minutes or so, so it's not a huge deal.  And if they don't want to work in their box, they can sit and read a book or go outside and play.  I mostly just want them in the general area I'm in and not running off to their rooms where I have to go re-collect them when it's time to move on.  

Hoping this helps things stay where they're supposed to be so that this mama's mind can stay where it's supposed to be.  Nothing throws me more off track than a messy house.