Science is so much fun!

Our personal planetarium. Isn't that just cool? The kids drew constellations on the underside of a dollar store umbrella.

Measuring craters made by dropping small household objects into a pile of flour. What great fun!

George and his homemade 3D glasses. Stylin....

Trip to the Zoo...

Our homeschooling group has an annual kick-off day at the zoo. Despite summer colds & general "don't wanna" attitude, we went.

Amber with her kiddos and mine. Hanging back has its advantages: photo ops and quiet!

Stopping to check out the river otters. Dang! We have a lot of kiddos between us...

Amber and I got smart. We headed back to the big tent where all the sign-ups and visiting were taking place. We let Rhys take the 7 little kiddos around the zoo. (sssshhhhhh... don't tell!) We gave them the camera & sent them on their way.

The kids had a great time and took lots of pictures. Amber and I had a great time catching up with the other mamas! Here are some of Rhys' pictures...

Guess now that we've had the kick-off of the school year, perhaps we should start school again?!

Where to keep all the stuff?!

School supplies... My friends lament the massive lists provided each August telling them what their children must bring the first day of school. Pens, pencils, crayons, dry erase markers, binders, paper, pencil boxes, etc... A lengthy list of necessities for the coming school year.

We homeschoolers get no such list. Even better, we make our own! However, we don't ship off all the fabulous materials. We get to keep them all at home! And my list is long! With our implementation of workboxes (see this post), I now have more supplies to organize. Pens & pencils had a home. Notebooks & paper sat neatly on the shelf. I stacked tidy little boxes of crayons & markers. But now?! Now, our supplemental activities join the inventory of items needing to be easily accessible. Hmmmm... tucked into bins and boxes, stored in the laundry room and garage, doesn't count as "easily accessible"?! What's a mom to do?

Get rid of clothes, that's what! (Breathe easy. I didn't get rid of all of them!) I'm not much for lots of clothes anyhow. Obviously as I designed my "walk-in" closet as more of a "reach-in" closet. Now, it has a new job. It houses all my essential school supplies in an orderly fashion on the MAIN floor! The bonus: you can walk through my dining room/ living room without fear of bins toppling and burying small children!

The result:

Those bins are organized by subject rather than grade level, thereby making it easier for me to fill our workboxes. I can easily find an activity for both Kjersten and Brennen to do together for handwriting or a game that Rhys can teach Kjersten without having to search through too many bins.

Treasure boxes

"By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established;
through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures."
Proverbs 24: 3 & 4

Welcome to my new obsession... An old idea explained in detail in Sue Patrick's Workbox System. Delightfully suited to homeschoolers of children in any age range! It's not a curriculum. It's is merely a way to organize our school day, keeping children on task & mom accountable.

Perhaps it's me (although after reading Sue's book and through more blogs on this new craze, I'm beginning to suspect it's not *just* me!). I have great curriculum. Each subject chosen on it's own merit and with each child in mind. I own more activities, books, craft supplies, and games than a non-homeschooler can imagine! Within these four walls, I have everything to make our school days fun, challenging, creative, complete. What I lack is the apparent ability to organize these things to easily incorporate them into our day.

What's a mama to do? Treasure boxes (or workboxes if you plan on Googling them)! The idea is delightfully simple. Each child has a rack of boxes. The mama fills them with as much as she wants each child to reasonably complete the next school day. After breakfast & morning chores are done, my children now "clock" in to school and set out to empty their rack.

A view of our boxes. We're schooling through the summer as no one is complaining yet and we're making good progress. Our days are lighter and we're taking more breaks so everyone is happy!


Schedule strips for each child. As with all things around here, each kiddo has a color (when possible). Rhys= blue. Kjersten= pink. Brennen= green. Cael= orange. This applies to towels, toothbrushes, cups, pencil boxes, etc... Anything I can coordinate this way, I do. I never wonder whose towel is on the bathroom floor, but I digress...

The schedule strips are set by the mama when she fills the treasure boxes. For instance, if you see Kjersten's strip above (pink, if you weren't paying attention in the previous paragraph!), you'll notice she has 1-3 and then a cute little computer picture. She is to do boxes 1, 2, & 3 and then she gets 15 minutes on the computer (http://tutpup.com/ is the current favorite). When her timer dings, she's on to box 4. Following that, she has 15 minutes of guitar before she continues with box #5.

She can look at her schedule strip and see what's next. She can look at her shelves and see how many boxes are left (as she completes the boxes, the box and the completed work go in a large bin). It's motivating for her to see fewer and fewer boxes as she works her way through...



Rhys' boxes- If it requires help from mom, there's a tab on the front (see box #7). For this day he has (in order) math, spelling review, Flashmaster, handwriting, library reading, homophone worksheet, new spelling, and a cribbage game with the mama!

Here's a peek at Brennen's. In order, he has stamping letters, library reading, math worksheet, small craft, maze worksheet, new spelling, and handwriting. Rest assured, his schedule strip included jumping on the trampoline, riding bikes, etc...

Even baby Cael has boxes holding puzzles, toys, coloring, etc...

With the boxes all laid out, my kids can see what their school day will include. The fun stuff (games, crafts, cooking projects, and so on) motivate them to get to the boxes that hold them. The dwindling number of boxes as they work through encourage them to keep going.

For me, the advantages are incredible. No more "Mom... I'm done with math. Now what?!" No more three kids needing help with spelling at the same time (there's power in determining the order of those boxes for each kid)!

We're still fine tuning our system and I'm constantly on the look out now for great treasure box activities. So... stay tuned for updates as we cruise into our "regular" school year this fall!

Resources:

• Sue Patrick's web site
• Workbox Yahoo group (where I found the label "treasure boxes" that we love!)
• Workbox Fun Yahoo group
• and more blogs than I can list!

Music Appreciation Class...

Today, we spent a bit of time on music...

Kjersten teaching Cael the basics.

Here's George's song about Cael.

Cael's in the Fire by George

Cael's in the fire,

Cael's in the fire,

Cael's in the fire,

Oh no!

Cael's in the fire,

Cael's in the fire,

Cael's in the fire,

Oh no, he's toasty!!!

Pyramid

The little chokable Legos are banned to downstairs. The big Cael-safe Legos are kept upstairs for all to play with. And played with they are! Here's a recent creation...


What else? A pyramid.


Complete with the valley temple (middle bottom), causeway (middle path to pyramid), the sarcophagus (inside the pyramid), and boat burial pits (left & right of the causeway). Very nicely done. Unfortunately, Rhys was the photographer and is unfamiliar with the flash as you might notice in these next photos...


Proud of their accomplishment, in particular the self-timer on the camera!

Mat Man Has One Head, One Head, One Head...

Sing to the tune of "The Bear Went Over the Mountain."

Introducing Brennen and his Mat Man!

This is part of our handwriting curriculum: Handwriting Without Tears. Awesome program. And it is so much fun! Just ask the kiddos!

Science With Friends...

Making whales for our ocean boxes. Funny how the smell and feel of modeling clay is familiar even after 25 years.

No wall space? No problem.

Love all my windows. Not conducive to hanging school-type things. So, with sticky-tack and some suction cups, we make wall space where there once was none. (All temporary, of course... as we do use our back door regularly!)

I'm finally ready...

for September!!!! Argh!

I don't know where it went. Last thing I remember, it was warm. It was summer. We hadn't started school. Life was lazy and fun.

I vaguely remember planning for fall. I recall planning our coming school year. I seem to have memories of buying some books & curriculum.

What I simply cannot figure out is WHERE DID SEPTEMBER GO? It's gone. Just gone.

Now, here I am, a week into October. Up to Cael's eyebrows in snow. Lots of schoolwork done, but not all that I had planned. A month into gymnastics, guitar, and knitting club. No consistent wake time. No kids bathed, dressed, fed and ready for school at 8 a.m. No salt dough maps of Ancient Egypt. Oh well...

Here's what we did accomplish in the month I can't remember:

• Rhys finished 21 lessons in math (ouch!).
• Kjersten's halfway through her spelling book and making great progress.
• Brennen's loving his "wood letters" from HWT.
• Everyone knows the grammar jingles. ("This little noun, floating around...")
• Swimming creatures are much more interesting than botany (to us, anyhow!)

So, October is upon us and I realize that it doesn't really matter how ready we are... It will come and go just like September. I think we'll just enjoy!

Home schoolers say ENOUGH already!

Home schoolers are a threat. With often extremely limited funds, they persist in putting out sharp, polite, balanced, astoundingly well-educated young adults. Gosh, I'd be threatened, too.

read more digg story

(I don't often discuss our family's decision to homeschool, but sometimes I get so tired of the grief endured by homeschooling families- ours included! On days like those, I need to read articles like the one above to refresh my passion for protecting my ability to educate my children... It is a fight well worth fighting!)