~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The Kids~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Our school days


I finally got to take some pictures of the school areas in our home. My wonderful husband found these fabulous milk crates for me. Not the cheapie ones you find at stuffmart that would fall apart with any amount of weight. No these are the real deal!   We are using Heart of Dakota (You can learn about HOD HERE ) and have several read aloud books to use throughout the year during storytime. Each child has their own crate for their school books, but I only have the current storytime book in their crate (The rest are on our bookshelf.).

Ellie's crate contains:

1. A 3-ring binder. This holds her notebooking pages for history and science. I also tucked her timeline into the front pocket. I am considering keeping some of her artwork in here as well.
2. Math workbook 
3. Handwriting workbook
4. DITHR workbook and current independent reading book
5. Several books we are reading from daily for history and science.
6. Her current storytime book.
7. My HOD teacher's manual for the level she is doing.
8. Her vocabulary notebook.
9.. Her clipboard!  She is loving the list to check off each day.

I'm sure I missed something, but you get the idea.

Silas and Avrie don't have everything Ellie does but they do have a lot of the same items. Silas did make it a point to have his own clipboard. You can read about that in this post: My Son The Inventor if you missed it. 

Evelyn has a few read alouds, her own Bible, some coloring pages and her HOD teacher's manual. Yes I did get a TM for Evelyn. With the older kids I just did a hodge-podge of things for preschool but I needed something to make sure I covered all the bases since I am now so busy with the older ones.


These crates sit on the bookshelf when not in use. I know, it's not pretty, but until they find another home that is where they will live. When we begin school they each bring their crate in and sit it on the floor around my chair.

Whoever I am working with sits at the small wooden table (picked up at a yard sale by a wonderful family member!) right beside me. For some subjects I can give direction and they can take their work to the desk or the other table in the room to work independently. For other subjects they need mom right there along side for the duration of the lesson. So this little table works perfectly for us!

Then we have the ball gym there for Sadie. She crawls around and is currently trying to pull up. We have to watch her because she tries to pull up on the crates or tries to pull things out of the crates. We also have to keep an eye out for baby drool on the books. ;-) Then sometimes we have this:


Is it my turn?



This set up works pretty well as I can nurse Sadie while helping someone with math or reading aloud to everyone at once. They can color on the floor or at the various tables/desks and still be within earshot. Everything we need is right there with us, so they don't leave the room unless they are going to the bathroom or to get a drink.

Ellie will sometimes go read on her bed for her independent reading but she reports back within 10 or 15 minutes so that works well.

For a change of scenery we will come into the dining area and use the dry erase board. Todd nabbed this at an auction for a local college. It's 12 feet long! We LOVE it!  Above it we have our art-line where we hang the kids' artwork. We got that at Ikea. The art-line was hung before the dry erase board or else we would have hung it a bit higher.  It works well enough.
 

This is where we will do things such as:

         - Learn a new letter for handwriting.

          -Work on Ellie's DITHR (Drawn Into The Heart of Reading) brainstorming and such

          -Learn a new math concept

          -And of course we have dinner and just have fun drawing silly pictures ;-)


Another spot we use frequently is the couch, but you already know what a couch looks like.

I'll try to grab some pics of the kids in action. So far we are taking extra time getting our flow for things so I haven't had time for pictures.


Have a blessed day! ~Tammy

1 comment:

Tiffany said...

I love this set up! We use our home office as the classroom but we also use the couch and kitchen table as well. Looks like you are set up for a wonderful year