While discussing deciduous trees with the kids, they were answering some questions. Evelyn was super excited to answer something so I thought I would help her out a bit.


"Evelyn, the leaves FALL off of trees in which season? Winter, Spring, Summer or FALL???"  Quite certain she had the correct answer she quickly stated, "Spring."  We all burst out laughing and she had no clue why! LOL

Have a blessed day! ~Tammy

Gearing up for some indoor shop class

It's been a busy couple of months.  We moved amidst a huge amount of snow, thanks to some very dedicated friends. :)  This old house we are temporarily living in is quite drafty and with record lows we have been wearing a LOT of layers.

We got our new school room up and running (Such a big room. I am loving the large, albeit drafty, windows.) and then Todd brought in something I never expected.  A lathe!  This is a current picture of our school table:

Why a lathe?  Well, the kids are participating in their annual pinewood derby race for Awana and thought it would be fun to make the cars into shapes. My husband rocks!

Each of the kids chose a theme (okay Sadie didn't really choose hers.) and Todd helped them pencil the shape onto the wooden block.  Then they each got to be helper while he worked on their car. ie., They ran the shop vac. ;-)

Here's a pic of the cars so far.  Left to right we have:

Ellie:  Hello Kitty

Silas:  Race car

Avrie: Boat

Evelyn: Minion

Sadie: Baby bottle

They will get to sand on them and paint them up at Awana.  I'll post finished pictures.  Evelyn was so excited when I told her we had a googly eye that would be perfect for her one-eyed minion!  Sadie has been carrying her bottle around all over the house.  Avrie has already painted a bit on her boat and Ellie and Silas are ready to begin painting next Awana. I can't wait to see what each of them do to create their vision!


Have a blessed day! ~Tammy

A schedule that works!

Let's get one thing out in the open. I am NOT naturally organized. Never have been and never will be. I started out homeschooling with a 5yo, 3yo and 1yo.  Of course at the time I thought it was really hard. Now I look back and realize how easy I had it!  We did our school work when we felt like it and got our state required 180 days in easily.  If I had a new baby, we took time off without guilt. Now that the children are older I feel like we need some more structure to our schedule. I'm still working on our daily plan but I have put together a yearly plan that I am in LOVE with!

It all started when an online friend was telling me about how she was scheduling her year and I liked a lot of what she was doing.  I took some of those ideas and tweaked them to fit our family (one of the many perks of homeschooling) and am very pleased with the results.

2013-2014 School Schedule

The Planning Process

I started out by looking at each month and marking any times that we normally end up not doing school. You know......times like the week of Christmas when life gets so busy and school just doesn't naturally happen. I scheduled those weeks off.

Then I made notes of other times my husband is off work.  There are a couple Mondays in there that he has off work so I schedule those entire weeks off school for us as well.

Next I looked at our extra curricular activities and took any time off that would be a busy time for us, such as the week of the local children's theatre show.  Last year we did do school the week of the show but it was HARD to get it all accomplished and would have made for a much more relaxing time had we not attempted it.

I wanted to get done by a certain date and I did NOT want to go more than 6 weeks in a row doing school.  I am good in spurts but need a break or I will burn out.

Using these steps I was able to get all 180 days scheduled and be finished by the end of May. Of course if we end up going longer it's not the end of the world. ;-)

Creating The Schedule

Next I made a spreadsheet of the months with 4 or 5 weeks (depending) listed for each month. The 5th week is colored gray if that  month does not have 5 weeks in it this year.  Some weeks don't have 5 days because of the way the calendar falls so I made a note on those.  I noted the number of days each week in the green highlighted column and left myself space to make tally marks with a pencil once each day is completed. This has been a great tool for me to check that box and see how far we have gotten in the year and if we are on schedule.  Any weeks that we are taking a break are marked with purple.

The schedule ended up in sections of a few weeks at a time, which was exactly what I wanted.  We have some things that we will do every school day, but there are other subjects that I preferred to do more of a unit study with. I set time aside each day for a "family elective".  This is noted on the schedule with red letters. 

My oldest daughter has some subjects that the younger ones don't have.  I have a special time for her to work on those subjects each day as well. Those are her electives and are noted with pink letters.

I don't have every item that we are doing on this yearly schedule.  There just wasn't enough room, but this gets the majority of it all in one place for me to see visually what the plan is. For record keeping and our daily schedule, I use the online scheduler at Simply Charlotte Mason. I find their scheduler is very intuitive and it helps me keep things straight.

I hope this post has gotten your creative juices flowing and will help with your school year plan.

Have a blessed day! ~Tammy

My favorite school items so far

I must share my favorite school items so far. Of course the books we are reading are awesome!  Here are a few. ;-)

But, I'm not talking about those, I'm talking about my favorite organizational items.



First up we have Ellie's checklist, in its home on the infamous pink clipboard.

I took all of her HOD boxes and some other things she has to do throughout the day (piano practice and such) and listed them for her. They are color coded. The green boxes are things she needs to do with mom. The purple items are her independent work and the pink boxes are her independent reading. I separated the work and reading because sometimes we will be out and about and I can tell her to grab her reading for the day. I thought it would be easier for her to find this way.  Ellie seems to love that she knows what she must accomplish and can see what is done and what has yet to be done for the day. We are pleased with our list!





Next is our timeline. The timeline we are using this year happens to span over three pages. I wasn't sure how I was going to do it and I happened upon a file folder that opened into thirds! I got a cover sheet off of the wonderful HOD yahoo group shared files to make it pretty.

Then put the timeline pages inside.

 I love how it folds up for storage inside the binder but will fold out to show the years all at a glance.




Speaking of the binder........that is my next favorite item. Rather than blank pages, I printed off the History notebooking pages from a lovely HOD mom. I felt like it would help us out a bit. Ellie still has to fill in all of the information but there is not nearly the amount of writing she would have had otherwise. (I don't know why these pics are sideways. I have rotated them all different ways and it's not working.)

History

Next is the Science notebooking section. I just put a blank page in the page protectors for each unit. That way they are read to go and we don't have to hunt for a piece of paper. Ellie has a bible verse at the top and then she made a drawing of high tide and low tide. Since we were learning about the sea she drew a fish around her bible verse. :)

Science

The last section (so far) is for her science experiments. I printed a worksheet off for each unit and it is all ready for Ellie to fill out. I had a picture but blogger is being difficult tonight.  I have to say that the page protectors are what makes this binder so perfect. I got the idea from Julie on the HOD forums. She is a genius!

Well, there you have it. My most favorite organizational items for the year. 




Have a blessed day! ~Tammy

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