Archive | Homeschool

Back to School Organization:The Scary School Shelves

July 23, 2012 By Melissa

We haven’t done as well about easing back into school as I’ve wanted to this month. It might have something to do with the fact that our school shelves looked like this:

Or it could be the fact that our school supply box looked like this (it’s in the bottom of that picture, but it’s hard to see. What with all the mess…)

I feel like we need some background music of the Jaws soundtrack! We like to keep it real around here, and this is definitely the uglier side of keeping it real! It’s not much wonder that the thought of trying to do school was enough to make me want to run and hide! How on earth was I supposed to find our school books? Or a pencil? Or crayons?

I decided Friday that I had to tackle the chaos. Rip it off like a band-aid! Granted, it had taken months, if not the whole year to get this bad. A lot of the mess came from “projects” or “art work” of the girls – hence all the mounds of paper. But it exploded beyond that, and the shelves became a black hole into which any toy or item that drifted into the dining room could be thrown.

It took me several hours Friday and Saturday to get it finished. I was so proud by the time I got to this point that I had to take another picture:

Progress! Of course, progress meant that there were various piles of junk all over my dining room table, stacks of books on the floor, and several garbage bags full of trash in a corner. But progress even so.

I wanted to run screaming on more than one occasion, especially as I got down to the nitty-gritty of dealing with all the random puzzle pieces, game pieces, toys, cell phone chargers, bills, Christmas stuff, and other assorted odds and ends.

But it was worth it to finally get to this point!

I could just sit and stare at them now!! The top two shelves on the right have our materials for this year. Read-alouds, unit study materials, curriculum, math books, speech folders, and so forth. The third shelf has some of the girl’s older schoolwork that they still like to flip through – notebooks and lapbooks mostly, along with a big stack of coloring books. The fourth shelf is a case of books that are great for pre-K, and a dry-erase writing board. The bottom shelf holds the rubbermaid with our school supplies, like scissors, empty notebooks, glue, and construction paper. It actually closes now! The top shelf on the left holds general homeschooling books, along with math manipulatives and our pencil boxes with pencils, crayons, and markers (I was SHOCKED at how many crayons we actually still own!). The second shelf down holds read-alouds that we may or may not get to this year, and the third shelf holds geography reference books. The fourth shelf holds more reference books – encyclopedias, Webster’s dictionary and thesaurus, and a few children’s visual dictionaries. The bottom shelf holds some puzzles and our music set. Right where the baby can knock them out over and over

Having this completed allowed me to sit down Saturday afternoon and write out our goals for the year, and some of our initial lesson plans. It helped that I could actually see the things that I had gotten for the year! I was also able to make a list of the school supplies we did need: glue sticks, construction paper, and tape. Not anywhere near what I thought we needed before I started.

We are starting school today, and I am so excited about it. I’m also determined to keep these shelves organized!

Do you have any big projects you need to tackle before school starts back?

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Summer Break?

June 11, 2012 By Melissa

It’s officially summer! Time to kick back, relax, play outside, and enjoy a break from school. Right?

Nehemiah certainly thinks so!

Not for us this year! We’ve been pretty relaxed, and that’s been fine, but our family is needing a bit more school structure than we’ve had in the past. I still have no desire to do “school at home”, but I think I need something a bit more then, “Hmm, what should we do today?”

We’ve taken a few weeks almost completely off, but over the next few weeks we are going to start easing into more of a routine.

Math:

Both girls are using Khan Academy, which they really enjoy. Makaylah will also be working through Math-U-See Beta Instruction Pack , and Sophia will be working through a leveled math workbook that we already own.

Reading:

We will continue using Starfall for both girls. With Sophia’s speech disorder (apraxia), I am still not worried about rushing reading with her, but we will continue learning phonics through flash cards and attempting some readers. I would really like to see Makaylah reading more fluently. It’s been a constant struggle for the past several years. We’ve backed off for awhile and then come back to it, but she has stayed frustrated with it. I think we are going to do our best to have her reading several times throughout the day, even if it means pulling back from some other areas. We are going to stay very positive about it, while still trying to work through whatever is giving her issues with it.

Science:

I purchased Apologia Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the 5th Day, and I am so excited for us to start it! I still want to order a Junior Notebook to go with it.

History:

I am still trying to make a firm decision about history. We will either be continuing our president’s unit study, or we will be doing one of the Simply Charlotte Mason modules.

Read-Alouds:

We are a little behind on our twelve read-alouds for 2012, so we need to get caught back up!

Geography:

We incorporate this with our other studies.

Speech therapy:

For us, this is a constant part of school. Sophia has been in speech therapy for three years, and it is unlikely that will end any time soon. However, she is in between therapist with the therapy center we receive services through. We’re not sure yet when those will resume. She also receives services through the local public school, but she is off until school resumes in August. This all means that will be even more important than normal that we work with her at home. With apraxia, most therapy involves lots and lots of repetition and drill. Thankfully, that makes it easy for us to work with her on it.

Now, we will still be having lots of fun! I’m going to be working on a summer bucket list (look for a 5 day series about this in July!), and once a week we will be doing a park day with homeschool friends. My goal in schooling over the summer is to allow us to get a solid start on school for next year, while still allowing us the extra time we need to take advantage of opportunities that arise throughout the year.

Do you school year round? Does it depend on how your year went, or is it the same year to year?

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Schooling Saturday: B and D Trickery

March 31, 2012 By Melissa

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a good school week. We are plugging along here! As I mentioned in this post, reading is one of our big struggles. Makaylah is improving, but its still a big struggle. She has a lot of trouble distinguishing “b” and “d”, which of course makes it hard to read fluently and leads to frustration.

I was so happy to stumble across this post yesterday about that issue. It has some great tips on how to help children remember which letter is which, and I’m excited to try it with Makaylah. The author says that most children she uses these techniques with are able to distinguish between “b” and “d” within a week. We’re going to give it a try, and I’ll update and let you all know how it goes!