At Heart of the Matter, it is "Not Back to School Blog Hop: School Rooms" week {click
here to see post}.
As a homeschooling family, school happens many different places, mostly where ever appropriate, comfortable, room/area best equipped with the things we need! Have you ever tried teaching math and money at a register and the cashier just blurts out the answer? We have!! LOL
Anyway, from Wednesday on, last week, I had an insane idea that I could get my house clean and staged, just so, that the pictures of our various school rooms would be perfect. Then HELLO, reality set in and it's not so staged. What follows are some of the areas we school in, but quite honestly, I could have easily taken hundreds of pictures for where we school (anyone want to see the inside of a not so clean van?).
Probably our most favorite room is the living room because it has the La
zy boy recliners in it. They're nice and cozy, a lot of light comes through the window, and for the last two years it's just where we've gotten a lot of our work accomplished. Plus, the boys and I love to snuggle on the smaller couch to read. Hard to believe that it won't be long before the three of us don't fit on the couch together anymore. Also, our tv is in there, which surprisingly isn't a distraction, which makes watching the Math-U-See videos easier.
Our boys absolutely love science! The love to see how things react with one another (especially
the brotherl
y love kind of experiments where one ends up crying ~ I'm not so fond of those ones!!). We've had fun on hikes looking at
Beaver dam's, looking at erosion, and other wild life. Also fun, science wise, was the time a couple years ago, when we worked on
chemical reactions. So, here are pictures our kitchen, mostly cleaned up!
"Stashing" school stuff happens, mostly, in our fireplace room. We've got a numb
er of varying kinds of bookcases in there. It has most of our school related books, arts and crafts type stuff, math manipulatives, file boxes holding current school work. In the winter, it's probably the boys favorite room to work on school stuff if we've got a good fire going!
Also in this room, to the right of the brown bookcase (on the right of this photo) we have a piece of metal hung on the wall, a calendar for the boys, and some cork board. Really thought they would have gotten a bigger kick o
ut of the sheet of metal, but not so much. Hoping to make better use of it this year. Possibly doing stuff with the word magnets we have or with the letters. Oh! Can you see that we have MORE bookcases to be put together in the photo to the left. Love the IKEA shelves that come in flat boxes. These are for the boys rooms for all the books they have. And possibly a few crates of toys!
So, this is a tour of our school rooms. One last thing, we do have maps and things like that. We decided to home school after a couple years of public school and we had already decorated the house. The maps and white boards, when not in use, get stored behind some chairs.
Happy schooling~
P.S. Forgot about the one thing I made for school last year that I really like. I purchase this wire basket when we were first homeschooling to contain the weeks worth of books. Over the years, our curriculum seems to be morphing into other styles of school and not AS many books. I had the thought that dividing the basket into three sections would be a great idea. The sections are labeled "school", "seasonal" (which I intend to change to "mom"), and "returns" as we use a lot of library books. The last one helps on library day to pick up those items that need to go back.
This next picture is a close up of the dividers. I used scrap, thin plywood and tried to paint it like a barn. I had left over letters from another project and was able to spell out the words I wanted. Even have enough letters to spell out "mom" when I get around to it. I just used Elmor's glue to put the letters on.
The guy that swallowed swords, spoons, and balloons!
Stockades!
Absolutely LOVE when the kids toys can be used for educational purposes. A number of years ago, Thing One and Thing Two asked my parents for a castle similar to this one. They both have one and enjoyed playing with them for awhile. It got to the point that they became occasional toys, but I wasn't ready to "retire" them. This week, I'm very thankful we didn't. It has been very useful to point out various words like:
using the companion guide to Magic Tree House "The Knights at Dawn". This has been a great reference guide and the print outs from Homeschool Share have been wonderful. So far the boys have learned about which kinds of castles were better for protection, the Feudal System, Lords & Ladies, parts of the castle. They've gotten a kick out me being able to hook up my Mac and do Power Point presentations for vocabulary, bring up pictures of Castles, among other things. They've also enjoyed playing with their castles while being read to from "Castle Diary, The Journal of Tobias Burgess, Paige".
Head of our house and school ~ Kevin!
Don't know what is going on with Thing Two's right hand, but
Thing One needs to be original in his
Still wanting to "name" our home school. Not sure why I have such a strong desire to do so, but I do. What has come to mind lately is "Brockville Academy". It sounds pretty good, sounds formal, sounds official.
zy boy recliners in it. They're nice and cozy, a lot of light comes through the window, and for the last two years it's just where we've gotten a lot of our work accomplished. Plus, the boys and I love to snuggle on the smaller couch to read. Hard to believe that it won't be long before the three of us don't fit on the couch together anymore. Also, our tv is in there, which surprisingly isn't a distraction, which makes watching the Math-U-See videos easier.
the brotherl
y love kind of experiments where one ends up crying ~ I'm not so fond of those ones!!). We've had fun on hikes looking at Beaver dam's, looking at erosion, and other wild life. Also fun, science wise, was the time a couple years ago, when we worked on chemical reactions. So, here are pictures our kitchen, mostly cleaned up!
er of varying kinds of bookcases in there. It has most of our school related books, arts and crafts type stuff, math manipulatives, file boxes holding current school work. In the winter, it's probably the boys favorite room to work on school stuff if we've got a good fire going!
ut of the sheet of metal, but not so much. Hoping to make better use of it this year. Possibly doing stuff with the word magnets we have or with the letters. Oh! Can you see that we have MORE bookcases to be put together in the photo to the left. Love the IKEA shelves that come in flat boxes. These are for the boys rooms for all the books they have. And possibly a few crates of toys!
P.S. Forgot about the one thing I made for school last year that I really like. I purchase this wire basket when we were first homeschooling to contain the weeks worth of books. Over the years, our curriculum seems to be morphing into other styles of school and not AS many books. I had the thought that dividing the basket into three sections would be a great idea. The sections are labeled "school", "seasonal" (which I intend to change to "mom"), and "returns" as we use a lot of library books. The last one helps on library day to pick up those items that need to go back.
Have you ever seen a new craft "toy" that just looks so cool, you just want one? Over at "Soft Place to Land", there is a give away for a Silhouette Craft Cutter. Here's a number of the things it can do: