A week longer than expected, but we managed to get our school room together. My husband (Ken) threw down some nice Pergo flooring in record time and turned our Sunroom into an official school in just one weekend. This was actually the first room in the house to feel complete. The kids love it and Ella was excited for school to start. I tried my best to organize such a tight space.
Here's Ella's workboxes and workspace. We are totally in love with the IKEA Trofast system and have maximized are space well with these. I still hope to get Ella a more traditional desk, but for now this little table works well for what we need.
Eric (15mth's old) is enjoying the play area I created for him. He has a nice play rug, also from IKEA and lots of trains and trucks to keep him busy. He is always in the middle of everything, so we'll have to look at adding a small table & chair for him as well. He's really interested in crayons, so I don't imagine it will be long before he will be more hands on in our lessons for the day.
This is our daily whiteboard and circle time area. We cover the Calender, Bible Verse, Song, and Math Activities here. We also have Ella's Headsprout (online phonics) goal chart here.
Every school room, aslo has a teacher's work area. Well, this is "Teacher Mommy's" desk. We'll be adding a flag to the room, but for now we pull up the american flag on the computer and say our daily pledge of allegience. Ella also does all her online learning here, using programs such as Headsprout, Starfall, and we even enjoy some youtube and National Geographic when appropriate.
Organization is key with all our materials.
We were lucky to find a couple more IKEA Trofast shelving units on Craigslist and picked up two more units. The room is finally packed, but at least it's organized.
Our typical day might run something like this:
Greet
Pledge
Prayer
Circle Time (Calender, Song, Math Activity, Review Theme, Book)
Online Activity (Starfall, Headsprout)
Workboxes (we have 12)
A typical day has been taking about 2 hours with the workboxes. Occassionally, we run over doing our art projects. It's all fun though and Ella is really enjoying our learning time together.
The best part is Ella can still enjoy other activities outside of the home too. She is attending a Monart art class and Soccer on Fridays, Choir on Wednesday's and will be starting Piano soon. I think she has much more well rounded education and she is a much happy kid, since we started homeschooling.
I hope to be able to write a weekly blog with what we've accomplished each week.
