School Time’s A Comin’ Part 2

Yesterday I talked about school for my little ones but things are changing for my older boys as well. At the end of last year we decided that my oldest son needed more attention. Not because he wasn’t doing well in school, just because he was feeling a little left out. I was working with his brother through almost all of his subjects and I never sit down with Jordan during the day.

So this year I’m moving the boys away from their desks and we’ll be doing school at the kitchen table. 

I purchased these crates, one for each of them and and a pink one for me. We’ll keep all of our daily books and supplies in them and bring them to the table each morning.

These are no where near full. Some of the stuff in there now are review products that were started in the middle of the last school year. We’ll continue working through those this year. I just purchased our remaining homeschool books this week, so we’ll hopefully be ready by August!

I’ve created a schedule that I’m going to slide into a page protector. Each day we’ll be able to check off as we work through it. I’ve also fixed it so I can adjust the times once we get started because I really wasn’t sure how much time some of our subjects would take.

School Time’s a Comin’

And I’m getting ready!!  My older boys and husband have been out of the house this week so I’ve used the time to get all of my school planning done. I have worked day and night but it’s been fun.
Lucas and I stayed up together a couple nights.  Believe it or not we made some pretty sweet memories working together.


Shiloh stayed up with me last night….and it shows, lol

I really wanted to be ready to start school by the first week in August and I had two full weeks coming up, so I knew I would need to get it all done this week. I spent the first two days buying some supplies and cleaning out our library/computer/homeschool room.

I must admit, it looks quiet nice (I really should have taken a before picture).I know it won’t stay that way though, lol.     
                            

We don’t actually do school in this room (we did once upon a time) but I do have an area for Jordan to do his Phonetic Zoo and Bible work.

We cleaned a shelf off of this bookcase to make room for our Sonlight Core E!!! I also have to make room for some Heart of Dakota books that I loaned a friend last year. Not sure where I’ll put those but I’ll figure it out.
My 5 year old son will be starting kindergarten this year and his 4yr old sister will be doing it right along side him. I wanted to make it special for them so I have a few things planned to make learning fun and easy (I hope!).

I’ve set up an area in my kitchen for us to do their school. In the past I’ve tried to do it in different areas of the house but we always seem to end up back in the kitchen. So this year the kitchen and dining room will be our main school areas except for when we’re doing our reading (SONLIGHT!!) That’ll be done on the couch as always.


So for the little ones, I moved their small bookcase and filled it with some of the books I want us to read this year.


They each have a cubby bin to hold their glue, crayons, scissors, etc. and another bin to hold their workbooks and papers. We bought stickers and I decorated one bin and they decorated the other.
I also created a morning board (although it may not get done in the morning…just depends). The idea came when one of my blogging friends (Rusheika, at Island Mama's Adventures) introduced me to the idea and directed me to 1+1+1=1 and Mama Jean.  I used Hubbard's Corner to help me determine what I wanted them to cover this year. I made a list and as soon as they cover a few of the items on the board, I’ll redo it and add new stuff. At least that’s my plan…things often don’t go the way I plan…we may totally hate this morning board thing. Goodness I hope not.

Our Morning Board

So there’s part of our school plan.  Tomorrow I’m going to blog about the older boys and the changes we’ve made for them.

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