Lessons from the Little School House

Well, what have we been learning in school? A LOT! We have had a great start to our school year for the most part and I am amazed at how quickly the kids learn things.  Our theme this year is a geography study of different countries and cultures. We have been working on North America and did a two week study on the United States. During that time, Hay had to be able to locate all the states on a US map for a grade and I had Si do it also but wasn't expecting to count it as a grade for her just yet. I found a couple online games they could play to help them learn the states locations. I was not amazed at what I could remember when I took a shot at the little game. :^/ Anyways, the kids played the game a few times and we practiced locating the states during school and within two weeks they did awesome on the test!! Both of them! Those little minds just soak things up! This week we took a plane trip to Mexico (no, not in real life) but we had fun as I became the fast talking flight attendant and then the customs person who had to arrest one of them for trying to sneak into the country! They are learning lots and I am glad for this opportunity for them to see what life is like for people in other parts of the world. We'll move on to Canada in a week and then to South America for awhile!

The weeks we studied the US we also studied forests in science. We gathered leaves at the park for a collection and looked them up in tree guides to find the names of the trees. We were so excited Troy was able to go with us! He read the kids a book about being careful and having fun in the outdoors.

Today was supposed to be our first field trip to some caverns in Indiana about an hour from here with a group of homeschooling friends from church however, the check engine light came on last night in the van so we decided it wasn't a good time to be spending money on a trip and stayed home. The kids were bummed which I knew they would be so I declared it "fun school" day today. We started an hour later than normal and I let them wear whatever they wanted. We did our morning routine - calendar and Bible - then I spent a half hour with each one while the other two worked together on something quietly. It went great and was nice to sit apart with them individually and work one on one. We may do that more often! After that we went outside for awhile and the kids had races and played with Lily. Next we played our geography game where they are learning where the countries are in North America.So...that's some of what we've been doing in school lately! We start week 6 next week - wow!

After that it was lunch and an educational video about Mexico then more fun outside. It definitely turned out to be a fun school day even if we couldn't make the field trip! I am looking forward to going on the one next month though!

Lessons from the Little School House: First Days

With our theme this year being geography, we have been learning about maps and globes this first week of school. We have tons of books in our book basket that we found at the library on maps. We did a little experiment of sorts on the difference between flat maps and round globes. I had Hayden try to take a piece of paper and fit it around a ball. This was to show that a flat map cannot accurately reflect sizes and shapes of land as can the globe since the world we live on is shaped like the globe, a sphere. He was (maybe still) convinced (or just stubborn) that one day he will make it work! From there we took a grapefruit and I drew a (terrible) map of the world and then peeled it and asked the kids to piece it together to make a map. I forgot to take a picture of the whole grapefruit so they held it together for me in the pic above.

Here is the peeled globe.

Trying to flatten it out match it up.

And again, one determined fella!

Today, we studied our backyard habitat by roping off one square yard and observing what was in it. They found leaves, berries, bugs, a small piece of duct tape, and holes. We'll be taking weekly nature walks and making a leaf notebook later. Hayden was sidetracked for a moment as he tried to make his string barrier smoke. He even wrapped it around a twig.

Looking for berries until she spotted an ugly bug crawling toward her!

Just hanging out in his square - we are working through an "i can't do it" phase lately. What happened to "I can do it by myself"?

Time for School!!

We have most definitely enjoyed our first few days of school! We have a big kindergartener, a sweet second grader, and a fun fifth grader! I just can't describe what a privilege it is to be able to be with my children each and every day! I love them so much and they are so fun to watch as they "do school". We started on Monday and I will be honest and say it was a rough start. None of us were used to getting up so early and I think we all had to take some time to wake up that day and get our frumpy grumpies out! I'll also admit that after day 3 this morning it has not gotten any easier to get up! I asked Troy last night how long til my body adjusted and he reminded me he's been at his new job for a month and he's still tired every morning...bummer.

I have been very pleased with how our schedule is going so far. I'm trying to do the same subject with them all at the same time and it's working even though I wasn't sure it would. So, when one of them is doing math, they all are. I stagger start them just a little and Keaton does a lot of hands on things that he doesn't have to have me right with him for.

One of my favorite things so far...

•  Timers! I bought two of these. They come in so handy when I want/need to set a time limit for a certain subject or activity. Wtih math, for example, the kids can do more than one lesson per day so I give them 30 minutes and have them do as much as they can. They also get 15 minutes for typing lessons on the computer, 10 minutes for math drills, etc. They're just super!

This was taken after our morning stretches. Just simple toe touches, jumping jacks, etc, and their favorite spinning while reciting months, days, continents, or alphabet until I say "freeze".

Ok, so maybe he's not so thrilled about everything!

She loves it all!

He asks to count to 100 every morning after doing their calendar notebook!

Domino Activity Basket

Here is an easy to make domino activity basket. Print off the domino worksheet. Laminate it so that you can reuse it. The child places the domino in its spot on the mat and then writes an addition problem and answers it using a dry erase marker. Easy cheesy as my daughter would say!

You can find the domino template here http://www.firstschool.ws/theme/printables/dominoes-math.htm. If you don't have any dominos you will find a template to make your own at this site.

The School Room

I plan to share some of the things I have found in all my searching for ideas to make school fun and exciting this year! First, I thought I'd start with a brief tour around our almost finished school room. We have a great basement to use for our school room. It has one big room where we will set up desks, tables, and center type things. There is a closet that we will use as our supply closet to hold toys, games, craft items, books for later in the year, etc. We also have a bathroom and the laundry room is in the basement so that makes changing out laundry very convenient for me during school!

Here's a big picture of our room. It's almost complete...needs the chairs (just waiting to get them cleaned up!) and a few more things I'll be adding to the walls like our big maps.  

I LOVE the chalkboard! It turned out great! We have our handwriting charts under it. I saved the space above for some paper dolls that we will make the first couple weeks of school. The table beside the chalkboard has another of my new favorite things...a laminator. It has been such a help in trying to preserve some of the activities I have been making.

This is our calendar wall. We will go over everything on it first thing every morning. I'll share more about it another time when I share our calendar folders that I just love, but the younger two will practice place value, counting, money and more by using this wall!

Here you see some things I had a blast painting. The magazine holders which we'll use for books (probably for our adaptation of workboxes) turned out super. I have four more to fill in the spaces with once I get more lime green! The second shelf has a basket containing the items used on the calendar every day, trays for papers, pencil sharpener and the bottom shelf has our read aloud missionary books, dictionaries, and some extra notebooks. 

This is where I will keep some center type activities. So far, most are geared to the younger two but I am working on searching for ideas and brainstorming for Hayden to be able to do some as a break from book work. For Keaton it will be used as productive learning time while I am teaching the older ones. He'll be able to sit at the little table for a change from his desk. I'll be sharing all the awesome activities that I have found and links to great websites.

Oh! Notice the buckets? They were part of my bargain finds at a dollar store in a previous post. The blue ones were the right color but the ugly grey ones are now a lovely lime green! Eventually, I would like to do the yellow baskets on the top and the little chairs but for now yellow works!

This table sits at the far end of the room and will be for art and other activities.  See the basket on the left? It used to be a peachy pink color with yellow stripes. Now it's brilliant blue and lime green on the inside! And then we have our book basket. These are some of our collection of books that I will rotate out unless I am able to add a few more of these crates. Found them at walmart and the colors were almost perfect. The green isn't so limey but it will work! The name book basket comes from our curriculum where we will be adding in additional library books every week to further explore what we are studying. The baby dolls haven't found a home yet. Siara only plays with a couple dolls so I'm thinking the rest need to find a storage bin to live in for now!

And finally, our computer station! This will be a favorite I'm sure with my kids! We'll use it for learning games and typing practice. The table was left here by the renters before us. Even though it's not in great shape it works beautifully as a computer table with a drawer and cabinet to store things. The box on the table is going to become a mailbox soon.

Hope you have enjoyed the tour of our Little School House!!

Our school choices for the year...

We are so close to beginning school and I am SO excited!  Our first day will be August 5th and it will be a short day for the kids to browse through their books and folders and do a couple fun projects (like apply for their "passports") relating to what we will be studying this year. Our core curriculum is going to be My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures. This is a year long geography adventure throught many different countries. They will learn facts about each country, where they are located, try foods from each culture, do country related art projects, and hear stories of missionaries from the different countries. They will also be studying the book of Matthew for Bible and about ecosysyems for science. A few extra things we are doing include Hey Andrew, Teach Me Some Greek, Typing Instructor for Kids, Praising God on the Piano, Guitar Worship DVD lessons, gymnastics for Siara, and most likely basketball for the boys later on during the winter. I think this year is going to be so much better than last.  I have spent many hours in preparing our school room, activities for centers (including a school computer - yay!), and beginning tomorrow I will spend the remainder of time lesson planning including pre-planned field trips and scheduled breaks!  I must take a second to say how thankful we are for such wonderful grandparents who have provided the opportunity for us to have so many wonderful and fun things, from books to the extras!  The Lord has once again met our needs and blessed us with more.


Lessons from the Little School House Academy...
Ok, it's not really lessons we have learned just yet but it will be for those who enjoy reading schoolish things like organizing, activities and such. Feel free to skip over these posts in the future if they bore you! : ) I have almost completed our calendar wall except for months and birthdays.  I decided we will include family birthdays for this so we will be able to cover more months.  The younger two will have calendar folders to complete each morning with weather chart, number of school days, etc.  Our huge chalkboard is looking amazing, can't wait to try it out. We have to wait until Wednesday when it must be conditioned and then it will be ready to go. What an invention!  I love the look of chalkboards and have seen the effects of dry erase marker mishaps all over walls so it was a no brainer that we would choose chalkboards but they are both pricey not to mention the holes it would put in walls for us to repair upon our departure of our rental home.  It cost us about $15 for the paint and foam roller and about 30 minutes each for the 3 coats it took!  Compare that to anywhere from $50-100 if we had bought a hanging chalkboard in the size I wanted. 


I became a huge fan of spray paint this last week!  I never realized how much fun I could have with it!  The two colors I chose to use on things I wanted to change are rustoleum's lime green and brilliant blue. I have done buckets, a basket, magazine holders, and eventually the desk chairs will be these colors.  About those school desks...well, let's just say they have been a pain or at least caused pain!  My sweet husband did the rust disolver for me since I had such a horrible allergic reaction to them.  It began shortly after I cleaned them up and the next day I was miserable.  My arms and face were covered with tiny little bumps that itched worse than any bug bite ever.  This lasted from Tuesday until I finally began feeling better Sunday!  I could not sleep at night because when I would get still I noticed the itching even more and even woke up from sleep many times due to the itching.  It never occured to me that my allergy to at least nickel that I know of would cause this.  As I read up on it sweating can intensify your reaction to chrome/metal/whatever!  Since it was above 90 degrees the day I worked on the desks outside you might say I perspired a little!  I am thankful it seems so much better and that Troy finished them for me.  I was able to paint them - without touching them! - and now we are just waiting for him to have the time to work on the chairs.  That's all for now but there's so much more to share and I will add pictures of our room as soon as I get another memory card for the camera!

I am itching just looking at these things!  Above is asfter cleaning and below after painting.

We spent some time in the water sprinkler last Friday after playing with friends!  Warning: Hayden has grown at least two inches this month! I'm not kidding! I need to check his height.

Project: School Desks Day 1

Today I began the project of cleaning up and restoring our bargain school desks. This is going to be a bigger task than I had planned but it will be well worth it in the end! The desks had probably sat in a storage building for many years. So, I began with wiping off all the dirt and webs on and in the desks then I used a wire brush to scrape off loose rust. I even used a drill (after Troy did the first one!) to take off the wooden desktops so that I am able to get to the inside more easily. Some of them will take a little more work than the others but I am so thankful for this great blessing! It definitely is not something that was necessary for us to do school but will make it more enjoyable and provide everyone with their "own" desk. Today's job took over 2 hours in the 90 degree heat and who knows how high the humidity was so I decided to wait until tomorrow to use the rust dissolver. I can't wait to get these done!

Here are some of the desks in our garage after we unloaded them a couple days ago...

Here are a couple of them today with the tops off and after I had cleaned and scrubbed them...

In other things related to school Troy and I discussed picking out school colors and I think I have chosen a name for our school. I like "Little School House". If you know me at all you know very well that I would love to live on a farm and have 15 kids running around and playing. Better yet, I would love to go back in time and live across the creek from Laura Ingalls! I prefer a simple life, would love to grow our own food, and have lots of land for the kids to explore. It is such a joy to have the opportunity to have our kids at home and to be able to give them a biblically centered education. I've always desired to be a teacher but never would have dreamed it would become a reality in this way!