Ramblings...

Ok while most of the US zones out on American Football, I’m going to do some homeschool blogging. *GASP* I’ve mentioned previously that we use a morning meeting board; you can read that post HERE.

I had wanted to do some updating to it and wanted to find something bigger to house it all, especially because my updates involved expanding what we use/do as well. After thinking on it for a few days I decided a tri-fold display board would be best. It can be folded and kept out of the way (saving us space) and should be able to survive our move –although if it doesn’t I can easily get my hands on another tri-fold board and spend less than 2$ so it’s cheap, which is important to a family that moves a lot and is on a budget-.

Once I figured out what I would use for the board I went about collecting the resources for our Morning Meeting Board. I reused a lot of what we already had but also, as previously mentioned, I added in a few more items.

Here is the finished product*the picture's not that great but you get the idea*:



I currently have everything stapled to the board but this isn’t very affective, it’s just all I had on hand at the time, I’ll be getting Velcro circles so we can pull things down when we need to. We have a monthly virtue we go over (using We Choose Virtue’s classroom edition-that’s the secular version-) we have them laminated so they can withstand years of use and moving. Under that is our “I’m Grateful For” list, the kids and I list two things each day that we are grateful for. After that is our word of the week along with a picture of Dr. King I figured Equality and King went hand in hand so whenever we use that word we also talk a bit about him, it was also our word of the week the last time I did this…hmm I should track my changing spurts to get the most out of them. Under that is also our artist of the month (which I desperately need to change, I finally have something I feel will be affective in our artist studies I just need to get the printouts made and added to the board).

In the center we have two “Days In School” printouts, they are a bit different from each other and I liked both of them, so we use both. Next to that is our Number Chart, I pick a number each day and Professor Chaos has to fill in the boxes (while counting out loud until he gets to the number I’ve chosen, sometimes I let General Disarray pick the number). Once Professor Chaos has counting to 100 down we will use the number chart to aid in our skip counting.

Under that we have our Days of the Week tracker from Trend© as well as our temperature tracking printout that covers indoor and outdoor temps, we have a digital thermometer that gives us a constant readout of the indoor and outdoor temperature as well as a few other fun things that we’ll use when T.B.M. are a bit older. We track temperature in Celsius since we use the metric system in our schooling, it’s what the scientific community, and most of the world, uses so that’s what I’m teaching the kids. Plus, honestly, I strongly dislike –read as hate…yes I know it’s a strong word- the US measurement system, always have. Especially, when I stepped into an advanced science class and was told I could no longer use the method I had been taught my whole life. Far easier to just start them on metric, anyways I’m rambling so back to the main topic I go!

Also on our board we have the current Season, Color of the Day, and a printable for learning time. I need to acquire a small clock to affix to the printout, for now though General Disarray has been drawing in the clock. We also have a Weather Tracker, Important Information sheet (which I will have to change up a bit since we have a local phone provider and can't just dial 911 in order to get emergency services), and rounding out the middle section, for now, is a skip counting page. I’ll also be adding a weekly shape as well to the board, but I need to get the Velcro circles first!

The last section of our meeting board features a Months of the Year song (all the way on the top), an Every Week song (which tells the number of days in a week and the actual days of the week), as well as a Days of the Week song (we found this song first and just LOVE it so it was kept on our Morning Meeting Board), and finally a Name Spelling song. I wanted to make sure Professor Chaos knew how to spell his name- he was doing pretty well but would skip a letter every now and then- so this has been a prefect addition to our morning meeting, especially when it comes to learning his middle name which is a bit long.

That pretty much sums up our new Morning Meeting Board. I store all the extras on the back inside little Ziploc baggies, that are affixed to the board using the last Velcro circles I had on hand.

For the printouts used, as well as ideas for your own morning board, check out the following sites *as always the views and opinions expressed on any blog/website linked here do not represent the views and opinions of this blog unless otherwise stated*:

Homeschool Creations

1 +1 +1=1

Confessions of a Homeschooler