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| A sneak peek at our schooling space. Check back next week for a tour of where *some* our schooling magic happens. Copyright(c)2013 Rayven Holmes |
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This work by Rayven Holmes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Showing posts with label Organizing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Organizing. Show all posts
Four, on a good day that is the number of subjects we
attempt to cover. That’s with me
combining writing with their language arts/reading work. To be honest…I hate it! Think about it, how truly effective is it to
try and cram so much into one day? Even
with the freedom homeschooling affords us, it still feels like we are rushing
to keep up with our lesson plans. If we
spend more time on math then we are a bit behind on science/history in
relationship to what is planned out.
While sure it’s not really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things because we can just school during a day that was normally planned as an off
day, but who really wants to give up their off days? I sure don’t!
I look forward to those days where I have no errands to run, no
playdates or field trips, no lessons to deal with; just me, myself, and reruns
of my favorite shows.
One thing I despised about my public school experience was
the way we bounced from subject to subject.
One minute you are knee deep in a novel during English class, the next
you are trying not to fall asleep while you stare at your textbook listening to
the teacher drag on about the Revolutionary War. Part of the reason I was so passionate about
homeschooling T.B.M. had to do with wanting to avoid what I view as the short
comings of public education; and then I went and planned our day just like what
I spent 12 years hating, what the frick frack was I thinking?!
I've mulled over the decision to go to one subject a day for
a while now, awhile meaning about two to three years, I kept telling
myself it was a crazy idea. My biggest
concern was that they would forget what we covered during the week with such a
big gap between their lessons in any given subject, but then I thought, if I
plan just right then, hopefully, they won’t.
Multiple subjects a day is draining for us, school becomes a checklist
of assignments to complete instead of the full immersion experience that I'm aiming for.
So I’m doing away with a schedule that involves trying to
squeeze multiple subjects in one day and replacing it with the following
schedule:
Mathematical Mondays (Math)
Test Tube Tuesdays (Science)
Wordy Wednesdays (Language Arts)
Time Traveling Thursdays (History)
Foundation Fridays (Life skills, Etiquette, character/virtue
study, etc.)
Does this mean there will be no reading work at all on
Mondays? No, there will still be daily reading;
it will just be more relaxed because the actual reading lessons will be on
Wednesday. Math will also be worked in
as well; on Wednesdays we’ll do a few word problems that tie into the math
objective of that week, while giving the boys a chance to hone their reading
skills. There will also be math and
reading on Tuesdays during our science work, and plenty of reading for
history. My goal is to weave various
subjects into the day, but keeping the main focus on the that day's subject. So on Test Tube Tuesdays if we do chemistry experiments we will use a bit of math, followed by reading and
history when we learn about an important chemist, and teaching proper
lab/safety information ties into our foundation work since I consider
lab/safety knowledge an important life skill to learn.
Next week will be the start of our one subject a day
learning, I’m a bit nervous, but also extremely excited since I've wanted to
make this move for a while now. It seems
far more practical and I think it will ensure the level of subject mastery that
we are striving for. Plus, it will be
fun to spend all day fully immersed in one subject! Oh the projects we’ll create!
How do you organize your day? Do you focus on one subject, multiple subjects, or something else entirely?
Copyright(c) 2012 Rayven Holmes
Back in January I touched on our 2012-2013 plans and after
ordering some of the needed items, viewing some of the materials a friend of
mine had, and a long chat with The Spouse the decision was made to change up
our plans. Despite my original stance on
using a “box” curriculum or “all-in-one” I had a change of heart, which is of
course the beauty of homeschooling, you can change things as you see fit.
While we have managed to get some work done this year,
neither the spouse nor I ,are pleased with the current way things are
progressing-there is a lack of structure we both feel is necessary in our
homeschooling-and our home in general-.
I had gone back and forth for some time over using Oak Meadow, I did
like the way the program looked, but didn’t really want to use an “all-in-one”. After a long discussion with The Spouse –I’m
talking about a conversation that went well into the early morning hours!-
where we both expressed concerns, expectations, positives, and negatives of
switching as well as our current hodgepodge of materials.
We went through the Oak Meadow Grade K that I had purchased
from a friend and decided that while we like the material it was too easy for
Professor Chaos so I purchased the Grade 1 for him and we will be starting that
as soon as it arrives. For General Disarray
we decided to skip fourth grade because he already knows a great deal of the
material Grade 4 covers and what we haven’t covered Oak Meadow covers as review
in the start of the year, so we are going directly to Grade 5.
We won’t be using it as a complete “all-in-one” because we
prefer Saxon Math and find it to be a bit more advanced/challenging than Oak
Meadow. We’ll use the Oak Meadow
provided Math for the first three grades and then switch to the Saxon 5/4 math
and go forth from there. We’ll also be
supplementing our science and history work as well for more in depth
study.
As for our yearly game plan, General Disarray will start his
Oak Meadow work this upcoming week, since the program is broken down into 36
weeks we’ll finish up right before Christmas-no planned breaks- and then take
off from our regular schooling until we get settled at our next duty
station. We’ll do some light work to
ensure material learned isn’t lost during the 2 - 2 ½ month break. For Professor Chaos we’ll be using Hooked on
Phonics, Explode the Code, and a series of math workbooks until his Oak Meadow
work arrives and then we’ll use Hooked on Phonics in combination with Oak
Meadow.
We won’t finish up Professor
Chaos’ work before the Christmas break, so we’ll do a light version of it
starting after the holidays- at the same time we are starting the light work
for General Disarray- that will put Professor Chaos finishing up around the
time we are settled at our next duty station.
Once we are all settled in we’ll stop the light work and take a good
solid two weeks off to relax, adjust, and prep for the new school year.
That’s our school plan and I’m looking forward to seeing how
the school year unfolds. There are also going
to be changes to our daily schedule as well, but that is for another blog
post. After I’ve got some much needed
sleep.
Copyright(c)2012 Rayven Holmes
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 HomeschoolerCopyright(c)2012 Rayven Holmes
I do most of my cooking at home, which requires a large amount of recipes to keep things from getting boring. While I have a rather large, and constantly increasing, collection of cookbooks I don’t use all the recipes in them. I have a select few from each that I frequent, as well as recipes I’ve found online, which makes for a LOT of recipes. The ones from online I usually write down or print to use later, and the ones from the cookbooks just get looked at when I need them-which means I have to remember revisions for each one or write them in the book (something I don’t always want to do because I may need to get rid of the book one day)-.
Having a cookbook out isn’t always practical depending on the amount of counter space I have at the moment or the amount of mess I’m making. The paper copies are too flimsy to stand on their own as well as the paperback books and the hardcover books are just too darn bulky. I’m sure many of you understand exactly what I’m saying. Sometimes just getting the recipe in a place where you can properly read it can be a major pain in the butt and hinder your cooking.
I’ve been thinking for a while that I need a better, more organized way of handling my recipes, but what? I wasn’t sure until I was clicking around on Shutterfly the other evening. There in the photo books section were two very cool books you can make, and they were recipe books! One is just the simple book with recipes and pictures, the other is a more glamorous version (which is what I intend to go for, because I want what I’m reading in the kitchen to put me in the mood to cook up something good!).
Not sure how I’ll do up my recipe book(s), I’m leaning towards combining it with my meal planning so each book would feature a month’s worth of meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks(at least two of those a day)). I can do up at least two to four books (yes I have that many recipes!) and alternate between the weeks in each one so I have some variety for us each month. It’s something to mull over while I pull together all the recipes I have.
I’ll share a peek at the final product when I get it. How do you keep all your recipes organized? Copyright(c)2011 Rayven Holmes
I have an addiction. I can usually keep this addiction under control when life is running fairly “normal”, but then something happens and my addiction runs rampant. At the beginning of the year The Spouse was away and my addiction came out to play *hey that rhymes!*.
What is this addiction you ask? It’s organizing, especially organizing our classroom and school supplies. My life overall is chaotic, dysfunctional, and downright insane at best. So organizing the things I do have control over pleases that slightly functioning part of myself.
So what have I done you ask? Well head over and check out the first Organizational Junkie post so you can see what I’ve done previously. Ok all caught up? Now for the current organizational bender:
I added another bookcase and converted a TV stand to meet my book storage and Discovery Bin items need.
We also have our Knowledge Books and Centers Packets in these really neat magazine racks that I found at a 100 yen store, and the colors go with the color theme picked out by TBM. Also with the Seasonal/Wheel of the Year Knowledge Books are Knowledge Books for each subject! I figured it would make life alot easier if I just took the printouts for each week and placed them in the same types of folders. That way everything stays together and at the end of the week I can just remove the worksheets, place them in our filing cabinet *all still in order*, put the upcoming week's worksheets in the folder, and fill our wall organizer with the 
worksheets for the following week. That way I have the worksheets from where we have been, where we are, and where we are going all tucked away and in easy to grab locations if I need to grab them.
The tallest bookcase also keeps our hands on items organized. We have our large math bin at the bottom with a few other items, then various math "toys" and math games above that, followed by language arts items at the top.To the side here we have a close up of the top of our largest bookcase. It has the bins for our Centers *which are not all finished due to me running out of various items needed to put them together*, as well as some science items that are best kept up high until Professor Chaos is a bit older.
The next item is the converted TV stand. The shelves are used for storing books that will be needed in the upcoming weeks, which allows them to be right at hand. The bulk of our reading books are stored on three bookcases which, have found their home in the area underneath our stairs. By pulling the needed items I save myself alot of back and forth. Although the running up and down the stairs does make for a semi-decent workout, it takes time away from our learning.
The top portion of the converted TV stand houses General Disarray's current phonics flip-book so it doesn't take up space on the computer desk when he isn't using it. It also holds our Discovery Bin(s) items, and the Discovery Bin that is currently being used this week. On the side are some ladles I bought from the same 100 yen store, they work great with our water Discovery Bin. The carpet came from the 100 yen store and gives the TBM somewhere soft to sit while they use the Discovery Bin(s). It also holds other bin items. I'm planning to get some squishy throw pillows to make that area my comfortable, and to encourage them to relax and read throughout the classroom. 
This next photo gives you a close up of the shelves on our largest bookcase. I have binders for some of the subjects we cover that, are full of various information we need or have collected. I also have some blow-up dice that help with reading comprehension by asking questions about certain elements in a story *who wrote it, where did it take place, who is the main character, etc.*. I found the dice at a teacher supply store when we lived in the states.
There you have it folks. My latest organizational bender!
I think it is safe to say that our classroom is almost complete. The only things I have left on my to-do list are curtains and squishy throw pillows. And to think it only took me two years to get it all together! But hey I did it! Woohoo!
Copyright(c)2011 Rayven Holmes
Well we’ve been busy this holiday season! I still have our HumanLight, Christmas, and Kwanzaa plans to discuss but first I wanted to go over what I’ve been slowly working on over the past couple of months *expanding on what I already had in place*. I’ve put the finishing touches on these organizational things while on our break. I’m striving to be more organized to ensure we meet our goals. I’m still working out the lesson planning in a way that I can easily stick to it. I currently have a 3-ring binder that I use, but it’s not as affective due to having to constantly make print-outs/copies, and it’s rather bulky. I found the Teacher’s Lesson Planner and Record Book at our base book store and I’m planning to use that for our 2011-2012 school year. If it pans out I’ll order more to use every year, or go back to the drawing board and find another planning book to explore and test out.
So what are the organizational things I’m working with:
The first is our school meeting board. I got the idea from various places, one being a friend of mine who runs Wandering Quail Road, and the other sources were from the same blogs many of the printables used for the board come from: Homeschool Creations and 1+1+1=1. *The views and/or opinions of the blogs mentioned during this post or any post for that matter DO NOT in any way reflect the views and/or opinions of my blog, unless otherwise stated.*
The months of the year song lyrics come from THIS website, although we did end up changing it slightly *notice the blacked out portion*. The first time we went over it Child #1 started singing to a tune *and lyrics* he had picked up from one of the various videos or songs we’ve listened to over the years. Not 100% sure where we first heard the song at, I’m still in the process of tracking it down *by going through our various CDs and searching the list of Youtube videos we use*. Also on our board is our date tracker (Trend©) which I got from a school supply store in the states. There is our word of the week taken from Sacred Spiral Kids, our weekly spelling list comprised from the Saxon Phonics 1 curriculum we have, and our artist of the month *info and photo gathered from a simple search of the artist*. Lastly I also made up a simple printable with boxes for the boys and I to put what we are grateful for that morning. I think I will have us go back at the end of our school day and write what we are grateful for at the end of the day as well.
I found this clock on Amazon, it has six alarm slots…yes I am one of those homeschool moms. The alarm also allows you to personalize your alarms, so I had The Spouse do the recordings for us. That way when he is away we can still enjoy hearing his voice six times a day.
Now moving upstairs to our classroom…I found this cart at a store off base. The top shelf holds our laminator *which I LOVE!*. The second and third shelves will hold the teachers editions of any curriculum we are using.
This is the same kind of cart as above they were actually pretty affordable and fit perfectly in the room. Far better than anything I have seen on base, yeah for finding something affordable off base given the current Yen rate! This one sits between the boys' desk/chairs and holds their pencil/crayon boxes, as well as their flashcard boxes. Not sure what will go on the third shelf, I’m sure it will get plenty of use when the time comes to fill it though.
Next is the inside of one of the cabinets in our filing cabinet. The boys each have their own cabinet where I keep the work they have done. I have folders for each subject, and they are labeled with the grade level as well. I also keep extra school items in the front of the folders.
Here you have our planned out general schedule easily accessible to the children and myself. Also on this wall are file folders with the printouts/copies for that given day and subject. This allows me to file away at least a week’s worth of printouts/copies, and have them easily on hand when we need them. Plus when the boys get older I can just printout/copy what is going to be needed and they can grab and go for that day and subject. Both products come from Learning Resources.
Now this section is what has had my attention for the last month or so. First off on the wall are erasable schedules *which came from Lakeshore, but I don't see them on the site now*. I originally bought only two of these, but didn’t use them as I had intended to. Then a friend of mine gave me the two she had since she wasn’t using them either. After about a week of pondering what I might be able to do with the four weekly planners it hit me. I can place two weeks worth of plans for each of the boys on these four boards. Then they *our lesson plans* are easily accessible so I can grab out what is needed for that given week without having to flip through a bunch of pages in a book. I can also see everyday where we are suppose to be headed, and make adjustments as needed. They are hung on the wall using a bit of string and four clear Command™ hooks.
Lastly are our subject boxes. Each shelf is for a particular subject (Language Arts & Phonics, Math, Science, and History), and each box holds the items need for that days work. We alternate Math and Science so I would have that day planned out at least a day in advance. Which will make planning experiments and gathering all the needed items a lot easier to accomplish. Especially since we will be covering Physical Science next year *a mix of Chemistry and Physics*, and I’m planning to make that as hands on as possible. I got the idea for the boxes from various info I got on the Workbox System *refer back to blog disclaimer* *my system is only slightly like it...mostly because it involves boxes LOL...but I don't do 12 boxes for each of the boys. I just stick to subjects we are covering because I just don't have the space for all of that nor do I really need it. The boys have unlimited access to our school supply closet so materials are grabbed as they are wanted/needed which works just fine for now.*
This is the same kind of cart as above they were actually pretty affordable and fit perfectly in the room. Far better than anything I have seen on base, yeah for finding something affordable off base given the current Yen rate! This one sits between the boys' desk/chairs and holds their pencil/crayon boxes, as well as their flashcard boxes. Not sure what will go on the third shelf, I’m sure it will get plenty of use when the time comes to fill it though.
Next is the inside of one of the cabinets in our filing cabinet. The boys each have their own cabinet where I keep the work they have done. I have folders for each subject, and they are labeled with the grade level as well. I also keep extra school items in the front of the folders.
Here you have our planned out general schedule easily accessible to the children and myself. Also on this wall are file folders with the printouts/copies for that given day and subject. This allows me to file away at least a week’s worth of printouts/copies, and have them easily on hand when we need them. Plus when the boys get older I can just printout/copy what is going to be needed and they can grab and go for that day and subject. Both products come from Learning Resources.
Now this section is what has had my attention for the last month or so. First off on the wall are erasable schedules *which came from Lakeshore, but I don't see them on the site now*. I originally bought only two of these, but didn’t use them as I had intended to. Then a friend of mine gave me the two she had since she wasn’t using them either. After about a week of pondering what I might be able to do with the four weekly planners it hit me. I can place two weeks worth of plans for each of the boys on these four boards. Then they *our lesson plans* are easily accessible so I can grab out what is needed for that given week without having to flip through a bunch of pages in a book. I can also see everyday where we are suppose to be headed, and make adjustments as needed. They are hung on the wall using a bit of string and four clear Command™ hooks.
Lastly are our subject boxes. Each shelf is for a particular subject (Language Arts & Phonics, Math, Science, and History), and each box holds the items need for that days work. We alternate Math and Science so I would have that day planned out at least a day in advance. Which will make planning experiments and gathering all the needed items a lot easier to accomplish. Especially since we will be covering Physical Science next year *a mix of Chemistry and Physics*, and I’m planning to make that as hands on as possible. I got the idea for the boxes from various info I got on the Workbox System *refer back to blog disclaimer* *my system is only slightly like it...mostly because it involves boxes LOL...but I don't do 12 boxes for each of the boys. I just stick to subjects we are covering because I just don't have the space for all of that nor do I really need it. The boys have unlimited access to our school supply closet so materials are grabbed as they are wanted/needed which works just fine for now.*
Well that about sums it up. Now to just put all of these things to use! Which we will be doing starting on Monday, wish us luck! Woohoo!!
Copyright(c)2010 Rayven Holmes
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