Aug
16

Our Schoolroom ala Ikea

By | Mom Stuff

238 Comments

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It’s finally happened! After 2 long years of saving and waiting, and saving, and checking online, it finally opened. Ikea. Right here in my backyard! (Well, not MY back yard, but you get the idea…its close…real close…almost too close.) Anyway, like I was saying I’ve been eyeballing some shelves and desks for a couple years now, and so as soon as it opened, I headed out. I know crazy right? Going to Ikea right when it opens. But I didn’t go on opening day, I went the next day. It was a weekday, so I figured all the fanatics would be back at work after camping out, so I was safe. Good call on my part too, it wasn’t bad at all! I seriously love everything in that store! I did get a little lost at one point though (I forgot how crazy-mazey it is in there) had to call a BFF to get me out LOL! She directed me to those handy little arrows on the floor and told me “follow the arrows, they’ll lead you out”. She was right. I stayed on the arrows and after just 2.5 … [Read more...]

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Aug
12

Our Homeschool Room 2010-2011

By | Homeschool

41 Comments

Ack! Ok everyone, I’m just trying to keep it real here and show you what kind of disaster occurred to my beloved school room over the summer. The kids playing in here definitely took its toll and I was procrastinating even going in there! But fear not, this is definitely the BEFORE picture! And after several hours complete madness one evening…ahh, everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. Everyone left me alone while I was working on this, I think they could sense the urgency. Here’s the AFTER picture: Is it wrong that I don’t want to let my kids in here now? I organized all of our manipulative containers in shelves along the back wall. I tried to put all the pre-k stuff on the pink shelves and then the math stuff and older kid’s manipulatives on the blue shelves. The only dangerous thing here is that the Teeny Tot can easily get to all of this, but then it will also eliminate the climbing that was going on before, so… The blue and white drawers contain puzzles, coloring … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Homeschool Tagged With: ,
Apr
07

Mom, I Need Help!

By | Homeschool, Mom Stuff

28 Comments

I thought I’d share a great idea a fellow homeschool mom in my local group gave me! It’s my helper for when the kids need my help, but need to wait for me for whatever reason (I’m helping a sibling, on the phone, talking to Daddy, etc). Because I know you’ll ask: The little people clips are from Lakeshore Learning, but I’ve also seen them places like Wal-mart. So, I taught my kids that when they need help, but can see I'm busy, they can go to this chart on the wall (It’s just a pocket folder cut in half) and take their clip and put it on me. This way they know that their request has been noticed, and I won't forget to go help them when I'm done! (This is particularly helpful after having 4 kids, as it would appear that I've lost most of my braincells and can barely remember my own name!)Each child get's their own colored clip with their name on it to use. This way I can see who needed me. There are also ideas for them to keep busy while waiting, though I have to say … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Homeschool, Mom Stuff Tagged With: ,
Feb
19

“One Another” Bible Study:

By | Homeschool

10 Comments

After repeated attempts at telling my children to share, be kind, forgive, apologize, and on and on…I decided we needed to do a little study on how God says we are to treat each other. So I created our “One Another” wall. Each day we found a verse where Jesus tells us how we are to treat one another. We put the words up on the wall for everyone to see, that way when we aren’t acting as we should, we can refer to it as reminder of how we should be treating each other. Here’s the list of verses we used if you are interested. (There are so many to choose from in the Bible. I just found some that fit our needs and we’ll add to our wall as we go) … [Read more...]

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Oct
09

My school room makeover

By | Homeschool

16 Comments

So after my husband, who is normally the source of my clutter problem, told me that he thought our homeschool 'stuff' was getting too cluttered, I decided I'd better do something drastic. So yesterday after school was done, I told everyone "grab your desks kids, we're movin!"and I proceeded to move the entire school room into our office space. This was no easy task mind you and at one point my 2nd grader said "Mom, I think we better call Daddy". (She clearly has no faith in me!)If you don't know me at all, please know this, I can walk into a room to put away a book and come out 2 hours later having re-arranged, organized, and purged it of any un-necessary clutter. Its just who I am, sorry honey, but you knew this long ago. So when you leave for work in the morning, its entirely possible that you'll walk into a completely different house when you get home, like say...yesterday.With all that being said, I'm VERY happy with the results! I managed to contain ALL (minus art supplies which … [Read more...]

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Sep
03

My School Room

By | Homeschool

16 Comments

So, I already changed my room around a little bit. I didn't like some of the setup and wanted to get a spot for my 'poster center'. Here are our desks and workboxes. I like the boxes separating the kids, it helps with focus issues. Here's a closeup of one of our 'workstations'. The drawers are Smart Space 10 drawer rolling carts from JoAnn's. I also found some colored ones online at ebay, and several people have said they found them at Sam's Club as well. Unfortunately they are double what I paid as they were 50% off at JoAnns when I got them. Here's a closeup of the drawers, I put 2 velcro dots on them, one for the number cards, and one for an extra card like 'work with mom'. The kids also put the number from their number strip on the 2nd dot when they pull the drawer to work on it. I love these carts, they really take up LESS space and the drawers pull completely out just like if they were to take it off the shelf. They pull them out then stack them on the floor to … [Read more...]

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