Our Homeschool Room Setup

I often enjoy having a glimpse at other people's homeschool setups.  We had quite a small house over in Australia, but we are now blessed with this amazingly large, airy homeschool room. 

We have bright colorful workboxes. Each kid has their own row, but I do not fill them every day with new things. Instead their basic subjects get stored here (including the manipulatives, new games, activities and printouts).  It does help with the organization, but since they don't complete things from top to bottom (as with the 'workbox system') I find that I needed ED's activities out on display/visible.

This former computer table now houses my storage area (for printouts), our 3-part cards, spelling games and things like that (those three trays to the left of the table and the little cabinet thing with plastic bins under the table).The area back to the right is a doorway up to the attic area -- it's often cluttered with things to go upstairs, things to put away or use later, etc.

ED has six trays. Two are on the table, two are under the table and their are two half-trays at the bottom. You'll see a close-up in a moment.  You'll also see the Montessori blanket to the left of the trays.  And our "All About Spelling" alphabet is also on the floor next to my storage cabinet. (The shoebox is out for an art project we're working on.)

The purple-covered table has different preschool activities. Last week it had a hammering activity. This week it has a couple of magnetic ocean puzzles. You'll also see the art notebook I put together earlier this summer. It still gets daily use!

Our craft table is where much of the action takes place here at the Homeschool Den.  We all sit down here on and off throughout the day.  I keep it covered with large pieces of butcher paper which pulls up from a roll at the bottom.  I change that paper every evening! First thing the next morning that paper is covered with drawings, writing, and scribbles!

Snippets of Our Week (for our 7-yr old)

This post is a long time in coming; it's taken forever to get this posted! I wanted to share some of the curriculum choices that are working well for our 7 year old this semester.

MATH: These past five months or so, we have been using a math workbook for much of LD's math practice.  Only recently have started back on our beloved Right Start Math curriculum. It was written by a Montessori trained teacher and you can read more about it here from the RS website or see some fantastic handouts written by the author that explains the value of visualizing math.   Right Start is very Mom-intensive and with the move I needed a bit more independence on LD's part during these settling months. So, LD usually does a number of problems from the workbook, some Montessori style math worksheets (pictured below as well) and a bit from Right Start. 

LD is just now working on the concepts of regrouping in addition and borrowing in subtraction. I really like these worksheets I found at Montessori for Learning because of the color scheme for units, tens, hundreds and thousands. Also it seems to help LD that the problems are quite large.  These sheets were under the "math" section rather than the "free" section if anyone's interested. They were free to download and I just happened to stumble across them.

READING:  LD has been making his way through the Magic Tree House series this semester. He has to read at least three chapters, but he'll often read more because he's engrossed in the book.

Handwriting and writing in general are still not LD's favorite.  Handwriting Without Tears has worked well for him and we're making slow but steady progress.

We also added in All About Spelling this semester (I heard great reviews about it) and we're almost to the end of Level 1 which starts with the basics.  Again, this is working really well for LD and I can highly recommend this especially if you have a child like mine, who struggles with writing because he doesn't want to get ANYTHING wrong. Sigh...

MUSIC: LD started with the glockenspiel at age 5. Then moved to piano at age 6 using Teaching Little Fingers to Play. Since we moved here, LD has been ready for putting two hands together.  We are using one of MY old piano books called Play That Tune. If it's available, it's wonderful for that next step.  LD is also learning Jingle Bells from Merry Christmas! Complete Level 1 for the Later Beginner.

Jingle Bells

Mary Had a Little Lamb and A Tisket A Tasket (You probably can't tell from this photo, but it is dated 1976--when I was assigned to learn these pieces!)

Geography just happens... We have this placemat at the breakfast bar where LD likes to eat.  As I'm cooking I often ask him to find 4 or 5 countries (particularly the ones we've covered in our world music class).

This was a really cute game for practicing reading coordinates.  It's played similarly to the game "Battleship."  I got this from mathwire.com.

PRACTICAL LIFE:  I stuck this in LD's workbox and he has successfully learned how to open a combination lock. 

We've started our studies of Ancient Rome -- of course starting with a physical map of the Roman Empire (made with cornstarch clay).  Then we added blue water and talked about the seas surrounding the Roman Empire.

I loved how closely they were studying the map in the book!

I guess you can't see it well in the photo, but LD wanted to add in Mt. Vesuvius.

We watched parts of the very old (but famous) movie Spartacus.  Quite spontaneously, LD and DD started playing "gladiators"!!

EXTRAS:
**Soccer season just ended on Saturday.  LD had lots of fun and liked his teammates and coach a lot.

**LD has continued with gymnastics (we did it overseas as well) and we'll continue on with that through the winter.  We finally hung up our gymnastics rings down in the basement area and all of the kids are enjoying those!

**All three of the kids just started a session of swim lessons this week.

**Music class -- and of course we have our group music class and the kids LOOOooove having their friends over for that!

Snippets of our Week (for our 2 1/2 yr old)

I've had a hard time getting to the computer this week (more about that in another posting). I have about four posts I've been working on--Snippets of ED's week, LD's week and my week, not to mention posting pictures of DD's completed butterfly lapbook. But now these are rather looonnnggg because it's taken so long to get these posted. So, in reality these are snippets of the past two weeks or so!

First I'd like to share these really cute physical activity cards we've added into our day!

I added these to ED's workbox about two weeks ago and we just love them!  They are balance, dance and gymnastics movement cards and when ED is at loose ends (because I'm focusing too much attention on the other two) these cards are a wonderful break!  We have a stack of about fifty cards and do a half-dozen of the movements suggested. They include things like star jumps, making yourself wide, thin, pointy, jumping around, moving in a zig-zag and more.  At some point I hope to add in some yoga pose cards that I downloaded for free as well, but haven't had a chance to print them out. Click here to go to the free downloads of the physical education cards from sparklebox. There are three sets that I printed out there.

ED in her balance pose!

These past couple of weeks I've brought out some of the girls' toys for ED to play with in our schoolroom.  Along with the play food, I made a little oven out of a box using aluminium foil and black circles covered with contact paper (on the top) and white paper glued straight on the box for the front area.  ED and DD loved this! (We don't have a play kitchen.)

ED has taken great pride in "doing her math."  She's been doing these spider sheets every day for about 10 days now. I cut the sheets apart after taking these pictures, but as you can see she's just tonging the correct number of spiders onto each page (I have to help her identify the number and to count them out).

ED and DD have really enjoyed bingo markers lately.  They do pages and pages at a time. These pages came from Making Learning Fun.

These do-a-dot letters are from http://confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/

ED and DD loved, loved the spider web activity (with glue and glitter).  They did about twenty!

"I want to do nastics again!"  ED goes once a week for a gymnastics class and wakes up each day hopeful that today is the day! The other kids go to this same gym, but in the evenings when it's considerably more crowded!

I made this felt board last year out paint canvases.  Here are the links showing how I made it:
http://thehomeschoolden.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-felt-board.html
http://thehomeschoolden.blogspot.com/2009/09/making-felt-board.html
http://thehomeschoolden.blogspot.com/2009/09/felt-board-play.html

My sister sent us these paint cards years ago.  We pulled them out for ED to sort through. 

It had been a while since I set out pin pushing.  I just make designs on construction paper and let the girls go at it. They usually go through about 10-15 each!  This time they are using a push pin, though I often have them use a meat skewer wrapped with a couple of rubber bands.

 I showed the picture above of the food/kitchen play I set out one week. This week I set out the farm animals and have been doing farm-themed things with ED.

I forget where I got this cute shadow matching activity. I lost one of the pages, but that makes it more challenging as there are a couple left over animals.

This sheet is from kidssoup. It's simple one-to-one correspondence where ED had to give each crow a popcorn seed.

Here ED is matching the farm animals with the (free) farm animal cards I printed out. They also have some wild animal cards as well.

Farm Animal Sounds:  This game called Old MacDonald Had a Farm is a great gave for memory and animal sound recognition.  Under each of the hay stacks is an animal baby that needs to find its mama.  On the player's turn she/he chooses a mama animal, pushes it down on the red stand and listens to the sound it makes. Then she/he chooses a hay stack and tries to see if the baby animal is hidden under the hay stack (see the picture below).

We haven't played this yet, but I found cute farm animal bingo sets here:
 http://www.animaljr.com/farm-animal-bingo-printable-bingo-cards/

Snippets of our Week (for our 5-yr-old)

I've been meaning to put up a post about what we generally work on from day to day. But, with blogger not working for a while, I have a plethora of photos to share. So, here's a glimpse of what DD (just turned 5) has been working on these past couple of weeks.  Her "basics" include math, reading, handwriting, music/glockenspiel, arts&crafts and another unit-study (a lapbook in this case, but we usually have some sort of science/history/child-led unit occurring. Usually this is something we're working on together as a family.)

I called this pumkin bingo.  I made a die with 3-digit numbers on them.  Each pumpkin has one of those numbers.  We take turns rolling the die and covering our pumpkin if it has the corresponding number. To go along with that we've been building those 3 digit numbers using Montessori type number cards that we have from our Right Start Math curriculum (pictured below).

DD has been moving along quickly with her writing. I decided to purchase this writing, penmanship book from currclick called I Like Animals.  It is a bit pricey (I bought a bundle, which lowered the price a bit), but I have to say that DD LOVES this.  Yes, LOVES it!  She is zooming through it and works hard to get to the mazes.  So in that regard I can highly recommend it.  I printed it out on both sides of the paper and bound it together to look like a proper book.

DD practices the glockenspiel every day and now know about four pieces.  She won't allow Mom to help at all! In this photo she is playing Hot Cross Buns.

DD wanted to do a lapbook and chose to learn about butterflies and insects.  We took that opportunity to go through our classification cards.  We started with the living and non-living sort with free Montessori cards I downloaded from here.

Another day we used those same Montessori cards to sort the "living" cards into the five kingdoms. (http://homemademontessori.blogspot.com/search/label/5%20kingdom) Sorry about the blurry photo.

We still enjoy lots of time in the woods!

Anyway, continuing on with our animal classification review... a few days later we pulled out the vertebrate and invertebrate cards (which again were free.  Thank you homemade Montessori!)  This was really useful because DD's lapbook delved into the differences among the various invertebrate groups and had some good mini-books that complemented these sorting activities.  I'll put up a separate post about her butterfly/insect lapbook.

DD has been learning to recognize the written numbers, so this activity from filefolder fun has been just great!

This is an activity I got from Montessori Print Shop at some point.  I think it might have been one of their free downloads. It has a close up picture of certain items and then a view of the object from farther away.  It was just a quick 5 minute activity, but it intrigued ED who also gave it a go. (You can see her pink foot in the picture... she's often trying to interfere when she feels left out. My main recourse at the moment, is to have her workboxes filled with activities I can pull out for her at a moments' notice such as a puzzle, sorting, a new coloring sheet or things like that. Now that I write that, it occurs to me that I should pull out some activity bags for her once again.)

DD reads through two or three readers each day (for a total of about 15 minutes of reading or so).

DD has been very, very proud of her lapbook.  Here she's showing off her latest additions to Dad.  I'll write a separate post about her lapbook soon.

We continue to have music class with some friends each week.  DD's music class is focusing on world music.  This week we learned a bit about about the music of Bali in Indonesia. We watched a short video of a shadow puppet show on YouTube. Then each child used actual shadow puppets that Grams passed on to us to act out their own short skit.

We had the gamelan music from someone's trip to Bali on in the background as each person got a chance to put on a performance with the shadow puppets.

In the beginning of our music class, we always sing a few songs together. The kids have loved the crazy motion song "My Aunt Came Back" Each week we identify where Japan, Algeria, Mali (Timbuktu), Holland and Niagra Falls are located on the world map.  The kids always laugh as each verse adds a new motion (a hand fan, sheers, wooden shoe, chewing gum, a ping pong ball, rocking chair etc.)

Here we are all playing "Go to the Dump."  We take turns turning over two cards. The object is to find two cards that equal 10 (10 and 0, 9 and 1, 8 and 2 etc.)

This ladybird math activity goes along perfectly with Go To The Dump.  It's from Early Learning HQ.

So that's it for DD at the moment. I'm planning to do a similar post for LD (age 7) and ED (age 2 1/2) in the next day or so. Oh yes, and also will share DD's lapbook. She's very proud of it!