We survived week one as a homeschool family....

...and I still have hair left! That to me, is a success!  This has been an extremely exciting, scary, raw week.  That sounds so ridiculous, but it has.  I have spent months...and months...and months planning this year out. I have worked tirelessly to get our homeschool room put together...I have scoured the internet and library for resources and information to make this a great year.  I was getting to the end of my creative and mental rope, until this week. 

Some things didn't go as planned, some things were a huge hit and sometimes I just had to walk out of the room and take a minute to get myself together. I think in my mind I had built the first week of school be some magnificent "angels singing" moment. It wasn't. What it ended up being was something better.

It ended up being a week of getting to know these two little boys. A learning AND teaching moment, for both myself and my boys.  I wanted everything to go just right. It didn't, not everyday.  Week one was a good test for us all. 

I made a mental note of what I need to work on... not for my kids...but for me. I need to speak softly. I need to realize that it's okay if things don't click right away. I learned that's it's okay if they don't enjoy the lesson I spent months planning. It's okay.

It's homeschool. It's about connecting with your kids. It's about being able to sit down next to them and teach them something they didn't know. It's about being there to listen to their problems they are having and being able to openly help them if you can and if you can't.....

....I learned it's okay to say "I don't know that answer, let's look it up". I learned it's always okay to ask for help, myself included.

What a wonderful exhausting week this has been. By the end of this week, I felt rejuvenated and just assured myself that THIS, this homeschool journey, this connecting with my children, this teaching and learning moment is exactly where I want to be. This is exactly what I want to do.

Next week and the week after and so on are going to be so much better than I think even I could plan :)

Enjoy!

Our homeschool room!

I feel like this summer flew by!! I spent it busily getting ready for school to start, having a yard sale, de cluttering...and getting our new homeschool room all up and ready for the big day! (August 4th)  My main goal of this project was to repurpose what I could in my house (hence the de cluttering). I also didn't want to spend a pile of money we did not have.  The first questions people ask me when I tell them we are homeschooling is "Are you out of your mind?!" "Is it expensive?" My answer is always "It's as expensive as you want it to be" and I honestly believe that.


Keep in mind, all of my materials that you will see in all these pictures have one thing in common... I did not spend a fortune. I feel like I keep typing this over and over in my blog posts (homeschool does not have to be expensive). I got all the posters, decorative stuff, craft items...from the Dollar Tree. I got most of my curriculum, books, games, "fun stuff", quiet time activities and the like at thrift stores, the Dollar Tree, yard sales and re purposing stuff we already had around the house.... Homeschooling is not expensive.  The only things I have bought brand new (and not for $1 from the dollar tree) are a few curriculum books (like math, health, reading).  Every piece of furniture you see in the pictures was re purposed. I didn't buy one piece of furniture for this room. I will however, have to buy a table for the room. What we have now is a janky used table I used to make soap on. It will do for now until I can find one.

If you are homeschooling your children and want to buy a boxed curriculum, I say "more power to you". I personally do not have the money to do that and also, I find that a few books I thought were going to work for my child...they just don't. They might be boring, or not eye catching or just not "on his level" of where he needs to be yet... I personally couldn't go out and spend a pretty penny on something I wasn't sure that we were going to like.  Some people find that buying a boxed curriculum is reassuring. It's like an all in one box of school.  I am taking more of an eclectic approach to schooling my boys... I am picking and choosing different curriculum that will work for different subjects. For instance, for science I am using a McGraw Hill text book. I LOVE the pictures in it! They are stunning. It's a National Geographic issue and the boys love looking at it. The information is perfect for a 6 and 4 1/2 year old.  That's the beauty of homeschool...everyone does it different. You decide what works for you and what doesn't.

So here's our new school room. I am pretty excited about the way it turned out. This is definitely a work in progress. After week one of homeschooling, I realized that some things needed to be moved and rearranged, but for the most part, this is how it will be for a while. You can tell in some of the pictures that they look different in the same areas. I rearranged and took different pictures.

I tried to separate the areas of the room into "centers" of sorts. Each area is used for something.

Here are the doors to the room. I found some cute little window decals at the Dollar Tree of the numbers and stuck them on the door. My little one likes to sit at the table and count them.

When you walk in and look to the left, this is where our "math area" is. This is where the calendar, schedule, our master schedule and the 100 numbers chart is. I plan on making this "prettier" in the future. Like, I don't know, adding numbered days to the calendar. :)

I made this from an old magnetic dry erase board, a pocket chart, those lined strips (cut into sections) and magnetic strips. All but the magnetic strips were purchased from the Dollar Tree. I found the magnetic strips in my craft supplies.

This is the top part of the book shelf (that I re purposed from my husband's home office). The left part holds the curriculum books we are currently working out of and our Hooked on Phonics (which I got from a homeschool friend's yardsale, score). The middle basket is my little ones books, flashcards, supplies and the left is our 1st grade books we haven't started on and I plan to use later in the year.  On the very corner is our dry erase lined handwriting boards.  All this was purchased at the Dollar Tree, thrift store, yard sales or re purposed from other areas of my house.

This second (top) shelf is where I keep our supplemental books (like the Discover the Human Body book, the I Wonder Why books and our "crafts" books). The white tub is for extra supplies. Under the white tub I keep our trillions on manilla folders (thanks Mom) for Lapbooking. The folder holder to the right was literally made out of a box. I cut it to hold folders. It holds our lapbooks we are currently working on, completed lapbooks, file folder games etc. I plan on decorating the outside by wrapping it in decorative duct tape... I just haven't found any yet that I like.

This is where I keep all our math supplementals.  The very top of the stack are colored counting cubes I got at the Dollar Tree. My oldest uses those for addition help when he's working on his math problems. I took three and wrote a "+", "-" and "=" sign with permanent marker on them. They are a hands on learning tool he likes to use. The Leap Frog math rummy game and dominoes games were both purchased at yard sales. The white three drawer tub was re purposed from my soap making days. The basket to the right was taken from my oldest son's old nursery. It holds "Quiet Time" activities for Luke such as a magnetic Mr. Potatoe Head game, Hidden Pictures Magazines, Magnetix, lacing cards, etc.

This is where I keep our math games. I have dominoes, Fruit Numbers (My oldest son's FAVORITE game, the cubes with the plus, minus and equals signs (so they don't get lost) and an addition popsicle stick game I made my son.

This is the drawer I keep our math flashcards and supplemental books that I got at the Dollar Tree.  These are great for days when we don't have math scheduled, but I want to get a little math in the day.

Time Bingo, big paper coins, Magnetic Weather outfits, a huge paper clock with working hands, rulers etc. in the bottom drawer.

The area next to the bookshelf is our Science area.  This is one of my most favorite things I have purchased! I got this magnetic Organs of the Body with all the organs at a used curriculum sale for $3. I was so excited. I just hung it on the bookshelf with some command tape. For the box that holds the organs, I used an old cereal box and covered it with constructions paper and hung it with the command tape.

This is our Science center. For now, it's a little bare, but eventually it will be nice and full, considering science is our favorite subject.  I used to use this shelf as a book shelf for my boys in their playroom and I re purposed it for our room. The bottom shelf has our Microscope (yard sale), Triops set (my husband and I purchased it years ago pre kids for us...lol) and the blue basket has a bunch of droppers, magnifying glass, thermometer etc. in it.  I used it under the winder because we have a lot of projects coming up that use the sunlight.

The art center....oh the art center....  This cabinet is chock full of stuff... Markers, crayons, melt and mold factory, playdough...you name it. It's in there.  The shapes on the front were from a poster I got at the Dollar Tree and mutilated.

I used an old coat hanger and my husbands ratty t-shirts for smocks. The black cart (from my scrapbooking days) holds paper of all kinds. I separated them with the hanging file folders that came with it. There's a rack on the bottom of the cart that holds magazines and  a tub full of smocks.

For the hanging art center I used binder clips and nails. That's it. 

Here's my white board... I used ribbon and a hot glue gun to embellish it a bit. The sign I made with stencils and a laminator (oh... I love my laminator). The shelf is from my grandpa. He made it many years ago and my mother gave it to me the last time I was visiting her.

I took construction paper, a huge pack of scrapbook paper, glue and went to town... Oh and some repurposed jars I had lying around the house.

To the right of the white board, my desk sits. My sad sad little computer desk. it's OLD... I mean OLD. It was in my husband's apartment when I first met him. At least it has held up well. haha.

Above my desk is where I keep my lesson plan.... Remember that scrapbook cart from the art center? Well it had two of these holders on each side that slid out. I took this one off, embellished it and had my husband securely fasten it to the wall. I am not allowed to use power tools around here. Bad things always happen.

I moved the map under the white board to put a colored scanner/printer on a little table between the reading area and my desk. The reading area, to me, is so fun.  The top shelf has our library books, our CD player and our tape player (both were free by the way). We use those for our Hooked on Phonics. That's about the only thing they are useful for.  The second shelf has our Leap Frog reader which my kid won't let me get rid of even though he doesn't use it.  On the right are some puzzles, games and phonics flashcards that I got at either the dollar tree or yard sales.  The third shelf has our books. (I have yet to bring all our books downstairs).  The basket holds our early readers and our Hooked on Phonics Readers.  There's our Alfie Robot game as well for Lucas. We got it 2 years ago for Christmas. The bottom shelf is just storage right now. I have my information books on homeschooling, foam letters, colored bunnies and a tub of miscellaneous cards/stationary and extra felt.

That's it! That's our homeschool room! I apologize for the length of this post, but I hope that if you are trying to get a room/space together, you realize that it doesn't have to cost a fortune and you can make a cute room really easily. Thanks for sticking around to see it all.

Enjoy!

Science: Moving Glitter

We talked about surface tension today and did a fun experiment Magic Moving Milk and then I found this experiment.

What you need:
water
shallow dish or plate
glitter (lots and lots of glitter)
dish soap

Put water on the plate.

I let each child add a few pinches of glitter to the water.  We talked about why the glitter floated and they each said surface tension. {BOOM, retaining knowledge}.

I see now that I chose the wrong plate. I needed to use a white plate. There are pinches of glitter there.

{I asked all the questions that the lady with this science experiment asked her students. Considering, I don't know anything about surface tension, really}

I asked them what they think would happen if I added soap to the water and broke the surface tension. They each were a little stumped because in the Magic Moving Milk experiment, the colors started moving and blending together..."this glitter won't do that momma, it will just sink"-Austin.

I added the soap and WHOOSH, the glitter moved to the sides of the plate. They were shocked and suddenly started asking a ton of questions.  I told them that since the surface tension broke it "grabbed the glitter and ran away with the glitter to the sides of the plate".  This is exactly what happened and they loved it.

We added a ton more glitter. We covered the surface of the plate. This time, however, when I added the soap, there was no where for the glitter and water molecules to go to so it just stayed in the same place. Essentially, we created a sort of glitter traffic jam. I forgot to take pictures of this traffic jam, because I too, was a little amazed.

I loved finding the Science for Kids Blog this morning and plan on doing a few more activities from her site.

Enjoy,
Crystin

Science: Magic Moving Milk

Today we did two experiments that were centered around surface tension.  The first was Magic Moving Milk!  The boys were pretty shocked at the end result. They had no idea what was going to happen.

What you need:
Milk (I used 2%, I have read to use whole, but we don't drink it)
food color
dish soap
shallow dish or plate

Put some milk on the plate or shallow dish. You don't need a lot, just enough to cover the bottom and about 1/2 and inch up the sides. Have the kiddos add  one drop at a time of food coloring to their plates.

In the middle of the plate add one to two drops of dish soap and watch it change!

 Then I just gave them a popsicle stick and let them move the colors around and swish them until they made their own colors.

Science behind this experiment: Milk is made up of molecules that basically "hold hands" or stick together.  These molecules form what is called surface tension.  Things will float on water until the surface tension is broken (dish soap).  Soap breaks the surface tension of the milk, thus the colors meld together and move around.

Enjoy,
Crystin

Science: Dancing Raisins

This was actually a really fun science experiment that we did today.  I bought some sprite so we could make some Gummy Bear Popsicles {considering it's hot as Hades out there around the South}. I have had the Dancing Raisins Experiment pinned on Pinterest for MONTHS, and just decided it was time to try it out.

What you need:
A clear glass
raisins ( we used 10)
Sprite

Fill the glass with room temperature Sprite about 3/4 of the way full and add the raisins one at a time.  The raisins will rise and fall back down for about 5 minutes. We didn't make it the full 5 minutes because my boys wanted to drink their Sprite.

There was no keeping our hands out of the sprite.

Dance, Dance little raisin

The Science behind this experiment: Soda is full of Carbon Dioxide. The Carbon Dioxide forms little bubbles around the raisins that make them rise. When the bubbles break at the surface, it allows the gas to escape and the raisin falls back to the bottom of the cup, only to have more Carbon Dioxide attach to it. Rinse and Repeat.

{Our word of the day is Carbon Dioxide....} I took a cute video of Lucas trying to say Carbon Dioxide, but can't figure out how to load it with sound.

Enjoy,
Crystin

Tea Bag Rocket

What you need:
a tea bag (the large Luzianne tea bags worked better for us, we tried multiple)
scissors
a plate
a lighter

Remove the staple, string and paper from the tea bag with the scissors and dump out the tea into another container or the garbage (you will not need it).
Unfold the tea bag and open it up to form an empty cylinder that you can see all the way through.
Stand the tea bag cylinder up right on a non-flammable surface. I used a plate.
Light the "rocket" and watch your kid's faces.

**we did ours inside. We tried to do it outside, but the slightest breeze will knock it over. You need no breeze whatsoever. Don't worry, the rocket extinguishes itself in the air**

We learned how warm dense air rises above the cooler air and that's why the rocket floats up.  There's a lot more information you can teach your kids about this experiment, but my boys were too darn excited to try it again and again.  You can find out more about this experiment here.

I took a video of this, but unfortunately I can't find it! I will upload it once I do.

Enjoy,
Crystin

Marvelous magic marshmallow monster poop for Letter M Day!

Home school took up most of our day today. Actually, today was filled with a lot of playing, laughs, creativity, exploring and other fun stuff.  With each activity we did, it was followed by a lot of imaginative play, cooperative play and just plain play. I was a little surprised but I just rolled with it.

Monster Poop has ALWAYS been a favorite of my boys. I started doing it about 2 years ago. Basically, it's just shaving cream and green food color. When Austin saw it he said "it looks like monster poop" so the name just stuck. 

We have a book called Huggly Gets Dressed. It's about this cute little monster who's interested in how people wear their clothes.  My boys thought this story was so cute....so {maybe} about a year ago, I decided to leave the boys a present in the bath tub and a note from Huggly taped to it. He had come to try on all their clothes and said thanks, but he needed them to clean up his poop he left behind. Gross...but my boys think poop is hilarious, so I won :)

Today I asked my boys {since it's M day}, "what do you think would happen if a monster ate too many magical marshmallows?" Lucas shouted "He would POOP out magic marshmallow poop!!!"  ....and that's exactly what happened in our shower today...for Art.

MARVELOUS MAGIC MARSHMALLOW MONSTER POOP

You need: 
Shaving cream

food color
Optional:
containers {if you want...I sometimes just give them a can of shaving cream in the shower and let them go crazy}
little spray bottles to clean the shower when they are done
rags
sponges
googly eyes

All you do is squirt shaving cream in a container and add drops of food coloring. That "magic" part is swirling it and seeing the color come out. if I would have thought about it, I should have put the some shaving cream down, put color down and then more shaving cream so they had to dig for it. I didn't do that.
I dropped some googly eyes on top. 

They played in this "poop" for over an hour.  I then had to turn the water on to rinse them off and they stayed in there playing for a while longer. This freed me up to get whatever I needed done.

 

This really is a fun activity.  If you don't mind messy clean play {who would} give it a try :)

This ends our Letter M day for today!

Crystin

Handwriting practice with dry erase boards

This seems to be my kids favorite way of writing. They each ask me throughout the day if they can use their dry erase boards.  Since today is Letter M day, I put some three letter words on Austin's dry erase board and Lucas just got a lot of practice making his "Mm".  Austin did end up writing all the words out, then erased them all and started sounding out his own words. He sounded out and spelled box, momme {mommy}, fox, mit and a few others.

 I got these dry erase boards and markers at the dollar store a while back.  

Enjoy
crystin

Letter M

This is our morning white board, this is the first thing we do in the morning. I go over the list of activities to do and the letter of the day. I circle the activities we have done and see what we have left to do. The words in blue are the words that we have talked about during the day that start with the letter "m". When they say a new letter "m" word we write it on our board. The first activity is always our workbooks (I choose that) and then I let them choose what the next activity will be. They always choose science.

The marvelous letter today is Letter M!  While the boys take a break from school, watch Monsters, Inc. and eat *moon mix I wanted to update on some of the activities we did this morning. I have a few more activities after snack, but here's the short list we did this morning.

 *Moon mix is just trail mix and marshmallows. I was just going to have them snack on marshmallows and found this trail mix next to the bag of marshmallows...hence the name "moon mix".

SCIENCE: MAGNETS AND HOW THEY WORK

Sorry the picture of this one is dark, the sun is right to our backs at the table in the mornings.  

Today we talked about Magnets and how they work.  We learned that things magnets are attracted to iron, steel etc. We learned the magnet has two poles, the north and the south. I taught them how the north pole is only attracted to the south pole and visa versa. We talked about the words "attract", "repel", "magnetized".  I tested them verbally by asking what the poles names were, what happens if the poles don't attract etc. 

 The boys wanted to figure out what had "iron" in it and what did not. They loved finding items that were magnetic. 

We brought out the rest of the magnetix we have and just played around with them.  The boys thought my cookie sheets might be magnetic and WERE.

 Austin tested this biscuit pan to see if it was magnetic, it was not, but the cookie sheets and muffin tins were.

This is a magnet maze I made really fast last night.  If you've ever played with magnetix, you know you get the balls and the little sticks. I just attached the stick to the back and they had to use the stick to control the ball where it needed to go.

READING: MADDOX THE MOON MAN  (plus activity)

I came up with a story about Maddox the Moon Man. He lives on the moon and is very lonely. He needs to find Moon Treasure so he can make a wish to get his friends to come live on the Moon with him. The boys loved it and listened really intently. I would ask them questions and let them guess at the answer. I would ask "why did Maddox have to put on a special suit and mask when he would go out on the moon surface." Lucas actually answered "because there's no air", which surprised me.  Anyway, so Maddox walks through the squishy sand of the moon following a map that he found 2 weeks earlier.  I asked a lot of questions when we were done "listening" to make sure they got all the information. They were like sponges!

The activity that goes along with my story is Moon Dough. If you've never experienced Moon Dough, I suggest you let your kids play with it. I love it and so do my kids. 

MOON DOUGH

8 cups flour

1 cup baby oil

themed items (for this activity, I used Maddox-an imaginext space guy), an imaginext alien, a few "friends", star stickers, a construction paper "map", space masks, googly alien eyes, and moon treasures. 

*I doubled this recipe because I was making two batches.... these were sensory tubs so I wanted each boy to have their own amount. So I used 16 cups flour and 2 cups baby oil)

(I buy the 2lb bags of flour at the dollar tree and the baby oil there too. This activity was about $5. I have used expired flour before as well and veggie oil and they worked fine)

 The moon treasures are those balls you see in the picture. I just put a "jewel" inside and smooshed dough around it to form a ball.

Checking "maddox the moon man" out and putting on his space mask

 MOON TREASURE!

 I asked Austin to read what was on the outside of the map.

 He has to count his moon treasure because Maddox found 9 before he could make his wish.

Lucas got sidetracked with a worm... He named it Moomie...and it's now somewhere in our house.  {ugh}

Well that's our morning so far. These boys are bursting with energy so I am going to shoo them outside to play for a while. Maybe it's because they had moon mix ;)

Crystin