Tot School

October 29, 2009 in Tot School by Schoolin"R"Home | 3 comments

Here are a few of our recent activities within our Tot School!

My youngest children enjoyed matching numbers using this Scarecrow File Folder activity.

We read Goodnight Moon with our FIAR Club. Here is a paper we did with that.

It was a coloring picture. They colored in the items in the room in crayons then to make the room green. They used green watercolor paints. (They love painting!)

We also did a few fun Tot Tray activities. I was organizing the Tot activity cabinet and these activites my youngest wanted to work on.

This one is just placing marbles on the suction cups of a patterned bath mat piece. I found some fish shaped ones. This is a fine motor skills activity.

This one is a color sorting activity. The ice cream bowls and scoops I found inexpensively. I put those three colors (blue, green, & Yellow) of pompoms in a container. They had to take the color ice cream scoop they wanted and use it to sort those colored pompom balls into the matching bowl.

The picture below shows two other things (characters) my little Tot is currently enjoying:

 

If you want to see what others are doing in their Tot Schools, check out 1+1+1=1 blog.

Itty-Bitty Bookworm: I like Me

October 16, 2009 in Tot School by Schoolin"R"Home | 1 comment

We recently had some fun with the book entitled I Like Me.

I teach a class of 2-5 year olds in our homeschool co-op. It is a Little Literature class. This month we did a book within the Itty-Bitty Bookworm’s Bo curriculum. The book was I Like Me by Nancy Carlson.

In this story, the pig appreciates and takes care of herself. I was able to incorporate a reminder from the Bible, too. I told the children how each of them was a special creation, made by God. How each one is unique.

We did the coloring picture included in the curriculum:

We also made the booklets from the curriculum. I had each child work on the same page at the same time. They colored each page according to their hair color, eye color. I wrote the word on the line since most of the children in this age group can not yet write. For the favorite foods page, I had food pictures already cut out of a magazine. They choose pictures of their favorite foods and glued them onto their "I like to eat____" page. The books really turned out cute:

For a take-home project, I gave them a sheet with an outline of a child. They were told do a self-portrait by making the person look like themselves. They brought them back to me to see at our next co-op. A self-portrait is a nice additional project for this book.

If you are interested in learning more about the Itty-Bitty Curriculum, check out their website. They have literature-based curriculums. The Bailey curriculum is for 18-36 month olds. The Bo curriculum is geared toward 3-5 year olds.

Keeping up.

October 16, 2009 in Blog Fun by Schoolin"R"Home | 2 comments

It’s been hard keeping up lately. I know all of you homeschooling moms understand the schedule that comes with homeschooling 5 children. All of my children seem to have their own individual curriculums this year. Occasionally we will do a project like a lapbook together but mostly everything is separate… and that is a lot of subjects. My two youngest children do some activities together as well as some apart. We do Tot Trays this year. These activities are usually a hit with them.

I am telling you all this so you know why I haven’t been blogging. I enjoy blogging and love the friends I made/make as well as the ideas and projects I find on other blogs. I just haven’t had the time to sit down for myself and blog here. I do have some things ready to go though and will hopefully soon start blogging a little more often.

I might even keep my blogs more visual and write less words for the time being. You know… ease back in slowly, building up to when I can more easily post more. I am a very visual person anyway. I go to blogs more often that have a lot of photos and show crafts, etc. with photo steps/instructions so it will be more my style anyway! :)

 

Apron Giveaway!

September 23, 2009 in Blog Fun by Schoolin"R"Home | 2 comments

Over the past year or so I have developed a real liking for aprons. I think they are fun, helpful and also a reminiscent item.

The apron is certainly helpful in saving your clothing while cooking as well as with other domestic activities. I can always picture a women walking to her garden and gathering up her harvest into her apron to carry inside. The aprons of the past, worn almost everyday, certainly would have some wonderful stories to tell if they could. Even to the child running to their mama crying, head hitting the apron as they hug and the child’s tears filling the mother’s apron. Aprons are mother’s helpers and a reminder to me of simple and wonderful things!

I have a small collection now and it is a fun collection to have. The aprons will hold special memories to me as I am teaching my older girls now how to cook. Someday I will look at the aprons we’re wearing now and the memories will flood into my mind.  I have picked up a few cute aprons at thrift stores and one new, one was a gift (a pattern to be sewn) and my older daughters have each sewn me aprons at their sewing classes. I’ve never won an apron yet so hopefully I will possibly win this one!!!

Here is the giveaway for a nice Edwardian giveaway! Check it out and enter if you’d like!

Back to HOME School: Workboxes

September 4, 2009 in Workbox system by Schoolin"R"Home | 5 comments

September is zooming by. The start back up to our Home school year for 2009-2010 is underway and going well! How is your year going? Are you into the swing of things yet? I think we were all ready in our household to get back into a regular schedule even though summer seemed to go by too quickly.

We started using Workboxes. I am sure you have probably heard about these. This idea seems to be sweeping through the homeschool arena and I can see why. It is such a simple set-up but so wonderful in how it works. It really keeps the child working more independantly and is a visual and self-motivated approach to scheduling a student’s school work for the day. I was never one that liked to print out daily schedules for my children (of reading age.) Each day confirming what the next pages to do took time out of the day and seemed to break the momentum. Our new workbox system has solved these problems. Also, I often had little projects like art projects or small kits that never seemsed to work their way into our school time. Now these things can simply be placed in a box and they get used, after all that is why I bought them! This workbox idea is from a book called Sue Patrick’s Workbox System. 

Here is what one of our workbox system’s looks like. This is my oldest daughters set-up:

I had a wooden shelf that had been given to us many years ago that never felt I used well. It sort of caught our overflow, etc. I decided that was what I wanted to use but I still wanted to find the right bins/boxes for that shelf. It took some looking but I found them (and inexpensively, too! WhooHoo!) I especially like these bins because they fit most school books in them flat.

You can adjust this system to fit your needs. For one of my children I will probably be using the stackable drawer system. The rubbermaid product that has clear drawers that pull out. This will fit right on top of the desk.

To number our bins, I used a bulletin board strip that had numbers on it. I got a whole package of them (14 strips) in a pack from the Dollar store. I cut them apart and laminated them. I just attached a twisty-tie to the back and once dry, twisted them onto the bins.

Here is a wonderful website. It should answer all your worbox system questions. It shows pictures of other homeschoolers’ systems, each being a little different. This site hosts many great links to printables  well as ideas for items to add to younger children’s workbox trays.

If you have questions, leave them in the comments. I will try to answer them. If you have a workbox system post at your blog, let me know. I’d love to stop by and see your system!

  Happy Homeschooling & Have a great year!  

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