Revamp

We didn't have a dedicated homeschooling room in our house, or even a dedicated cupboard!

Suffice to say it was getting a bit annoying having everything stashed piecemeal in various spots around the house, but we did have a rather decent sized patch of wall behind the dining table -

Which I commandeered!!

 We bought some of those shop style wall mounted strip shelves on sale, three 300mm x 2400mm (one of which we're not using currently), for boxes & files, and two 150mm x 1200mm ones for holding pencils etc and displaying books.

I used cheap fabric boxes, cardboard magazine files, and lidded plastic boxes to hold all our craft gear, science bits, materials, manipulatives, and paperwork.

And each of the kids have a box that I prettied up a little to hold resources for them specifically that aren't currently in use -

 Books currently or commonly in use still live in the rainbow drawers under the shelves, next to my sewing table.

It's a big improvement!!

Of mice & men..

It's best laid plans time.

I'm aiming to make everything simple this year, with plenty of flexibility, but a predictable 'shape'.

Eli has decided that now is a good time to start showing an interest in letters, numbers & writing, so need to incorporate more of that in for him too...

So this is what I'm instituting for Lexi-

Mon-Thurs
* Basic Business - Do these in any order - Math Mammoth (2 pages), Start Right English yr4 (one activity), Spelling City (10min or so)
* Snack
* Reading with mum (or to mum, or listening to an audiobook, depending on my energy levels  )
* Play (while I do housework, woot)
* Lunch
* Quiet time (resting/reading/puzzles/audiobooks/colouring/writing etc)
* One Thing More**
* Outside time

Friday
*Do Something Different - Choose some of these - Life of Fred, word worksheets (these are vocab/spelling/word property sheets), Intrepica, Khan Academy, D'Nealian Handwriting, Mavis Beacon Typing

then the rest of the day proceeds as per the others, from the snack onwards.


**"One Thing More" might include - swimming, art, cooking, topic studies, discovery box (a box full of science experiment stuff), Mr Q's Science, any of the 'Do Something Different' list, science kits, outings, videos, music, sports, Start Right Science, or something totally unexpected!" (this is so I can squeeze all the other stuff in, but the actually content is entirely dependent on my energy levels & how busy we are... trying to keep things as flexible as possible, but still with structure)

For Eli I am starting a letter of the week thing, a sight word program, some basic maths activities, and have a box of various learning games & stuff for him, and for him & Maia I have collected a basket of quiet activities that only come out while Lexi is trying to focus.

I've drawn inspiration in particular this year from the TJed 7 Keys, FIMBY's "Usually, not always" (my fav HE blog! I love that she doesn't try to do everything & is very conscious about what she is willing to let go), and "One more thing after lunch" from Hodgepodge.

Should be interesting!! I'd like to think I could maintain something like this, but time will tell... we're getting off to an auspicious start with our first 'proper' morning being taken over by a routine hospital appointment, but life is full of interruptions after all!

Getting organised!

 We're naturally really, seriously disorganised people!


But with a revolving cast of 3-5 kids around the place, a class of 20-something eight year olds to manage, and all my crafty ventures, being disorganised just was NOT going to work with home schooling!

So I dragged out all our vaguely school related supplies -

 and arranged them into....

generic stationery (pens, rulers, tape, glue, staplers etc), painting, and other art mediums-

(I emptied the dregs of the big paint bottles into smaller squeezy ones, and recycled the empty bottles into containers for our crayons, pencils & pens, they're a fantastic size for that)

folders and notebooks, exercise books, and printer paper & canvases - 

science kits, our discovery chest, maths games & manipulatives, things to keep the little one amused, collage stuff, and kid's craft supplies -

which mostly turned into this, our school cupboard - 

And as for actual work material, we have our rainbow tower-

which currently has another 5 drawers as yet unassigned (but mysteriously full of assorted pieces of kid-paper!). On the top is the cutlery caddy I bought for holding writing & colouring pencils. I used a piece of cardboard to make a little removable cup to fit in one slot, for catching pencil sharpenings, and hot-glued a pencil sharpener onto a piece of string to tie onto the caddy!

For a schedule, I was inspired by this chore chart (which I saw on Pinterest, but can't find the pin!). Ours is just a laminated sheet of paper taped to the fridge, but it's sufficiently pretty to keep our six year old happy!

I found some round, self-adhesive magnets, and printed out little pictures of everything that I could think of that Lexi might do in a day, including a few just fun things!

Thus far we have- maths, handwriting, poetry, art, storytime with me, cooking/baking, crafts, walk/outing, swimming, puzzles, gardening, writing, independent reading, Lego Quest, St John's Penguins, discovery chest, social studies, Intrepica, and science.

No doubt I'll add more as we go, but as we are just easing into our new rhythm at the moment, I think that is more than enough!

This system is good because it gives Lexi a clear idea of what is expected that day, she can 'tick off' completed activities, and it even gives her a lot of freedom to choose what she would like to tackle throughout the day!

So I think that I have most of our HE stuff sufficiently organised, if only the rest of the house was that way....