Getting Started

This week has been our official week of homeschool. We did a few things the last few weeks but they were more hit and miss as we were gone for a week for one last trip to visit our families in Star Valley. It then took a couple days to get settled back in, get the house caught back up and get my curriculum ready that we changed at last minute.  So officially we started this week.  How has it gone?

Monday:  It took us a bit to get the kids going and they were willing to get started and we got quite a bit done. But by the time we finished up at 3:00, we were all exhausted.  I could not have every school day go like that. There are still lots of other things that I needed to do, prep time that was needed, down time, and some play time for all.  We had to change something.

So I picked up a book that another homeschooling friend of mine recommended.  Love to Learn by Diane Hopkins. It's full of tips, advice and suggestions from a long term homeschooling mother.  In the little bit that I read that evening I made some changes to the structure of our day, my priorities and the next couple of days have gone awesome.  We have now completed all of our daily schooling by noon!  Leaving the afternoon for errands, playing, jobs, chores, music lessons, design work or lesson planning for upcoming days.  Oh I hope I can continue this for the rest of the year. It has been awesome.  Here are a few of the changes that I made.

I am up by somewhere between 5-5:30 am.

I spend the morning reading my scriptures, doing any other preparation needed for the school day. I shower or try to have breakfast ready by 6:30, so we can get everyone up, eat and have morning scripture study with Beau before he leaves to be to work by 7:00.  I am hoping to get a 1/2 hour of exercise in there somewhere too.

If I get on the computer I don't check email or browse the web. I only do what is necessary to prep for school. I don't let myself check any of this until we've finished school in the afternoon.

I have everyone get ready for the day - dressed, hair fixed, teeth brushed.  The first one to be ready for the day get's first pick of the chores for the morning.  (This morning was the first morning I tried this technique.  What has been taking them anywhere from 30 minutes or longer to do, took them exactly 3-5 minutes. They wanted first choice on chores.  It was amazing.  They didn't know what their chores would be, and they knew if they were the last one they would probably get stuck with the worse. I think we'll continue this method  for getting ready.

They also were more willing to do the chores because they chose what it was rather than me telling, and it was something different every day based on what I needed done.  We had been having arguments over zones lately because someone's didn't get messy and it wasn't fair that they didn't have to clean when another one was super messy. Plus there have been items that needed to be done that weren't getting done because they weren't on the regular chore schedule. I decided I would write the chore list based on what needed done instead of a set one.

While they are working on chores, I do dishes, throw in some laundry, pick up any major areas, and if needed also shower and get ready.  Depending on the amount of family work I have that needs to be done in the morning we'll start school either at 8:00 or 9:00am.

I then pull the kids together to start school. We start with a quick devotional where we start with prayer, learn about a virtue for the week.  This week is kindness (since it has really been lacking in our home lately.) We learn a new song. This weeks was "Kindness Begins With Me." We practice our memorization of the Living Christ and either play a quick game or read a story about the virtue.

We then start do our Family School Curriculum with our subject for the day.  This is done with everyone together.... hence the name "Family School" :)  I am really excited about this curriculum and will share more about it in a later post.  This usually takes us 1 1/2 - 2 hours to do the lesson for the day.  I was waiting to do this after the kids did all their individual work and we weren't getting to it clear until the afternoon and we were all getting restless at this point.  After reading Diane's suggestions I decided to do it first.

After we do the subject for the day, we then do individual assignments, which I had been doing all together at the table so I could help everyone.  It was taking forever.  I decided to take Diane's advice to have them learn on their own away from distractions. Meaning away from each other!

I created a weekly assignment log that has what they need to do every day for their individual lessons.  They include:

copywork / spelling
write in their journal
their specific writing assignment for the subject of the day
reading for 20 minutes
the math lesson for the day

Then rotating day by day it will have music lesson, tech lesson, or Spanish for the day. They were given the instructions that they are not allowed to have free time or play until all of their boxes have been checked off.  They can do them in any order. They need to do it in a room completely by themselves. If they procrastinate it and never finish it for the day, not only did they loose play time or free time, they will find all of the same assignments given to them the next day completely blank so they can start all over. (My friend suggested this method, that after a few days it works wonders at stopping the procrastination and distractions.)  I will go around to help them with any problems they have or questions. They can skip the ones they don't know or need help with.

It was amazing how fast the older ones were able to get their work done. I was able to spend part of that time working one on one with Isaac on his reading lessons. It also works well because Belén usually takes a pretty long nap in the mornings.

We have been done by noon the last two days with this schedule.  We were able to have the afternoon to run errands and go to piano lessons. Today I was tired and could take a nap without feeling guilty, get caught up on some laundry, dry some food and do some reading that I was wanting to catch up on. I'm hoping to also use the afternoon for a chance to get out in some sunshine and do something physical with the kids.

I had a friend that is starting her first year homeschooling ask me how my day was set up and our schedule.  I don't know that we had a major schedule in the past which did make it difficult sometimes to get through everything, or everything just took a lot longer than it needed to.  So right now this is my new schedule and new plan and it seems to be working.  There will be times when we have more detailed assignments where school might go until 1:00. There will be other times when an individual subject might get dropped so we can fit something else in together, or because a lesson will take more time. But it seems like those will be easier to work with and deal with than having the whole day mixed up.

I'll keep you updated on how this works the rest of the year. I know there will be days that just don't work out like this, but even if most of the time it was working we seem to be getting a lot more done in shorter amounts of time.

Letting It Shine

This last year has been quite a growing period for me in so many ways.  One of those specifically being the choice that I made to homeschool my kids.  It has made me grow, stretch and learn things that I don't think I would have ever learned had I not brought them home.  It's been an incredible journey. Hard in some aspects and yet so rewarding in others.

There have been so many things that I've wanted to say. So many thoughts and feelings that I've wanted to share with you. Insights, difficulties, joys, and tender mercies that I've wanted to tell everyone about.  But in the process I've been hesitant to do so.  Here are some of the reasons why.

1) Some are very personal understandings and learning that are intended just for me.

2) Some are still more attacking that supportive.  They are still letting us know how they think we should do it, that we're not doing enough, that our kid should be doing this or that, that we're not doing it right and we're going to mess them up.  That they will either be smart or stupid. I have come to have some pretty strong opinions about things this year, and I don't feel like arguing about it with people. I would love to have a serious discussion with people, even those that don't agree. Especially if I feel like they are willing to listen and aren't going to be attacking me the whole time.

3) There are a lot of good mothers out there who sincerely want to do what is best for their child, and feel guilty or wonder if they are not a good mother if they don't homeschool.  I never want to make someone feel guilty or bad. Everyone's circumstance is different. Each family is unique, each child is unique.  We don't have to do it all the same way.

But lately I've been having a feeling that I should be saying more. I should be sharing the things I've learned and starting to understand because maybe there is one person out there that needs to hear it.  Maybe there is one person who is struggling with something that could gain from it.  Maybe there is someone that just needs the confidence to do it.  I have had quite a few say that they've thought about homeschool, that they'd like to do it, they just don't know if they could.  Maybe they need to see that it's possible and the Lord will help them along the way.

This morning as I was thinking about all the things that I'd like to share, the things I'm excited about, and whether or not to stick it ALL out there. I had part of this quote pop into my head:

"You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” -  Marianne Williamson

You don't shine a light by hiding it under a bushel.

So over the next little bit I'm going to be sharing some of my journey to homeschool. Why I decided to do it, things that I have been learning in the process, tender mercies that the Lord has given us. Some of these might come across as being strongly opinionated.  (If you don't already know that I have strong opinions about some things and feel pretty deeply about some stuff then you really don't know me well. :))  In sharing them with you I am not doing it make you feel bad, or guilty about what you are currently doing with your family.  That's not my purpose.  That is your stewardship and the Lord is letting you know what you need to do for them.  I am sharing it in hopes that maybe it can help someone. Maybe it can make you think, ask questions and start searching for answers. Maybe it will give you the courage to let your light shine a little bit more.

But mostly it will be a written record for my own children of what their mom believed, chose to do while raising them, and the things I learned with them in the process. Really all of this is for them.
 

Another Round of Art Classes

I have decided to do another 10 weeks of children's art classes this upcoming fall. They will be held on Fridays at 2:00 pm and possibly 3:00 pm.  If anyone is interested leave me a comment or send me an email and I'll get you the information for them.

Treasure Maps!

You can't study pirates for a school unit and NOT do pirate maps. When I took an e-course from Deep Space Sparkle this summer she had a lesson on making treasure maps. I could not pass this up on our unit. It was just too much fun.    She had great handouts that talked about the different items you'd find on an old map, how to make scrolls, and we just had a blast with it.  Shark infested waters, treasures, whales and serpents   We also came across a really cool pirate game that works with checkers. Where you have the Spanish Fleet trying to get their ships of gold safely back to Spain without loosing it all to the pirate ship. The kids loved it.

Of course even sometimes mom wants to have fun drawing and painting too and making a map was just too hard to pass up. I usually give it the name of "demonstrating" the lesson, but really it's just me wanting to relax and play too.

Incas, Conquistadors and Pirates!

Recently we did a unit for homeschool on the conquistadors, Aztecs, Incas, Myans and pirates. We read this great book about the Lost City, learned about Pizarro and Cortez, made some Spanish doubloons and finished off with some gold Inca masks.

We used gold foil to create our Inca masks and our Spanish doubloons. We learned about symmetry while drawing our masks, and then texture as we pushed the foil in and out to create the textures of the facial features and designs.

We added a bit of color with some colored permanent markers and additional decorations such as feathers and beads.

And yes... that mess you see on the table is what you see at our house on a regular basis during school time.

 I just love the unique way they turned out, especially the shininess of the gold foil!  The kids loved this project and ended up playing with their masks quite a bit afterwards.

Down by the Sea

This was the last project we finished for our summer class.  It seemed only fitting that it be a beach summer theme. This was a two day project for us. The first day we painted the background sky and sand. Then painted and textured our blue papers for our water. The second day was spent collaging boats and putting together our sea.  This is a great lesson for talking about depth and space. How objects look smaller the farther they are away, and how the boat that is going to be the farthest in the distance is going to be tiny compared to the boat that's closest to you.  Some of them got this concept easier than others or they made the different sized boats but forgot placement when they started gluing. It was also works wonderful for talking about overlapping with the waves and ocean to make the boats look in the water and to create a feeling of depth.  Sorry about my slightly blurry photos. My camera hasn't been working all that great lately.

I found the idea for this project at Fine Lines.

Colorful Chameleons

I've seen this lesson on deep space sparkle for a while and just fell in love with it.  But I'm a sucker for anything bright and colorful. I decided to do it with one of my private students and some of my kids. I thought they did a great job. Unfortunately I only have two pictures of the finished ones and my sample.  This lesson is great for talking about complimentary colors, brightness and contrast, how to draw animals, and pastel techniques.

Mid-evil Castles

I'm finally having a chance to get caught up on some of our art projects for this summer's class.  One of our summer art classes was creating some mid-evil castles. I don't know of any child that doesn't love the magical, fairy tale dream land.  They did a great job creating these, and it would have been nice to have a bit more time to put in backgrounds. I probably should have given one more class period to painting backgrounds.  Live and learn I guess.  Some of the things they learned about was: Architecture, pattern and texture. I still love how one lesson can vary so much from the Kindergartener up to the 5th grader.

I took the idea for this lesson from Deep Space Sparkle.

The House That Built Me

My sister put together a video for our family reunion. It's about my Grandma and Grandpa Fielding home. A place that is filled with memories of reunions, thanksgivings, family gatherings, three wheeler rides, the big tire swing, waves on the trampoline and other great memories. I always loved to visit her, it just always felt like home.

Week 21 In Our Life

I know that I haven't been the best at updating what has been happening in our life lately.  Probably because too many good things have been going on.  So I thought I would share one of our weeks with you. You'll have to read about it in the layouts. :)  (You should be able to click on them to view them bigger.)

This year I really wanted to document our life. I am not completely caught up, but I am getting it done. After trying a thousand methods finding the one that I could actually do the Project Life Method has been the one that has clicked for me. Lately I haven't had much time to do anything scrapbook or designing related. When I have, all I've really wanted to do is record our story right now.  That is a good thing I think. Isn't that what it's all about anyway. Telling our individual stories.

Starry Night and Day

I loved the results of a lesson from Deep Space Sparkle when I first saw it. I decided to try it with my kids and another little boy that came to our house for art time.  We talked about cool and warm colors, looked at the use of lines in Starry Night and then had them choose if they the sky or land to be warm colors or cool colors.  This was their finished results.  My girls really loved this project.

We had such a fun time that we decided to do it with my summer art class.  Although we gave it a twist this time around.  We talked about how to create depth in your art work by having a background, middle ground and foreground. I encouraged them to also try to use warm or cool colors.  I used Starry Night to help them identify where his background, middle ground and foreground were. I also encouraged them to use lines in their sky to create movement similar to Van Gogh's Starry Night.    Here were our finished results.  I loved how they turned out and with such a great variety between the differences in skill and subject matter. (Sorry the colors are slightly off - trying to photograph these were tad more difficult.)

Here's how we made them.

1. Take a 12x18 piece of black construction paper and cut it so you have a 9x12, a 6x12 and a 3x12 piece.
2. Have the students draw their sky on the large background paper first. Make sure the designs they want shown are in the upper third of the background.
2. Have them draw the middle ground - hills, city, mountains, water, trees, animals etc on the medium sized paper.  Cut out the top spaces so it has more dimension and negative shapes.
3. Draw the foreground on the smallest paper. That could be waves, beach, a hill, grass, etc.

4. Fold the background in half so it'll stand up.
5. Fold the edges back about 1/4 - 1/2 inch on the middle paper, to make a tab that will wrap around the back of the large paper to staple it.  Fold it in half.
6. Do the same thing you did in step 5 only fold the side tabs twice as large as the middle tabs so that it will pop out in front.  Line the papers up and staple the tabs to the background.

We were able to get it down in within the hour art class, but we were pushing it with 11 kids. If you have a larger class, you might want to do it in stages so they have more time to do a really good drawing.

When I Grow Up - Self Portraits

Recently I started teaching some art classes out of my home to children in grades K-6th. Previously I was an art teacher for K-2 grades in Las Vegas.  It was something that I had thought about doing right after I was married. We had visited Beau's relative and his daughters were showing us their artwork they had created in an art class they were signed up for. It sounded like such a great idea to do private lessons from your home.  At the time I didn't know where to even begin setting up something like that. Life started happening and it got set to the side. (I ended up substituting for a boys lock down school instead... hmm how did that happen?)  

Now 10 years later I've started homeschooling and have seen how much my kids love it when I say it's time for art. They have some of their mother's blood in them. :)  I've enjoyed finding lesson ideas on the internet to try out with them and have found some inspiring sites from some awesome art teachers.  

I decided it might be fun to teach a few art classes to other homeschoolers and friends.  It would give my kids some more interaction with other kids and summer seemed to be the perfect time to try it out. So we gave our first class a go.

Our first lesson was imaginary self portraits. They were to decide what they wanted to be when they grew up and do it as a self portrait.  I used a lesson from Deep Space Sparkle.  I love her site. She has so many great ideas and lesson plans available. My summer art class has kids in it ranging from Kindergarten to Fifth grade.  That can be challenging to find something that will fit the different skill levers but when you do it's fun to see the variation.

The little first grader above wanted to be an artist. I love her finished picture with lots and lots of windows because "artists need lots of light."  After she finished her entire picture she had to add paint splotches to her painting on the face, hands and shirt, because "Artists get really messy and get paint all over them."  It's been a lot of fun for me to get back into teaching something I love so much. I'm excited to show off the rest of our art through out the summer.

On My Bookshelf

One of the things that I love about homeschooling is the fact that it is making me step up and increase my learning as well. It's made me study everything I can about teaching, learning styles, homeschooling methods and how to create a learning environment. It's made me realize that my kids will never love to learn unless I'm showing them that I personally love learning. Which I do. I really do.  So I've made the goal to read more. Read more to the kids as well as read more myself. So far I've been doing pretty good. I recently saved up and sold some stuff we didn't use any more to get a simple kindle for reading, and have fallen in love with having tons of books in one spot. I love using it for school, having audios to listen to as we drive in the car, and just how much I've read since having it.  So I thought I'd share the books I've been reading to the kids, finished reading or are currently in the middle of them. Some of them have become all time favorites, which I hope to share more about later. (Sorry these aren't linkable.  Hopefully they're big enough you could do a search on Amazon if you wanted to check it out.)

Among the Night People

"Can we keep him?"
"Where's his mommy?  Maybe she'll come looking for him?"
"What if he's hurt?"
"Can we hold him?"
"Why can't we keep him?  We can make him some milk and feed him, till he gets a little bit bigger."
"Why can't we hold him?"

Yes, our daily random homeschooling moment continues.  Today's moment was brought to you by the knock on the door.

"Hi!  I'm new next door.  I found a baby raccoon on the sidewalk, and was wondering if it might be yours."

"Hmmm... let me check.  Pets...  Cat? Nope - severely allergic to them.  Dog? Not while we live in this tiny place.  Bum Lamb?  We almost ended up with one of those... Chickens?  I wish.  Fish.  Yes.  Fish.  The same reply I give the doctor every 2 months when we go in for a visit and he asks us if we still have our fish.  They're the perfect pet in my opinion.  Raccoon?  Not in this lifetime... (but we'll go ahead and let the kids call dad in about 30 minutes and see if they can convince him to let them keep it.)

 "Sorry. I can't say that I purposefully own a Raccoon."

That led to an immediate mass exodus of the house. So much for getting a lesson done or maybe we just need to change up the lesson.  The guy next door called the animal control unit to come and figure out what to do with it. The kids oooooed and awwwed while waiting for the "crazy guys" as Mirian was calling them. (I have no idea where she got that from.)

I have to admit, he was cute... and I even started flashing back to being a kid and day dreaming how awesome it would be to have a wild animal for a pet... but the realistic, party-crashing mom jerked back to reality and said no way.  A few other neighbors gathered round, picked it up and let the kids look at it up close.  Soon animal control pulled up all serious, adorned their gloves, grabbed the claw, walked up and then did a double take and said. "That's all it is?"  It wasn't too old.  Barely getting around and making lots of little noises trying to locate his mother I'm sure.  I went back inside to grab the burning waffles for lunch.

"Why did Sally ask them not to put it down? What does that mean?"

Here began the learning opportunities.  We ate lunch and discussed what it means to put an animal down and why sometimes it's more humane than letting it suffer.  "So they kill it?!"  I could see Fern in the back of my mind "up at the crack of dawn, ridding the world of injustice" as she saved Wilber from an untimely death.  I'm still not sure if they quite understood 'why' they would need to put it to sleep.

At that point their minds were not on fractions, or the Trojan wars. So I decided we might as well go with it.  We pulled out the book "Among the Night People." One of the books in a series about the various animals and their habitats and behaviors. It's a classic and a great read for kids as it's told from the animal's point of view, but shows them the way of life, behaviors and environment various animals live in. I pulled up the chapter on Raccoons.  We read about them having a party in the night and and their mom helping them learn to have good manners. After the story I asked the kid what we learned about Raccoons and their behaviors.

- The come out at night and sleep during the day.
- They can't run fast
- They can't dive in water although they like to play in it.
- They walk on their toes
- They use their paws like hands to pick up objects and to eat, and can stand on their back feet.
- They like to eat bugs, worms, crayfish, etc. (Bats too, Isaac said, because he learned that on the Krats
       brothers.)
- They like to get out and play with others and can be mischievousness
- Live often in wooded areas
- They tend to dip or wash their food in water before eating it

We pulled out their journals to have them write about their Raccoon adventures.  We try to write daily in our journals, even if it's just a little bit. I want them to get in the habit, and I want them to have a record of their own life and stories.

Savannah actually wanted to write about hers in newspaper format.  I've been trying to create a literacy center, with different options for them to use while writing.  It might have blank books, letter forms, blank lists, Mad libs etc. I'm not completely finished but have great plans for it. While creating it I made this generic  Newsletter form and keep several blank copies of it for them to use at their liking.  I saw a similar one from Martha Stewart for Mother's Day. I wanted mine to be very flexible as well as usable for a history.

Who knew that this is what we would be studying for the day.  That's alright though.  They will remember more about Raccoons now, because of the personal hands-on living experience, than they ever would have remembered by reading about them in a science lesson.

I wanted to share my blank copy of the newsletter. It's a great way to just get a  kid writing for fun. You can create realistic news stories or make up some wild tales. It's a fun way to get the kids writing just for the enjoyment and pleasure of telling a story.








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What It Really Looks Like

"Mom! Savannah dropped her book in the pond!"

Really?  The hard bound Newberry Honor book from the Library?  Arghh.  Is it not enough that I already single handedly donate large sums of money to our city library unintentionally.

It's been 3 weeks already?

No it's been more like 4 or 5 weeks since checkout. Ouch, that's going to cost me.

And how many books do I have out? 30?

78.

 Hmm. Maybe I'm not cut out to homeschool. I have obviously been unable to teach my children math, explicitly how to count to five. Five books everyone. That's all you can get. 5 books x 4 kids and one mom...plus a couple of extras. Thirty really should have been our max. Seventy-eight?  I guess I should be happy that I have raised kids that love to read. But really .... what could be a great literary quote?  You know the one that will be engraven above the door to the new library wing, created from our family's personal donations to the library.

Plus they'll now have another $20 my daughter will be paying after she's cleaned the car, scrubbed my toilets, picked up the lawn, cleaned the fridge, and babysat for a couple of hours.  That seems about fair, and doesn't seem like it would be overstepping child labor laws too much.

"There's nothing like a good lesson in responsibility." I stated, turning around to continue my conversation with the other homeschooling mother.  It was a play date at the park, our few hours to swap stories, ideas and get inspired from each other.  We leave realizing our children are normal and that we really aren't as crazy as we thought we were.

It's a good dose of medicine every few weeks. Plus the kids have the chance to play with each other, be in nature and wear themselves out.

"They're in the water!  All of them!"  If a book wasn't enough it was now all the kids. The other mom headed to the pond to be the bad guy.

"And there are leaches in it!"  I'm not so sure about the leaches. I did see small fish or tadpoles swimming earlier when I had walked by.  But, who knows what else swims in there besides the ducks. (Who had already been fed our picnic sandwiches, which meant a melt down was soon to follow when everyone got tired, thirsty, and hungry later.)

"Tyson picked up a snake too!  He thought it was a twig but when he picked it up it wiggled and then his tail BROKE off!" She was telling the full story now.

"Well, there is homeschool for you... picking up real snakes." I had to laugh..and shudder at the thought.

"That's right.  In regular school they only show you pictures of snakes. Here you get the real thing." the Texan mom drawled.

The other mom returned.  "They were cleaning out trash from the pond. It was hard to get too mad at them."

This is what I love.  Air, sunshine, kids, other mothers in the trenches, laughter, real life experiences, the free schedule.  This is truly what I love about homeschooling.  How family life and school can so easily happen together in every day moments.

Real memories created with each other.  Memories that only happen in brief instances of time that can be so easily lost.

Moments like that first good snowfall, when the kids rush out excited, wanting to put their snow clothes on. The rest of the world, was hurrying their kids out the door, with breakfast in hand to make it to the school before the bell. Because of our flexible schedule, I recognized this was one of those few and rare occasions to enjoy God's beautiful creation of a white blanket of snow on a cool crisp morning.  Add to that the frosty breaths of air, laughter, the children's squeals and the pure delight for life. The excitement of showing their new little sister, only 6 months, old the beauty of snow, was worth setting the start of our schooling back an extra hour.

It's those random moments. Cuddling and reading books together. Making chef salad together (New York Style), which got all of the  kids excited about eating vegetables. 10 minutes earlier they would have been complaining about those uneatable veggies.  Watching your kids sit through an entire 2 hour play - The Suessical Musical, completely enthralled with kids their age, singing, dancing and acting. Seeing your daughter catch on to a math concept and exclaim, "Oh this is easy!"

It's starting out the day not completely sure how everything will pan out, but excited when lessons were learned that were not planned.  Just like that day at the park.  We came excited to talk and play and instead we left having learned a little bit more about:

- The Pond Life Ecosystem
- Snakes
- Taking care of the Environment - Littering
- Responsibility
- Ducks
- The lives of other people
- Physical Exercise
- Social Skills
- A list of some new books to check out

It has taken me some time to start looking for these everyday learning moments. It was hard to not assume that if it isn't happening at the table, with a workbook in hand, and everyone busy, that learning wasn't happening. In reality, it is happening. I just have to stop and re-adjust my perspective so I don't miss out on the joy and splendor found in learning from everyday life and experiences.  That is when it's the most satisfying.  That's when I can can look at another $20 donation to the public library as another learning moment. (I'm sure my husband will see it that way as well.)

Making Our Space Work

We have a very tiny home and when it comes to wall space there is even less.  Trying to figure out how to do school and where to do school is sometimes a challenge. Most of it happens in this tiny space right here. Our one room living room / dining room.  Nothing Fancy.  

Since our wall space is limited, I've had to come up with other creative means of having supplies right at our fingertips.  Here is one example - our world and US maps.  We just didn't have wall space for these, except in the kid's rooms, and I didn't want to have to go to the bedrooms every time we needed to look something up.  I saw a table in a photo from Delightful Learning, where she had maps on her table covered in clear vinyl.  I loved the idea.  So one day in Walmart I picked up a large chunk of it for less than $8. (I wanted it pretty thick so it would be durable.) Beau asked me what I was doing with it.  (He always has a certain look on his face that says, uh oh... now what.)  I told him not to worry, "You'll hate it." :)

So we laid the maps underneath, wrapped the plastic over top and stapled it with the staple gun underneath. I personally have loved it.  (You can ask Beau his opinion about it later.)  I love that they are easily accessible, which makes is possible to quickly locate our geographic area we are discussing in history.

I also love watching my kids do random things with it throughout the day. Out of the blue Savannah started to make her own little geography book.  She was locating countries throughout the world, drawing their flags, writing down their capitals, and then listing anyone she knew that served a mission there. I was often asked... do you know anyone that served in a mission in France? Australia? Israel?

They also came in handy when we were doing math and talking about coins.  We ended up finding the matching state for our quarters we were using in counting money. 

They have also make for great discussions and quizzes at dinner time.  We see who knows state capitals, countries or ask who can find a certain town. I am hoping at one point to also bring more current events to the meals, where we can find them on the map and know what is going on in the world.  They can also be used to draw on top of with dry erase markers to show explorers trade routes, the pioneer's trek from Illinois to Utah or other travels.

We also have some of the little animal safari tubes. They could be used to sort animals by climates, continents or countries. You could reenact battles or show where wars were fought with little army or civil war men. There are so many uses, and it makes it so much easier than unrolling the map and then putting it away every time you want to look at it.

Another way to be creative is how to find supplies, curriculum and other resources.  I like to check our local DI (Thrift Store) to see what kinds of gems I can get. One day I found a roll of 12-15 laminated maps of continents and countries around the world.  On the back of most of them has detailed facts. For example on the back of Brazil it had a whole bunch of facts on the Rain Forest. Pictures of the animals, the different layers of the rain forest and other related facts.  What a great resource for $2.50.  We ended up pulling it out last night and Beau asked me where I got them.  When I told him, his reply was "That's why I love you.. these are really cool!"  I also found some great activity books on the human body, some eye witness books on reptiles, and a large volume of stories from around the world. Savannah found it recently has been reading the 500 page book for the last week.  

So if your discouraged about lack of space or resources, be creative and frugal and you might be surprised at ideas you've never thought of before. I'm pretty excited about mine.