My Disorganized But Organized Homeschool

Week 2 of iHomeschool Network's Back to School Blog Hop is School Room Week. We show off our work spaces, our storage, our school rooms (if we have them). This is my favorite week of the Blog Hop. I love snooping in other people's school rooms and gathering ideas for our own. Especially people who, like us, do not have a dedicated school room.

I live in organized chaos.

We have a fair sized home. But no where to really call a school room. Most of our schooling happens at the kitchen table, the couch or the front porch. Most of our supplies and curriculum are stored in our over-sized (for it's purpose) laundry room.

This is my pile. Multiple weeks of work printed, my read alouds, Olivia's readers and Brianna's Biology text for me to put comprehension questions out of. The pile and the binder cubby is on/in my desk. My computer holds a world of carefully organized bookmarks to about a million sites and a folder of precisely organized ebooks. I'm slightly crazy.

These are the girls daily work folders. Most of Brianna's schoolwork is on the computer now, but her folder holds her notebooks and Pathfinder journal and notes. Olivia's holds her current math, English, reading words, spelling books and Brownie journal.

This is the school closet in the laundry room. The top shelf is board games. The 2 other shelves are various art supplies, small kits and manipulatives. One the left set of drawers is my photocopier and for some reason, our flute. In the drawers are various art supplies and school dvds. On the middle tower is completed work that I need to sort into their kept-work binders and our globe. In those drawers are various often used supplies (glue sticks, craft paper, ect...).  On the 3rd tower is Brianna's French knitter. In the drawers are a zillion supplies - pencils, staples, post it note, blank notebooks, manila folders, ect... Almost everything we need outside of curriculum is found in this closet.

Our very picked through bookshelf (most books are in the kids rooms or in current use) and our guitar. To the side is a bin of books that are between the girls' reading levels.

This pantry holds the curriculum for the grades we are not currently using as well as our science kits. The top shelf is zip binders of the kids completed work that we've decided to keep.

Our main work area, the kitchen table. On it is Brianna's laptop, the school bin (a bin of pencils, a math kit, glue sticks, calculator, ect...), the marker tower, Joshua's preschool bin (laminated printables), and our teaching clock. On the wall we have the lyrics to O' Canada, maps of Canada and the world and a cursive writing chart.

Not Our School Area

This week in the iHomeschoolNetwork's Not Back to School Blog Hop is on school rooms or school places.

We have designated school areas. An area for working. An area for storage. Well, actually several of those.

They all look like a tornado went through them.

My big plans of organizing all the school stuff this summer went the way of the wind. In other words, I did squat.

So to save hubby from dying of embarrassment, I won't post our school area pictures right now.

School Room

Joining up with the iHomeschool Network Not Back to School Blog Hop!


This week is all about our school rooms. I don't have a set *room* for schooling, but here's some pics of our school "zones"

The kitchen table. Where school usual starts each day. The squares on the left side of the wall are the girls' work for the week. The remnants of our Olympics work is still out.

Olivia has her own little desk, but generally likes to sit at "her table" in the kitchen

2nd smaller kitchen table which is "Olivia's" table. It also has a stack of marking I need to do and books that we'll be using in the coming weeks that I have out to plan.

An older picture, but the girls work outside in nice weather too

Our main bookshelf (I reeeeeeally need a better one!) and the treadmill the girls train on in crappy/hot weather off to the left

Top of the school closet - games, manipulatives, this year's workbooks 

Bottom of the school closet - the photocopier, Brianna's laptop, Olivia's files of letters of the week and our towers of general school supplies, art supplies, white/chalk board easel

Boxes and bins of extra school stuff. I could probably have 16 more kids to homeschool and not have to buy anything outside of paper and ink, yet I keep buying more lol

Our Calendar Board

Last year I had bought this Calendar set

On Brianna's first day of homeschool

It worked great. Until Olivia was tall/smart enough to reach up and grab the date clings or stand on stuff to pull them down. It's been completely out of commission since May when we lost a couple pieces that Olivia tore off *sigh*

So I saw an idea for mounting Calendar Time stuff on a cork board (sorry for the lack of credit, I can't remember where I saw it and now I've seen it in several places!). I thought, great idea. I can put what I want on it and it can be tucked away and pulled out everyday if I end up needing the wall space it's on.


And so, it was born....

A check-offable chore chart

100 Days of School

Tot School weekly stuff for Olivia

Brianna's vocabulary word of the day

A weather set taken from 1+1+1=1

And a calendar

Tot School - Week 5

Our Focus:

- Letter D

- Number 4

- Color Purple

- Oval Shape

Olivia is 22.5 mths

D is for Sticker Dino!

Showing Brianna colors

So peaceful doing her school work she's chilling, sucking her thumb lol

We're working on getting her to actually color stuff rather than just scribbling across the page... it only works sometimes lol

She's loving these Nemo color cards!

Instead of patterning with her color bugs, they crawl up her arms

Olivia's version of pouring LOL!

Coloring on her D page

She just loved the Dora pages! Here she's pointing out shapes

Stickers and Dora! Life is good!

Coloring her alphabet page

Fine motor - eating oatmeal. She's getting much better at feeding herself *with* silverware. She even asks for forks and spoons now!

So happy with her new big girl desk!

Olivia's very own work space!

I got my printables from:
1+1+1=1
Confessions of a Homeschooler
Printer Projects
Daycare Resource 
Homemade

Find other Tot Schools at 1+1+1=1

A Secular Site!

I have zero problem with the fact that I'm a minority being a secular homeschooler. However, it is nice to see some things made for secular HSers! I was directed to the site secularhomeschool.com and am very excited to check it out!


Also got some great FREE pdf files (I guess they're e-books or something) from currclick.com. They were having a big Cyber Monday sale. It was set pdfs that were free but I think I picked up 7 or 8 that will be useful for us.

And last but not least, a shot of the baby helping Brianna with her schoolwork :)

An Organized Day

Very productive day! I got Brianna's desk moved out of Isaac's dark-ish room to the nice and well lit old toy room. It now sits in front of a large southern facing window (with a black out blind so it can lowered to shade her eyes but still light up her work). Also found that the old hamster/mouse shelf is a great bookshelf for her larger books and text-style books. They didn't fit on her regular bookshelf (which doesn't have adjustable shelves) so I was lost where to put them.

Next, move to Isaac's room. Oh boy! On the stripping of the possessions day (extreme, repeated bad behaviour made her lose everything but her bed and clothes), I just kinda tossed everything in there. WOW! But now, it's an organized mess. All I have left to go through is her assorted toys (ya know, the random ones that don't come in a set or anything). I also have to figure out what we're gonna do with her hidey chair and the 2nd slingback chair. They're just kinda stuffed in there right now.

Now I really wanna re-paint. The walls in the old toy room and Isaac's room are horrible due to Brianna's drawing on them. They just look gross now. I have the paint for Isaac's room but just can't seem to find the time to do it. Maybe I'll get Lee to occupy the kids on the weekend and get started. I just wish I had paint for the old toy room instead of Isaac's room (I use colored paint) since Isaac's room is shut up right now and the toy room is out in the open (essentially an oversized hallway between the bedrooms). Wonder how much of what colors I have in the basement......