Getting Ready

Before we left on this most recent camping trip, I was doing some hoeing out and finally I put away last year's school work. I think I read on a blog within the last day or so that others walk away from it all at the end of the year only to come back and deal later on. That was me this year! Sometimes I do it right away. This year...not so much.

I got to use my new ProClick which, in agreement with others, is absolutely uh-mazing! I can totally see where the notion of, "I must find more to bind" comes from!

I emptied the math journals and bound them up and stored them away in a labeled container (a reusable grocery bag did the track for all of our 2010-2011 work!).

My new super tool- the ProClick by GBC

What a mess! Since I don't change out activities day to day in these workboxes, they get messy AND you can see we lack discipline in using all the boxes- my kids like to stuff all their work on the top row. They are just a lot to keep after with four kids and more of a relaxed homeschooling environment.

At our house they gather dust and "stuff" accumulates behind them. Have a ever mentioned that my kids target practice with their Nerf guns on our maps there? They have an elaborate system involving different point values of the various states. As you can imagine...behind these racks on the floor were copious amounts of foam darts and legos and fake coins and beads and buttons and...

Though we have started school slowly this year (as is typical), we are scheduled to begin in earnest tomorrow. I still have my work cut out for me this evening! I did get E12's books set up, but I need to find a balance with those workboxes. They are my nemesis. There. I said it. I simply need to face the fact that when it all comes down, they do not serve our style of homeschooling well. At this point, they are a place where we store our school work when we aren't using it and since I have little option to change that, I'm working with what I have. I am experimenting with using only the rack without the boxes for a few subjects so that the notebook/book will lay flat on the rack. It might be easier for the kids to maintain. Once I've got it figured out, I will share with you all. But something needs to change!

More on the start of school and the plans for the other kids as I finish them. I'm looking forward to a good start for our new school year!

Adjustable School Table

A year or so after we started homeschooling, I really wanted to move from little tables we used as school desks to a school table. I told Dan I wanted an adjustable table that could be short and then grow with the kids. Of course I had visions of a table from Discount School Supply or Lakeshore, but Dan had another idea. Since we'd been married, we'd been using and moving around a kitchen table from his childhood- a pretty utilitarian formica topped table. His solution was to make new legs for that table. He made three sets of legs from a 4x4. Each set was taller than the next. For all these years we've been on the shortest set of legs and I'd been thinking lately (maybe for 6 months) that E12 might really enjoy sitting at a taller table! Dan mentioned it to me too so we finally made the table taller.

Dan is so clever!

E12 helps to put on a new leg

He even scrubbed the table top and the vinyl. A mid-year table tidy. Isn't it beautiful?

Thankfully, J5 is still at a good height for the table and it isn't too tall for him. We started out with cheap wooden chairs for the table that just fell apart too easily (they were build-able) so we replaced them with chairs from Lakeshore Learning.

The table looks so much taller! My kids are growing. *gulp* We still have one more set of legs to go before the original legs are put back on the table. So, they still have more growing to do and I guess we'll have to think about new chairs by that time!

Perimeter Shelves

In my post about centers I mentioned that we have shelves going around the perimeter of our playroom. I promised some pictures so here goes. You can take a look as long as you refrain from making fun of our gorgeous paneling. We are dragging this house- kicking and screaming- out of the 1970s. One. Room. At. A. Time. This room...not so high on the priority list. But it makes a great place to put stuff on the walls!

We just moved some of our games to this shelf. They are organized by category- preschool, word games, math, and geography/social studies.

This wall holds the centers- unlabeled boxes were put up backwards. Hmmm...makes me think I should have labeled both sides.

Here's the other back corner of the room. It all started when we put up the shelves from the floor up. Dan had some extra so he put up the extra length over top of the butcher roll. Then one day we decided we could just extend it all the way around. As you can see our dress up on the hooks is out. of. control. I've also been working on rotating toys and finding new places for things. It's a constant process when you have 6 people in 1400 sq ft.

You might have noticed some project items here and there...plain wood right above these words and some boards against the magnet board. Those are the pieces to the much talked about art center for R9. I think I'll share some in progress shots of that shortly.

Upgrades...

So, we finally made a decision on what to do with all of the gift money we were given at Christmas time. Let me first say that there were several things on the table. Almost every one I know got a Wii for Christmas. So, I was Jonesin' for the Wii. Dan didn't like that idea. Another thought were these cool laser tag guns. I turned that one down. The kids would have liked either. Another idea was a new computer for the school area. The kids weren't as excited about this one, but it grew on them. Since it arrived they've been enjoying it. We ordered it through a sale at Dell, with the university's education discount, on February 4th. They said it wouldn't ship until February 19th. It came early, but seriously? Did they build it from scratch when we ordered?

Two new flat screens! One for our older computer (a gift from my parents- I love it when they upgrade) and of course the new one has one. Once we get a few connectors, both of these computers will be on the network. For now we have three out of the four computers we own on the network but one more can join when the connector ship comes in. All with internet and printer access.

Check out the yellow track ball for the kids' games. Up on the older tower is our Intel Play QX3 Digital Microscope. Love this thing and it doesn't run with Vista so it will stay on the XP machine.

The older computer tower will be transformed into a network server for back up. But tell me what I'm going to do with these two beastly monitors?

We are all set! Look out...webquests and research will never be the same! J3 is going to miss the machine that ran Linux, but no worries I'm pretty sure we have all that Linux stuff on disk (right Grandpa?) and we'll still be able to run it.

Thanks to all of our family members who contributed to our amazing gift. We have done our part to stimulate the economy. All done now.