A tour of our school room

Since this is the first time we have had a dedicated school room, I wanted to share it with you. When I first started homeschooling my intent was to never have a school room, because in the many books and blogs I read, school rooms were often equated with “compartmentalizing” learning in one’s home.

However, as time went on I realized where we study really makes no difference to our mindset, because learning has become a very natural part of our daily rhythm whether we are at home, in the car, the grocery store, or at afternoon activities. I also realized that if I want to give my boys an organized, inspiring, and engaging work space that they can really make their own, we needed to have a dedicated room, otherwise the daily set up for me took time away from learning and our main living space was always piled with books, papers, and projects.

In Hawaii I split our office space with a school space, now in our new home we have a full room to ourselves. It has been great fun putting it together and now it is one of our favorite rooms in the house, because it is colorful, flooded with sunlight, and we have such a great time learning together.

We also use the dining area for art projects, the kitchen for science experiments, the play room for imaginative play, the reading room for story time…you see where I am going, having a school room has not prevented learning from happening elsewhere, it has simply allowed us to be more organized and use a lot of visual learning aids on the walls. So now, on with the tour…

Our Animals of the World map (bought at Costco), continental map for our geography studies, elements of drawing chart for Drawing with Children, writing chart for letters and numbers, Damian’s alphabet and number charts, our Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom palm tree with our two main alphabet books at the bottom of it.

Next to this area is a book case that holds supplies, reference books, work folders, and manipulatives. We also have a two door built in cupboard that has shelves for more storage.

Our school song, as decorated by my two boys. This is next to our circle time area, since we sing our school song every morning.

Calendar and weather portion of our circle time area, beneath this, which I forgot to take a photo of, is a rug and big floor cushions for us to sit on while we say prayers, do our virtue learning, sing our school song, and go through the calendar/weather activities. I am in the process of re-working our virtue learning poster which is usually in this area of our classroom, I will share it when it is completed.

Our white board, which we use for all kinds of things. I keep it at ground level so it is easy for the boys to work on too.

Our electronic globe which is still a favorite.

Our feature study area – whether it is a science, history, or geography unit we are working on – we keep all the books, posters, and manipulatives in this area, so that while we are studying the subject, the boys can easily come and do further investigation or re-use the manipulatives.

Our activity and work boxes – I did away with workboxes for Damian, since he and I work together through all of his work now, and converted them into activity boxes (I will do a full post on these soon, because they have proven to be very popular with the boys and helpful to me in teaching two students doing very different levels of work). The workboxes are Rylan’s and he works through them in the mornings after our circle time, while I am focused on working one-on-one with Damian.

My area labels as seen above were all done on my computer, laminated and I glued on the wood deco animals (or a castle, which you can see on our “reading nook” sign below), which I purchased from Michaels for 25c each.

“Education is the indispensible foundation of all human excellence”. A banner I made across the school room wall from a quotation from the Writings of Baha’u’llah. A reminder of why we work so hard to learn! I will change this quotation banner a few times during the course of the year, re-using the same letters.

Our Baha’i Holy Places and Houses of Worship wall which we are adding to as we study the continents in geography.

The Golden Rule poster – a quotation or verse from all the major world religions referring to the golden rule of treating others the way we would wish to be treated.

Our reading nook – this is just a small reading corner in our school room, we also have a reading/library room downstairs next to the play room.

And that is a peek into our school space!

This has been added to Preschool Corner & 5K too.

Making name bracelets and necklaces for cousins and friends

This year for Ayyam-i-ha the boys made handmade name necklaces and bracelets for their cousins and friends. Although mom (that would be me) forgot to take pictures of their completed jewelry before I wrapped them. I did take pictures of the ones they made with their own names the next day.

We used alphabet beads and a pack of wooden and shell beads (I guess we still have the Hawaiian beaches in our hearts, we tend to do things with beachy themes…). It was a fun exercise in fine motor skills (beading on string), pattern/sequencing, and in spelling with the alphabet letters. Rylan did the spelling of the names (spelling practice) and called out the letters he needed to Damian, so that he could find them in the bowl of letter beads (letter recognition).

I had not made any conscious goal for this activity to be anything more than a fun craft, however, observing how it evolved into a joyful learning experience, made me stop and think about how naturally and seamlessly learning has become woven into the daily rhythm of our family life. Learning is a natural, enjoyable, and continuous part of my boy’s life, there is no underlying feeling that learning occurs only during “school”. I have never been anything but a homeschooling mom, so I don’t know if this is unique to the homeschooling experience, but it is something I am truly grateful for.

Still here, believe it or not!

Yes, I am still here…never meant to be gone for SO long, but this move has been a tough one. I have spent my life moving all over the world, and yet this move really threw me for a loop. It wasn’t the weather (although various people from a DMV clerk to a Target associate have actually shrieked at me and called me ‘insane” for moving from Hawaii to the Midwest, and “in winter, of all times”!). We were just displaced for a long time, and had lots of things go wrong. I will not bore you with the details, but the good thing is that, after three months of being in limbo, we have settled in a nice home, in a nice neighborhood, and just spent three weeks with visiting family over the holidays. So, thankfully, life is on the right track again!

I am still unpacking boxes and hanging pictures, but the important areas are finished– including a dedicated school room upstairs (hooray!) and a dedicated play room right off the kitchen and living area, which has already seen many, many hours of play.

As to school, let’s just say, we have been un-schooling it for the past three months, for the most part. Rylan reads anything I put in front of him, so he has been feeding his mind non-stop, but the more formal learning activities have been far and few between…until this week! We are finally getting back into our school routine, with great excitement! And this time around I have a 6 year old and a 3 year old (when last I posted I was teaching a 5 and 2 year old!), which means I now have a proud, little preschooler in my midst! :)

So, I am back and it feels good, and I am looking forward to this new year. Hope you have all had a blessed start to 2011!

{our world now}

The end of Kindergarten!

Rylan has finished bits and pieces of his kindergarten curriculum over the past year or so (for example, he asked to learn to read at 4 1/2, so he was finished with his kindergarten reading curriculum by 5), and we have done small things to mark those accomplishments, like getting to go to the book store and choose a new book. But since we have reached the official end of the kindergarten school year, Ramtin and I thought we should have a little celebration to mark this milestone for Rylan.

I made him a certificate of completion.
And then we celebrated with a special dinner, a simple homemade cake (my Grandma's double fudge chocolate cake recipe - Rylan's favorite), and a movie night filled with popcorn and cuddles on the couch. Rylan also video skyped with his Grandma and Pa who told him that he had a special package in the mail as an end of year gift from them (a wildlife explorer subscription), so he was over the moon!

As homeschoolers we need to figure out how to mark our children's educational milestones in a way that is special and meaningful for them. I would love to hear how you celebrate your children's milestones (whether you homeschool or not), so please share any ideas or thoughts you may have.

What our days look like: our schedule/routine

I have received several emails asking me about various aspect of our schedule – how and when we do learning, what I do with Damian while trying to teach Rylan, how I fit in housework and cooking, etc. All of these questions have come from non-homeschooling families who are currently investigating the idea of homeschooling, so my reply is with that in mind. I thought I would try to incorporate all of these answers into one post (thank you to those of you who have been patient with me in replying, I have had a rough couple of weeks). Now to answer the question:

Let me start by saying that our schedule is constantly being revised as the kid’s activities change throughout the year. I like to keep to a basic routine, but I also love the flexibility that homeschooling allows. If one of the boys are really interested in a particular activity or subject, then we shift our schedule to fit it in. We are also planning to school all year round this year, so no stopping for the summer. The reason for this is that Rylan LOVES school, to stop in his mind would not be fun, but almost a punishment, which defeats the purpose of a holiday! We do stop school work when family visits, which is a couple of months over the course of a year, and when we travel ourselves (but that is learning in itself, right?). So, given this year round learning and the fact that the nature of homeschooling allows you to do away with homework altogether, and one-on-one learning with your child means they can cover more work faster; you can definitely work in time for a lot of extracurricular activities and also plain ol’ downtime for playing, imagining, being outdoors, and doing art work.

So, with this in mind, here is a more detailed look at our week. Right now Rylan is taking swimming lessons twice a week, gymnastics once a week, and piano lessons once a week. Both he and Damian attend a Music Together class once a week as well. We have a weekly play group we attend and go on a lot of planned field trips with a great mom/kids group that we are members of. All of these activities are a minimum of a 25 minute drive from our home, some as much as an hour and a half away, so that means we have a lot of time in the car. The kids also have weekly play dates with their friends in each other’s homes or at the park or beach and we go to the library once a week, plus we have to do the grocery shopping and errand running which all homes require to keep functioning. So right now maybe you are thinking when do you do the school work? :) Normally we have three mornings a week at home, on these mornings, after breakfast and washing up, we go to our school area and start our day with our circle time, which involves prayers together, studying our virtue of the week and doing the related activity, and then calendar time. After all this is finished, we move onto workboxes, which you can read more about here. We usually finish the workboxes (that is all of Damian’s and the first half of Rylan’s) around 10 to 10:30 a.m., at that point the kids go off and play together and I try to get some housework done. Sometimes they help me, like with laundry and vacuuming which they love! Depending on the day I may also put something in the crockpot for dinner during this time. We usually read a few books before we eat lunch around 11:30 a.m. At 12 p.m. I put Damian down for a nap and Rylan has about 30 minutes of quiet time (usually quiet play or reading in his room). I use this time to do work on my computer. Just a note here - with the exception of one morning a week, even when we are out for the morning, I generally make sure we are home by 11:30 for lunch, so Damian gets his nap and Rylan gets focused school time while he naps.
Right now I have it easy because Damian is napping two and half to three hours every day (long may it last, pretty pleeeease!!); so after quiet time, Rylan and I go back to our school area where we work through his remaining boxes together. If we finish his workboxes before Damian wakes up, then we do more work together (I usually let Rylan decide what he wants to do).

When Damian wakes up, its out the door to afternoon activities. We spend almost every afternoon out of the house doing activities, having play dates, going to the beach, the park, the library, grocery shopping, and running errands. If we are home (including when friends are over) we often incorporate some kind of art or craft into that time.

When we return home it is time to make dinner, while making dinner I direct a general tidy up the house which the kids carry out (since this involves putting away their toys and books that are scattered throughout our home!). Sometimes I just call out “clean up time” and they do it, other times they need a little more motivation, then we sing a clean-up song together (there are a few of them out there), I give them challenges to see how fast they can put a certain set of toys away, we put things away by color, by type, by counting, and so on. A note here - the reason this works for me is that my kitchen/living room/dining room is all open plan and the boy’s room is the first room off of this area; so I can easily keep an eye on the whole process while preparing dinner. Usually by the time dinner is done the house is pretty much straightened up and if there are still a few minutes before my hubby gets home, we go and read together until dinner (or if Ramtin gets home before I finish dinner he reads and plays with the boys). The rest of the evening follows like this: eat together as a family, bath time for the boys, family prayer time, and reading books before bed time for the boys.

And that is a basic look at our days!

North, South, East, West (printable)

I recently made these two sheets as a fun filler for Rylan's workboxes. We are about to start learning about the continents (I will share more on this later), and have been doing a general review of the geography we have covered thus far, in anticipation of our first continent to be studied - Africa.
You can download these worksheets here. The third page has the compass on it, which you can cut out, so your child can hold the compass over the picture in the middle to answer the questions on the worksheet.

Hope you are all having a wonderful weekend! :)



This has been added to: Preschool Corner & 5K too.

Damian and workboxes

A reader recently emailed to ask me how I get Damian (age 29 months) to work through workboxes every day. I thought I would answer this question in a post, so here goes:

The simple truth is I don’t!! Damian is actually too young for workboxes and formal learning (in my opinion), BUT that being said he does want to be just like his big brother who definitely does benefit from the use of workboxes. So, I got him a set and fill them for him, but I am very relaxed with how he moves through them, he doesn’t have to do them all, he doesn’t have to do them in order either, and if he just wants to play, then that is okay too! Most days he does like to work through them, although he may not do them all, if this is the case, whatever is left over stays in for the next day (but it is moved to the top). His boxes, as you can see here and here largely consist of educational toys, games, and puzzles, because at his age learning should definitely be all about playing and having fun!

When Rylan was little we did not have workboxes, but I did do two organizational things to enhance learning through play. One was to create “stations”. This would involve me placing a few key items I wanted him to work with in a noticeable and very easily accessible place. For example, a peg puzzle on one coffee table, an ABC matching game on another, and a color sorting game on his child-sized table and chair set.
The second thing that I did was to organize the toys and books on his shelves in the bedroom and living room in a Montessori-type style. The shelves were kept simple, with each activity or item being readily accessible, visible, and organized. Rylan knew where each item belonged on the shelves, so that when finished with an activity he could return it to its spot. I would rotate toys every week or two, with favorites staying out for longer, or all the time if really loved.

A Montessori exercise: making sentences (printable)

I created these word lists so Rylan and I could do a sentence making exercise, also as a basic introduction to words like adjective, noun, and verb. The word lists are below, I added pictures to the noun column just for fun and too add some color to the activity.

I laminated them (just one sided lamination to make them a little easier to work with, and so they would last for re-use) and then cut them into single words. I started by laying all the cut out words on top of their corresponding words on the sheets above, so he could see the word lists and their headings, and then he started to use them to make sentences.

If you would like to try this exercise with your children, you can download my word lists here. I actually thought afterwards that it would have been nice to have a column with punctuation marks too. I think I will add some for the next time we do this activity.

This has been added to: Preschool Corner & 5K too.

Another linky post

Okay, so I am feeling a little under the weather today...I think it's the start of a cold...or maybe it's just my body telling me "enough already, get some more sleep!". Either way, I took the day off (well, aside from caring for two boys, getting one to swimming lessons, grocery shopping, and laundry...ummm do mom's ever get to really take the day off when sick??). So, tonight I am just going to share some great links with you, here goes:

- If you have not already visited Confessions of a Homeschooler based on the hundreds of times I have linked to that blog, please do!! Erica is an awesome resource for educational materials, she creates them and shares them as downloads from her blog. Two recent post in particular have resulted in my printer running out of colored ink! :) These are aimed at the preschooler set, but I am using some of them already for Damian and he thinks they are pretty fun: PreK Numbers, Shapes, Color Review and A-Z review.

- Here is another great ABC learning activity that you can download from 1+1+1=1. I love that it is not just about matching capital and lowercase letters, but also offers some good pincer grip exercise with the use of clothing pins. And while I am mentioning this blog, let me just point you towards her calendar time post!

- Simple Homeschool has a great review on math curriculum, if you are trying to figure out what to choose for your homeschool. We use Math-U-See and are very happy with it, although as I mentioned before, we try to incorporate a lot of living math into our days too.

- Looking for some fun science to do in the kitchen? Check this post out.

Happy clicking, hope you find something that inspires you in this list!

Field trip: Goat farm

Recently the boys and I got to spend a morning at an organic goat farm, that also produces veggies, eggs, and honey on a small scale. The boys had an absolute blast! First off they got to play with the baby goats (there was a lot of laughing when I pointed out that they are called kids too!). These goats were just 7-9 days old.
They got to feed them plenty of leaves and grass.

And even had turns holding the goats.

Then they got to meet the mama goats and Damian managed to slip them some leaves through the fence.

We only got to see the beehives from a distance (for obvious reasons) and swung past the veggie patch on the way to the chickens. The chickens live in the banana patch! They are free range, they "fertilize" the banana patch and also eat all the insects off the trees.

Meeting madame chicken!

We got to tour the milking facilities, and then on to the kitchen where they make the goat cheeses.

The morning ended with getting to sample some of the produce...well, that and a yummy pizza lunch at a local bakery with friends!

Nurturing virtue: Generosity

Here we go on another installment of our virtue learning! We started the week off, as always, defining the virtue and discussing what it means to be generous. During this discussion, I pointed out the generosity is not just about giving "things" or money away (although this is definitely an important part of generosity), but that is also about being generous with your time, with your feelings (in other words being kind and warm to others), with opening our home to others and making them feel welcome here, and so on and so forth.

We followed this discussion by doing our virtue posters for the week. Rylan's depiction of generosity was him sharing a toy with Damian (who interestingly is still at the crawling stage in the picture! ;) ).
We memorized the following quotation: "To give and to be generous are attributes of Mine" taken from "To give and to be generous are attributes of Mine; well is it with him that adorneth himself with My virtues" by Bahá’u’lláh.

We read the following books: Learn About Values: Generosity, Share and Take Turns, and Rylan read Mary Clare Likes to Share to Damian and I. We also read a story illustrating generosity from Vignettes from the Life of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

We sang the Magic Penny song and watched the movie Charlotte's Web, followed by discussing the generosity of the spider Charlotte in the movie.

We made these generosity collages, one to show what "generosity looks like" and the other to show "God's generosity to us".

To practice generosity we cleaned out the toy cupboard, and the boys put aside a few toys that they no longer play with much, but thought a couple of their friends would enjoy and then gave them away to those friends.

There is SO much you can do with your children to teach them generosity, what I have shared is just the tip of the iceberg (as they say). There are so many charities, homeless shelters, nursing homes, etc that you can involve your children in where they can learn about giving both their time and money to help improve the lives of others.

Happy virtue teaching!

Previous weeks: Courtesy and Thankfulness.

This has been added to Preschool Corner & 5k too.

Mystery bag with words: storytelling practice

I don't know if this is a "real" Montessori activity, but it occurred to me to take the mystery bag game and turn it into a reading/storytelling activity. Let me just start by saying that Rylan needs no encouragement on the storytelling front! But since he does love it, I thought it would be a fun way to incorporate reading practice with the challenge of trying to make a story out of a few randomly chosen words.

I wrote a bunch of words on little pieces of paper and put them in a bag. Each time he would pull out 5 words, read them to me, then have to tell me a story using those 5 words. I had a lot of words in there, so I am not going to list them all, but a few examples are: dinosaur, afternoon, tomorrow, green, food, little, crocodile, king, etc. He would wrinkle up his nose every time like he couldn't think of how to relate the words, but then would come out with something pretty clever...and some pretty silly too, so we had plenty of giggles with this one. It turned out to be a very fun activity.

Field trip: "Chef for a day"

We recently spent the morning at an organic pizza restaurant, where the boys got to be "chefs for the day". The owner of the restaurant did a full demonstration (minus his "secret ingredients") on how the sauce and dough are made.
As well as showing the kids how to toss pizza dough.

After the demo the kids got to get their hands into the ingredients. They had lots of fun with the big balls of dough that were past around.

A tour of the kitchen, they even got to look in the very hot pizza oven.

Rylan's turn to flatten his pizza dough.

Then Damian who could just barely reach the machine!

I did not take a picture of the finished product...we were too busy eating! Needless to say the restaurant kept the pizza coming until we were all stuffed! They allowed us to sample all their different toppings...Rylan's favourite was the pesto pizza and Damian was all about the plain cheese pizza!

Once bellies were full to the brim we had some time to play and ride with friends. Great morning!

Aren't they cute sharing a horse?

Montessori inspired workboxes

I love Montessori activities, and frequently include them in the boy's learning time. Here are a few examples of how I have added them into our workbox routine.

Whenever I have filled a workbox with a Montessori inspired activity, I put our learning tray on top of the workboxes, so it is easy for us to take the items out of the drawer and put them straight onto the tray (Montessori activities are generally done on a tray or similar surface to contain the activity and create a defined work space for each child). I follow the normal process of a Montessori activity, first I demonstrate the activity by completing it myself (i.e. modelling) and then allow my boys (whoever is doing it, sometimes both of them) to repeat the task, usually several times, as long as they are enjoying it and still interested.Beginner pouring for Damian - pouring beads. Normally I would use dried beans, but I didn't have any on hand at the time, so he tried these and they worked pretty well.

Followed by rice pouring.

Transferring activity - transfer rice from one bowl to the other using only the spoon. This is excellent for the development of fine motor coordination.

Pegging activity. First peg around the block, then around the paper.

Threading beads.

Transfer activity using tongs.

And lastly, sandpaper letters.
There are so many more you could add to workboxes, this is just a few that we have done recently.

You can find this and more workbox ideas at: What's in the box Wednesday and Wednesday Workbox Day.