Homeschool Supplies

When I thought about homeschooling I forgot about setting up a space to keep the supplies. I had thought I could just keep them with my craft stuff, but that turned out not to work. When I wanted something for Drew to do I had to go hunt my my craft room, and by the time I found his stuff he was over wanting to do it. So, I cleaned out a section of our kitchen cabinets that we weren't really using and moved his stuff in. This has worked so much better, especially since it is right next to our eat-in table.

We have Crayola Colors 24 Piece Puzzles for different weeks colors. I got them from Wal-Mart in the dollar bin. They have 24 pieces, which works well right now. I wish they had had the yellow one when I was buying mine, but they were all out. I like these puzzles because they have lots of objects of that color for us to talk about, and isn't just a picture.

The boxes are from Ikea and fit in the cabinet fairly well, but they have to be turned long way. If we keep the boxes in the kitchen I will probably go back and get another color so the orange doesn't stand out as much. But for now they are working great at corralling the little supplies.

In this box we have stickers, foam letters, foam sheets, glue sticks, bath crayons, and laminated Bible verse cards. A bit of a hodgepodge, but since most of the things are stickers it works.

The other box has our Crayola Washable Watercolors , Crayola Washable Crayons , Crayola Washable Markers , poster paints, stapler, and Crayola Washable Kid's Paint . These are the supplies I was always having to hunt for and now that they are in the same box I can make a quick grab for the one I think will be the least mess that day. Huge word of advice, buy the WASHABLE version of Crayola supplies. They are slightly more expensive, but the clean up is so much easier and will keep you from pulling your hair out. You will notice a box of non Crayola markers in the box, I used them once and they were hard to clean up and I haven't used them since. The poster paint is non Crayola washable, but sometimes I just need a good poster paint.

We have our books of the week in here, too. That way I always know where they are and I can pull them out. I was keeping them on the counter and one had an accident with Drew. Thankfully, the library has a policy that as long as the page wasn't torn out it isn't "damaged". But, we will be keeping library books up in the cabinet for a while. We also have our collection of play-doh on this shelf. I like the box we got at Wal-Mart. There are 16 little sticks in the box and covers all the basic colors.

Our Fisher-Price Brilliant Basics Baby's First Blocks is on the shelf, too. I love this sorter! A friend gave it to Drew for his first birthday, and it is great. I keep it up on the shelf so that when I need it all the pieces are together. We are missing one of the blue circles, but that is ok, I will find it one day.

For Drew's first Christmas I made him a set of cloth letters. Since the curriculum we are using does a group of letters at a time, I just have these pulled out. The others are mixed into his toys.

I also have a binder to keep all the lesson plans. I was trying to keep them loose and that was failing horribly. I have the summary for the year printed out and put in the front pocket with the laminated scripture verse of the week. Then I have the weekly plans with sheet protector dividers to hold that week's coloring sheets and complicated crafts. I also have a tab to keep track of the full list of lesson plans in the back that tells me more than the basic spreadsheet in the front does.

Example of everything for one craft in a sheet protector.

So far this system is working well for us. There are supplies that are still in my craft room like my card stock (not the cheapest option, but I already have it and so I am using that instead of construction paper), my printer, my silhouette, and lamination machine. Most of these things are too big for the cabinet, and where they are is convenient for when I am working at my desk getting things ready for the week.

Feuerwehrmann Sam

Photo Credit

Drew is obsessed with Fireman Sam! Fireman Sam is a firefighter who lives in a small Welsh village of Pontypandy. He helps save the villagers when they get themselves into sticky situations. It is a really good show. We have just watched all the episodes Netflix has repeatedly, to the point that I was getting very tired of them. Well, the other night AJ had the brilliant idea to turn on Feuerwehrmann Sam. Fireman Sam in German on YouTube.

This really was brilliant! German is going to be our foreign language of choice (namely because my brain can process it), and I have been looking for a way to introduce Drew to it. Our library doesn't have any German for toddlers videos or such, but they have a lot of other languages, so I was sad. AJ fixed this! It has actually been really fun watching Sam in another language, even the episodes I have seen many many times.

Yes, we do have a cow cutout in our living room.

I am amazed at how Drew will really watch it in German. I am hoping he is picking up on the language. I am surprised how much I can understand when I am not watching the screen, as opposed to when we accidentally get an episode in Russian. I am so thankful that technology allows us to have these options and be exposed to other languages.

Red Fish Blue Fish

The Book of the Week is One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish

Photo Credit

We tried reading the whole book this week, but Drew's attention span just wasn't there (we are dealing with some teething problems aka 2 year molars). We did talk about the title fish though and read those pages several times. Sometimes, you take what you can get and just move on.

We did a few fish crafts this week with red and blue. These were a little hit or miss, again because the attention span just wasn't there. We did fish cut outs, glued tissue paper scales on, stapled them together, and stuffed them to make 3D fish. 

Drew was really into the glue stick part, but didn't care for the sticking the scales on. We played 52 pick up with all the tissue paper several times. Luckily, Drew likes to sing the Clean-Up Song and helped pick them up. When there were finally more than a few scales stuck down I stapled them together. Drew LOVED the stapler. He even helped with the pushing it down part on the second fish.

I am not sure this is what they were supposed to look like, but hey Drew was happy with them. Sometimes, I just have to let go of my perfectionism in his projects. They are his projects and as long as he is learning and having fun things don't have to come out perfect or even like what they look like on the website. I am really having to let go of having to "go back and fix it." Especially when he is really happy about how something comes out.

We did add a couple of additions to our family recently, that just happen to fit into this theme. AJ bought two beta fish for Drew. Drew LOVES them! Red and Blue are a topic of many of Drew's conversations in the morning. It is fun asking him if he has said "Hi!" to them yet?

Blue!

Red!

I think Drew likes Blue much more than Red. He will call both of them Blue, even though he can say red. Even as I am typing this he can see Red on the screen and is saying "Blue! Fiss" It is very cute. I also think it is cute the way he says "fiss" 

 

We also did a hand print project for One Fish Two Fish. We were supposed to be making fish out of the hand prints, and it mostly worked. Though Drew was much more interested in just putting down random hand prints and smearing the paint. I knew this project was going to be an "end up in the tub" one.

Blue hand!

Red handed!

He really got into this one. He loves playing with paint and will ask to "pint" frequently. Normally, he just gets the watercolors because they are easier to clean up, but today we used the poster paints. It was fun when we just started smearing paint. He would ask for a color and point to the jar, and then I would paint his hand that color and he would press it down. I am amazed at how well he knows the colors, even if he won't say the word for them.

Again, I am having to let go of my "perfection". This isn't the way I thought the fish should look, but that is where Drew thought the fish should go. So, we have some swimming to the left, some swimming to the top, and a fish and a half swimming down. I guess it does look more like a real fish tank this way.

Yellow!

The color of the week is Yellow! 

To celebrate yellow Drew wore yellow shirts, thankfully we had several. We also played with yellow play-doh. This was Drew's first time playing with play-doh. He kept calling it cheese. It was funny. I am happy that he didn't try to eat it like cheese, and I am glad to know he put together that cheese is yellow, too.

I printed out the circle template from ABCJesusLovesMe and laminated it. It made it easy to do different activities with the play-doh. We rolled it into snakes and made circles to lay on the big circle, and then we flattened the play-doh to try to fill the circle.

I have tried to point out yellow items to Drew, and he even said yellow this week. That was a fun first. We have been using his yellow bowls and cups this week too as reinforcement. The best was I had his breakfast in my hand this morning in a yellow bowl and he knew it was his.

Table Setting Placemats

When Drew turned two we decided it was time to start really working on homeschooling/ life skills. He was eager to help with things like sweeping and wiping down things. So, the timing seemed right to start having him help set the table and learn where things go. I had seen this great idea for placemats identifying where everything went years ago and just never gotten around to making them. Well, I finally took the time to make some.

I used some of the left over fabric from Drew's birthday party to make them. They are a bit wild, but easy to identify what everything is; green plate, blue cup, patterned napkin, and orange utensils. They also match the bunting that I left up for the summer. I am not sure if I am going to make some more neutral ones yet or not, but that is an option.

I still need to finish the other couple, but I have gotten really distracted with other projects and traveling. I made five templates. I know that sounds like a weird number, but we frequently have Joy and Jason over for dinner or grandparents, and five gives us enough that we have ones for when they are here.

Drew has done really well with the placemats. He puts everything in the right place and can identify what they are. I decided I like having everything a different color. I can tell him that the bowl goes on the green circle and the cup goes on the blue circle and that is where he puts them. It was a fairly easy project, especially since I just traced our actual items onto the fabric and cut them out. I like the fact it is our stuff because everything fits nicely and covers the template when the table is fully set.

Camping-theme day

Today was a bonus lesson - we talked about camping! We have not been able to camp at all this summer, which makes me sad, so I decided to do some fun stuff about camping. Savannah really enjoyed it and I blogged about it on my camping blog.

I printed some of the printables from 2 Teaching Mommies and Homeschool Creations. I got the craft from Homeschool Creations as well. We practiced cutting, drawing lines, number order, and matching.



Craft supplies for our campfire craft. We had fun hunting for sticks and stones outside, and I used a glue gun to glue everything to the CD.



Savannah cut out the flames from the construction paper.



Our finished campfire. You're supposed to use tissue paper but we didn't have any. I think the construction paper turned out okay, though tissue paper would have looked better.



Drawing lines. I don't think she was a big fan of following the dotted line exactly. ;-)



Matching.



Help the campers find their tent.



Putting the strips in number order makes a picture of a campsite!

The books start coming in!

I spent a long time trying to figure out what curriculum to use this year for Savannah's Pre-K year. There are a bunch of great free ones online, but I really wanted something easy to use (planning wise) and I felt that some of them were lacking in that area. Then I went to a homeschooling conference and spent a long time looking at everything there. I finally decided that Sonlight was the curriculum I wanted to use for this next year. I'm really excited!!

Last week the first books started rolling in. I am so excited!! Since apparently my brother and I were cut from the same cloth, I made a detailed spreadsheet of all the books, what weeks I needed them for, and the prices I found them for online (at Sonlight, new on Amazon, and used elsewhere). I have about half of the books I've ordered so far, and I should be getting most of the rest later this week.

I've also been busy getting our homeschool room set up - we're going to start school the last week of August. We were doing great until I injured my hand and had to stop. I'm really frustrated because I desperately want to finish, but I can't. Once I am feeling better and am able to finish, I'll be sure to get some pictures up. :-)