Creekwood Chronicles

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This blog is a place to chronicle our family's adventures in homeschooling, special needs, adoption, child training, and life in general.

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Aug. 31, 2009

On the Eve of a New School Year...

Posted in Creekwood Academy

These past few weeks have been full. We've been enjoying the summer weather while it lasts and I've been busy as a bee getting our things ready for the new school year. Below is an overview of what I've been working on lately:

I've been fine-tuning and implementing the much anticipated family "schedule". I got the "Managers of Their Homes" (MOTH) book for my birthday in July and after reading and digesting the detailed and very helpful information a couple of times, I started putting together our schedule. Let me just say that I LOVE this system - it is so helpful to me! I've tried to use several other styles of routines/schedules in the past and they've all flopped. We've been taking the baby steps and slowly adding more parts of our MOTH schedule as we get used to it and it's working. I'm getting a lot more accomplished and feeling much more organized - it's great! We're not done yet (there are some blank spots yet to plan) and we haven't got to where we're doing the whole thing, but we're headed in the right direction.

I've been sorting through our books and supplies and organizing our shelves again. Now things are easier to find as we need them.

I bought a 6-pack of magazine storage boxes to help organize our school books/materials (see blue boxes on bottom row above). They have been very helpful, and I wanted to be able to organize some more things that way, but couldn't bring myself to spend the $$ for them at the store. Thankfully I saw an idea for using empty cereal boxes and decided to make some storage boxes.

I started with several of these:

And after several days of cutting, gluing, papering, and drying, I had several of these:

Normally I wouldn't choose a modern circle pattern paper (I'm very much an "old-fashioned" girl), but the main paper I had on hand to cover the boxes was brown kraft paper, and the blue & green circles matched my decor, while the beige/brown circles matched the kraft paper - so it works. And in case anyone is wondering, I used larger size cereal/cracker boxes such as one gets from the big warehouse stores. These were sufficiently deep to hold 8x11 or slightly larger papers & materials (like a plethora of coloring books!). It also took longer than I anticipated because I had to keep clearing off the kitchen table so we could eat there at mealtime (imagine that!), but they're finally done - until I decide I need some more!

I've also been inspired by the workbox idea that so many are talking about. I have neither the book or the floor space to implement the full system, but one homeschool mom showed how she adapted it to use with a portable file box, and I thought that would just suit us to a tee. For the moment, the children's boxes are holding their school materials - pink for her and blue for him (what can I say, I'm a traditionalist!).

My box (in the center) has the only empty hanging folders I could find - thankfully, there are 5, one for each day of the school week. I have labled them Monday through Friday and color coded them to match the folders inside. In each day there are 3 clear folders (I got the package of 15 folders on clearance at the office supply store for $4). Since the folders have three different tab positions in 5 different colors, I matched the color with the day of the week and labled each of the three tab positions for each of us. Mine are the first tab on the far left, DD is the middle tab, and DS is the far right tab. That way I can see at a glance whose folder is out for any given day. And because they are heavy-duty plastic they should hold up to repeated handling pretty well.

So far I plan on using this to assemble the basic materials/papers needed for each day of the week to go with our curriculum, rather than dividing it up each day. This is our first "official" year, so I want to take it easy and not try to do too much all at once. In our state, record keeping is required when a child enters first grade (or is age 8, whichever comes first). Since we're doing K & PreK levels this year, I plan on keeping my records as if I had to for state requirements (like I will have to next year), as a practice run for record keeping. My hope is that by the time next year rolls around, I will have a pretty good handle on maintaining regular records and it won't seem so daunting when I need to have them for state requirements.

I've also been exercising my creative muscles and creating some visual charts/displays to use in our daily school routine. I have a bulletin board mounted on the wall above my computer. I cleared it off and am prettying it up to use for school stuff...

The border above the bulletin board is a Susan Winget border I found at Michaels in their new teacher stuff section. I love Susan Winget's artwork! I cut the scalloped ABC border from black cardstock and used a white paint pen to write the letters. The type of letter I used is the D'Nelian style font. I really like the contrast and how it looks like a chalkboard around the edges. I also have the numerals from 0-9 along the bottom of the frame.

Like many others in homeschool blogland, I found some handy pocket charts in Target's dollar section. I used one to make a chart of our daily routines:

I got tired of the endless, "Is it time for lunch?" and "When are we doing ------?" questions. There are only 8 rows, but it is enough to list our main morning-afternoon activities. It will also help my DD practice reading the clock. Each activity has the time beside it (not shown) and she can just check the clock to see if the time matches. I added pictures beside each event to help recognize the different activities since I have pre-readers on my hands.

The other chart I will be using as a learning chart to help us review what we are learning each week:

I am using the Sonbeams curriculum I was blessed to receive in March as our "spine". I will be adding things & adapting it to make it more challenging for DD and simplifying it for DS. The 26 week curriculum follows a letter of the alphabet each week, the numerals from 0-25, a color a week for the first 11 weeks, a shape a week for the next 10 weeks, and finishes up with various gross motor & fine motor skills. I'll share in another post some of the modifications I am making to fit our family, but that's the program in a nutshell.

Finally, I have put together a Calendar Board to use at the begining of our school day. I made this on a tri-fold board for several reasons: 1) we don't have the wall space to hang it (and it won't stay put if I hang it on the glass door in the kitchen - condensation is the enemy of adhesive); 2) DH prefers not to have dozens of school things scattered everywhere, so I wanted something I could put away each day; 3) and having something we take out each morning helps make the start of our "school time" feel a little more official.

I found the calendar numbers/months at the dollar store. I am using black velcro to attach the calendar pieces because they are easier for DS to see. It may not be the prettiest, but high contrast materials are a must with low-vision. I realize it is not yet September 1st - I added them for the photo shoot.

Here is a close up of the right hand side:

Besides doing the calendar, we will recite the salutes to the American flag, Christian flag and the Bible (a tradition I'm bringing in from my own homeschool days). I have the US flag picture mounted on the left hand side of the board and the Christian flag & Bible pictures here on the right. If you look closely you will notice that the bottom of the pictures is not attached. I mounted them so they can flip up and we can read the words of the salute underneath (in case I forget sometime). I've also printed out and mounted on cardstock several verses that I want to be a theme or motto for our learning.

On the left hand side (below the US flag) I have another verse and pockets to put the numbers in Chinese & French we'll be learning with our dates. Why Chinese & French? Well, DS was born in China and I have French ancestry. We'll also be learning the colors in Chinese & French, but more on that another time. To make the clear pockets for the number cards I used one of my clear sheet protector pages, cut to size, and taped to the cardstock with clear packing tape. I wanted a clear pocket that would survive repeated handling and this seemed to fit the bill. We'll see how it holds up to daily use - I may do this part myself just so I know it won't be mauled by eager little fingers.

Well, those are all the things I have pictures for. I've also been typing up lists, school calendar activities, title pages for the children's learning notebooks, and ironing out the lesson plan details. It's been fun (and I'm not quite done yet), but I'm glad I have this "practice" year before the formal "you must keep records" stuff really begins, because even this simplified planning has been a lot of work. Much of that is due to planning for a regular K level child and a special needs PreK child schooling together, and I hope that gets easier with time and experience.

Sep. 3, 2009 - Untitled Comment

Posted by coffeeandconversation

I love how organized yet attractive your homeschool stuff is. Your calender board is amazing. I have a trifold that I bought a while back to do something like that too but haven't decided just what I wanted. I am really loving what you did though.

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