Because I Like To Pretend Everyone Cares About This

We are almost ready to begin the 2008-2009 school year around here! After the homeschool organization Keepin' It Real event I began to dream again of a school room. In fact, that very day I jumped up and started moving things around in the front room (the room formerly known as "home office", "classroom", and "playroom") I decided that having everything in one room was worth it if we just had a table. Well, as you know, we found a table for $20 and we are set.

This will be my second year of homeschooling and I feel like I learned so much last year--and still have so much to learn! Last year Sweetheart had just finished up 1st grade at a private school where they used ABeka curriculum. So, we stayed with that last year for 2nd--adding in other stuff as we went to spice things up. This year I am branching out and trying new things. Some may work and others may get abandoned--who knows? But I'm excited about trying all these new things. We have so many choices in front of us as homeschoolers!

So here is my very rough plan for our school year:

Sweetheart (3rd grade)

Bible (various things--mostly, you know, The Bible)

Copywork/dictation

ABeka math

All About Spelling--Level 1 (we didn't do anything for spelling last year)

The Mystery of History

Apologia's Exploring Creation with Astronomy

Reading--I plan for her to read a lot! I have the ABeka 3rd grade readers that we will use, but not all the time.

Little Bit (Pre-K)

I will do themes with her (we are starting with "All About Me" and then "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" for example) so we will read books together on the theme and do activities to go with the theme.

I will also choose math and literacy activities for her each day. Most of them will come from the internet. I especially am in love with this site. This woman has EXCELLENT ideas for pre-k kiddos.

She will make lapbooks for her themes at least some of the time. She will also join us for Bible and join us for History and Astronomy whenever she wants to. And I will read to her a lot.

That's pretty much our plan.

Now, about that school room! Let's go around the room, shall we?

Here's the beginning of our bookshelves and our recycling crate. (Got that idea from Carissa!) Oh, and the trash can. Glamorous.

I'm not sure you can tell, but these shelves are labeled folks. I am so organized I almost can't stand myself!

Ok, that's the end of the shelves. Here we have our world map and some drawers with my stuff on top.

See? Even these are labeled! This is all of our different kinds of paper and materials for lapbooks and notebooking. Uh, they are mostly empty because I don't know really what to put in there. I'm not afraid to admit it.

Moving around the room some more, we have our white board and calendar. See our totally awesome table we got for $20!!!!! I love it and it fits just right.

This is Little Bit's desk from last year. I'm not sure how much she'll use it now that we have the big table to spread out on, but she's not ready to get rid of it. In the drawers next to her desk are crayons, art junk, and coloring books that the girls are always allowed to get into. She does like to sit at her desk and "do art."

Those crates on the floor hold their notebooks, books, school boxes, and backpacks when not in use. (I got that idea from Elle!)

We are planning to use these cubes for our library books. That stadium chair is just sitting there needing to be returned to my sister, but it looks like the girls plan to use it for a reading corner.

Well, that's our school room--scrubbed up and ready to use. Now if I just knew what we were going to DO in there, we'd be ready.