Not-Back-to-School . . . Learning Spaces . . .

I'm continuing my own Not-Back-to-School Blog series with Learning Spaces week . . . We aren't "sit at desks (or the dining room table) and do school kind of homeschoolers. We have learning spaces throughout our house, so I thought I'd share, in no particular order, a few of the places we learn, or store learning stuff, in our house . . . 

Right now Little Bit's reading program requires a white board, so we've been using the easel, set up in the sun room. The reading program came with cardboard letter tiles, but Little Bit decided letter magnets are more fun, so we use them on the white board as well as writing the words. 

She wanted a way to keep her magnets organized, but when she had them all organized ON the easel, it didn't leave any room to actually use the white board, so we re-purposed an old cookie sheet to be her magnet tray. I didn't realize until I started editing pictures, that her hair had gotten in the picture of the magnet tray, and I'm too lazy to go take a new one. So there you have, proof that we really do use these learning spaces LOL.

I have maps hanging in the sunroom, so we can easily reference them if we want to.

In the living room, I have a basket for library books on the hearth. The extra supplies for Little Bit's reading program live under that basket, so I don't lose them. The little white board has the current items Lexie and Ashlyn are supposed to be adding to their book of centuries. And my temperature blanket knitting project sits next to it. One of our cats thinks the rocks under the gas log are her litter box, so for now I keep "stuff" blocking the whole fireplace to keep her out of it. 

My tote usually sits down beside my recliner, but you can't SEE it there, so I set it on the coffee table for the picture. It holds basic office supplies, my planner, scrap paper, new paper, the stuff I'm currently using for Little Bit's school, paper work I'm currently using, and a folder of "to be filed" paperwork waiting for me to take it down to the file cabinet. The basic idea is that, with only a few minutes "warning" I can add anything specific I need that day, and grab my tote and be ready to do school anywhere.

Ashlyn does most of her school in her room. She has her desk all set up for art, and has our old laptop up there so she can do Teaching Textbooks and ArtAchieve. She also uses the laptop to watch the Grammar of Poetry DVDs so she can watch them without all the distractions and interruptions she'd have in the living room. 

Little Bit is much more likely to want to "do school" when she sees it sitting out ready for her. And I'm more likely to find time to do it with her if everything is all together ready to go. So we set up some "work boxes" of sorts for her in the front entry. Which isn't an ideal spot, but it's where the little white shelving unit happened to be sitting, so I just went with it.

She has a plastic bin for each day of the week. The "apple basket" to the left is where she puts things she's done with. Then I can either put them back in the correct bin for next week, file them, or put books we're done with back on the shelf. The purple canvas bin on the bottom shelf is where I stash things I'm going to want to put in her bins soon, but not this week and the white canvas bin has her school supplies in it. The basket to the right has some games that I switch out randomly from the shelves in the sunroom, to try to catch her attention and get her choosing different games instead of playing the same ones over and over. On the shelves next to the Thursday & Friday bins are things like a container of salt/glitter that she can trace letters in, and some extra art supplies I think are what's in the blue basket next to the Friday bin.

Ashlyn's piano is in the living room. And the picture also shows the corner of the TV which does get quite a bit of use in our homeschooling. In addition to Little Bit watching shows like Wild Kratts and Magic Schoolbus, we watch some YouTube shows for history (LOVE Crash Course History), and use the DVD player to listen to audiobooks. I also cast mp3 files up onto the TV using Chromecast so we can use the volume on the TV instead of being limited to the volume on my laptop. Under the TV are DVDS, CDs, and some games.

There are also a couple bookcases in the living room, and some books on the living room windowsills, but I didn't take pictures of those.

The sunroom has more shelves with some of Little Bit's toys, more games, and educational things like the Globe and some manipulatives.

The big green chair in the sunroom is a favorite place to read and Lexie can generally be found there, or on the sofa in the living room when she's doing her school. She has a desk in her room too, but rarely wants to be alone. She does go to her room to practice violin, and sometimes has the sewing machine set up on her desk, but otherwise, it's more of a "storage surface". She wants people around even if she's reading and telling us not to talk to her LOL.

One thing I was very excited about when we got this house was the room in the basement to have all my books together and organized. This is only some of them, it turns a corner and goes along another wall, forming a guest bedroom space in behind all the shelves, but you get the idea! Lots and lots of books, and I can actually find what I'm looking for. We don't generally "do school" in the basement, but it's where the books live when we're not using them :)

The other half of the basement is for active play. We have the trampoline down there as well as things like bilibos, bean bags (the kind you sit in and the kind you toss), etc. It's where I can send Little Bit if the weather is bad and she's getting too hyper.  The gray couch thing behind her folds out to be a queen size foam mattress, so it can be additional sleeping space when needed and also sometimes gets folded out to be used as a tumbling mat. When it's folded into a couch it gets used for reading when someone goes down to choose a new book and can't wait till they're back upstairs to start reading it :)

Tucked into the corner by the electrical panel and such in the basement are my file cabinets. They're messy, but more organized than I've been able to be in our other houses.  This is where I have various kinds of art paper, the kids old school papers and Junior ranger books and such, as well as household files. On top are some extra school supplies, and stacked next to the cabinet are more stuff that I found while unpacking and need to get filed but haven't taken the time yet.

In our last house we didn't have a place for a kitchen table. We had a drop leaf table that could be set up when we needed a table, but there wasn't really room to keep it up all the time. I didn't think that would be a big problem, since we don't tend to eat our meals at the table anyway, but what I didn't think about was how much the kids like doing art, and how necessary a table is for that. It's nice to have our nice big table in this house, with a water proof table cloth on it, so messes don't matter, so Little Bit can paint pretty much whenever she wants. I have one small cupboard in the kitchen designated for painting stuff so it's convenient to get out when she wants it.

And finally, the cedar chest/coffee table in the sunroom, for a little bit of everything. We have it on a rug so it slides easily so that it can pull up to the sofa when needed, like right now, when Lexie's using it to build something or other. Or it can push out into the middle of the room, or all the way over against a wall if we want the open space.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some places, and today it's beastly hot out so I didn't include the outside spaces that are nice when the weather is good . . . like the garden that Ashlyn maintains and the porch swing on the front porch and the tree where Little Bit tucked a "bug hotel" to be able to watch for different kinds of bugs. But you get the idea . . . :)

Not Back to School . . . Curriculum!

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For the last several years I've participated in a "Not Back to School" blog hop in August. But I'm not finding any indication that anyone is doing one this year. I like having the "assignment" to write on the topics in this blog hop, so I'm gong to pretend it's still happening, and write about the topics once a week in August anyway . . .

And so, without further ado . . . Not-Back-to-School Week 1:  Curriculum!

I feel like finally, after 9 (ish ?!?) years of homeschooling . . . we have hit our groove . . . we know what works for us, and we're happy to just kind of keep moving forward. So here's what we're doing right now:

Together:

Bible: Bible Road Trip Year 1 this is our second time through Bible Road Trip, and we're not following it exactly. In theory, Lexie and Ashlyn are doing the Dialectic level, but in some cases, we're doing all chapters instead of just those suggested in the curriculum, and since they're not a fan of "research papers", we're skipping those. We enjoy listening to Rabbi Lutton's sermons, so for the books where we can find recordings of her sermons, we listen to all chapters. Also, for Genesis and Exodus we read through the entire books, along with looking at select sections of the commentary in the Chumash and in the NASB study Bible.

History: We are in our 4th year of The Story of the World. Now that the girls are older, we are doing less read alouds and more independent reading. Each month I compile a list of independent reading options for the next 4 chapters in Story of the World. They choose which books they want to read and I get them from the library or, if the library doesn't have them, we decide if we should buy it, or if there's a different book they can choose instead. We listen to the Story of the World together in the car, one chapter per week. We also listen to Diana Waring's CDs when they correlate with SotW. I also choose picture books and short chapter books to read to Little Bit each week. At bedtime, we are trying to choose books that all 3 girls enjoy for our longer read aloud then.

Health/PE: We are trying to be more intentional about making sure to do something active and outdoors regularly. The girls aren't thrilled about it, but we're working on it. . . when we've had dogs here it makes it easy. They're happy to play ball with the dog. Ashlyn is generally happy to work in her garden this time of year. Lexie is more at lose ends . . . Lina is more than happy to have someone to play with her, if her sisters would just play :) Sometimes we'll turn the sprinkler on or get the wading pool out for her and then she's happy to play on her own while we garden, etc. outside.

Lexie (8th Grade):
Math: Life of Fred Algebra I

Science: She wants to study genetics. We found MIT's course online, but she found it a bit advanced (being college level, and intended to be taught by a teacher, not self-taught by a 13 year old . . .) I just realized I have the .pdf of My Name is Gene and it's workbook so this week she is checking that out to see if it's a better fit.

Language Arts: Mostly focusing on literature this year. Otherwise known as reading plenty of good books :)

Music: Violin lessons

Art Appreciation: We got a series of books on various artists last year that she continues to work through.

Fiber Arts: Sewing

Ashlyn (8th Grade):
Math: Teaching Textbooks

Science: For this summer, gardening, including maintaining records of what has and hasn't worked, things to try differently next year, etc. Once we're past gardening season she will re-evaluate if she wants to continue to focus on botany, or switch to a different science for the winter.

Language Arts: In addition to the on-going literature focus, she's also doing Grammar of Poetry.

Music: Piano lessons

Art: Art Achieve Level IV

Little Bit (1st Grade):
Reading: Delightful Reading Level 3 from Simply Charlotte Mason she is LOVING this program!!! When I first looked at it, I printed out the sample lesson to do with her to see if it was worth buying. Not only did she love it, but she begged to do the next lesson the next day. I ended up e-mailing the company (after I'd ordered the curriculum and was just waiting for it to arrive) and they send me a .pdf of the teacher manual to use while we waited because she was impatient! :)

Jesus Storybook Bible: Technically we all do Bible together using Bible Road Trip, as mentioned above. But sometimes the discussions are over her head and she tends to wander off to do her own thing. So in addition, we have been reading one story in the Jesus Storybook Bible each week, and then doing at least one hands-on activity or craft to go with it. I recently "created" a Sabbath School Curriculum to use with the Jesus Storybook Bible, so this also functions as my "guinea pig" to see what activities do and don't work well before I add them into the curriculum. I honestly can't say enough good about this book! It is by far my most favoritest Bible story book EVER!!!!

Gnomes and Gnumbers: This is so fun! I'm a strong believer in delaying formal math until age 9 or 10, but these fun stories introduce some basic math concepts in a low key way AND my art-lover gets to draw pictures every week, so she's happy as a clam :) We do roughly one lesson per week.

Science/Nature: Burgess Bird Book - my original plan was to read one story per week, have a coloring page of one of the birds highlighted in that week's story, and look that bird up in a field guide so she could color it accurately. But she prefers to listen to the stories, often 4 or 5 in a row, on librivox, while she's working on other school work (like copying words for reading, or drawing pictures for Gnomes and Gnumbers. So we go with it. . . She's almost through the whole book. When she finishes it, we'll move on to the Burgess Animal Book.

Various art and craft projects each week.

Wrapping up the Last Half of July

Hey look, I'm getting caught up!!! And apparently I forgot my camera existed these last few weeks LOL (that, and the kittens had gone to their new home, so I don't have a gazillion kitten pictures to bore you with).

The weekend of the 24th, Lexie and Ashlyn went to the beach with friends. Little Bit had a taste of being an only child, and wasn't overly impressed. Tracy the cat seemed to miss Lexie and Ashlyn too. She slept on top of me most nights. I was surprised at how much less dishes, and laundry there was with only one kid.

Despite Little Bit's declaration that she didn't like being an only child, she wasn't exactly lonely. Her friend, K came over to play for a few hours on Friday. On Sunday, my parents came up and met us at Chipotle. I told Little Bit I was taking her someplace for supper but wouldn't tell her where. We got there and my parents got out of their car, her reaction was priceless :) And on Monday, we dropped something off at K's house, and her mom and I got to talking, so Little Bit and K got to play for another hour or so.

Lexie and Ashlyn got home from the beach on Monday, and, at the same time, Nina (standard poodle) came to visit for a week. Tracy was much more laid back (for her) about having a dog in the house now that her kittens are gone, but Nina simply could not comprehend that this small furry thing didn't want to be her friend. She did become slightly more wary after Tracy swiped her nose a couple times, but her memory was short, so after a day or so of keeping her distance (Tracy didn't hunt her down, like she had Maggie, but she did stand her ground), Nina would try to make friends again, silly dog. Still as long as we kept an eye on them, Tracy didn't have to spend as much time locked in the bedroom as she did when Maggie was here. I had ASSUMED that the easy solution would be to just let Tracy outside. She spent most of the time the kittens were here, trying to sneak out, but we wouldn't let her for fear she wouldn't come back to her kittens. But silly cat, now that I WANTED her outside, had no interest in being outside. When we DID put her out, she'd sit right outside the sliding door, and Nina would stand right INSIDE the sliding door barking and jumping and trying to figure out how to play with her through the glass (while Tracy did her best to swat Nina through the glass). And Tracy'd come back in as soon as we let her.

And that pretty much sums up the rest of our month. We spent a day helping friends get ready to move. . . Stopped by a friend's house to meet the dog she was dog-sitting (because Ashlyn can never meet too many dogs). . . Enjoyed park days with play days with friends. . .

Wrapping Up the First Half of July . . .

More catch-up . . . when the weather cooperates, we've been meeting homeschool friends at a park on Fridays. The teenagers tend to do things like play board games. I think Lexie and Ashlyn's favorite has been Harry Potter Trivia. While the rest of the kids play on the playgrounds. Little Bit loves playgrounds, but complains that her sisters won't play with her, so having other kids to play with is PERFECT!!!

I kind of went overboard on kitten pictures the first part of July. They were such a fun age, and we had to take lots of pictures before they left. So now you'll just have to humor me while I share some of those pictures :)

We got to take care of Maggie the dog for a week. On the day that her owners brought her to us, we had the wading pool set up, so all the kids, and Maggie, had fun in the pool. Though the younger kids didn't like having Maggie in the pool, so most of her pool time came after the rest of the kids went home.

But she enjoyed plenty of pool time with Little Bit while she was staying with us. I'm pretty sure she figured nothing could be better than getting to play frisbee and jump into the pool to cool off every time she brought the frisbee back.

Needless to say, Ashlyn was happy to have "her Maggie" back with us. And Maggie was happy to make herself at home on Ashlyn's bed again :)

At church, we've started having the 4-6 yr old class combine with the 7-10 yr old class for song service a couple times a month. I love all the energy when all the kids are enthusiastically "Makin' Melodies" :)

  

Tracy (the mama cat) has always been a "people cat", in fact, that's what made her not a very good mama cat, she'd rather be with people than with her kittens when they were little. Once they were big enough to play with her, she seemed to like them better. And when they left, she obviously missed them AND apparently thought we must miss them too, so she decided she should comfort us, and/or herself, by spending as much time as possible in our laps. I don't mind that so much, but waking me up in the middle of the night to rub against my face doesn't go over so well LOL.

One day when we were all busy with other things, Little Bit kept wanting us to play Uno with her. Finally she gave up on us, and decided to play Uno with her stuffed monkey :) 

Playing Catch-up . . . the Last 10 Days of June

Wow! I'm even farther behind than usual! It's summer. We're having fun. I'm obviously not finding time to blog . . . but here are at least some highlights from the last part of June.

One thing that our old house didn't have, until a few months before we moved, was an outdoor water faucet. So we couldn't do much with wading pools and such. And the house before that was on such a steep hill that it was challenging as well. When we moved to this house, tucked away in the attic of our old house, I found a wading pool that we'd gotten at some point. So we set it up, and Little Bit got Lexie to spray her with the hose next to the pool LOL.

At co-op, while Little Bit played with her friends, and Lexie played with the baby. Ashlyn spent a day cuddling with one of her favorite dogs (the big brown one) who had been sick for a couple months, and passed away the next week.

We spent an evening at a watershed awareness fair. The highlight was free ice cream!  But Little Bit also had fun helping to paint a rain barrel, and throwing water balloons :) It was a fun evening all around.

 We decided the wading pool from the attic wasn't big enough around, AND blowing it up was more trouble than it was worth, so got a bigger wading pool that doesn't have to be inflated and deflated. Little Bit's been having great fun with it this summer :)

In June we still had the kittens with us (a couple weeks ago, they went to their new home). I'll try not to bore you with TOO many pictures of them but they were soo sweet, and cute, and continued to love to be cuddled. When they got tired and wanted to sleep they'd climb the sofa, or my skirt and curl up in our laps and fall asleep.

They also got to be SO playful!They'd chase each other and tumble over and over. Tracy (the mama cat) seemed to enjoy it as much as the kittens. The kittens thought the other cats should play too, but they mostly just looked at the kittens as if they were crazy, and then walked away.

For some reason, Zwei was fascinated with attacking shoes, especially Crocs. It was so funny watching him attack it and tumble over and over with it.

Little Bit is getting more into school, and one fun thing we've been doing is Gnumber Gnomes stories. In addition to enjoying the stories, and drawing pictures of them, and the math concepts they introduce, she enjoys playing with our math gnomes and their "jewels" and telling her own stories or re-telling the Gnumber Gnome stories.

Little Bit is also enjoying lots of  "art", including making her own "4th of July" shirt. I love how it turned out :)

In addition to liking to curl up in our laps, or together in their box, the kittens also continued to think they were parrots and perch on our shoulders.

One of the Amish markets that I've always loved, but didn't get to very often when we lived farther away, is only about 20 min. from here, so we're able to go more often. Near the end of June they have an "anniversary" celebration that includes samples, sales, and a free petting zoo. Conveniently, at least this year, it also coincided with them getting cases of blueberries in, so we could go enjoy the petting zoo and pick up our year's supply of blueberries at the same time! I still had some in the freezer from last year, so only got one case this year. We ate a bunch of them fresh, Lexie made homemade blueberry jam with some of them, and we froze the rest.

At the petting zoo, Little Bit was thrilled to see ring tailed lemurs (we couldn't pet those. But the rest of us were most excited about meeting a Zebu. We might have spent the rest of the day singing the Veggie Tales Zebu song LOL.

The library's summer reading program, was just the incentive Little Bit needed to pull out her easy reader books and get back to trying to read them.

I love this picture of her and Lexie reading together in bed at bedtime.

And that is June . . . I'll try to get caught up on July before August is over :)

Wrapping Up Most of June . . .

Last October we were studying the American Revolution in history and I wanted to include the nearby field trips at that time, but we were a bit distracted with buying a house! So, I put it off. And then it was winter . . . and then we were busy getting our old house ready to sell . . . and then I blinked, and it's JUNE!! And we FINALLY made it to Independence National Park. Which is the official name for all the historic, founding of our country, stuff in downtown Philadelphia. Lexie and Ashlyn already have their Junior Ranger for Independence, but Little Bit earned hers. 

We had hoped to be close enough to the end of the school year to avoid school groups, and early enough to avoid the summer vacation crowds, but alas, the school groups were still there! Talking to a ranger, the elusive "in between" we were hoping for doesn't exist because of different parts of the country getting out of school at different times. But we did manage to find parts of the park that are, apparently, less interesting to school groups, that weren't super crowded, and enjoyed our day anyway.  

After most of the school groups had left for the day we were able to get to the Liberty Bell without battling crowds. The big girls were vetoing all photo ops that day, so Little Bit is the star. 

Needless to say, much of our time this month has revolved around kittens. They're soo cute, and active and fun! They have a strange obsession with shoulders (the kittens we used to have when I was growing up seemed to like shoulders too, so apparently it's a kitten thing . . . ) 

Another field trip that's been on my "to do list" for awhile is Landis Valley Museum. We went a couple years ago and enjoyed it, so now that we're back to the 1800s in history, I wanted to go again. Different buildings are open different days, so I watched the calendar and chose a day that sounded fun. It was, though it started raining before we finished, and enough of it is outside, and it's close enough to home, that we decided to just go back on a non-rainy day to finish up.  Before the rain started we discovered an unadvertised open building that had a room where kids could play house with old fashioned stuff. Little Bit had a blast! And Lexie occupied herself trying to figure out how a spring-loaded metal toy was supposed to work (I don't think she ever figured it out for sure). When I finally said we needed to move on, Little Bit begged to come back another day.

The kittens keep growing . . . Meanwhile, campmeeting time came around. It was only a weekend this year, so we didn't take the motorhome up and camp up there, just drove back and forth for Friday evening, and Sabbath. Little Bit enjoyed her first year in Primary, though I think all the meetings on Sabbath were a bit much for her. She was showing definite signs of being overstimulated by the end of the day.  Lexie and Ashlyn were in Earliteen (7th & 7th grade) this year, but for some reason, this year, Earliteen was combined with Youth (high school). They enjoyed the speaker, but I did feel the afternoon activity wasn't age appropriate, so we spent the afternoon meeting time visiting with friends instead.

Even Rodney can't resist cuddly little sleeping kittens . . . Sunday was Shavuot. Shavuot celebrates the harvest, as well as God giving Moses and the Israelites the Law on Mt. Sinai. Since the harvest is the "fruit" of the farmer's labor, fruit is generally eaten on Shavuot. And since the Torah is sweet like milk & honey, dairy, especially sweet dairy, is also traditionally eaten on Shavuot. So, we had fruit smoothies for breakfast, ice cream and fruit for lunch, and mac and cheese for supper. Little Bit declared it a very yummy holiday! We also decorated the house with flowers and greenery, and then, on Monday, planted those that could be planted outside.  

Monday and Tuesday my parents were here working on some final details on the Oley house in preparation for the appraisal and inspection. Much to Little Bit's delight, they took her with them to the Oley house on Tuesday and she got a whole day of of Mama and Papa to herself. The big girls and I took advantage of the quiet to get lots of school accomplished that day and, much to Lexie's delight, I went and picked up a Genetic curriculum that a local homeschooler was giving away. It's high school level and so far Lexie's finding it entirely too easy, but at least it's the subject she's been wanting to focus on for science this coming year. We also discovered that MIT puts their coursework online for free, including an undergraduate Genetics course, so once she completes the high school level course, she can try out the college level one, either back-to-back or in a couple years.

Wednesday we were planning to go to a free "Farm Days" at a dairy farm near Lancaster, but when we got there it was SOOO crowded, that we decided to skip it. I hadn't expected it to be that crowded, so hadn't worn walking shoes (it was going to be a hike from parking to the activities), or brought a bag to carry water bottles and such with us (it was hot!). We were literally right down the road from Landis Valley Museum so we went back there for a little while instead.  The buildings weren't open like normal because of some special classes that week, but the "playhouse" building wasn't being used, so we just went there (we have a Pennsylvania Heritage Membership that gives us unlimited admission to various PA history sites, including Landis Valley, so it doesn't cost us anything extra to just go for a little while). Lexie was an awesome big sister and "played house" with Little Bit until we were all hungry and ready to head to Costco for pizza.

 This weekend our friend, Kathryn was here visiting. She was interested in seeing Valley Forge so we went there on Friday. After seeing the museum and video, we did the driving tour (the gift shop sells a CD that gives you tons of information about Valley Forge as you drive the tour, so we enjoyed that), with a stop part way through for a picnic lunch. Then we detoured through Amish country on our way home to make sure Kathryn saw some horses and buggies and such. She took tons of pictures, so I didn't bother taking any, if she's willing to share, I'll post a few :)

The rest of our weekend has just been hanging out closer to home. Playing with kittens, grilling out, and enjoying time together.