The School Room is DONE - and just in the nick of time!

Well, it took Justin and I until 3am this morning, but sure enough, we got the school room done in time to begin Hunter's first grade year this morning! We had a great day, and I can't wait to get back to it tomorrow! (When we were done, Hunter actually said "awww, can't we do more??" - so I let him use my label maker while we put some binders together :o)
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Anyway, how about some school room pics??
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In order for you to get the full effect of how far we've come in 3 months, I'll share some before pics:

Here we are looking into what is now the school room, this is what it looked like when we moved in over Memorial Day.

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Inside the school room looking out into the living room. We built a closet that now conceals the water heater and stashes all of our school goodies.

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Here is Justin framing one of the 9,000 soffits in the school room, thanks to the builder leaving pipes in inconvenient places.

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My Dad and Justin framing the wall that now holds our whiteboards. (We had to frame all four walls in this room)

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And now for the After photos!!

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Here we are in the living room looking into the school room. (we dropped everything in the living room to focus on the school room, which is why the stairs are still bare and the doors lack casing. Don't worry, after a small break, we'll get on that :o)

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Ahhhh, just like I dreamt it!!!

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Here you can see the closet over to the left.

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Hunter's desk: a thrift store find that I stripped and painted black, then I painted the top with dry erase paint, so his whole desktop is one big dry erase board!

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Goodies waiting for Hunter at his desk this morning included a brand new, big kid Bible, a Berenstain Bears book, and a Toy Story lunch box with new dry erase markers, Chicago sports teams pencils, bookmarks, and some silly-bands :o)

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We added a little bit of Hunter's personality/passion to the desk drawers

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I used this adorable antique canning jar for pencils. I secured the jar to the desk using 3m picture hanging strips.

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Morgan's nook :o) I made the magnet board out of an antique frame and some flashing

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This is the shelf above my desk; a little homage to Laura Ingalls Wilder and my love for the one room schoolhouse concept

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I LOVE this antique tea table, and it just happened to work perfectly in the room as a printer stand!

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Well, there it is! There is still a lot of wall space to fill, but I was not at all interested in cluttering up the walls straight out of the gate. We'll be doing rain gutter bookshelves again, and hanging various projects from throughout the year. For now though, I love how simple, clean, and calm this space is! The rest of my house is still a disaster, since we spend every spare minute on the basement. However, now we have this space to greet us every morning, and I am feeling so blessed :o)

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Hitting the Road (Is that even legal ?!?!)

While most people seem to have kicked off their 'official' school year already, we are delayed a little bit :o) Our school room is a few weeks shy of being completed, but that is not the only reason we are pushing things to September. On Saturday, the kids and I (and my Dad, who is so wonderfully caring and generous - he is flying out to Georgia tonight so that he can drive with me!) are heading up to Chicago for the second time this summer. However, Chicago is not our final destination! We will spend one day in Chicago with my parents, and then my mom and the kids and I will drive up to North Dakota! (Yes, I'm crazy. I'm okay with it.)
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While on the road, I have some things for Hunter to do, most of them revolving around geography. We have a map on which he will trace our route through all the different states, and each time we hit a new state, he will read some information on that state and tell the rest of the passengers in the car.
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I am very much looking forward to spending this time with my son. I am grateful for the quality time he will spend with his grandparents and great-grandparents, learning lessons and experiencing things he would have to miss out on if he were not home schooled. I try not to dog on the public schools (heck, I'm a public school teacher by trade), but it makes me a little bit ill to think of my son sitting at a desk from 8am to 3pm every day, while so much life is happening outside those walls! Because Hunter isn't sick, I would not legally be able to take him out of school for the two week period he would miss. But because we've been blessed and called to home school, we have a very special freedom that I am pleased as punch to take full advantage of in the next two weeks!
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Here's to time with family, time with our elders, time to explore this beautiful country God has blessed us with, and the time and freedom to grow outside of cinder blocks and in the fullness of the life we've been given!
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Stay Tuned!

We're Back!!

Since my last blog, we have moved - again - this time to Northeast Georgia! We are settling into our first (owned) home, and loving it! The crown jewel of this house was an 819sqf unfinished basement, which we have poured our hearts and souls into this summer. The basement now consists of a beautifully tiled full bathroom, a large media room and bar (who's ready for some FOOTBALL??), and best of all, a BEAUTIFUL school room!

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We are still putting the finishing touches on the basement, but we will be ready to start school after Labor Day weekend. For now, I wanted to revive my blog (which WILL be updated every Friday during the school year, with notes about the curricula we are using), and participate in the "Not Back to School" blog hop! During the month of August at 'Heart of the Matter Online', bloggers can post links to their pages about a different topic each week.

This week, the topic is curriculum, and lucky us - the UPS man delivered a big ol' box of school goodies from Rainbow Resource today!

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For Hunter's first grade year, we are going all in on the classical method of homeschooling. Back in May, I read "The Well Trained Mind" by Susan Wise Bauer, and I was hooked! I will do a post next week with regards to method itself. As for this year's curriculum:

Language Arts:

- Spelling: Spelling Power

- Grammar: First Language Lessons

- Writing: Writing With Ease (vol. 1)

- Reading: Whatever he likes!

Math:

- MUS Alpha/Beta: Hunter ended his Kindergarten year halfway through the Alpha book, so we will be picking up where he left off, and moving on to Beta when he's ready

Science:

- Apologia Science, "Exploring Creation With Astronomy"

Social Studies:

- Story of the World, Vol. 1

Art:

- We are involved with the home school group at our military base. Hunter will be participating in an hour-long art class every Wednesday afternoon (I am VERY pleased to outsource painting this year :o)

Music:

- Later this fall, we will be purchasing a piano. When we do that, I will begin teaching Hunter how to read music and play the piano.

I think that's it! Of course, we are including all kinds of wonderful literature and reference books revolving around the history topics - this year it's ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. I am so excited about this year. There are many new things happening, such as reporting to the state, and having attendance and instruction time requirements, but that is all part of the adventure, and I can't wait to begin. Welcome, First Grade, we've been waiting for you!!

First Chapter Book!

I am beaming with uncontrollable pride right now, because this morning, Hunter finished his first chapter book, The Fantastic Mr.Fox!

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I decided to present this book to him, just to see how it went, and to make sure I was meeting him at his level. Hunter read every single word of this book out loud to me, reading one chapter per day. At the end of each chapter, he drew a picture of what had happened in the story. I am still deciding what I will do with the pictures - I'm thinking either a nice report cover or spiral binding, not sure yet.

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At any rate, here is Hunter, looking as though he just conquered the world!

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New Home, New School Room!

After a mid-year PCS move, we are all settled in our new home in Texas. Until May, that is :o)
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In this house we decided to have the kids room together, so that our third bedroom could be used as a schoolroom. This is working out perfectly, because Hunter and Morgan do SO well together, and having a designated space for school is very, very fun!
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I really didn't like having school posters and pocket charts in our living room in the last house. Having a separate space really helps with organization and focus. It also allows us to hang as much stuff on the walls as we want, without taking over the dining room!
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Here are a few pictures:

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We are loving this set up, and as we search for a new home at the next duty station, having a secluded school room is very high on our priority list!

Apple Pie by Hunter

Reason number 1,273 to love home schooling: spending Monday morning together in the kitchen, baking an apple pie with the apples you picked last Monday morning :o)

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Last week, our Five in a Row book was How To Make an Apple Pie and See the World. (I will post our lapbook on this sometime tomorrow) Our unit study culminated with the baking of a magnificent apple pie.

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Step One: Combine dry ingredients

(ps - how adorable is the juxtaposition of the Urlacher jersey/puppy dog apron??)

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Step 2: Pour dry ingredients over apples that took mom forever to peel and slice with a paring knife because she got all ready to make the pie and realized she doesn't have any kind of a peeler...

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Step 3: Press pie crust into 9" pie plate

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Step 4: Destroy any evidence that might suggest you used a store-bought pie crust.

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Step 5: Pour coated apples into *homemade* pie crust.

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Step 6: Place top layer of *homemade* pie crust, and flute the edges. That's right, flute.

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Step 7: Paint the *homemade* pie crust with an egg white (or as Hunter, the five year old comedian, prefers to call it - boogers)

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Step 8: Put the pie in the oven and wait patiently...

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Step 9: Sniff and admire :o)

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All in all, our project was a huge success! We had a great time together, and Hunter is extremely proud of his pie - we are so excited to rip into this bad boy during half-time tonight!

Mike Mulligan

This week we started a new curriculum (although, we are still doing Math-U-See and A Reason for Handwriting/Spelling)

Five in a Row!

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This is awesome. Each week we have a new book, and do projects in five different disciplines (social studies/geography, language arts, art, math, and science), all relating back to the story. I chose to incorporate lapbooks, because it keeps all of our components in one place, and let's face it, I like things that way!

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We started out with Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel. Over the course of the week, and with just this one story, Hunter explored steam powered machines, learned about stewardship, measured squares, wrote about personification and character traits, and drew trees from both aerial and close-up perspectives!

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I took a few videos of Hunter giving a 'tour' of his first five-in-a-row lapbook. A few disclaimers:

-please excuse the pj shirt :o)

- I swear on McDonald's Frappes that I did not tell him to say all that stuff about having fun doing projects with his mom... if you listen closely, you can hear me melting behind the camera :o)

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I printed off all of the lapbook components from HomeSchool Share - they have GREAT five in a row resources!

I can't wait to start this week's book - How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World!