Our Peace Table

Here is our peace table in our schoolroom!

We use our peace table for promoting mindfulness, solving conflicts and calming down when we get upset.  Our peace table contains: on top our peace basket and a copy of "peaceful piggy meditation".  

Our peace basket contains:

a copy of "the peace rose"

a copy of "calm down time" 

a laminated finger maze

A laminated peace card (from the peace table card set from Montessoriprintshop.com)

Our starry night jar ( original idea from Chasing Cheerios )

A seashell for listening to the ocean

meditation pebbles 

our peace rose (fake rose lol )

The bottom shelf of our table contains:

 a little basket with our peace table cards

our copy of "mindful movements"

a mini Chinese gong to signal the start of mediation

I was asked on one of my forums that I frequent to explain how we use our peace table so I am copying and adding that post in here for an explanation of how WE use our peace table.



OK so the idea of the peace table is a Montessori based idea but we have added some of our own spin to it as well.  Being a family with an ASD kiddo and me being ASD myself and both of us having anxiety issues we needed some more ideas for adding mindfulness to our lives.  Also having soon to be 4 boys close in age we needed better methods for conflict resolution so we could teach our kids better ways to deal with negative feelings and fights.  Our table works in different ways depending on the situation.

Daily use:
We try and include daily meditation into our routine.  This really helps ASD people to learn to calm the craziness that can happen in our heads especially for those of use with severe sensory issues like DS1 and myself.  We go to our rug and cushion basket and get our meditation cushions plop them down in front of the table get our meditation pebbles (we each have our own set of 4) and then I will start our guided meditation CD that came with our mindfulness book http://www.amazon.com/Planting-Seeds-Practicing-Mindfulness-Children/dp/1935209809/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1348798848&sr=8-2&keywords=mindful+movements  I HIGHLY recommend this book!!!!!  I really cannot recommend it enough actually :lol:  Thich Nhat Hanh is a fantastic writer who cares very deeply in his quest to bring mindfulness to the children of the world!  I own almost all of his books and they are all extremely well written and useful especially when you start out and have no clue what you are doing :lol:  anyhow back to the story .........  we hit our mini gong to symbolize the start of meditation and we work through it all leaving us all feeling very relaxed and fresh.  I make it very well known to the kids that they can do this anytime they want as there is no overdoing meditation IMHO.

Calming the ickies:
I'll be blunt here.  My son is ASD and we definitely have days that can be BAD.  Days where his anxiety is through the roof and he is an emotional mess.  Days where my heart breaks because I have to see my baby coming apart at his seams.  BUT and a huge BUT our peace table has given us more hope that we can overcome this together.  As soon as I notice it coming I'll say something like hey T I think we need to take a visit to the peace table.  I make it very clear in all forms that this is NOT punishment ever no matter the situation.  I want the kids to want to go to the table when they feel they need to and I want them to view it as a safe place where they can calm down and escape whatever ickies are creeping in.  So during a breakdown we go to our table and the first thing we usually do is shake our starry night jar really hard and get all the thoughts racing wildly around the globe.  I will tell T this is your mind right now, full of thoughts racing around with no rhyme or reason.  He will then put the jar down on the table or floor and we will take deep breaths and watch closely as the stars or "thoughts" start to all slow down and settle and the jar becomes clear of thoughts.  This is our mind when we practice mindfulness and we can settle all our thoughts and calm down our ickies so our minds can be clear.  At this point he is usually calm enough to go onto the next step of the seashell.  He will usually go ahead and grab the seashell and listen closely to see if he can hear the ocean. He will then usually trace the finger maze and read the calm down time book.  By the end of the process (10 min or so total) he is usually calmed all the way down and crisis is adverted.  On a bad day where meds are off or he is over stimulated or whatever he may have to do this over and over again through the day but each time it does work to calm him back down.

Conflict resolution:
If we have a fight we go to our peace table.  Any fight that results in screaming hitting or just no foreseeable end usually ends up in a group trip to the peace table.  Once there If we need to we re-read the peace rose book or just go right onto the peace rose activity.  What we do is first calm them down.  I try and do this by putting on calm music from our meditation cd and reading one of the tables cards or books to grab their attention.  Once we are calm enough to talk I will pass the rose to one of the children.  If I feel in the fight there was an aggressor and a victim I will give the victim the rose first.  He who has the rose talks everyone else must remain silent while the rose holder expresses why he is upset and how he feels about the situation that transpired.  Once the first child has had their chance to speak they pass the rose to the other child who then gets to say their feelings and thoughts on the matter.  This teaches them to listen to each other and try and understand how each feels which is very important in general but even more so when a child has ASD and great difficulty in relating to the emotions of others.   It is my hopes that this method will really help them to learn to talk out disagreements and be more mindful of the feelings and boundaries of the people around them.   After both parties have talked mom gets the rose and we think of ways together that the situation could have been handled differently.  I will take ideas from each kiddo and we will talk it over passing the rose if need be.  Once a resolution has been found we go back to what we were doing hopefully a bit more aware of how to treat each other.


So that is pretty much it and how we use our peace table.  :)  I hope that helps out some people and as always I am open to more suggestions as we love new ideas to add in or things to learn!

DIY Montessori Checkerboard

I really wanted to have the Montessori checkerboard in our collection but could not swallow the 50 dollar price tag on it!  So I set out to make it myself.  I bought everything from Michaels for under ten dollars.  It is a plywood board and balsa wood square dowels.  I first measured and drew on the checkerboard and then painted it.  After it dried I glued down the dowels to form a frame.  Then I sprayed the whole thing with modge podge glossy sealer for a nice finish.  Finally I wrote on the numbers in extra fine sharpie marker on the white boarder.

Here is our finished checkerboard!

Our Finally well ok Almost Finished Schoolroom!

Truth is I didn't feel like waiting anymore to share! LOL  I was just WAY too excited with all of our hard work and changes that I just had to share!  

As you know from a previous post my beloved grandmother recently passed away.  I didn't even have to think in order to know what to do with the inheritance that she left me.  She was such a driving force in my own education and love of learning I wanted her to always be a part of learning and education in our home and the lives of our children so it was through her that this schoolroom was built.  

The first order of business was figuring out shelving.  I hated all the cheap fiberboard walmart shelving we had before and the general closed in feeling of the schoolroom.  After looking around I fell in love with and decided on using the Ivar shelving from Ikea.  Not only are they unfinished REAL wood they are inexpensive, beautiful and easy to assemble!  We also went with Ikea for my new desk (expidet with desk attachment), the computer table (kritter w/ matching chair), the practical life cubbies (expidet on it's side) and the pre existing personal cubbies under our TV is also an expidet from Ikea.  I also found this awesome set of small wooden boxes (set of 3m 2 smaller and 1 large) that work PERFECT for displaying material on the shelves in a really pretty way!

Second was to order tons of beautiful Montessori materials!  This was soooo much fun for me and something I have always wanted to do!  I ordered the bulk of my materials from; Montessori Outlet, Kid Advance, Ifit Montessori  Alison's Montessori and Caliber Montessori.  I researched, thought about it, slept on it and came up with my list of materials I wanted in our classroom.  I then also figured out what I would make and what I would buy.  I also went onto Montessori Print Shop and collected the printables I wanted to use in our classroom and began the work of printing, laminating and cutting out the materials.  All in all so far I would say I have printed, laminated and cut out close to 1000 sheets of paper!  I took a very long time but I figured it would be worth it to have the bulk done and ready for use.  

I also put our lovely virco desks in the basement!  Really we don't use them and I thought long and hard about it and didn't feel them to be necessary as we are not aiming to replicate a B&M school.  T opted to keep his though so we put it in his room so he has a place to work alone if he chooses.

So without further ado here is our new Montessori inspired classroom!

 The hubby put up the tapestries to span the gap between the knee wall and the ceiling because T kept looking over the knee wall down the stairs and it made us very nervous!  Turns out they are gorgeous up and we love them!  The yellow map hung on the knee wall is loop material so you can velcro things to it!  I plan on making lots of laminated items to put up as we study geography!

 The view from my desk towards the Montessori shelves.  You can see the Ikea futon we have here in front of our school TV as well as my blue teacher's cabinet and the drawers I keep my step daughters' afterschool supplies in.  You can also see the higher up shelving my awesome hubby put up for me.  Up there lives educational board games, science books, history encyclopedias, T's keyboard, a few science kits and my Montessori albums.

 Our homeschool TV area.  We watch our documentaries here, T does his piano lessons here, master reader is done here.  You can also see the boys' personal cubbies that have their supplies in them ( yes I color coordinate my children)

 This expidet is where our practical life trays live.  I try and cycle them out frequently so they do not get too old.

 Here you can see the window side of the schoolroom as well as the grammar farm that lives on the rug in the middle of the room.

 These are our language shelves.  The bins above hold our printable materials for grammar and the pink, blue and green language series.  The left shelf has pink, blue and green materials on the top shelves. The bottom shelves is the grammar materials.  The right shelves hold our metal insets, sandpaper letters. melissa and doug letter matching puzzles and a box of latin readers.

 These shelves are our sensorial materials.  On the top shelf lives our plants then come our geometric shapes and geometry cabinet.  One shelf down is the pink tower, brown stair and a box holding blindfolds.  The shelf below holds knobless cylinders, color boxes 1, 2 and 3.  Bottom shelf has the toddler pink tower ( brown stair is currently downstairs).  The corner shelf has our CD player on top ( we have classical music, guided meditation cds and such in our CD player at all times.  On the shelves there are our geometric nomenclature, Kaleidoscope, pressure cylinders, touch tablets, sound cylinders, constructive triangles and on the bottom shelf live our knobbed cylinder blocks.

 Here is a better view of our art corner.  The easel is from Ikea as are the smocks hung on the wall and the bygel rails that hold supplies in colorful cups.  The blue cart to the left holds the free use supplies so the kids can easily get to them.  I have a mat on the floor to make cleanup simple as you can just wipe it off!  The basket holds our work rugs and meditation cushions.

 This is our map stand and maps.  I got the stand and 4 of the maps for a killer deal from Caliber Montessori who is going our of business and was liquidating their stock and ridiculously cheap prices! I plan on remaking the flags for our flag map because it really bothers me to have plastic flags with all of the beautiful wooden stuff all around!  on the floor under the stand lives our world map and the control maps for each of our maps.  On each side of the stand lives our long red rods and our number rods.

 To the right is our art cabinet which has magnet locks on the doors.  I keep the bulk supplies in here as well as supplies that require more supervision.  The shelf above lives all our art paper and on top pf that is our spinning organizer with scrapbooking scissors, glue and art pencil case.  there is also some paint pallets and for the moment our wooden science tray.

 Squee Montessori math oh how I love thee!  Bygel rails hold calculators, pencils ect.  You can see all of our math materials here.  Most I bought however there are a few home made materials here as well like the addition charts, teen & tens boards, spindle boxes and the checkerboard.  I will come back later and add here what is all on the shelves but for now we'll leave it at math materials LOL

 More math shelves and the little shelf with our continent boxes on it.  GASP yes I know there are a few plastic items here LOL.

Our cultural/geography shelves.  On the bottom you can see two of my homemade land and water form trays.  On the top shelf, the bear is from Harrods in London and the panda my brother brought back from China.

So there you have it our brand new Montessori classroom!  I am so in love and have a hard time not wanting to be in the room all day long!  

Continent boxes

Here are our continent boxes!

 They are still kind of a work in progress as some are still not that full and I am sure we'll collect more as we go.  I again used the awesome photo boxes from Michael's craft store and I have got to say they really were perfect for the job even if they are not the traditional colors of the continents.  I have decorated each box using scrapbook stickers as well as glued the montessori nomenclature card for that continent to the lid of each box.  I lucked out and found a few boxes that were already printed with nice artwork that corresponded to the continent.  I then began the work of filling my boxes.  Each has the corresponding book from the true book series which I bought for really cheap used off amazon.  Then I called my mom (she has traveled around a lot )  and asked her for any of the chackies (doodads) she didn't need/want anymore.  I then looked through my memorabilia and made a list of things I would like to find and headed off to ebay.  I found a lot for really cheap on ebay!  I also signed up for a culture swap which I am really looking forward to!

Note:  I store the nomenclature for the continents in our nomenclature drawers located in our closet. 

Here are some boxes to look at!

Europe and Africa

Europe has in it:

coins, stamps, bills (even one with montessori on it!), picture my mom took of Stonehenge, A piece of the berlin wall my brother gave me, a rosary I picked up from the Vatican when I went to Rome. 

Africa has in it:

Folder cards from Montessoriprintshop.com, an African mask my brother brought back, African animals toob, tanzinite, African mined amethyst, ancient Egyptian artifacts from my personal collection (shabtis), bills and coins.

Asia

Asia box contains:

Tibetan prayer flags, sand I collected in Israel, japanese candy, pearls from china, a statue of Buddha, a wooden fan, a Chinese butterfly that was sent along with something I ordered off ebay once, incense from India, sushi erasers, coins, bills,  rice seasoning packets from Japan, Chinese ink with brushes, jade cat, chopsticks, safari animals from Asia and stamps.

Creating Nature Boxes

I have been putting most of my free time effort lately into the creation of nature discovery boxes.

I am housing my nature boxes in photoboxes from Michael's craft store as they went on sale for 1.66 and well I filled 3 shopping carts full, you know in case I needed them LOL I use these same boxes for my continent box and they are awesome in general for many school uses! So far I made a list of the boxes I would like to make first, then went through and made a list for each box's contents. Some of the more obscure items I found on ebay or through general internet searches. If you are persistent enough you can find a lot of awesome things to put into your boxes for very cheap! The idea behind making these boxes is we have discovery units ready to go that can be pulled out at any time and put on a wooden tray on our science shelf for exploration. I plan on coordinating the boxes with what we are currently studying in science as well as every box that corresponds with a creature we can raise we plan on doing that! We already have an egg incubator, frog kit, butterfly kit, ladybug kit, praying mantis kit and we can get a new fish at any time LOL Best thing about the kits is you can buy them in advance and just wait till you are ready to send in the coupon to get your larvae/eggs! Most of my boxes have little books inside them on the subject matter within. They also have corresponding nomenclature I store in my nomenclature drawers. The boxes I have made first are: Bat - Even has a freeze dried bat in the box (creepy I know) Sea life- different types of shells and preserved sea life trees - different leaves, branches, pine cones and bark Bones - contains a real skull, real jaw bones from a variety of mammals, animal xrays, human xrays and a baby tooth Skin, scales, fur and feathers - contains exactly what it says Birds - feathers, fake nest, bird skull, hoping to add a emptied preserved egg. Insects - a bunch of dead bugs preserved in clear acrylic blocks, a book on insects, some specimens we collected and I have placed into little acrylic boxes with magnifying lids. - We also have a hornet nest that the hubby removed from the side of our house in a separate plastic shoebox with plastic wrap over it so the kids cannot touch since it was sprayed with raid. The coolest thing about our nest is there was a new hornet emerging from a cell when it was sprayed so it is preserved mid hatching! Bees- bee life cycle models, beeswax candle making sheets, honey, a dead bee in an acrylic block Animal tracks - animal tracks rubbing plates, animal tracks matching cards, Rubber molds of real animal tracks. We also will be going out with the boys for nature walks w/ plaster so when we see some tracks we will cast them and add them to our box! Butterfly - Butterfly wing in a magnification box, butterfly life cycle model, a collection of many different butterfly wings. My bones box as an example of contents

Some resources for making your own (will come back and add more over time too)

 bat activity sheets free!
http://www.kidzone.ws/animals/bats/activities.htm
http://www.theteachersguide.com/batslessonplans.htm


Wildlife coloring pages and activity pages
http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=613673&mode=2 http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/education/9110 Articles http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=1054377&mode=2 http://www.conserveturtles.org/seaturtleinformation.php?page=flatback

Our Grammar Farm

So I really wanted a nice looking grammar farm but no way was I going to spend 300 dollars plus on one so I did the next best thing and built ours.

I used:
a farm set I got off ebay for about 20 dollars
an Ikea Lack side table on casters ( so we can move our farm if need be)
Safari animals ( some are a little off scale LOL)
felt
hardware drawers
labels from Montessori Printshop

First I glued the felt to the table top.  Then when it dried I set up the farm and put another blue felt cutout on the grass for a pond.  on the shelf  sits our hardware bins with all our labels and behind the bin we have a few baskets containing more things for the farm.  This table really ended up working perfectly for our farm setup!

Here is our finished farm

Montessori Land and Water Form Trays DIY post

So I have been steadily working on building my montessori materials up to get them ready for our new classroom which is about halfway done now!  Here is a look at my finished land and water form trays which all told cost me about 20 dollars to make and are metal instead of the plastic ones that run over 100 dollars for the set!

Materials used:
Plaster of paris
Aluminum cake pans (98 cents each at walmart and the perfect size!)
Modge podge high gloss sealer (to make them waterproof)
99 cent rose art modeling clay (to form the molds for the plaster)
Acrylic paint

I forgot to take in progress pics so I will just give a brief explanation of how I made them.

First I set out all of the trays and rolled out my modelling clay into flat pieces to form the molds,  Then I put the clay into each pan into the shape of the landform I was making.  NOTE: i only had to make 5 total molds as the other 5 trays are the inverse of the first 5 molds which saved on clay and time.  I then mixed the plaster and poured the molds.  Be prepared to hold up the clay for a few minutes on a couple of the molds for stability.  Soon as I pour I tap the whole tray off the table to bring air bubbles to the top instead of inside the plaster.  After it was dry enough I removed the clay and set them up in the next 5 trays and repeated the process but inverted where I poured the plaster. NOTE: on some of the smaller forms you may have to glue down the plaster to the tray after it has set because it will not stick on it's own.  (the ones I glued where: island, peninsula, archipelago and isthmus)  After all the plaster was poured and the clay removed I began painting the trays.  I used green for the top of the land, 2 shades of brown to show the earth on the sides of the land and then blue for the water areas.  I waited a day for them to fully dry.  After they were dry I took them outside and gave each of them a heavy spray down with the high gloss sealer so that my trays can be filled with water when we use them.

here are the finished trays!

She Gave Me So Many Beautiful Things

It has been over a month now since I said goodbye to one of my dearest friends, my grandmother Tillie.

Even now I have still not 100% processed the fact that she is gone.  I miss her terribly and just want everyone that reads this to know what a wonderful and amazing woman the world lost that day in July.  I can say with confidence that without her this blog would not exist and I would not be the person who I have become today.  

My Grandmother was no ordinary grandma.  She was smart as a whip up till her last moments on earth.  She possessed a witty humor and such a great albeit ancient level of knowledge.  If it were not for her I doubt that I would have had the love of learning, reading and writing that I possess today.  My childhood began in the suburbs of Cincinnati Ohio about 10 minutes drive from my grandparent's home.  My earliest memories are of my Grandmother and my Papa Irv.  They were such a perfect fit the two f them.  Papa was such a soft, kind and sweet man that was so full of love.  Grandma showed her love in different ways.  She always treated you as a little person not as a child.  You were expected to behave, have manners and always be on the path to bettering yourself.  From an early age we were immersed into the world of books and learning.  Grandma didn't have cable, we didn't watch TV other then the exception of Jeopardy at night and classic musicals rented from the library down the street.  Instead we learned.  We built things, did all kinds of projects, cooked, went to museums, visited zoos, collected books from the library and listened to Grandma and Papa read to us.  And no they didn't read us twaddle they read us fantastic poetry like Rudyard Kipling, Robert Frost and many others.  Then one day we moved away to Pittsburgh PA because my dad had gotten an offer to have several offices there.  I still have those sad letters I wrote to my Papa saved in my scrap book.  It was not until years later though that I received a letter admitting just how deeply saddened he was when we moved away.  Alas that was not the end of our journey.  We began spending summers in Cincinnati with grandma and Papa.  I would go for two weeks and usually end up begging for just a few days more. As we entered into elementary school Grandma stepped up the game.  it was time for better books (think little women) , handwriting practice and to memorize those poems we had listened to our whole young lives thus far.  Still we loved Cincinnati and though at the time we were not fond of the work it molded us gently into who we would become untimely.  They fostered our loves and nurtured our interests which gave us so much knowledge and so many avenues of topics to pursue.  I remember as a child loving human anatomy so much that my grandparent bought me my very own human body encyclopedia.  I tore through that book even taking notes and highlighting at the tender age of seven years old.  I actually sat down and wrote a report on the entire book on my own, outside of school because I loved it that much.  

That support and encouragement never ceased as I aged.  Through my teen years I was not as receptive to her advice and opinions but hey what teen likes to be told what to do and that they could GASP be wrong.  So yes there were some years of disconnect but still those early roots stayed planted and growing in the form of my own poetry.  I wrote hundreds of poems detailing the emotions of my struggles with my Autism throughout my adolescent life.   As my hormones subsided and my maturity began to take hold I rekindled that dear relationship I had with my Grandmother.  She became my confidant and I could tell her anything without fear of rejection.  My Grandmother knew of my darkest days and some of my darkest moments in life.  She supported me through it and she applauded me in my ability to bring myself out of it all and back onto the road of life.  

Then in my late twenties babies entered my life as my first son was born.  I got to watch my grandmother become a great-grandmother finally.  Oh how she doted on my little guy.  I saw a softer side of grandma that I had not seen before and it was beautiful.  I soon began building my son a library of books and they were his earliest friends.  By the time he was a year he had crates full of books in his little playroom.  I began the research on homeschooling him and entered into a new world of knowledge and wisdom.  Then one became two, then three and now here I sit with number four in my belly as I write this.  My youngest son will never get to meet the amazing woman that was his Great-Grandmother but he will know her.  He will now her through the story times and poetry.  He will know her through my words and memories and he will know her for the woman that his mama became.  My Grandmother gave me so many beautiful things but none of them you can put in a box or display on a shelf.  My children will grow up surrounded by the beautiful things my Grandmother gave me and I hope that is inspires them and affect who they become as profoundly as it has for me in my life.  

Fun green school supplies from Green Apple Supply!

Green Apple Supply

After my recent disappointment with an order of a case of Prang crayons from a seller on Amazon I went searching for a cheaper way to buy the Prang crayons for our schoolroom.  In searching I happened upon a company called Green Apple Supply who carried the Prang soy crayons for way cheaper then amazon.  Not only that but they had goodies, oodles of goodies!  What homeschooling mom can resist the allure of school supplies?  I am crunchier then a lot so school supplies that are non-toxic and made from mostly recycled materials or renewable resources SIGN ME UP!

So the goodies I got are:

Prang soybean crayons!  What I originally got here for.  I got 5, 64 packs and 10, 24 packs.  Gotta stock up after all!

Friendly marker Highlighters.  These have minimal plastic and are totally non-toxic!!

Friendly Dry Erase markers.  Non-toxic dry erase markers woot!  I never even knew you could get these.

Glob paint six color packet kit.  All non-toxic, made from plant and herb dye.  Comes in powder form that you can mix with water to get different consistencies from water color to tempra!

Super cool eraser sticks!  These you sharpen like a pencil but instead of lead they have natural rubber erasers inside.  These were too cool to pass up my kids will love these!

Eco Erasers.  We erase a lot here in kindy and these are cheap and natural!

Jungle Vine Pencils.  In golf pencil size too!!!!  I grabbed up a set of these to put in a nice little mug on our table.  The kids will love writing with these!

Kids KleanEarth Recycled Protractor.  We actually were already in the market for one of these and at 50 cents more then walmart cheapy plastic who can pass it up!

And there you have it folks my green school supplies haul!  Now just have to wait by the door, stalk the poor UPS man and prepare to put it all away in our ikea organizers all neat and tidy!

A funny but true list!

This was posted in my local homeschooling association's yahoo group enjoy!

*Nine Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School*

Be aware of the insidious and unspoken lessons you learned as a child. 
To thrive in the world outside the classroom, you're going to have to 
unlearn them.

Dangerous things you were taught in school:

*1. The people in charge have all the answers.*That's why they are so 
wealthy and happy and healthy and powerful --- ask any teacher.

*2. Learning ends when you leave the classroom.*Your fort building, 
trail forging, frog catching, friend making, game playing, and drawing 
won't earn you any extra credit. Just watch TV.

*3. The best and brightest follow the rules.*You will be rewarded for 
your subordination, just not as much as your superiors, who, of course, 
have their own rules.

*4. What the books say is always true.*Now go read your creationism 
chapter. There will be a test.

*5. There is a very clear, single path to success.*It's called college. 
Everyone can join the top 1% if they do well enough in school and ignore 
the basic math problem inherent in that idea.

*6. Behaving yourself is as important as getting good 
marks.*Whistle-blowing, questioning the status quo, and thinking your 
own thoughts are no-nos. Be quiet and get back on the assembly line.

*7. Standardized tests measure your value.*By value, I'm talking about 
future earning potential, not anything else that might have other kinds 
of value.

*8. Days off are always more fun than sitting in the classroom.*You are 
trained from a young age to base your life around dribbles of allocated 
vacation. Be grateful for them.

*9. The purpose of your education is your future career.*And so you will 
be taught to be a good worker. You have to teach yourself how to be 
something more.

Our awesome new pencil sharpener!

Classroom Friendly Supplies pencil sharpener

We got this great new pencil sharpener and boy does it ever work well.  Our pencils come out nice and sharp without looking like a dog munched on them.  Plus it came in pretty colors too which is a nice bonus!  We ended up getting the Cool Blue color for our schoolroom which matches nicely.

We are doing Logic of English this year and loving it!

I will come back and do a more full review later on.  For now though I will post up the fruits of my labor, a full modified schedule for kindergarten level with readers and children's books scheduled alongside the lessons!  Hope this helps some people out!

here is the link ( but it can also be found on my downloads page)
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_ABMoourebeT29fNnlsemd6SUk


The first 7 weeks were a condensed form of a schedule found for younger kids from BugsMama from the well trained mind forums.  Thanks bugsmama for a head start on my schedule workload!  The books scheduled are from our home library that we already own.  I went through a pre-read them to align them the best I could with the schedule.   You can get the k-12 readers from christian book for relatively cheap.  The Steck Vaughn readers I collected off of ebay also for pretty cheap.  Most of the children's books could either be taken out from your local library or purchased used off of Amazon.  You can also buy the Tag reader and learn to read books off of Amazon.  I luckily already had the full set of learn to read Tag books and they are AWESOME!  We also have more Tag books which you could just have your child free read as they hit into the more advanced lessons in LOE.  I like having a large amount of readers because I can just take out what corresponds with this week's lesson and place them in my son's book box and he can read them during his reading time each day.

First day of school!

Today was our first day of school! 

Kindy for my 5 1/2 year old and pre-k for my 3 1/2 year old.

Each kiddo got a gift bag filled with super hero school supplies ala target dollar aisle!

My K'er

Oh yeah rocking the silly camera smile face!

My scheduling folders!

Or in other words how I plan for the year.

Here are my pretty binders (green room binders from Target) that sit next to my desk for easy grabbing.

The folder on the left is my "mom" folder, the middle folder is my preschooler's and the one on the right is my Kindergartner's.

Here you see the tabs inside my "mom" folder.  I have master lists, our current month's schedule, forms and curriculum I may be considering for next year.

Here you can see the chore charts I have printed out for my K'er this year. I grab one at the beginning of each week and place it into his binder.

Here is a blank movie list sheet I have made up as well.

This is the inside of my Kindy's folder.  You can see our schedule for this year.  I made it in open office, printed it out, laminated and then hole punched it.

You can also see the same pretty binder tabs I have in my folder (from walmart)

Here you can see a filled out "goal" sheet.  This is the master for the year of things I would like to accomplish for each child and curriculum corresponding to each goal.

These are Scope pages from DonnaYoung.org.  I print 1 per month and write our more immediate goals and check them off as they are met.  There are also spots for notes and thoughts.

Here are our attendance sheets also printed from Donnyoung.org

these are pretty self explanatory.   We don't have to track attendance for our state but I like to know for our own so I can better plan vacations and breaks for the year.

Here is the top sheet from our 6 week plan/schedule.  This is a heavily modified excel file from donnayoung.org.  I use it in open office to create our schedules.  I only plan 6 weeks in advance as we schedule therapy for my ASD kiddo every 6 weeks so this gives me the ability to plan around therapy days.

I check off each lesson as we complete it each day.