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.

Our workbox setup!

Workbox Fun!

Here is how we use workboxes in our house.

First are our carts.  Each child has a rainbow set of drawers that we got from Sams club for 24 dollars!

on top of their cart you can see their expandable file folder (each child's folder is in their special color) inside the folder in each of the sections labeled day 1-5 live the worksheets ect. for each day of that week.  I fill these folders on the weekend and then each evening I refill our drawers for the next day.  Super easy!

Now the numbers on the front of the drawer are put on with velcro dots.  As a drawer is finished the child places them on their workbox chart which is mounted on the side of their cart as shown in the second picture.

Now Here we have the workbox schedule book.  Each child has their own and yep the covers are in that child's color coded color LOL.  There is a spot for the day of the week and the date to help little ones learn calendar skills.  

We have a duplicate set of tags that lives in the back of the schedule book in the "storage pages".

I put the numbers and such in our day's schedule so that each kiddo can follow their schedule each day.  You can see here that it will show lunch breaks, circle time and snacks are all scheduled in here.  Each day has a front page and back so their enough squares for tags each day.

Here on the bottom corner of each child's dry erase board you can see a "help" tag.  

Each child has 5 help tags in their desktop box.

If they are working on something independent and get stuck they can grab a help tag and attach it to their dry erase board to let me know they need help with what they are working on.

You can see on top pf the shelves here the colored bins.  You cannot see it well in the picture but each bin has the kiddos names written on in sharpie marker.  

As a child finishes the work in their drawers they place the work in their bin which are once again in the child's color coded color.

And that is our system!  I will show in a later post how I file all of the work we finish and prep it for our portfolio review!

Our Homeschool Room!

Here it is in all of it's glory with all of our learning spaces!  This is in our large greatroom upstairs on the kids floor.  The bedroom directly next to our schoolroom has been transformed into the toddler/baby playroom and has tons of fun activities and imaginative play things to occupy my 20 month old while we school.  Our school room has an area for each kiddo including our new little one due in November.  (yes I like to plan ahead and have everything in it's place) LOL  You can see our Montessori shelves, workboxes and all our goodies throughout the room.  We now also have a fouton up in our school room that sits in our viewing area with our old vizio mounted above the expidiit that houses our shoe boxes full of activities.  We watch our documentaries, atelier DVDs and such here on this TV.  Makes it so much easier then having to go downstairs to watch and run back up to do the activity!

Welcome to our little blog!

A new school year, a new baby on the way so why not a new blog to boot?  We were formally at homeschoolinginthemountains.blogspot.com but felt like starting anew and using our "official" school name.  My name is Jen and I am the mama of 3 (soon to be 4) awesome little boys going from 5 1/2 down to almost 2.  I also have two stepdaughters (14 and 11) that we have with us every other week but they go to public school here in WV.  We are starting our homeschooling journey when our oldest boy was a baby, researching, playing games and then beginning to sit down for "lessons" when he was around 2.  We have learned so much since then and are super excited to be starting our first year officially on the books with the professor in Kindergarten.  I will come back and update later on with pictures and all sorts of fun.  I really hope to find the time to stick with our blog and keep it up to date with all of our adventures as sort of our little digital journal of our homeschool journey!