Old Schoolhouse Magazine Holiday Deal Hurry!

The Old Schoolhosue Magazine is a great resource! I loved rereading articles
for hints and tips and as a new homeschooler and still enjoy the magazine's
articles and ideas 2 years later.  This is a wonderful deal that they just
published for the upcoming Holiday weekend, a great opportunity to get a
great deal!
Hope you enjoy your 4th of July Holiday weekend and the rest of your summer.

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Workbox Expansion

So I decided that I am expanding the boys' workboxes to include their fun activities and games. With that I had to come up with 1 more cube for each of them which meant purging more of my craft area.
I now have an empty space on my office (don't worry it will fill up fast with other stuff.)
Now each of the boys have 12 slots available for workboxes. 1 slot will be their return box for finished work, while the other 3 slots will be home to fun desk activities and games they can choose to play (logic puzzles, wordgames, mazes, geoboards , etc..)

Of course now I have to come up with 6 more ITSO wide trays, oh how I wish Target would put them on sale soon.. at $4.99 a piece it will be a while before I can get them, still they are perfect for workboxes in our cubbies (JetMax Cubes). They are also the perfect depth for some of our larger activities (Reading Rods and such)

I'll try and get a picture posted later tonight. I'm thinking of hanging their white baord workbox schedules on the side of the cubbie wall, so we will play with that too.

Blog Planner Form

So I am still working on my central communication binder (Mommy's brain, scheduling, etc...).

I know I don't blog enough so I decided to create a Blog Planner/ Scheduler. It is pretty generic and has me blogging during the weekend and leaving weekends open ended.

I hope someone else can use it. I figured I can write in meme's and such as well as inspirations from different events along the way.

Blog Planner

What logs or forms can't you live without?

I'm creating forms and logs for our central binder. I'm trying to decide what else to include. Weekly workbox planner is done, book review log is done, and morning/ evening chore form is done.  I'm not sure what else I want to include...

I have a couple different menu planners but so far haven't found 1 that sticks, also need a shopping list with coupons and price comparisons on it, so I guess that will be one I will build...

Any suggestions? leave a comment with your can't live without forms and if you know of some great places to find forms links are always welcome.

Book Review Log

Just thought I would share another simple form I put together. This one is for book reviews. I am behind posting my book reviews and needed something to get me on track... I plan to use it as follows:

Rec'd: When I get the book/ curricula

Title / Company: Title of the Book or Company for curricula

Kids: Is this for the kids Y/N  (if Yes, I will have them help write the review)

Blog: posted and where (U for homeschool Blog , W for writing Blog)

Facebook/Tweet: Did I post the review on a fan page or link to the blog on twitter (Y/N)

Amazon/ BN: did I post it to Amazon or Barnes & Noble

+/ - : a positive or negative review (mostly for me so I if I'm keeping book/ curricula or something else)

book_review_log

Hope someone finds this useful.

Wall Timeline up and ready to fill

I finished up the wall timeline frame today and it is ready to fill with dates!!!

The wood frame is some upcycled down trim I picked up at our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore for $.25 a foot.  I spray painted the trim with Brown Leather Glossy Krylon paint from Wal-Mart cositn $2.67. I bought more trim than I needed (at that price it was better to be safe than sorry..).  The paper is from a huge roll of cream colored paper a neighbor gave my mom about 25 years ago (no kidding)...

Now we have a 6foot x 4 foot (44 inches to be exact) framed timeline in our hallway.  I am going to day our base line and put some key century marks on it so it is ready to be filled in.  I am going to use clipart tags for some of the key events we have learned.. We will be starting with Creation and bringing to present day (I figure through 2020 should give us plenty of timeline to work with...)

Next week the boys will have tags to hang on the timeline in their workboxes (I am thinking of using tags and string to fill the space and be able to include more events..)

Simple Workbox planner

I am playing around with a simple workbox planner using 8 boxes for each of the boys. We do workboxes 4 days a week with 1 day for our co-op group. Since I created it I figured I would share with our readers. I'm attaching the .pdf file , if you would like a copy of the excel spreadsheet file leave a comment and I will send one to you that you can change as needed. workbox_4_day_planner . I will printing 2 copies and putting them in a sheet protector (1 green one for Nathan and 1 blue for Cameron). It isn't a fancy form, but right now I need simple with room for notes.

Summer School on hold

We had plans for summer school and week 1 went pretty well, but then a few preplanned activities and Mommy's Just One Thing Challenge got in the way, so we put school on hold and took our 2 week break a little early this year...

We did however get a box for our Math-U-See blocks and a couple more ITSO boxes for the boys' workbox cubbies.. so all is not lost... I also have been shopping around for our magnetic white board for the Communications Center and have found a couple options: Costco at about $25, Target at about $17 but smaller, and Wal-Mart at $15 same size as Target but a metal frame instead of wood... so now just need to make a decision on that...
Also this week we are building a framed timeline in the hall. I hope to post pictures of it later this week.

Wonderful Copywork

During the Ultimate Homeschool Expo I was blessed to "meet" Jennifer Bogart during one of the sessions. Jennifer and her husband have Bogart Family Resources and have a wonderful selection of copywork available at Currclick.com.  I recently received an e-book from her to work through and review with my boys.  I selected "All Things Bright and Beautiful" in D'Nealian format for Cameron to work on. After just 3 days of using this copywork I have already seen improvement in his writing, what a blessing. We also printed the pages of Manuscript formatting and made wall charts for him to have. What a great blessing this e-book has been in our summer school sessions. I printed out the pages he needs for the week and am ready to go. I had to adjust his workbox/ school schedule today but was able to take his coywork pages, his Math-U-See worksheet, and his spelling list and just slip them in a pee-chee folder (yes I still have Pee-Chee's laying around) with a couple blue post-It notes for directions and a small ziploc bag for blocks, markers, and pencil and Cameron is all set for Thursday's workboxes on the go.

Comments

I see visitors to the blog but no comments. I'm thinking it is time for a giveaway... I will post the give away later tonight... Stay tuned