Our Book Case

Yes this is our bookcase for Homeschooling. Believe it or not it's kind of organized LOL. At the very top we have all our hands on teaching supplies (we're still waiting for our curriculum). Because the boys learn better hands on We use an Abacus to help us with our Math. We have a bingo telling time game that will help the kids learn the analog clock....Yea, the kids can't read an Analog clock...How did they move on not knowing these things. We got a little clock to teach with. For EmberLee we have a bucket full of letters that she and Bridger can lace words. EmberLee is working on her sounds that the letters make, her vowels and Consonants, and sight words. We have a cash Register(that isn't shown in this picture) that will help us teach money. The kids aren't too hot with that either. Calculators have totally corrupted our minds. We can't hardly work without them. We have Brain Quest boxes for each of the kids that are in school. Way fun to see what they know or don't know :) Then we have our Solar System Models that we're working on for Science. We're going through each planet. While we learn about it, they paint that planet and set it up on their Solar System (another blog). Our second shelf down is our folders on the right in each subject. A bag of sand to write our spelling words in (more ways of learning than just writing). Bridger also loves this. He can make all kinds of cool designs in the "sand" it's actually cream of wheat. It's consistency is similar to sand. In the can below the "sand" is beans that EmberLee uses to count with when she doesn't want to use the Abacus'. There is our books that we're going to be reading this year on that same shelf. Right now we've already read the 1st book in our series of the Diary of a Whimpy kid. A new friend of mine won't let her kids read books like these because she calls it Twoddle. I say that if they're reading and enjoying it, and it shares morals and values....Let them learn to love to read. We're 3/4th the way through our 2nd book there is a total of 3. On the shelf below is more books that they can just read. Folders and EmberLee's wipe off books. The 3rd shelf down is our shelf with our curriculum books in it. It's not really full we're still waiting for a lot of them. But we do read from the scriptures in the morning with our other books. The things we're waiting on for curriculum is our Math, Writing, Science, and EmberLee's box with all her Kindergarten Curriculum in it. Along with those we're going to be getting 3 laptops from IDEA (our homeschooling company, kind of like k-12 in Utah). I'm excited to get schooling done quicker with these laptops. We'll be organizing a check out system so that I can make sure that the laptops get taken care of, along with all these cool tools we've gotten to help them learn. On the bottom shelf we have EmberLee and Bridger books. We do a lot of reading through out our school day. We're also doing a lot of Field trips in the next few weeks. Last week we went to the Recycling Center, we learned what to Recycle and Why. Now we need to get some kind of system set up so we can do it. On my Birthday this Wednesday we are going to Spring Creek to learn about the Salmon life cycle. Friday we're going to Pizza Hut for our reading program through IDEA....free pizza. Same kind of deal they do back home in the elementary schools for the kids that read. Then on the 9th we're going to the Musk Ox farm. The kids are counting down the days for that. In the morning EmberLee uses her pointer and goes through the calendar, weather, and letter sounds. This is our schooling corner. Jake is playing his games lol, he hasn't played in over a week. Anyways....This is our homeschooling in a nutshell. Daily it seems to be fun at times and hard at times. 2 weeks ago the boys didn't do so hot on their spelling words, so I made them learn the same words differently......in sand like I mentioned before, tactile is huge. They did so much better this week. We did a lot of hands on this week. Which they loved. It's been fun to watch them learn, and to learn what works best for them. Each kid is different. I'm excited to be posting more about homeschooling as we are going along. But we all love it. Sleeping in, bringing in prayer, scriptures and parental love into our learning day. I never thought I'd be up to this, and I really didn't think I had the will power. But with a constant prayer and the motivation of knowing that otherwise my kids would be gone ALL DAY, helps me want to be their teacher. I'm so glad that we have found this opportunity, and that I can help them succeed. They seem to be much happier, and I don't have to gripe at them to get their homework done. We Love School :)