Wordless Wednesday: My Silly B and I

Our Homeschool Schoolroom

One of my favorite places in our home is our schoolroom!  I love how it feels and looks.  I love how my kids have a special place that is just for school.  I love watching the boys in the schoolroom working on puzzles on the floor at night.  I just love everything about it!

While I understand that it is not possible for everyone to have a schoolroom in their house and some people who homeschool do not feel the need for one, we love having ours and see its many benefits!

When the boys enter our schoolroom, it is time for school.  They are now in a learning environment with little distraction.  They each have their own space to do their work and they love helping me decorate their areas.  When we decided to take L out of public school and homeschool him, he was very sad he wasn't going to be in a fun classroom anymore.  I decided to do what I could to fulfill that need for him and he is now very happy with his very own room (that he shares with his bro of course ;-)

I LOVE seeing other homeschoolers' schoolrooms and how they have it set up, so here are some pictures of our room!  

Here is L's part of the school room!  There is a large whiteboard behind the map!  His desk is in the middle of the room.

Here is B's corner!!  He has his own comfy chair :-)

Reading corner!!!

I wanted to show our bookshelf (it is actually a room divider bookshelf, very sturdy)-- one of my homeschool mommy friends had blocked off the doorway between her schoolroom and dining room with a bookshelf and I thought that was brilliant!!  I did it too and now I do not have runaways during our school time ;-)

Wordless Wednesday: My Little Chef!!

Inexpensive Homeschool Portfolio Folder

Anyone who homeschools can agree, we all have a plethora of papers/projects/artwork that have taken over our schoolrooms and houses!!  I like to keep our schoolroom clean and organized- and it is for the most part... except for the piles of papers from past weeks that are all over the place!  

I REALLY wanted to buy each of the boys one of these from Lakeshore Learning:

But at $20 each, I can not justify it at this point in the school year.  I will wait until August when they have their big sale!!

So, while at Kroger the other day, I saw these guys on sale for around $3.00 each and grabbed one for each of the boys.

 They will do the trick, but not very personal and a little boring looking (because that is so important ;-)!  I decided to pull out my new friend, Mod Podge and make it look a little prettier!!!

I used scrapbook paper and traced out the letters

Mod Podge, baby!!

Lay out the letters AND... Mod Podge, baby!!!

VOILA!!! 

Organization makes me SMILE :-)

They are super cute and will work for the rest of the school year!!

Preschool Corner: Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?

I just love doing lapbooks with my little B!!  He has so much fun reading the book everyday and then doing a craft or activity that goes along with it!  His favorite part is being able to show daddy his work at the end of the week!!  I really like doing a theme every week with him, along with book work (letters/numbers/handwriting).

Last week we did, Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? lapbook!  It was a lot of fun!!  I downloaded it from www.homeschoolshare.com- CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD FREE LAPBOOK

Front of Lapbook

Inside the lapbook- here are a couple of the activities he did, along with a game in the bag!

Back of his lapbook- he had to glue on all the healthy foods that Jesse ate!

Here is the game that is included in the free download- Laundry Letter Match!!!  B had so much fun doing this!

If you have a preschooler, you should definitely give this lapbook a try :-)

Martin Luther King, Jr. Cookies!!

Okay, one more fun thing for MLK day!!

We are going to a MLK celebration with our homeschool group tomorrow and everyone needs to bring a snack or treat!  I love holidays and tend to go a little crazy with them, so I thought and thought what I could make to represent MLK and what he stood for.... it came to me while running on the treadmill- MKL cookies with words that represent him :-)

I used store bought chocolate chip cookies, milk chocolate chips, white chocolate chips and wax paper.  I was going to use black gel frosting, but it doesn't harden... so I just used left over melted chocolate chips!

Melt milk chocolate chips and dip half of the cookie in it- Cool for 5 min in refrigerator until hard 

Repeat with white chocolate 

I wrote "Freedom, Equality & Peace" on the cookies

I loved how they turned out!!!

Martin Luther King, Jr. Unit

This week, we did a unit on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  I have always been fascinated with MLK.  I love that he stood up for what he believed in and never backed down... all while doing it peacefully!  It took a strong person to be able to take on our country and try to change the way people treated and segregated the African American community at that time.  I appreciate what he did and thankful God sent him here to help make the world a better place!!

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I downloaded this unit study off of the Teachers Pay Teachers website- it came with a printable book that was wonderful- it made it easy for both my seven and three year old to understand who he was and what was going on during this time in history!  I highly recommend it for younger kids!!  CLICK HERE FOR UNIT STUDY

The unit study also included this cute MLK color, write and cut!  L wrote, "Peace, Equality, Freedom."

Here are a couple other resources we used

Here L is watching MLK's most famous, "I have a Dream" speech

Here are the three additional books we read throughout the week

I also downloaded from the Teachers Pay Teachers website, a MLK paper bag template- the boys had fun coloring and glueing them on their bags :-)  CLICK HERE FOR PAPER BAG TEMPLATE

I feel that both boys learned a lot about MLK this week and also have a better understanding of what life was like over 50 years ago.

Learning about Ancient Egypt!

We are just finishing up our unit on Ancient Egypt in History!  I was really excited about this unit because I LOVE everything about Ancient Egypt- let's just say, I got really into it!!  L had a lot of fun reading books, watching educational movies and doing many activities that went along with what we were learning.

L & B with their Pharaoh crowns and clay pyramids 

Landon's favorite activity was toilet paper mummy!!

We also talked about archeology in this unit- here L is digging for real fossils!! 

Sad to be moving on, but looking forward to the next ancient civilization!!

FREE Printable Maps!!

I found this great site that has free printable maps- big or small!!  As homeschoolers, this is a wonderful resource.

Here is L working on his African map for science!!

FREE PRINTABLE MAPS