Sarah homeschooling recipes family building our home

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

My floor.

A day's worth of grime on my floor.
Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean,
but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.
Proverbs 14:4

Some days I wish my oxen would keep the manger a little tidier.

But until then...
they're

fun

to

have

around.

I am blessed.

Friday, March 18, 2011

School Room

This is how my morning and afternoons usually look.  In this particular momemt, they're doing fun stuff.  Normally the table is covered with books and papers, but same idea.  I always enjoy seeing how other home schoolers organize.  Some school in the kitchen.  Some school on the sofa.  Some school in a school room.  Some school outside or during nature walks.  This is where we do it.
(this was taken with my phone, thus the blurriness)
One of the things I've done throughout the years is kept most of my school furniture white.  I've acquired all this stuff at various times, but when you put it all together, it only looks slightly haphazard.

This is taken from the living room.  We are in a rental, so currently, our school is in the entry way.  There's this big open space as you walk in the front door.  Space is limited in our house, so we used it right up and put our school there.  I like it.  It's near the kitchen.  There's lots of natural light.  It works well for us.  This shelf you see is mostly filled with games (as you can see) and puzzles.  Whenever the kids complain about not having anything to do, I point them there.  These shelves are from Ikea.

This is from the inside.  The top shelf is filled with resources we use often, but not daily.  On the right are my photo albums and baby books.  There's really nowhere else to put them in the house, and I didn't want them in the garage.  So there they are.

I opted for the stainless table and have been great with it.  It scratches but doesn't stain like a white surface.

I label the baskets with what exactly should go in them so the kids can put them away themselves.

Plus, labels make me happy.

Can you tell?

This is where I put the kids papers when they're done.  It gives me a place to file them before I put them in their notebooks.

They each have one.  They don't take me too long to make.  Just scrapbook paper, stickers and collages I made on shutterfly.

I do these because we home schoolers don't have the benefit of school pictures.

It keeps me accountable to make sure I have a good individual shot of them per year.  It sounds easy enough, but so many of my pictures end up being in groups.  Or random when their hair or clothes are sloppy.

The back always has a pic of them with their brothers in that same year.

Books.

More books.  And a much needed printer/scanner/copier.  And a good pencil sharpener.  You NEED a good pencil sharpener.

This is my school cart.  It's where I keep everything I use on a daily basis.  I pull it up to where I sit at the table so I don't have to get up and down during school.  Heaven forbid, I exert myself.  The only reason I get up is to reheat my coffee.  I bought it when I started Graham in kindergarten and it's still in great shape.  The drawers are wide and perfect for textbooks.  An Ikea find as well.

And every school room needs pretty pencils in a pretty cup.

The End.

Guns, snakes, & golf

Last weekend, while I was organizing, Chris and the three oldest went on a father/son weekend in West Texas.
West Texas has a distinct landscape.

Such cute boys in their hats.

A sweet father/son pair.

The boys were given riflery lessons.  His first time shooting.

My little men.




He eats this stuff up.

If I had to guess, he was a little scared.

Dads hanging out.

The landscape.  A little prickly.  Did I mention that Sweetwater is the rattlesnake capital of the world?  For real.

And my boys arrived a little late, when all the beds in the house were taken.  Guess where they got to sleep?  Guess who didn't sleep?  (that would be Chris).

They loved riding down the hills in these wagons.

What's not to love?  (Side note:  Graham hit our van with one of these.  The last father/son trip, Chris's phone, keys and wallet were lost at the bottom of a river.  These trips are becoming very expensive).

Standing behind the orange line while others are shooting.  Good idea, dads.

This picture looks very Texas.  The truck, man in cowboy hat, the gun, the brown, brushy stuff.

This stuff is Graham's element.  This smile makes my mother heart glad.

And to top off the boy weekend, they stopped at the Rattlesnake Roundup.  It's a famous event in Sweetwater, Texas.  Chris said it was PACKED!

Who wouldn't want to be in place with rattlesnakes everywhere?

He looks like a man who loves snakes.

From that to playing golf with Papa.  Quite the transition.  They clean up well, don't they?

Monday, March 14, 2011

Home Alone

So I had a fabulous weekend.  2 1/2 days of being all by myself IN MY HOUSE.  It was a dream come true.  There are certain things that are hard to do with the boys underfoot.  And home schooling means they are always underfoot.  Here is a summary of my time ... in pictures.

I spent most of my time organizing and trying to throw stuff away.  I was attempting to do Sarah's 40 bags in 40 days in a weekend.

Things like organized bathroom drawers make me giddy.  Along with uninterrupted time to do it.


Organizing also makes me nostalgic.  I was repacking home school stuff and look what I uncovered.  Where have these years gone?  I want kindergarten back.

I missed his noise.  The silence was quite loud (and nice).


I uncovered some of my childhood pics and discovered that Cry Cry may get his good looks from yours truly.  Is it just me?  Do you see some resemblance?

This makes me happy too.


And this.

And a trip to Ikea.  Who doesn't love that?

To be continued... where the boys were this weekend.  I was glad to see their little smiling faces when they got home.

A special thank you for Chris, Papa, and Tandy who made this weekend possible for me.