The long awaited first red tomatoes have arrived! They don’t go very far when they are cherries.
My husband finished a shelf he’s been working on for all our school books.
It’s beautiful! Solid oak.
Music Festival
This is her 3rd year playing violin in the Winter Music Festival so she earned a trophy. In the Music Festival a student plays 2 pieces from memory before a judge with only a musical accompanist present. The judge then writes a critique of the students performance. The experience is very similar to trying out for a part…preparation, nerves, etc.
She also has completed the first Suzuki book, a major accomplishment. She now needs to prepare for her first book recital.
Last Day Completed
Schools out at our house!
I’m looking forward to spending more time on projects.
Box Day
If you are a homeschooler, than you know what box day is; a much anticipated event.
We have 8 school days left. Wahoo!
A Tour of Our New School Room
Last summer we added onto our garage to make room for a new school room. We have been schooling in a room a little bigger than a hallway for over 4 years now.
I really like all the school materials out of sight when we are not schooling. And I think having a separate room where we “get to work” helps with the focus. Besides, we have enough trouble finding things outside of “school.” I have nightmare visions of what it would be like to spend all day looking for the reading book! That is how the rest of our life goes.
Here’s a side view.
I love the decks.
Construction was finished in the fall. I didn’t start thinking about furnishing until the end. And I didn’t budget for that either. Luckily, stores were trying to unload the last of their lawn furniture. 5 yr old has been vacuuming with that little thing since I bought it. In her perfect world, it would be silent. And then she would never need to turn it off so that people could talk.
Here’s the other end of our seating area. We have been enjoying bible studies and such there. The heat is wood. My main reason for not pushing to move in faster. I waited patiently for my husband to put together the desks because I didn’t look forward to keeping 2 fires burning. It’s very cold in the mornings still. As you can see, we just moved in a couple weeks ago. All the cardboard is packing material waiting to be kindling.
I work with the kids at the table. Previously we always did our work together on the floor. That is 5 yr olds little desk. She had a little plastic preschool table and was waiting for the other kids to move out and make room for her to take over a desk.
The only furniture I previously had was: white boards, chalkboard, 5 yr old’s desk, and the table against the wall.
Here are the other kids hard at work. : ) They really wanted their “own” desks. The big request was lots of room to be able to have a bunch of books open while writing. 9 yr old and 7 yr old have been passing notes back and forth through the computer chord holes in their desks.
As you can see, my poster got wet in the move. The roof was dripping at the time. The chart is for checking off memorization work.
You can just barely see the french doors where we walk in.
Hope you liked the tour.
Early Readers with b and d confusion.
b and d are hard for beginning readers. Here is a neat little trick to discern the two:
Hold up the hand and use the thumb and first finger to make the ball on each hand. The other fingers are the stick. When you do this it spells the word bed. So that if you know the word bed you can figure out which letter is b and which one is d.
My little one is too little to think about the word bed, so I modified it like this. She holds up her hands to match them to the letter. Then she can read if it is b or d. After a couple days she memorized it to her hand. Now if the letter matches her left hand she knows that it is B and if it matches her right hand she knows that it is D.
Fantabulous Coloring Books
My kids like to color while I read to them from books with no pictures. Since they do tend to use up a good number of coloring books, I like them to be a little more advanced than puppies, kittens and horses. If you haven’t seen coloring books like this before just take a look. Here are a few I had laying around the house.
Color by number.
Coloring books to aid memory verses.
In German.
A coloring book about India.
I order from Rod and Staff books. But most mennanite curriculum carriers would have them.
