Home Education - Organisation
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Ask and Ye Shall Receive…..Again
Once again God has answered my wants, it wasn’t with something I had to have but something I wanted. He is indeed good to me. For some time I have been wanting a cork board as I haven’t been able to hang the children’s work on the wall anymore because the blue-tac just wouldn’t work:( I priced cork boards and they were rather on the expensive side and simply way too small. A friend suggested cork wall tiles to make into the size I wanted, when I went to the shop they were out and couldn’t tell me when they would be back in stock. So it was one of…
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Indpendent Work and Accountability
This week I have re-introduced an idea we have used before, personal checklist sheets. We have long had our routine for the day pasted on the board so the children are supposed to know what is coming next but for some reason I am often the only one who looks at it. Therefore it is always me telling the children what they have to do next. I know what is required and what they have to do but the children don’t seem to despite the fact that I thought all was clear. In my attempt to address this problem I created an excel spreadsheet with the days of the week…
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Visual Presentation Becomes Keepsake
Every year for the last several years I have gathered the children’s work together at the end of the year and bound it together. These binders have become treasured keepsakes of the children, they hover around whilst I am compiling it all together, anxiously waiting to see their book. I have just finished doing last years, this is a job that takes a good day or so to do six binders. It is my way of validating to the children that their work is important, it is worth keeping and yet at the same time taming the paper tiger. They make a wonderful memory to look back on and from…
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Creating A Family Timeline Keepsake
For so long I have wanted our family to keep a timeline/book of centuries but wasn’t too sure how to go about it, then one day I was browsing at Suzanne’s site and was so excited by the timeline that her boys were using and how they were keeping it. Finally the ‘lightbulb clicked’ and I thought “I could do that”. Suzanne’s timeline was Amy Pak’s History Through the Ages. I just loved the layout but the cost was too prohibitive for an Australian due to postage and currency conversion. I started brainstorming other ideas, sourcing local realtors in my quest to make my own timeline. Contacting the local printers…
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‘Ask and Ye Shall Receive’
Just before Christmas I started dropping hints to Prince Charming that what I would like, really like would be display shelves for our ‘theme’ books. You know like the ones that they have in the children’s section of the library. I thought having the books displayed attractively would entice the dc to pick up the books and read of their own accord. At that time I was gathering the books together and placing them in baskets which was successful too, but you know, always thinking;) One Saturday Michaelangelo and I attended a garage sale and found my Christmas present! I walked in and saw display shelves! Well technically they were…
- Blog, Book Chat, Hearth & Health, Home Education, Home Education - Organisation, In the Library, Living
What I have been busy doing
I’ve been busy this last fortnight spending many hours entering our personal library into a database. Using Readerware I have been able to create a book database by scanning in the barcode(thank you Prince Charming for the scanner) or entering the ISBN of our books. In many cases I have typed in author and title manually if the book is pre ISBN (1960s). I now have our home library manageable due to this software. The neatest feature that I love is the ‘category’ option. Today I was able to enter in ‘Christmas’ and view our relevant books to aid in my planning for Advent. I first trialled the program for…
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Our Montessori Space
After our successful Montessori activites I was inspired to have ‘Montessori shelves’. Our house is small so space is at a premium. Looking around I found a place under the entertainment unit where I could store activities together. First though I needed to pull everything out that was crammed under there. Of course this then created a problem of where to place the games and puzzles removed from the unit. After thinking about it I found a shelf in the linen cupboard that could fit in some of the games if rearranged. Some games were sat on top of a bookcase. Here is my cupboard containing all the manipulatives and…
