First School Day

I'm so excited to say that we finally had our first day in the new school room!  After looking through all the pictures I want to talk about, I've decided to split this into two posts.  First, a look at the room.  When we bought the house we had the basement finished and had a space made specifically for school.  Unfortunately, no matter how hard we tried, we could not get windows in the room because of the slope of the land.  It is small and won't work forever, but it is a dedicated space and will work for now.

We turned this....

.... into this.

  

I bought the shelves from Ikea and compared to most other shelves, they are a steal.  They all cost somewhere around $150-$200.  They are untreated pine, with no back and no sides.  But, they are very versatile.

I mentioned most of the activities in my last post, but I've got pictures this time.  First we have the few practical life works. On top I put a few shirts and hangers, in the middle is a basket of towels for folding and some pom poms for sweeping, and on the bottom is a box with two belts for buckling. Then we have pattern cards and work mats. Then Air, Land, and Water sorting cards on the top shelf and tweezers with pom poms and shapes on the bottom.

 

On the next set of shelves I have some paper, colored pencils and a circle stencil on the top.  Next is a bucket with clothes pins and color box 1.  Second to the bottom is the Association of Objects cards and on the bottom I have tongs with pom poms for transferring.

While Link was very excited about starting school, I think he was most excited to know that he was going to get to paint again.  So I have some of his art supplies on a top shelf.  This way he can see them and ask for them, but he cannot reach them himself.

Just to give a better view of the room, here it is from both sides.  We did end up putting a computer in here, but it doesn't seem to be too intrusive.  If we expand and need the space, it can be moved out.

I plan to cut some of these shelves in half and use them in the boys' closets for toys.  I don't really need the vertical space and I think it will make the room seem larger if the shelves are lower.  I can only really use one wall because the room is so small.  The double doors at the end have shelves where I keep my supplies out of sight (and store tons of things I don't have any other place for right now).

At The Playground

Well we didn't start school on Friday, but we did have a great time outside this weekend.  We took our first hike since moving to TN.  It didn't go as planned but it was still a lot of fun.  We went to Laurel Fork Falls, but did not make it to the falls.  Apparently there are two ways in - one is 1.2 miles each way, the other is 2.6 miles each way.  We choose the long one of course and only made it about half way.  We had a ton of fun though and everyone is looking forward to trying again, from the other direction.

Daddy carried Bumblebee in his new backpack carrier with the ergo strapped onto the back of it.

Link started out full of energy, running any chance he got!

We found a very fat worm :)

We paused while the other baby on the trip had a snack.  Link found a root to play on.

We didn't have to worry about him drinking enough, he loved using the  bite valve.

It works well for wetting little boys too :)

More running....

Then a tired little boy.  I took Bumblebee in the ergo and Daddy got the big boy!

A Fresh Start

It's been about 6 months since I've had the time to sit down and blog!  In that time our family has spent most of our time house shopping, building, moving, unpacking, and traveling.  We are also now expecting a new addition to the family!  We're finally starting to get settled down and I'm really, really ready to start Link with some pre-school activities.  In our new house we actually have a dedicated school room and I already have the new shelves put together in the room.  This past week I have worked on getting our first set of activities on the shelves.  I tried hard to use only things I already have.  Once we're in a good routine and I know its working well, I plan to buy a few things at a time.  I'm a little nervous about the new baby coming in February as I'm sure it will disrupt our routine.  But, hopefully we'll be used to it enough that Link will be able to continue without my undivided attention.

So here's what I have on the shelves right now:

• Hanging clothes on hangers (Gettman)
• Bucket of clothes pins to pin on the bucket (my pins have springs)
• Land, air, and water sorting cards
• Association fo Objects cards
• Cutting strips
• Towels for folding (Gettman)
• Buckling (Gettman)

I plan to have add transferring with a dropper and with tongs as soon as I can find either.  I'd also like to do a sinking-floating activity, but haven't put a lot of thought into how that would work.  As soon as I get some flowers, I'm going to do flower arranging.  I'm pretty sure I have a little duster and dustpan around here somewhere.  When I find it, I'll put that in with some little pom poms.

I'll try to take pictures tomorrow either while Link works or afterwards!

Right now I think we'll be using the two hours in the morning while Bumblebee is sleeping.  So I don't have anything in the room for him.  Later I plan on having some things for him to join in, but while we're just getting started, I'd like to have the one-on-one time with Link to establish a good routine.

Why Buy Organic?

I went through a faze when I first started feeding Link solids where I was researching food a lot.  I did a sloppy job of it, but I got some decent information and went with it because it sounded reasonable.  Generally I tried to buy organic, and limit sugar and artificial stuff.  The problem with that is that a year later, I couldn't think of any good arguments for buying organic when my grocery bill was seriously over budget.

Then I watched this video and about fell out of my chair.  Then I read this post and laughed a little.  Then I read a bunch more and decided I needed to figure out how I could spend more wisely to make it work.

Lunch?

Why do I have such a hard time thinking of things to make for lunch?  Seriously, PB&J has got to get old sometime; then what will I feed Link?!  I do not like spending 2 hours making a gourmet lunch, but if I could think of anything he'd eat, I'd do it!  All the recipes I find online are too complicated and more than likely he won't eat them.  Who likes broccoli and chicken nuggets anyways?  Last time I tried to feed him a chicken nugget, he said "that's a hash brown" and could not be persuaded otherwise.  He eats chicken fingers occasionally, spaghetti, plain meatballs, PB&J of course, and cucumbers.  Sometimes he eats quesadillas.   Anything else is hit-or-miss.  He used to eat fresh green beans and asparagus, frozen peas, and carrots. He won't touch any of those now.  I envy moms who can whip up healthy meals for their kids and actually get them to eat.  I feel lazy when all I can ever get Link to eat at lunch is PB&J.

Taking a Blog Break

I'm taking a break from blogging for a while because we have too much going on right now.  I just bought most of the shelving I need to get started on a school space and now we're looking for houses.  House hunting is sinking a good bit of time.  We're also traveling a lot.  I also don't have my laptop because I loaned it out.  So, I will be back in a few months once I have my computer back and things settle down a bit.

Art!

After getting some great advice from the Playschool6 Yahoo! group, I finally ordered some much needed art supplies. I ordered everything from Discount School Supply. I read a few blogs that focus on doing art with their homeschooling kids and this was one of the good places they recommended. I also found a list called Jean's Top 10 Art Materials for Toddlers and thought that would be a great place to start. Here's what I ordered:

• COLORED REGULAR WIGGLY EYES-PACK OF 100
• TEACHER'S COMFORT GRIP SCISSORS
• COLORATIONS WASHABLE FINGERPAINT - blue, green, red, yellow, white, black
• SIMPLY WASHABLE TEMPERA 16OZ - blue, green, red, yellow, white, black
• GRIP SCISSORS BLUNT
• CRAYOLA 8 WASH BOLD MARKERS
• COLORATIONS 8 LARGE CRAYONS
• COLORATIONS WASHABLE SCHOOL GLUE 1.25OZ
• COLORATIONS WASHABLE SCHOOL GLUE - 4OZ
• POM-POMS - SET OF 300
• PLASTIC JUMBO CHUBBY BRUSHES -SET OF 12
• FELT COLORED FELT 9" X 12" - 50 SHEETS
• STUMPY SPONGE STAMPERS-SET OF 12
• CRAFT STICKS - 1000 PCS
• MY FIRST SCISSORS BY FISKARS

I also ordered a Baby Bjorn smock from Amazon, and I'm having someone pick up an easel from Ikea for $15.

Link was SOOO super excited about all of his art supplies, we ended up doing everything the first day after we got the package.  I got mostly great videos, I'll have to link them up once I get them formatted, but here are some pictures.

Oh, the excitement!

Left hand...

Right hand...

Oh, no.. its on his fingers

see? you wash my hands now?

I said, show me your googly eyes! 

He used the tempera paints, finger pains and then glued all sorts of things to his paper and colored with his crayons and markers.  Watching him with the finger paints was neat.  Link is very peculiar about getting things on his hands.  I like how he experimented with how it felt on his fingers and how it spread on the paper.

I'm so glad I finally exposed Link to these activities.  He asks for it about every day!  I love how he loves it!