The Homeschool Cupboards...

Here are the pictures. I am really pleased with them, and the boys were a little impressed this morning too. LittleH#1 even found something in one of his books that he thought he'd lost - a little press out Mercury for a solar system he hasn't finished making yet... he thought he'd lost the planet but now we can complete the model. As an aside, we made a fantastic Space lapbook a few weeks ago - my idea of a nice neat little 'putting a topic to bed' kind of thing. However, our attention span for the Solar System seems to rival infinity itself. I am not fighting it too hard. I am learning more and more from it myself!

The cupboards - before, during and after:







Slight matter of white drawers to the left also needing to be weeded and, brainwave - labelled, but apart from that a 100% improvement. You will just have to imagine the insides of the cupboards - neat shelves, equipment sorted by category - maths supplies, phonics and word cards, duplo letter and number tiles, craft materials...

It's the truth, but Matthew took the final photos and unfortunately didn't think to photograph the perfectly sorted cupboad insides. Never mind! I already said it wasn't a perfectly serene and inspiring homeschooling blog, and I am not going to close up on beautiful objects strategically and artistically placed on shelves. I think they always look wonderful but you would have to know what you were doing first. I will leave that to the experts.

Spring Cleaning. In Autumn.

At least I think it's Autumn, I haven't got used to the order of seasons here yet. I can't help myself calling it spring cleaning. Anyway, what it means is that I am reorgansing the school shelves. With a view to planning the rest of the year.

It is a year since we began educating at home and I am still struggling with terminology - do I want to call it homeschooling, home educating, school work, book work...?

So for the sake of argument (and secure in the knowledge we moved away from the idea of 'school at home' even before we moved out of the school) I find it easier for now to use the 'school' based words and education creeps in every now and again.

One would hope education crept in every now and again, I suppose.

So as well as struggling with terminology, I am also struggling with organisation and am re-organising the shelves and cupboards again to make the most of the space I have, and also to home the supplies and materials that have multiplied over the course of the year. Also to make room for the fair bit of work we have produced, before it goes to the Pool Room. Currently the Pool Room is just a drawer in the bottom of a chest of drawers we brought from England but we need a more organised and bigger Pool Room now that the number of children, learners and beautiful pieces of work worthy of the Pool Room have increased.

One thing that this blog is not going to be, is a place to come and draw serene inspiration for perfect schoolness. But it might give someone else like me confidence, ideas, and satisfaction that their house (and school shelves) isn't as bad as they once might have thought.

I have taken a 'before' photo. I will take a 'during' and sometime later this week, even an 'after' photo might appear.

We are currently on 'holiday' from school after not taking many breaks at all this year. We kept up some sort of school the entire year to allow for getting LittleH#1 back where I want him to be (post school - grrrrrr), and to allow for the time we would lose when LittleH#4 was born. I am amazed that we have done so well, all things considered, so before I burn out and it all falls over, I am having a break to reorganise and plan ahead for our next year.

Currently my school year runs to March, it seems. I will plan ahead to December so we can realign ourselves a bit. We might even get a summer break!

I told the children we are on 'holiday' from school. LittleH#2 asked if we can do work tomorrow. So it looks like I am running a Holiday Club as well.