Satori Smiles » Organization

Starting a Writing Center (or Drawing Center)

Angela — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 02:10:39 +0000

Satori loves to write and draw on our kitchen table. It’s expensive and I’d rather not have her on there, so I am putting up a little table in the kitchen for her to write and draw. Just yesterday I took advantage of Michael’s 40% off sale and got Derwent watercolor pencils, Kohl-i-noor woodless colored pencils, 50 Cray-pas Junior Pastels, 50 Crayola markers and some $1 Target containers to store them in. Messy stuff like actual watercolors and paints will stay downstairs in the craft room. I just thought it would be more inspiring to have windows and be near people when she wants to write and draw.

I don’t have an updated photo of all this.

When we get back from our trip, I’ll be on the lookout for building an accessible arts/drawing center and/or writing center. So far, Satori is using this little table all the time already! I think it’s a good idea. So right now I’m open to any ideas. I want everything easy to reach and tempting to use… I know there’s a word for this style, just haven’t looked into it much yet.

Starting our Drawing lessons We are going to be sketching and drawing a lot...
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SOTW Lessons and K-1 Schedule pages

Angela — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:02:42 +0000

Behind the scenes I’ve been working on updating a SOTW Lessons page. I started making this page last year as I was preparing our SOTW lessons, but now I brought it into the blog for easy viewing. Seeing all the chapters lined out on one page makes it easy for me to see at a glance where we are, for current, past, and future lessons. This is a work in progress. I actually told Susan Wise Bauer’s team I was doing this, so that I could come up with something that wouldn’t infringe on her hard work. I think it will actually make people more interested in her program, as well as helping me plan, so everyone wins.

Also updated is our K-1 Weekly Lesson schedule. I’m a spontaneous person, so I don’t have a schedule down to the hour. Click to see full view, or head to the link above. You may notice I finally cut out our Explode the Code workbook, it was redundant. We cover reading/phonics with our normal reading and readingeggs.com. We cover handwriting in our normal handwriting and copywork for several subjects. Spelling is adequately covered in All-About-Spelling. There are subjects that we haven’t covered yet this year, like Science and Art. I do feel bad about that, and hope to get organized enough to include them. Other subjects, like Spanish/Latin/piano/swimming class/drama classes maybe we’ll start later this spring or summer.

A Sample Monday

If I had to describe a typical day, here’s how a typical Monday might go. As you can see from our lesson schedule above, actual sit-down work is less than two hours a day, so most of our day is spent as freetime. For some reason, we both like to do Math at night, after we both get a second wind. It has become very enjoyable, but the disadvantage is that if we’re busy, we sometimes skip it. I need to prioritize certain lessons to make sure we cover them as planned.

9:00: Wake up, breakfast, shower, check email.
10:00-10:20 – Reading (OPG)
10:20-10:40 – Spelling (OPG)
10:40-11:00 – History (SOTW)
11:00-12:00 – Mama reads aloud, Satori plays ReadingEggs.com, watches educational video, etc…
12:00-1:00 – Lunch
1:00-5:00 – Freetime – Play time. Possible craft. Possible educational videos/movies.
5:00-6:00 – Dinner
6:00-6:20 – Math (RS)
6:20-6:25 – Writing (WWE)
6:25-7:00 – Mama might work on blog, while Satori might color/play.
7:00-9:00 – Playtime, mama workout time, TV time…
Before bedtime, Satori reads a few stories from her readers, and then Mama reads aloud from a chapter book.

K-1 Schedule I use Homeschool Skedtrack for our scheduling, but one thing...
SOTW Lesson plans I’ve uploaded our SOTW Lesson Plans on my Google Docs...
Our Home School Room pages updated Today I updated a few pages of our Home School...

Living Room

Angela — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:29:06 +0000

Here are some photos of our newly decorated living room/family room. (I had promised my mom to take these.) This is just below our Loft area where we do most of our lessons. So you can see that the family can stay connected if some of us are hanging out in the Loft or in the living room watching TV.

This new furniture kicks out and reclines, and most of it even rocks back and forth. It’s so comfy to curl up and watch movies or read.

Very important to me in this little redesign of this room was a place to read comfortably. With the adoption coming up, we may be losing our Library room to a bedroom, so I still wanted a place to curl up with my children and read. This recliner chair certainly fills that need!

This piece below was sitting in our basement playroom unused. It is supposed to be a media center, but we decided to convert it to a bookcase showcasing large hardcover books, like the kind you’d put on a coffee table. I’ll get a swivel dictionary stand to hold our unabridged New Oxford American dictionary.

When we bought this house, we inherited all this rustic Aspen furniture. We added two new pieces to this room, the bookcase above, and the end table. These join the huge entertainment center in the room, as well as all the window sills and railings in the room.

This weekend, we got some beautiful Colorado snow. You can’t see all the windows, but this room has windows climbing way up high and we can see the snow-covered trees surrounding the house.

Homeschool Room section updated The past few days I’ve been working on the blog,...
Painting our Craft Kitchen – color input needed When we first started homeschooling last spring, we first converted...
Added a few new homeschool room photos We just got back from Denver where we went to...

Added a few new homeschool room photos

Angela — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 06:48:56 +0000

We just got back from Denver where we went to the Denver Nature and Science museum (photos to come later) and I decided to update some of the blog pages.

I’ve been busy working on some photos to update the Homeschool Room section.

Fitness gym…

Kraft Kitchen has been updated with a new child-sized adjustable height table and chair…

… as well as a new Craft Embellishment Center.

History Hangout has new timelines up…

And more… Check out the Homeschool Rooms section.

Homeschool Room section updated The past few days I’ve been working on the blog,...
Our Home School Room pages updated Today I updated a few pages of our Home School...
History Hangout You can’t say I don’t prepare for the future! I...

Making Your Own Timeline Figures with Dymo Label

Angela — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 02:57:47 +0000

I love organizing and labeling things. You can get a Dymo Label Printer for under $100, and never have to buy ink or toner, just the labels. Super useful for homeschooling. I use them to print out labels, postage, and now Timeline Figures!

This evening I decided to start our history timelines. (I will blog about my favorite timeline choices in another post.) My timelines both came with sets of timeline figures, but neither had King Narmer or a shaduf figure, both of which we’ve studied in Story of the World. I hate waiting for snail mail if I order some printed or on CD. I also wanted them in label sticker format, I didn’t want to have to cut them myself. So I decided to make my own!

First I had to see if this was going to be easy. I loaded up the Dymo software and within a minute I had my first timeline figure of King Narmer up! (He is the tiny black and white sticker on the below timeline, you can click the image to see it full-size).

For those of you that are curious which timeline that is, it is the Classical Education Timeline Complete Package that is currently being revised. You can also find it at Pandia Press. Based on the messages, they are supposed to come out with their new version January 2010. They have one day left! It comes with a sticker pack, but doesn’t have all that you’ll need. I’ll blog more about this timeline and our Add-A-Century timeline later.

Here he is up close.

Now that that was such a cinch, here it is documented with pictures. First I use Google Images to find a picture of the image. I copy that to my clipboard (right-click, Copy). Then I pull up the Dymo software and insert the image into my label. I had chosen “Fit to Screen” so it automatically resizes. It is also easy to put a black outline around the image, the better to see it on the timeline. Then I add a text blurb, and press the big green Print button.

Immediately comes out the beautiful label!

This is a Dymo Twin Turbo printer which holds two different labels. I can have label and postage ready at the same time, or keep a small and large label ready. I believe I have a small Dymo label printer leftover from my business, which might be fun to do as a blog giveway sometime.

And our second timeline figure it up!

If you are a member of Hannah HS Yahoo Group, they have very helpful files where you can find free timeline and history cards to print off as well.

Public Domain Images that you can use for Timeline Figures:

Historical Portrait Gallery
Clipart ETC – Floridal Educational resource: 58,000 pieces of free educational clipart are available for school projects
Classroom Clipart

Want to just purchase ready-made Timeline Figures?

If you do not want to make your own, there are plenty of timeline figure choices. This one is probably the most well-known:

History Through the Ages offers hundreds of high quality timeline figures (illustrated by Amy Pak). You can get 1,260+ figures on a 2-CD set for $74.95. Store them in this beautiful “Record of Time” journal.

Ancient History Timeline Satori learned a lot about maps and geography this week,...
Preparing for Story of the World Now that we’ve had a thorough study of prehistory, we...
Blog Commenters (specifically, those that are attempting to comment) Thank you to those who went out of their way...