Tips for teaching a Houseful

This evening as I folded laundry and tidied up for the new week I listened to a wonderful web seminar called Tips for Teaching a Houseful. The seminar is by Marcia Somerville, she is the author of Tapestry of Grace.  She gives alot of practical tips for schooling with toddlers.  She also gives wisdom for schooling all the way up to highschool.  Thought you might like to listen to it.

How do you school with a Toddler? What does he do all day??

I will let the pictures speak for themselves....

I love this little guy to pieces but he is a mess!

Ever heard of Tangoes?

In addition to games, my kids love puzzles.  I started putting these Tangoes in Humpty Dumpty's (HD) workboxes and they are a big hit.  We have several different pictures and you place the shapes on the picture, kinda like a puzzle. 

HD became quite engrossed in his rocket ship as you can see.  These are great fun and really help build

critical thinking skills. 

All done!  5,4,3,2,1, Blast off! 

Little Boy Blue decided to join in the fun!  What you don't see are the 55 other tangoes on the floor!

The tangoes would also be great for sorting - coloring, size, shape.

A Valentine for my SweeTart

Let me first say that I usually DO NOT condone the humongous sweet tooth that my husband has.  For Valentines Day I did however decide to endulge him just a little.  I decided that instead of a card, I was going to go all out.  I had remembered seeing a Candy Bar Card years ago and decided that was the ticket.

Instead of a poem, I decided to do a Top 10 List, which turned into a Top 12 List.  I got some ideas for the sayings online and some I came up with on my own.  It was actually pretty fun coming up with the little sayings.  I thought you all might get a kick out of seeing it so here is what the card looks like....

In case you can't really read it this is what it says...

The Top 12 Things I Think of When I Think of My SweeTart (sweetheart)

1. I love that you love me to Reese's Pieces (pieces).

2. You bring me Almond Joy (joy).

3. You are better than a 100 Grand.

4. Even if you get a little Chunky, I'd still love ya!

5. You make me Laffy Taffy (laugh).

6. I am thankful for the 4 little Sugar Babies (kids) that you have given me.

7. Even if I searched the whole MilkyWay, I'd never find a Mr. GoodBar like you.

8. I love that after your Payday you let me go on Shopping Spree's.

9. Even though you've told some Whopper's, I still love you.

10. Your my BabyRuth (baby) and I am thankful that our life has been filled with Good & Plenty.

11. Your my knight in shining armor, your better than the 3Musketeers.

12. I will never understand what a whatchamacallit is?? (My husband says whatchamacallit ALL the time, so this was a perfect fit for him)
Lots of Love from your Reese's Peanut Butter Cup (buttercup),
Brandi

Wanna Chocolate Fix??

If your family is like ours, you probably have a love for chocolate too.  So when you combine our love of games with our love of chocolate, what do you get??  Chocolate Fix of course.  For the holiday the kids each got a ThinkFun  game.  ThinkFun are the makers of RushHour, which I think is more well known than Chocolate Fix.  These are fun little one player games, although sometimes we do play together, they teach logic and critical thinking.   The Chocolate Fix game comes with 9 "chocolate candies," the board, cards and a travel bag.  The cards give you clues about how to set up your "box of candies," by shape and by color.  The cards are on a little spiral stand and when you think you've got it, you flip the over and check to see if your correct. 

I really appreciate games that make my kids exercise their little brains. My kids really seem to enjoy this one, and I must say that I do too!
 

Snowmagedon 2010

This is what weve been enjoying for the past week.....

I have never seen so much snow in all my life.  I truly thought I'd died and moved to Vermont.  This winter has been the most snow that our area has EVER gotten.  I think we got like 28 inches the first storm and the another 8-10 on the second storm. Oh did I tell you we are getting more snow on Monday!!!

I can't even begin to tell you how much I am ready for Spring.  I think I might start a Spring Count down.  My kids on the other hand are loving it! 

Our Playroom/ Schoolroom

I have to admit that over the years I have tried many, many ways to keep some form of order for the toys that seem to make a neverending beeline to our house!  I have tried different shelves and different containers trying to find the right system for us and by golly I think I finally got it.  I also have to admit that I have, in the process, driven my dear husband amost insane.  Every so often I go on a whim, as he calls it, to try yet again the find some other way to house the kids stuff.  I enjoy change and he well just doesn't.  Moving on...  I just wanted to share the "current" system that is "currently" working for us.

This is one of our 4 big shelves.  The top shelf holds our manipulitives for math and phonics, which I am glad to have out and easily accessible.  The top stripes baskets have craft kits, clay, stamps, ink, etc.  The 3 smalled baskets some instruments, card and logic games and group work for school.  The bottom 2 striped baskets have paper in one and flashcards in the other.

These are the kids bookshelves which I have tried to keep organized.  I have them organized by board books, letter and number books, dinosaurs, math books, readers, chapter books, art books, science books, and then we try to keep books in a series together.  One of my oldest daughters chores each week is to organize the book shelves.

 The table is for coloring, art and games, the occassionally do school there but most of the time we are at the kitchen table. 

These are the other big shelves.  I used laundry baskets from Target to store our toys in.  I have the bins labeled and most things end up in the right container.  I do a quick reorganized about once a week because I am, as my wonderful hubby says OCD : ).

As you can see I am a collector of games, all most as much as I am of books, LOL!  I love finding games, reasonably priced of course, for the kids.  I love getting games from yard sales, consinment shops, TJ Maxx and I do try to make sure we give them a few for the holiday.  I love being able to add games and puzzle into our studys just to add an extra bit of fun. 

Workboxes.  I think by now most homeschoolers have atleast heard of them, right??  Well, this is my 2nd, oh wait a minute, make that my 3rd attempt at using workboxes.  I have loved the concept of them from day one, except the large shelves that Sue Patrick recommends.  I have so much going on in the playroom already, I just don't have the room for those large shoe shelves.  Anyway, I first tried magazine holders and that worked for a bit.  Packed them up for a while and then a few months later I pulled them out again this time I actually used the schedule stripes, nope that didn't work for us either.  3rd (and FINAL) try, I ordered

the 10 drawer organizing carts from Joann Fabrics.  So far, love it!  I am really trying to just keep it super simple.  I fill their boxes with school work and a few extra fun goodies and off we go.  For some reason we always seem to end up at the kitchen table so I am glad that these carts are on wheels, the kids just pull their cart to the table and start their work.
(Please note:  these pictures were taken while the little one was napping and the 3 bigger kids were outside playing.  This play room only looks this way twice a day, once first thing in the morning and second before they all go to bed : ) 

Played a Game with SomeBody Today

For the holiday I tried to get several games for the kids that had an educational theme to them.  We have played a few of them but today I we played one of my new favorites!  It is called SomeBody.  The game is all about the human body.  There are 5 different types of games to play with in this one game, which I thought was a huge bonus! 

                                                   

Basically, each player (up to 4 players) gets a Body Board and a sheet of reuseable body part stickers.  The game that we played was called Build SomeBody.  We each got our body board and stickers and then you take turns answering questions about the human body and if you answer correctly then you get to add a body part to your board.  The person to fill up your body wins. 
One of the questions that stumped me was "What body part stores extra blood?"  The answer, to my surprise was the spleen.  They also have these experiment cards that are fun too!  I got one that have to count your full breaths for one minute to see how many breathes we take in a minute.  One of my girls got an experiment card that had you take 20 baby steps across the room and explained that was the same length of your intestines.
This game was a breath of fresh air for health today.  The girls and I both loved playing it and I am pretty sure it is going to be a favorite.

Enough already!!!

of snow that is.  I can't ever remember seeing this much snow in my life.  We got hit with 30 inches over the weekend and we are getting about 10-20 tonight & tomorrow.  Never thought I'd be sick of snow, but I am!  I have been trying to stay "prepared" just in case our power goes out.  I have been trying to keep the floors vacuumed (our rottie has been shedding profusely), keeping up with the laundry and last but not least the groceries.  I am so thankful that we have a generator and even more thankful that we haven't had to use it.                                                                                                                                        With all this snow I have to admit I have been having a hard time focusing on school.  We've been more relaxed the last couple days and really just focusing on our core stuff.  I am however very excited about the new workbox carts I ordered.  I had tried the workboxes with magizine holders and that didn't really work so well for us.  So last week I order these new cart's from Joann's in hopes of them working out better for us.  They were supposed to be here yesterday but due to "snowmagedon," they couldn't get here.  They did arrive TODAY!!  My hubby and the kids put them together and I am hoping to fill'em up tonight and start them tomorrow.