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.

Getting Back into the Swing of Things

Ater a loooong 3 week winter breakwe started back to school yesterday.  Things went fairly well considering we had a been off so long.  We use the My Father's World curriculum and this year we are using Exploring Countries and Cultures.  We are currently in Europe, we've "been" to Norway, France and now we are in Germany.  I was excited to get to Germany, my grandmother was from there, my mother was born there and I was able to visit Germany with my grandmother as a little girl.  We are learning a little about German customs, the language and the foods.  Sometime this week I'd like to make something that Germans eat regularly.  I thought about Saurbraten and concidering I can hardly get the kids to eat normal food I am thinking this is definitly out!  I thought about Brautweirst but the thought of all those nitrites, well that's out too!  So, after chatting with my great aunt Mesi this evening, we concluded that homemade potato pancakes with applesauce was the way to go.  I can remember my grandma making these for me as a child.  Hopefully my little ones will like them too!