August homeschool wrap-up

Wow, August flew by in a whirlwind!  I would love to post weekly wrap-ups, but over the summer it was near impossible.  So, here's a whole month of what we did as far as school goes.  August was a big organizational month for me mostly.  I had to get things cleared out of our dining room so that I could make that into our main homeschool area now.  We just can't fit all of us confined in the tiny computer room anymore, so I decided it was time to really set up the homeschool classroom the way I wanted it.  It's so nice to have things easily accessible.  Now, the computer room is a mess and used to store a lot of our craft supplies, school supplies, and other things we don't use a lot.  I like having it all in a separate room.  I like having us all at the dining room table too.  The only thing I miss about being in the computer room is the confinement.  I can't close the door to keep the kids focused.  They see things that they want to go do in the house and wander off sometimes so that is a challenge we are working on.

To prepare for the school year, I finally got all our workboxes and preschool trays set up!  I'm so excited and happy with how they are set up right now.  They run along the main dining room wall, and next to them is a big counter space where I keep all the supplies that we need on hand.  I would love more space someday, but I'm so thankful for what I have here.  On the left, April has the 12 box system, and in the middle of the 2 racks is Aaron's 6 boxes.  Then, on the right is a rack with Aric's preschool trays.  Someday I'd love to have all the workboxes like Aaron's but they cost quite a bit, so this works for now.

I decided to go ahead and mount our calendar and other meeting things in the living room.  I used to keep this stuff on something that was portable, but got tired of moving it around all the time.  Right now we have a counting tree that we are counting to 100 days on.  I still have yet to get more of our calendar time up, but these are the basics for now.







Really, we don't need backpacks every day.  But, I like the kids to have them because we do go out during our school time occasionally so I want them to have something that I can put their work in when I know we will be out and about the next day.  I did read about another homeschool family who does have their kids bring their backpacks to their table everyday and their backpacks are loaded with all the kids' individual supplies (so you don't have to go chasing after pencils and scissors like we so often are doing).  I think that is a genius idea, and we did load them up with supplies.  But, we keep forgetting to grab our backpacks everyday and bring them to the table.  Maybe eventually we'll get there.







Okay, so that was the planning and organization that took place for getting ready for the Fall and main school time.  I still have to get another shelf up near the dining room for all the kids' main curriculum to go on so it's close at hand for me to put in workboxes when I am getting them ready, and then it will all be complete.  I also loved this idea at Delightful learning where she made special shelves down low for the baby with themed toys on them, so I might include those on our new shelves too.

We did try to keep up somewhat with lessons during the month of August, but it was all very hit or miss with fun outings in the nice weather, camping, birthday parties, and whatever else came our way.  I am ready for the busyness of summer to wind down.  I'm excited that things are starting up for the Fall and that we can settle a little more into staying home during the days.  But, here's what we did during the month of August:

I had fun taking pictures of the kids at the park for their school pictures.  This picture really has nothing to do with school lessons, but I thought it was a good representation of how hot it has been here lately.  This was a shot of Aaron during our photo session.












We made lots and lots of "trains" out of printables.  I had a hard time getting Aaron to put his sight word cards into words, and just when I was going to give up he saw how Aric lined all his body part cards (see picture below, on the right) in a train like he always does with his tot school printables.  He decided he wanted to make a train too!  I said okay, lets make your sight words into a train.  He was all over that, and I finally got him to complete the task.  Aric also made a F is for foot train with the different colored feet from tot school printables.  Working on the letter F seems to have spanned the whole month of August.  It has been real slow going because of summer.  We should be able to move on to letter G soon.

Aaron worked on a page from his USborne sticker soldiers book.  He loves this book, and April was helping him here.  I remember this day.  It was hot and we all just wanted to be done with school for the day.  This was Aaron's last task that day before he could go play.






We did our first row from our Before Five in a Row book "Jesse Bear, what will you wear?"  We really didn't do much except for the lapbook pictured here.  But, we talked a whole lot about the book, and we made up a lot of rhymes.  In the morning when we'd get dressed I'd say the Jesse Bear, what will you wear rhyme but I'd use the boys' names.  Aaron really has a thing for lapbooks.  He loves them!  He loved this lapbook and took it out a lot to look at all the things he did.  Some of the things included in the book are "find the bears" game, letter B, and rhyming pairs.


The lapbook turned out pretty cute.   

I love this little book with a picture of our family and Jesse Bear's family.

We read and talked about the scripture and having a merry heart.

April worked on her Language lessons

Aaron worked on his new electricity set over and over and over again.  I am amazed at how much he loves this set.  He's always trying to make things work, so this set has everything he needs to do just that.

We played lots and lots of legos.  I usually don't let them play with the creationary game like this, but Aric got it down and was playing with it so I let him.  We also have a big drawer of legos that we take out quite often.

Since we were going camping for labor day, we made some play campfires, and roasted marshmallows.  To make this craft we used liquid watercolor on coffee filters to make the red, orange, and yellow flames.  Then we painted toilet paper rolls brown for the logs. and glued it all to a paper plate.