Preparing For Homeschooling

14 Aug, 2008 Family dustbuster homeschool
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Time is counting down for our first child’s entrance into homeschooling and my wife is definitely getting ready for it.

We’ve…

Ordered all the books
Read through the materials
Filled out the necessary paperwork
Begun scheduling
Changed our Dining Room into our homeschooling room.

The last one is almost finished with what we did tonight. Tonight I took the kids out to get a white-board and cork-board so that we can put homeschool related stuff where the kids can see it.

I have plaster walls, so every time we want to affix something to them, I have to drill a hole to place a holder in it and then the screw. And it leaves a mess all over the floor.

Fortunately, a little while ago we picked up a dustbuster that really does a nice job when you don’t have a lot of a mess—definitely not enough to get the whole vacuum cleaner out for.

We’ve been using it since we purchased our rug for the Dining Room, and other than the time that it clogged it does a pretty good job.

What kinds of decorations do you put up for homeschooling? Anything permanent, or mostly things that can come down?

5 Comments

Colleen said,

Wrote on August 15, 2008 @ 7:10 am Subscribed

Sounds awesome. I met a woman last night that who was going to start home-schooling her 5yo in this next week too!

Are there online resources to help with teaching the materials? More specifically math?

Colleens last blog post..First Day of School
Mary said,

Wrote on August 15, 2008 @ 3:06 pm

Great job, MIn, and Mrs. MIn! I’ve not done anything permanent to alter our rooms, we don’t have a school room…when I need the white board, I just fetch it from my closet and we prop in on a kitchen counter or on the hearth. I have a homeschool bookshelf in the LR, next to the computer…this is where we keep the girls’ binders and all school related books. I also have a carrying file box for each year. This is where I keep all their schoolwork, filed away for each child.

Colleen, there is SO much out there online. Just google math tutoring for instance. I’ve joined many yahoo groups that were created just for the curriculums I use. They’ve got files and resources that save me a BUNDLE of time, plus the creativity of moms who have BTDT!
MInTheGap said,

Wrote on August 15, 2008 @ 3:26 pm

@Mary: The material we have actually wants you to decorate a room, and my wife really would like a separate homeschooling room, but that’s not going to happen with our current house configuration.

As for math, we’re doing Math-U-See which has DVD’s as well as workbooks– I’m pretty excited about the program.
Yvonne said,

Wrote on August 17, 2008 @ 8:30 am

When we first started homeschooling we dedicated a room to our learning. We decorated with stuff that we could change as the children learned. We madea timeline, created a school name, had fun educational posters and whatnot. But then reality struck. We never actually were in there! LOL

We much prefer the couch for our group learning and then each child finds a spot and sits down to do his/her independent work. You’ll often find mine at the kitchen table, on the floor, in the backyard on the porch, or laying on a bed.

So eventually, we dismantled the schoolroom and used it for a bedroom. But we do keep a small whiteboard in the dining room.

Have fun this year! Our homeschool program has morphed over the years…growing and changing with each child. What a blessing!

Yvonnes last blog post..Grace – Frogs, Toads, Buttons, Bows
MInTheGap said,

Wrote on August 18, 2008 @ 9:10 am

@Yvonne: Thanks– your comment made me smile.

One of the things that we realized quickly was that this would probably be one of the only years we’d be able to follow the book’s decorating guidelines anyway because we’re not running a class for only one child or only one age, but for multiple kids! So it won’t be long before “the room” will be more generic.

I think that there’s a level of fun and excitement in decorating a room for school, so I don’t think that will ever go away, but I can see the dining room becoming primarily a dining room again.