Ready For School!!!

Well I spent my birthday yesterday finishing getting our schoolhouse cleaned and ready for the start of school!  And I am happy to say I accomplished that!!    WHOO HOO!!!

Here is our teaching area with their cute little desks and chairs all positioned around our white board!

Here is a view of my desk and the craft table!  I don't know if Alyssa will fit in her chair (on the end of the table) all year but she is still fitting in it now...so we will go with it and figure out what to do later when she no longer fits in it! LOL!

Reading is going to be the main focus in Seth's school year so we have almost a whole bookcase dedicated to his books!!  So excited!!!

I have grouped all our games and toys and stuff together.  Hopefully I have enough to keep Aaron and Alyssa busy!

The green box is for Alyssa and Aaron's "stations".  I have an awesome friend who gave me an idea of putting fun activities in bags.  I have also included coloring books, fun toys, and games in there as well.  Hopefully I will be able to quickly teach them that they can have one activity out at a time.  If they want to do another activity they have to put up their current activity first.  Hopefully there will be enough variety that they won't get bored.  (Aaron won't be doing as many "stations" as Alyssa because he will be participating with Seth in some of his school activities).

The blue box underneath the green box is all of our puzzles.  I went through and put them all in ziploc bags (cut out the picture of the puzzle from the box to put in the bag as well to know what puzzle it is). This was also an idea from the same friend!!  Hopefully this will help us keep our puzzles together better.  The boys love to do puzzles so puzzle time should be a lot of fun for them :-)

Another view of the cute little desks - with their cute school boxes on them!  We are ready for school!!

We are looking at starting school on Monday August 22nd!  We will school Mondays thru Thursdays and will take Fridays off!  Every other Friday we will have homeschool co-op classes!  The Fridays we are not in school we are just going to have fun!!

Seth told me yesterday afternoon "Momma I can't wait for my first day of 1st grade!"

Our Very Cute School Boxes

Ok I have to brag on my mom for a minute! :-)  She made the boys the most adorable plastic canvas boxes!  We are going to use them for school boxes!

Here is Seth's box with his lid on!

And here is an inside view.  I found that I had some plastic containers the perfect size to fit right inside.  They make the box more sturdy and protect the boxes!

Here is Aaron's box.  (at the moment the lid is lost...He wanted to play with his box a couple of days ago and lost the lid).

Aren't they adorable?!?!  What a fun way to keep up with school supplies!

Getting Ready for our next school year!!

We have been having a full and FUN Summer!!  The highlight of our summer has been the weekly play dates that we are having with kids from our homeschool group!  We are really developing some neat friendships (mom and the kids)!!  It has truly been an answer to prayer!!

Well starting this week I am getting SERIOUS about getting our schoolhouse ready for the next school year!  I have been given some good advice that the kids feet should be firmly planted on the floor when doing any writing in school.  Well, our table and chairs that we had were not allowing my kids to be able to do that.

Last week hubby and I found some desks at IKEA.  They were actually laptop desks but we decided that they were just the right size, they could adjust to be flat on top and their height was adjustable (and the price was just right!)  So we brought them home and got them put together.

Today though I discovered that the chairs that had for the boys (desk chairs with wheels) were still too high for them to be able to plant their feet on the floor even at their lowest setting!  THANKFULLY though a good friend of mine, Angela, gave me some little kids folding chairs that were perfect height!!  We will still use the office chairs at our craft table and when they are at the computer - but now they are sitting "correctly " for doing their writing and schoolwork!

So here is a view of one of the desks and chairs. (you can see Alyssa in her little desk in the background!  She is so proud to have her own little desk as well (-: )

The boys were so excited when I used some stickers to put their names on their desks :-)

I also found that I had some plastic baskets that fit just perfect under the chair to hold notebooks, pencils, etc...

The kids are super excited about their desks!  I think they are going to work out great!!

Ok - back to work!  :-)

Kellie