Monday 9 March 2015

Our New Learning Space {NBTS}

This post comes with a WARNING.  You do NOT need a personal library to home educate, although it does seem to be a common side effect in many home educating family homes.  Paul indulges my Bibliomania habit and my Dad custom built some bookshelves to make storage easier.  I think that I would have had a lot of books even if I had not home educated.  Home education has simply empowered me to find excellent twaddle-free literature.

A few years back I did a show and tell post about our learning spaces.  We tend to homeschool using our whole home. Nothing had really changed over the last three years. This years Aussie Not back to school party Learing Spaces theme over at Our World Wide Classroom has inspired me to change things up a little at home and move my primary learning area into the same space that most of the books are kept.

We found a great couch at the local op-shop and that is at the rear of the room.  I moved the small shelf next to this courch.  I keep our current read-alouds here along with a few reference materials and a couple of items that are to tall for any of the other shelves in the house.  The beautiful flowers are a gift from my daughter before she flew out to the USA two weeks ago.



I spent a few weeks rearranging my shelves and removing books I know I will not be using with Nathaniel and making some new sections.  I wrestled with how to arrange the books on the shelves which took a while.



If you're anything like me you'll want to get in there for a closer look at what sorts of books are housed on the shelves.

I finally took the plunge after 10 years of home educating and used the colour stickers on the Sonlight Core books to keep the different cores together. I am pleased that I finally did do this as it's made life so much easier.  It's so much easier to locate a specific book in a specific core. I can now see at a glance if a book is in the wrong place too.


I decided to try and place the biography style books together. Some of these are specifically for homeschooling and some of them are for me.


I also rediscovered my character study resources and will be adding these to our studies later this year.


One of my current passions is learning about the Charlotte Mason method of home educating.  The more I've looked into it the more I found out about Nature Journaling and journals, so over the last couple of years I have been collecting some resources for it.


Earlier this term I attended a Charlotte Mason workshop where classical subjects were talked about so I decided to place my Charles Dickens reources, William Shakespeare, Hymn Study, Artist and Composer Studies resoruces together.


Other posts in this years Not Back to School blog hop
It's been so much fun rediscovering the treasures that have been hiding on my bookshelves and knowing they are in full view so I remember to use them when we're studying.  I am looking forward to a little more tweaking of this space but so far I am very pleased with the results.

Have you blogged about your homeschool space ?  If so I would love to come and see so please leave a link either in the linky or in the comments.

Blessings
Chareen
PS If my spelling is not a 100% this week I would ask for your patience. I am borrowing a friends laptop (who happens to be german) and so I have no way to do any spell checking as her pc has a default setting of German ...

Saturday 7 March 2015

On a mini vacation of sorts {HSMJ}

 In my life this week…
  • I have been spoiled.  There is no other way to say it I have!  One of Paul's work collegues needed a house sitter.  I am currently living in the Brisbane Ranges.  My view is of the national park and the sound of silence is supreme.  It's amazing! The only down side is that internet access is almost zero so this blog will be a littlle quiet for the next two weeks.
  • I really want to try and make this Faux Stained Glass Mosaic Luminary
  • Please pray for Debra over at Footprints in the Butter her Mom passed away this week :'( Yesterday, I was THAT Mom




In our home school this week…
  • We finalised Nathaniel's flag design for Boys Brigade.
  • We have continued most of our current history read alouds and have started reading Mountain Born.
Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…
  • Fox Hill
  • Two families have come out to visit us here.


My favourite thing this week was…
  • Seeing Jane bless Nathaniel with a pocket watch. She has gone to the USA to visit some families there.  She purchased two pocket watches and set hers to Aussie time and Nathaniel's to USA time.  That way they could both know what the time is where the other is.



 Things I’m working on…
  • Forming a good routine.  Nathaniel and I are struggling to find our rhythm this year.  I'm hoping that our time away at the farm and away from distraction will help us both to find a good workable rhythm together.
 On the WWW I’m reading…
 I’m cooking…
  • Nothing new at the moment.  I am however re-reading the Trim Healthy Mama book and rediscovering it's treasures.  I am determined this year to regain health and my waistline ...
 A photo, video, link, or quote to share…


Blessings
Chareen


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Photo collages made with: Photoscape a FREE photo editor


A Week In Review Link UP

Join Lisa and I each week and share your week in review.  We look forward to reading about your

  • Week in Review
  • Field Trips
  • School Work 
  • Homeschool projects
  • And anything homeschool related.
Here is a button for your post.
My Week in Review Link UP


Thursday 5 March 2015

A Green Fish {Virtual Fridge}

This Week
Last week we completed this fish in the sea pictured inspired by The Golden Fish by Paul Klee.  We used The Usborne ART Treasury on page 28-31.






Featured This Week
Wow so many wonderful things shared in last weeks Virtual Fridge link up it was difficult to choose which ones to feature.  This week there are two that caught my eye.

Love this tutorial over at Mothers Messy Madness - Easy Spring Plants.


I love Crystal's super easy science / art tutorials over at the Science Kiddo.  Here is one for Rainbow Paper.


Your Turn

I invite you to take some photo's of your children's artistic pursuits put them in a post and link up with me I would love to come over and see the wonderful art your children have enjoyed doing.
Virtual Fridge Link Up

Blessings
Chareen

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The Virtual Fridge a weekly art meme where we can hang our children's art on a virtual fridge. This meme was started by Jennifer over at A Glimpse of our Life who kindly invited three other bloggers to co-host this weekly meme.

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