heartofdakota.com

Hi everyone! We have completed our first week of school! Yay! It went really well! We started Beyond on Monday with my daughter. She did great! She had a cheerful attitude and just breezed though the week. The best thing about the whole week was how much improvement that I have noticed since this time last year in Little Hearts. Last year, when we started the Thornton Burgess books, she had the hardest time sitting still and actually listening to chapter books with no pictures. Well, with the small chunks of Storytime that we did each day, she has just blossomed! When we read our portion of Helen Keller today, she was so disappointed that we couldn't keep reading!! I told her that we would go and pick up some more chapter books. So, for everyone going through that this year in Little Hearts, stick with it, because it really works! So far, besides Storytime, her favorite is the Poetry Copywork. I bought some cute storybook handwriting paper and she has loved doing a little each day. She can't wait to get her Poetry book going. She has always loved making her own books. She is doing so well with her Emerging Readers also. We loved The Reading Lesson last year! It was a perfect fit for her. I could just go on and on about how smoothly our week went.

I hope that everyone has as good of a first week as we did! We love HOD!

Christy

Ok, I got them in order, but they are HUGE! If you have any tips about how to get them smaller the next time, let me know! Maybe we can do the week in review some now.

Christy

Christy,

I LOVE your post on using Beyond for your first week! We, too, just finished our first week with Beyond! We are also doing CTC with my 10 yr. old, and LHTH with my 4 and 2 yr. olds! It's proving to be a fun adventure!

I love your room for school and the organization you've done! Looks Great! I have done a good bit myself and need to do more! I would love to post in the week in review sometime when I get a chance. It will be great knowing that there are others that will be doing the same units we are. Our schedule is a little different this year. We're doing a week off every month, to accomodate my husband's shift work. He works a different shift (2nd or 3rd) one week a month and the children wouldn't have family time with Daddy if we did school through those weeks. So it means we start earlier in the year and end later in the year, but I think it'll work out nicely and prevent burnout! So we may not be on the same weeks you are, but will still be enjoying the same GREAT program!

Thanks for the pic's!

In Christ,

Lisa

Your room is gorgeous (and the color is now serving as my inspiration for our school room as I knew I wanted a green, but wasn't sure what shade)! Great pics! I have one of those PC caddies too, but mine holds my large utensils. I may have to get another one for our supplies.

That is great! I love your school area too We will be starting Beyond a week from Monday with my 1st & 2nd grader.

Christy,
Thanks for sharing your first week and the pics! I'm a very visual person and and organizational nut, so this was very helpful for me. And the pictures gave me a visual of the work in Beyond for my daughter.

Laurie in MN

Oh my goodness!!! Your homeschool room is such an inspiration. I'm not sure if I'm now wishing for a designated room to be as organized as you or if I could send my son to your house to be homeschooled ! Thank you so much for sharing. Although my house is too small to have a homeschool room, your pictures have really given me some ideas I hope to utilize.

Blessings,
Pam

Looks like you had a GREAT first week...and I love your school room too. May keep the pics for inspiration....

Oh, thanks! You are all being TOO sweet! This is definitely NOT a dedicated school area. If I had turned my camera to the right, just a bit, you would have seen my kitchen sink full of dirty breakfast AND lunch dishes This is unusually clean because it was our first week of school, and I have been working on it the last couple of weeks. I will admit that I am a little (ok, a lot ) OCD about being organized. And, I will say back before I had kids, my house was SOOO clean, but those days are gone. Honestly, I really don't mind that much, because I would rather have a totally messy house with my kiddos here, than a clean one without them. The kids and I eat at this table during the day while hubby is at work. So, we never start school without having to scrape dried cereal or something else off it. So, don't be fooled by the pics! Ha!

But, thanks again so much! I am also a VERY visual person and I have enjoyed reading and seeing everyone else's ideas too!

Have a blessed evening!
Christy

I'm interested in where you got you paper...or do you have a stamp that has the words written at the top? I'm sure my son would love to have a pre-numbered spelling paper!

I love how bright and white everything is in your school room! (My house must be needing a fresh coat of paint. )

So glad that you had a good 1st week. It's been happy here, too! I love to see the progress of my kids as they learn.

Kathleen

Hi inHIstiming! The paper that we used for her poetry copywork is this:

http://www.fsp3.com/scripts/ProductCate ... ry=L0701XX

We probably wouldn't have gotten that, but our local school supply store just closed down and they had a 75% off going out of business sale. I bought a couple of packs of it last year, not really knowing what we would use it for, and now I wish that I had gotten more of it at that price. My daughter just loves the pretty paper. The first page of her poem (with the art picture) is called Smart Start story paper and the back pages were Smart Start writing paper.

Now, on her spelling test, I just got a black marker and wrote what I wanted on it. The paper is sold at Walmart or Target. It's by Mead. I got just the plain handwriting paper for 1st grade and then I also bought another pack of the plain storybook paper. They are both sold in a composition style notebook that you tear out. Our Walmart here was sold out of it, so I got mine at Target. You may can order it online also.

Hope this helps!
Christy

I love your school area and cabinet! I love to organize too and right now I am waiting to get some more bookshelves so I can get our homeschool room just the way I want it. Where did you get your table? I have been looking for a table but couldn't describe to my hubby exactly what I wanted but the table you have is perfect!

Hey Stephanie! Thanks! The table was another sale item! It's a project desk from Pier One. I got it about 4 years ago. I think that they were discontinuing the white, that's why they were on sale. But, I think that I have seen either a dark brown or a black one in there lately. I didn't check the cost, just happened to notice that it looked like mine. We had the table before we even talked about homeschooling. I used to put cookbooks and extra kitchenware in it. But, it has been a very good school table. We keep Bibles, Dictionaries, Atlases, etc in one end of it. The other end also has cubby spaces in it. We loosely do a workbox type system in the other side. I separate her stuff out so that she knows what comes next, but honestly a lot of days we just grab it out of our cabinet one at a time or stack it on the table. HOD is so simple, a lot of times she just looks with me as we check off the boxes in the guide.

I wish that we had more space to put some bookshelves in. They keep all of their fun books in their rooms in baskets beside their beds. But, they have so many now, they are running out of space.

And, then, all of our other books (like Little Hearts that we are saving for my son) that we don't have room for in the kitchen go into a closet in hubby's office. We only keep what we are currently using in the kitchen.

Christy

christyg wrote:Oh, thanks! You are all being TOO sweet! This is definitely NOT a dedicated school area. If I had turned my camera to the right, just a bit, you would have seen my kitchen sink full of dirty breakfast AND lunch dishes

If this was my house you'd see dog hair tumbleweeds and pawprints on the floor. I'd say dishes aren't so shocking.