Our Homeschool Room

Homeschool room inspiration: something I spent a lot too much time browsing Pinterest and the Internet looking for the "perfect" room and coming up empty. I found great ideas! But guess what? No one had the exact same space or stuff as we do. So I picked out some paint swatches, decided to make Mr. J's honey do list a bit longer and off we went!

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Our reading nook turned out great! It's wonderful to have a cozy place to curl up and read or pretend.Underneath is our basket of pretend costumes and hats. The boys have so much fun with them! I love having things around to encourage imaginative play. What's your favorite pretend play encourager?

The supply closet is sort of organized but still a bit scary as Mr.J hasn't finished building the second set of cubby shelves, but it is a lot better than having things strewn across the house! We have our art supplies, paper, bowls and baskets, unit study materials, printer and laminator , manipulatives, and a host of other goodies in there.

I do have some things up higher than you might see in a Montessori classroom, but Mr. F is a bit of a chewer and as much as I love our dollar bin calendar, I don't think it's safe for teething.  You can see my comfy chair and blanket for snuggly read aloud time. The Cars rug is where Mr. T has to stay, Mr. F is still learning about those boundaries, but there are blocks, cars and sensory bottles there for them to play with while I read. Reading aloud is such a great tool for learning and wonderful family time, too. I use the humidifier shelf to house the current read aloud books. And a video monitor for when I use it as a playroom so Mr. T can't be too rough with Mr. F.

Our cursive chart and map came from The School Box. Our Hands are for Helping box was built by Mr. T at a Home Depot Kids Workshop. Goodwill had the Pooh clock. And the art above the humidifier was dome by the boys' Uncle P when he was in middle school. 

Our activity table has a great storage drawer where we store our DUPLOs! We have some fun activities coming up in math where we will be utilizing our DUPLOs. Both boys love them. I do, too,  until I step on one. Moms of boys are familiar :)

Meet Fish. He's our school mascot and he was deemed Fish by Mr. T to the checkout lady at Petsmart when she asked what he would call his new friend. The look he gave her was priceless. "Fish". Like that should be the most obvious name in the world. Mr. T also picked out the firetruck. He kind of loves them. I love having a low maintenance pet and the noise of an aquarium in the school room. It's very calming.

I have our Melissa & Doug instruments , train set and Montessori wooden toys and puzzles all on our little shelf. All the books are board books until we get a higher cubby set. Mr. F likes to eat books. Literally. Mr. T's school tool box is there, and our stuffies and finger puppets are on the floor. Our Melissa & Doug Easel is awesome! We use it a lot for drawing and writing practice. Or climbing. It's very sturdy!

Our cork board houses art work until our art shelves are built. (Poor Mr. J) Our weekly ABC Bible verse cards are there, too. They are free and I laminated them so they will last. I love our weather chart next to the big window. It's from School Box, too. 

From the door. Mr. T was not having the photo session. He wanted to be in "my woom". So he sat down and worked on his Kumon Book Of Uppercase Letters . If you have another primer suggestion, I'd love it! He doesn't repeat things well, I think he gets bored, and when he's finished with this one I'll need another practice book since he's doing 3-6 pages at a time!

Where did/do you look for homeschool room inspiration?

Sensory Play

Oh the joys of figuring out fun ways to practice Occupational Therapy at home! I am so very thankful Mr. T loves his Ms. Tara so much and works so well with her. At home sometimes he is less cooperative. So I have to come up with fun things to incorporate into our day to day learning.

With his sensory issues, Mr. T loves deep pressure and squeezing things in his hands. So we made butterfly food for the dish in our butterfly garden. Banana and watermelon all squished up and topped with a bit of water to help it rot faster. They love it! Alas, we will be needing to make more sooner than usual since all the rain has washed away most of what we made.

The obligatory clapping. Yep, he clapped little bits of squished fruit everywhere!

Another thing we've been doing is balling fruit. Mr. T has difficulty with that particular wrist motion. It's a motor planning issue that is most likely related to the Apraxia. But he is making lots of progress and is doing great now with his pre-writing and pencil holding skills!

Mr. T's concentration face is one of my favorites!

And it has been sooooo wet here! It has rained and rained and rained. One afternoon while the storms were holding back and it was just raining we let the boys outside on the deck for some good old fashioned water play. We didn't have out the water toys for fear of them blowing away and the pool is filled with rainwater. There were lots of leaves and sticks and acorns on the deck for the boys to play with. They both are such awesome little water bugs!

What are your little ones favorite sensory play activities? You can see some of our other Montessori fun here. We are linked up here:

Building and Baking

We've been baking a lot lately! Mr. T is all about being in the kitchen right now. He's doing such a great job, I try to always say yes unless we just can't for some reason. He's becoming quite the little chef. I love how good he is getting at setting the table, too.

Since we've been spending so much time in the kitchen I though a kitchen tool discovery bowl would be fun for Mr. F. He's fallen in love with the Egg egg beater and takes it everywhere now. He also likes beating things with the rolling pin. As long as it isn't his big brother, I'm cool with that.

We picked up a bird feeder kit at Hobby Lobby per Mr. T's request. Mommy didn't pay close enough attention, though. It did not come with pre-drilled starter holes like the kits from Lowe's and Home Depot, so I had to help more than we usually do, but we did eventually get it glued and nailed together and we had a good time doing it.

Mr. T got my camera (I actually got it out, I've been taking all iPhone pictures lately and decided it was time to get out my big girl camera) and he began snapping pictures and got this one of the bird feeder that I thought was really cool. Mr. T's camera is on the fritz, so we will be needing to replace it soon. I love seeing the world from his perspective.

He's very serious about his wood working. I love that he is able to focus for such long periods of time when it's a project he is really taking interest in. I think we will be incorporating a lot more delight directed learning into our pre-k learning this fall.

Here is the wonderful bird feeder all put together! Mr. T painted it and it looks lovely! We just need to get some seed in it and find it a home outside and the birdies can go to town! Do your little ones like to build things? And do you make your own or buy kits? I'd love to have a new kit resource!

We are linked up here:

Making Spaghetti Sauce with Mommy

Mr. T was delighted when I let him bring his little chair into the kitchen to help mommy make spaghetti sauce since mommy didn't let him help make scrambled eggs for lunch. :) I don't trust him around our 2 burner griddle just yet. But we put in the olive oil, spinach, salt and pepper, garlic, Italian seasoning and stewed tomatoes and then turned on the burner.

After we stirred  everything up Mr. T got to watch Veggie Tales while I added the meat, cabernet and stirred as the sauce simmered down most of the afternoon. Then we made the noodles and we really enjoyed our yummy dinner. It is always a treat to see how proud Mr. T is when he helps make our meals.

These strawberry cannolis were dessert :) And they were even better than the sauce!

Horses and Farm fun: part one

Keeping his hand flat just like mommy showed him so Daddy pony didn't nibble his fingers again!

We are doing a wonderful farm unit we found on Currclick!  Itsy Bitsy Learners unit on farms is so cute and Mr. T loves all the animals, but he's a big fan of horses and cows. There are wonderful 3 part cards, baby animal puzzles, and montessori style counting! He is really doing well on his numbers 1-10 and on his letters. We are struggling a little with lowercase, but for a 27 month old I think uppercase is just fine :)

We got to go feed some miniature ponies that belong Mr. T's sweet friends, Miss M, Miss C, and Mr. C (Mr. T's nursery buddy at church). And we got to go with Miss E and her sweet mommy so it was even more fun! Mr. T loved feeding the ponies some baby carrots. And the new colt was just too precious not to share!

We'll post more of our Farm Unit fun later this week! What kind of farm fun do your little ones love?

Mr. T was so gentle with the ponies! I was so proud of him!

The colt is still so small it's all fluffy! Mr. Glam said I could not have one, though. ;)

My little horse lover! I can't wait to get him riding. I just know he's going to love it!

Flower Arranging from Our Garden

This rose is my first full blown bloom of the season :) I currently only have 4 rose bushes, but am hoping to replace the two the deer ate to death soon. This is one of my favorite pinks, though. Did I mention these are huge blooms?

We have a rose, an iris stem, some rosemary and a mint sprig alongside our water and vase.

Mr. T loves anything where he gets to pour water. Check out that grin :)

I told you they were huge blooms!

Mr. T's finished floral arrangement for us to enjoy for a few days. I love having flowers we can cut and keep in the house to make things pretty and for Mr. T to develop an appreciation for all God's beauty.

We are linked up here: