Summer Gardening

  I am probably toiling in vain.  I have not had a great garden in over 3 years, but I still plant on.  I just turned over my last failed garden. I have no idea if I will continue to use the failed garden site or start something new.    Either way, I had to plant!

I am using old seed trays that I get from my friend, who is a watermelon farmer.  I used the dirt pods, but I found that the seed trays work better with potting soil.  So I got these planted on a Saturday and by Thursday morning they looked like this!

Amazing!  I plan to get pumpkins started too.  So far the butternut squash is up the fastest and most consistent.  After 2 weeks being planted they look like this!

I am very excited.  I took the green beans and planted them in a container.  This is not really the best time to plant green beans.   I went ahead and put them in a container, because my garden spot will get too wet. So we will see.

You can see I am using my recycling container.  I did stick a few corn seeds in, just to see what happens.

I am concerned about my squash and cantaloupes.  I will have to plant them in the ground very soon, but I am worried about the water.  Then with my gourds, I have got to figure out where to plant them and let them climb.  I have a few ideas, but it will require work.

 

This is my first time focusing on containers to plant.

~trish

Notebooks for homeschooling

I love workbooks!  I love workbooks for so many reasons.  They are pretty!  You can mindlessly plan.  They remind me of being a small child playing school for some odd reason.  I love them, they get me excited about what adventure I am going to take.  What I do not like, it they cost money, a reasonable amount, but when you are buying multiples, it adds up.

Trying to keep our cost down.  I figured we would use notebooks and at $0.20 each, they are a steal.  For me, they are so boring!  To change that, I decided to go through my untouched scrapbook supplies to see what we could use.  (For those of you gasping that it is obvious that I used Creative Memories AWESOME paper and stickers for notebooks.  Yes I did.  Because I went digital and I can use that artwork over and over {{insert raspberries}} SO ha!)

Well we turned it into a day of making things pretty.  I feel between these 2 selections, I will easily know who’s is who’s.

Here they are all done.  3 for the Kindergartener, 3 for my 1st grader, 1 for the know-it-all 3 year old, who could not handle not being part of something.  Then there are 3 for me, 1 for my thoughts on our homeschooling plans, 2 for plans with my blogs.

 

Here is an example of how I am using the handwriting notebook. first off, all the notebook paper is college rule, this way using 2 lines is a great size for writing for their ages.  This is my 1st graders writing.  She traces and then writes on her own.  I have the lines to show top and bottom to help her know where to stop.  I made the mistake of not highlighting the lines only once. 

I am still fine tuning our curriculum plan for the upcoming year.  We will be reading a lot of books and doing unit studies.  I figured we will linger in each unit study for as long as we are enjoying it.

The other aspect is, I have no idea how long I will stick with this.  I have a thing for notebooks.  I collect them.  There are hundreds of them.  I seem to gravitate to them and here I am conditioning my children to do the same.  Hmm, I might need to set a jar up for therapy at later date for them.

~trish

Preparing to start soon.

 

So I have been working on my first 9 week plan for school.  We will be starting in 10 days! so I figured it would be a good time to get things in order.

To start with, we live in a tiny house with lots of littles (please insert TREX voice from Meet the Robinsons). So the only thing I got for me is a book shelve.  SO here we go for order.

Top Shelf: Lego box, box of old school readers (from the 50s), and a box of Discovery Toys.  Side note:  Just found discovery toys and love them, there are so many cool things to use with homeschooling.

Second Shelf: Blue box of flash cards, mint condition.  I have no idea, I love buying flash cards, but we never use them. The basket on top is all of speech stuff.  All those workbooks are left over half done stuff.  So we will work them into our days, because I cannot throw them away.

Third Shelf:  This is our work station.  A basket for Mr. Family Clown and for Miss Helper.  I figured I would put just that day’s work in the blue basket.  Then a shoe box with pencils, scissors, and pencil sharpener.

Fourth Shelf:  A box for each kid to keep all their active workbooks.  I have another big box for all my teacher manuals.  That binder is My Father’s World Kindergarten with all the tabs for each unit and letter.  You can see it here in full.

Underneath is the Marbleworks and all of our coloring books.

 

I should have taken a before and after, but to give you an idea how I work.  This is a before and after of my desk!

So we I am getting excited.  The last of our stuff will get here tomorrow.  I still have more things to get together, like enrolling them in an umbrella school and unenrolling them out of public.  So counting the days down.

~trish