School Room Tour and Curriculum Choices

Here are our curriculum picks for this year as well as a bit of a tour of our room!

Our calendar! All ready for our first day :)

These aren't a scheduled activity for us but just available for whenever interest arises. I purchased them used and I'm not 100% on what they are called but they are similar to these. They are great when the kids need something to keep them busy while I am helping another kiddo for a few minutes. J can pick out his own right pieces but I pull the right ones out for M and then let her pick from the cup so she doesn't get discouraged digging around for the right ones. This also makes it self-correcting because she will be out of pieces when the puzzle is done correctly. 

These are a mix of wood and plastic pieces that I got at a conference and used at a sale. The cards were a free printable I printed from Confessions of a Homeschooler and then laminated. They are a big hit and help with capital and small letter recognition. 

Magnetic letters for word building activities. They are red/blue for vowels/consonants to help with recognition. We have a magnetic whiteboard like this as well as a magnetic sheet from IKEA that the kids use these on.

Math-U-See manipulatives. We only keep out what we are using, the rest are kept safely out of reach :)

This is all of our daily work. J and M are both using Sonlight (M is using 4k and J is using K - they could both just do the same but I happened up on the 4k teacher's manual at a garage sale for only $15 and liked what I saw so I want to add in some of the things in there for M)  Sonlight is technically a boxed curriculum and it comes with quite a bit of material (mostly read-alouds) so I only keep what we are currently reading in this box, the rest are on a shelf elsewhere.  There is a DVD player in here that we use for Math-U-See when we watch the weekly lesson as well as the Sonlight Science DVD we also watch weekly.

These magnetic letter boards are a fun activity that helps kids learn correct letter formation in a fun way.

Originally we had planed on using All-About-Reading but J was just not enjoying himself and one of my main priorities in school at this age is developing a love for learning, not a dread! We decided to switch to Dynamic Learning's reading program and while we've only been using it for a week, lessons are not met with resistance anymore and it seems to be a better fit. It has fun songs, cute stories, and small animal "prize cards" that help with retention. I anticipate going back to AAR at a later date as it is more in-depth than this program but I would like to get some wins in with this first. 

Language Arts (what Sonlight recommended) plus a letter tracing book from Amazon. 

Math-U-See for M and J. J is about half done with his already from last year so he will move on to Alpha when he is finished. M is just starting and will be going very slowly but she loves it!

Whiteboard :)

Just some fun things we have on hand. Paper roll is from IKEA, Globe is from Amazon and has constellations that light up which J loves and finally the Buddha board - total favorite recent purchase! It lets kids paint with water and then the "painting" disappears as it dries so it is mess free and infinitely reusable. C really enjoys playing with this as well.

Various learning games and puzzles.

Rest of my storage! Basket on the left is curriculum we are using (I just pull out the week's papers and put them on my clipboard (shown below) and leave the rest in that big binder). Gray box #1 is science/hands-on-history/extra manipulatives, gray box #2 is curriculum extras we aren't using right now but will this year, gray box #3 holds extra clipboards if we take school on the road and our DVD car head-rest holder if we ever need it. Binders are full of empty sheet protectors and then there are the Math-U-See manipulatives we aren't up to yet!

Clipboard with weekly assignments/papers.

Our school calendar and attendance pages are in here as well as a notepad I can jot notes on.