Our Homeschool Corner

Hi Everyone!

With a new school year upon us once again, I thought I would give a photo tour of my little homeschool corner in the universe.  It is not the fanciest, and not the most organized either.  But it IS where lots of love and learning take place, and it was definitely put together on a budget, so I hope it may help give others some ideas that they can use in their homeschools.  

My little homeschool area starts out like this:

Once upon a time. . . (don't you love stories that start like that?!)

I was a classroom teacher.  

When I had children of my own, and felt called to stay home and homeschool them, I always wished I had room in our house to make a "real" classroom.  Not to chain them to a desk for eight hours a day, but simply to have a space where we could leave art projects out to dry, have science projects ongoing and undisturbed, etc.  The only problem is that we never had a house large enough to devote an entire ROOM to homeschooling.

Sigh.

It's o.k.

My son managed to be educated anyway, and since he is passing his college classes currently I don't suppose the lack of a school room hindered his education.

But I still wished I had one!

Well, eleven years after our son was born, along comes little sister.

When she was three years old, we moved into a modest ranch home--

BUT

it had a basement!

At LAST, I thought!

I am going to take over part of the basement and we will finally have a REAL school room!

And we can leave our messy learning things out and about and it won't matter, because we can just leave them there and they won't be in the main living area of the house, so no one will see the mess if they come over.

But there was one little problem.

That first winter, I realized that the basement was cold.

And the upstairs was warm.

And besides that--the kitchen was upstairs, and even though it isn't my first choice, the truth is that often while I am homeschooling I am also keeping an eye on something cooking on the stove as well.

Sigh.

So I thought and pondered and pondered and thought.  And one day my husband walks in the door to discover me pushing the couch further into the living room and I stood in the newly cleared floor space and declared it our "School Room."

He looks at me and says "I always did say we live in a One-House School Room."

He's right.

We do.

 So here--behind the couch, is our "School Room."  When people walk in the front door, they walk right into it.  Do you think they will notice?  So much for hiding it and leaving our nice little learning messes laying around!  Well, the learning messes still get left around. . . it's just that now people will see them!  That's o.k.  I suppose it's a more honest way to live.  I mean, we wouldn't want them to think my house is always clean or something! ;)

 Here is our school desk behind the couch.  It is a hand me down table that I was given free from a school that was getting rid of it.  For us, it has been the MOST perfect piece of homeschool furniture.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE being able to sit next to our daughter while we do our school things together.  We each have "our side," where we keep the supplies that we each need.

I bought the chairs from Walmart, and they have worked very well.  We were a little afraid at first that the chairs moving over the carpet day in and day out might damage the carpet in that area, but we have had our school room for three years like this, and so far I cannot see any carpet damage at all.  Well, the whole house has old carpet, so no damage that wasn't already there anyway!

Our little supply caddys I found at Hobby Lobby.  I used coupons to get them even cheaper, but they were only a couple dollars to start with so the coupons brought them super inexpensive.  Mine has things like stickers that I use for grading, and we each have scissors, tape, glue sticks, rulers, etc.

We also have our own little pop up post-it note apple, which has been fun.  I was able to get these with a 100% rebate from Staples one Christmas time.  I love Staples for school supplies!  When the rebate is a store credit instead of cash, I use the credit to purchase computer ink.  I consider it a win-win situation, as I am going to purchase ink anyway, so I might as well get some other school supplies free while I'm at it!  I have been able to get not only these post-it holders, but binders, photo paper, computer paper, and other things in this same way.

Since our "desk" does not have any drawers, we use pencil holder cups.  One is filled with colored pencils, and the other is filled with Ticonderoga pencils.  We worked out a system where if a pencil is dull, we turn it over so the pointy end is down.  Then we just grab another pencil to keep working.  After a while, when we have quite a few dull pencils, we get out the electric pencil sharpener and have a sharpening party!

 These are my daugher's school drawers.  Some of the things are books that I read out loud to her, and some drawers hold work books such as math.  These labels are actually what we were needing for last school year.  This year our curriculum is a little bit different, so when I get time I will tweek a couple of the labels to better describe this year's items.  They are all held on with little velcro dots, though, so are easy enough to pull off and change.  Last year I had her pull off the drawer label and toss the label into that drawer to indicate that she had finished the work in that drawer--that worked great, as I could easily tell what she was working on if I left to work on food in the kitchen and came back later.

 These are my teacher drawers.  Again, with new curriculum this year, I do not have labels made for some of my drawers.  Sometime!  I picked up these drawers as well as the student drawers at JoAnn's on a black Friday sale, so they were MUCH less expensive than they usually are.  The teacher drawers I bought both stacks one year, and the student drawers I bought the next, and they actually are slightly different.  My teacher drawers the drawer itself is square, and my student drawers are sized more for holding a 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper.  I didn't try to get two different sizes--it's just what the store was carrying one year and the next.  I love having the drawers to hold our things--they work much better for me than a book shelf would, as many of our books are on the "floppy" side, so wouldn't stand up very well in a book shelf.  However--I will say that these drawers are very cheaply made, and if your frame sways at all off kilter, the plastic drawers will drop down.  I actually took an old cat collar I had laying around the house and used it to fasten the two drawers together, and this helped quite a bit hold up the one that was swaying off kilter.  So I would say they are not ideal, but with the sale I got them quite cheap and they do the job.  Ikea has some really nice, sturdy ones, but these will work so I am not planning on replacing them.

 Sitting here on top I have one box filled with home made file folder games (all subjects) and one box holding our binders for the unit studies and things we are doing this school year.  Remember I said my student drawers were a bit more narrow than my teacher drawers?  Well, they are just a tiny bit too narrow to hold our binders--normally I would have these in my daughter's drawers, but since they don't fit they are housed here.  It works!  The purple zebra stripe box and the yellow giraffe box I found at Ross for around $3.00.  They made me smile!

 Next to the plastic teacher drawers, I have a stack of stacking plastic bins from Walmart.  On the top, I have this plastic basket which is holding all the resources we are using for our Bible study this school year.  Well, it is holding everything except for our actual real Bibles, that is!  We are using a Bible program that I am absolutely loving, which is going through the entire Bible over the course of three years.  We have just started it a couple weeks ago, but at this point I am planning on sticking with it the entire three years.  I will have to do another post sometime showing in detail what we are using for our curriculum this year.  Below this top bin, the other bins are holding shoe boxes with our Math-U-See blocks in them, as well as magnet letters and other math manipulatives.

 Behind our desk leaning up against the wall is our felt board.  I made this from a sheet of plywood cut down to six feet in length, and felt from JoAnn's (bought with a coupon, of course!).  Everything currently on our board is hung with binder clips.  I do have a lot of actual felts, though, so it just all depends what we are currently doing what is on this board.  I love having it, and use it ALL the time.  And one nice thing is that it fits on this wall even though the front door swings open on this wall.  I couldn't fit any book cases or desks or anything bulky here, since it is a walk-way area, but this board only sticks out about four inches at the bottom, so it fits in this walk-way area just fine.  Right next to the felt board is actually the furnace closet.  I WISH I could use it for storing school supplies, but alas, the furnace does not allow me to do that.  But nothing keeps me from hanging pocket charts from the outside of the door!  Pocket charts were from the Target dollar spot--$1.00 each.  I use them for different things.  Sometimes spelling or vocab words.  Sometimes math facts that we are working on.  Sometimes cards listing the books of the Bible, and my daughter has to put them in the proper order.  Sometimes I write memory verse words on index cards and mix them up.  When she was younger, we would use them for recording the day of the week, the month, weather, etc.

 Our view from our school desk--the REAL reason we are schooling upstairs, is our wood stove!  In the winter time, we heat almost entirely with wood.  Being close by means we are nice and cozy--not to mention that I can always see when the fire needs another log tossed on it! And whenever we are going to read a story (which is often!) we just hop around the desk and head to the couch!  The sunlight is washing out the picture a bit, but we also have our large living room picture window right here, and we can see outside to the front of the house from our school room, which is nice as well.  I have some hearing loss, and have not yet chosen to wear hearing aides.  There have been times when my girlfriend has come over and knocked on my front door, and I haven't heard her! :(  Our door bell doesn't work, and if I am elsewhere in the house when someone knocks, chances are I will not hear them.  So being on the first floor and especially in the living room also means I can keep an eye on whether anyone is coming up to our house.  By the way--my girlfriend has now taken to standing on my front porch and calling me on her cell phone to tell me that she is out there!  She knows I will hear the phone ring if I do not hear her knock!

 My little "hidden" school area is these two white boards that are hung on the back side of the living room half-wall.  If I had more "real" walls surrounding my school room, I would hang these higher.  But you work with what you have, and my sweet hubby doesn't mind living in a One-House School Room, so he went ahead and hung them for me.  They are also magnetic, so we can use plastic magnetic letters on them as well.  Whenever we are doing something on these, we just plop down on the floor and grab the white board markers!  I love having them!

 If you turned directly around from the white boards, you would see this--our nondescript hall way.  Well, to the untrained eye it is "just" a hall way.  But to those who know. . .

 That coat closet door holds a plastic shoe holder on the inside of it!  This is where we keep our "extra" school supplies--glue sticks, glue, tape, markers, pencils, pens, post-its, paperclips, etc.  Whatever we may run out of over at our school desk.  I used to run down to the basement to get supplies, but having them close at hand is MUCH better!  I "wish" I could have these over the back of the furnace door closet, but safety won't let me and this coat closet is not that far away. . .it's just a little school room annex area!

 Forgot to show that on the back of the front door is a United States map. We used this all the time last school year.  This school year we are not using it quite as much, as we are studying more from a world map which is hanging on our felt board.  But until I have something we need to refer to more, I will just leave it there, as we do occasionally use it.  This map was from the Dollar Tree.

And last but not least, our little music corner just adjacent to our school desk.  The back side of the piano is where the white boards are.  On the other side of the quilt wall is the kitchen, so you can see it is within "hollering" distance for when I need to be working on food.  Our family usually eats lunch as our main meal of the day, which we like but it does often mean I am cooking and doing school at the same time.  I do have some large pull down wall maps that I was also given for free from a school that was throwing them away.  They are currently hanging in our basement, but I would LOVE to bring them up stairs. . . Just haven't figured out where to squeeze them in yet.  But I HAVE thought about hanging them behind my quilt here. . . then I could toss the quilt up when I want to pull one of the large maps down?  Just a thought!

Hope you have enjoyed this little tour of our homeschool corner.  As you can see, it has kind of evolved and sort of takes over everywhere.  But we have been blessed with freebies, inexpensive things from dollar stores, and lots of sales.  We "school" all over our house--our kitchen is our science laboratory,  our library is housed in every--single--room.  Really.  I realize I have left out our library completely, because none of our bookshelves happen to live in this school corner.  But trust me--there are twelve full size book shelves scattered around the house and basement, most of them filled with children's books bought over the years, often at thrift stores.  And this doesn't count the books that are not housed on book shelves!    But rather than showing off what "we do," I hope this has helped spark some ideas of things that YOU can do--even if you do not have a homeschool room!  

~Susan

From My Journal

Hi Everyone!

This has been a difficult week for my family.  This past Wednesday evening, my father-in-law passed away from causes due to the ALS that he has struggled with for years.  He beat the odds--he has been living with an "official" diagnosis of ALS for around eleven years.  He chose the most positive attitude I have ever seen--he did not let his negative medical diagnosis define who he was or how he lived his life.  My mother-in-law told me once that when they left that doctor's appointment where he was first told the words "ALS," they talked about it and both decided they were not going to live their lives any different because of it.  And they didn't.  Things changed, of course.  He went from using a cane to a wheel chair and recently to not even being able to operate his electric wheel chair.  The largest blow for him was losing my mother-in-law very unexpectedly last September.  And now my husband has lost both parents in the matter of ten months.

I was looking through my journal this morning, and this entry stood out to me.  I know it is true--and I am hanging on to it.

"From the stars that in their trackless courses through space follow from age to age their appointed path, down to the minutest atom, the things of nature obey the Creator's will.  And God cares for everything and sustains everything that He has created.  He who upholds the unnumbered worlds throughout immensity, at the same time cares for the wants of the little brown sparrow that sings its humble song without fear. . . No tears are shed that God does not notice.  There is no smile that He does not mark."  Steps to Christ, E.G.White, p. 86

God knows.  And He cares.

Good-by Dad.  I will see you on resurrection morning--you won't need your wheel chair then.

~Susan

Frugal Family--Saving on Skirts!

Hi Everyone!

Thought I would share a very simple method to save on making skirts.  Back in the olden days, I would have gone to the fabric store and picked out a pattern and fabric, thread, etc. and come home to sew a skirt "from scratch" so to speak.  Well, that was before patterns and fabric prices went so high.  So for a long time, I gave up on sewing clothes.  And I have never found a lot of clothes that fit me at thrift stores.  I guess that is what I get from being 5' 9 when the average American woman is 5'5.  

But I have now discovered something new--to me, anyway, and that is the option of looking at the thrift store as your fabric store.  

Last week I found this little beauty for .50 cents.  Not exactly my style, and definitely way too short for me.  It is hard to tell from the picture, but it was very much a "petite" in length, and I am very much a "long" in length! But I loved the fabric!  It just looked so summery and FUN!  Well, for .50 cents, you can't go very wrong, even it it ends up in the trash can--so I bought it and brought it home.

 First step, I chopped the skirt part off from the yoke of the dress.  I should have left the yoke in the picture for comparison, but I cut it off just barely below the yoke--trying to save as much of the length as possible.  Then pinned it together at the bottom hem since I was preserving the bottom pattern, and evened up my cutting edge up at the top.

 Next step was to turn it inside out, fold and sew the raw edge under 1/4th inch, then fold, press, and sew a casing for it.  Since the elastic I was using was 3/4th inch wide, I measured my casing fold to be 1 1/4th inch.  That way, by the time I took up 1/4th inch for sewing the casing edge, I would still be left with a good 1 inch space in my casing itself.  And don't forget to leave a couple inches open, so you can thread the elastic through!

 Here I am showing the little tool I have, but I am afraid I do not remember the actual name of it.  It is shaped similar to tweezers, but has a tiny ring that slips down and clamps it tight, so it grips your elastic (or whatever you are wanting to pull through).  If you do not have a tool like this one, you can just put a large safety pin through the elastic and pull it through that way.  Just for the record--I do recommend that you spend the little bit extra to buy the roll-free elastic for when you are doing a waist band.  Who wants to have your elastic fold over or roll once it is inside the casing and you start wearing it or washing it!  I had some elastic I had bought previously for making some jammies for Alison.  At the time, I "thought" I would never use up all that was in the package I had to buy, but today I was thrilled to find I had enough for this project!  I also do not usually have hot pink thread, as I do not usually quilt with any hot pink colored fabrics--but I had made a doll dress for Alison once, and bought the spool for that.  Yea!  Since the elastic and the thread were already bought and paid for with different projects, that makes them "free" in my book for this project!

 Once you get your elastic through, sew the two elastic ends together, then close up your opening in your casing.  Turn right side out, and there you have it--your new skirt! :)

 All it needs is a white blouse to match with it!  And one more thing. . .

Approval from the cat!  If the cat says it's a good outfit, it's GOOD!  Can't wait to wear it--hope this has helped give you all some ideas of using the thrift store as your fabric store.  This new skirt cost me just .50 cents!

~Susan

The One-Day Church

Happy Sabbath Everyone!

Today I want to tell you about a program that I think is the neatest thing.  I hope you have already heard about it, but just in case you haven't, let me tell you about the "One-Day Church" program.

Did that name catch your attention?  I hope so!  Most churches are not built in one day, that is for sure!  But these churches are.  The One-Day Church program was created and developed by a businessman by the name of Garwin McNeilus.  He conceived this idea in an effort to help meet the great need that there is around the world where congregations often meet in houses or even simply out under a tree.  In these countries, most of the church members are very poor, and have absolutely no way to fund a permanent church structure.  And when there is no church building, it is difficult to run church programs or to invite your friends to visit your church with you.

The One-Day Church program provides a steel structure and metal roof.  The local congregation is responsible for obtaining the land and permits needed to build the church, and then after the One-Day Church is erected they are responsible for finishing the walls and windows of the church with whatever local building materials they have available to them.  Some churches have walls finished with mud bricks, some with woven thatch, some with regular bricks, etc.

The structures and roofs are erected by volunteers from all around the world.  People--some young, some not so young--some families, etc. all pay their own expenses to travel to the building site at the proper time to help build these churches.  You can read more about this program at www.onedaychurch.org.  I have not been able to personally participate in building one of these churches, but I wish I could!  But there is still a place for people like me--I'll get to that in a minute!

The One-Day Church program has been so successful that it has spawned a related program--the One-Day School!  Using the same basic idea of the One-Day Church, the One-Day School has the steel structure, roof, and also walls, foundation, and school desks and other school supplies.  In many of these countries, being able to obtain an education can mean the difference between being able to get a job and feed your family, or going hungry.  A couple years ago I was privileged to  be able to attend a little bit of our church's world-wide conference held in Atlanta, Georgia in a massive building.  Well, inside that building, they had build one of these One-Day Schools and it was open for people to inspect and tour it!  I loved it!  Very sturdy, very well thought out as to having good ventilation, etc. as most countries where these schools are built are very very hot.  The teacher part of me jumped up and down with excitement at seeing this school building, and learning how these school-kits are helping so many who are so poor.  Want to see what these One-Day Churches and One-Day Schools look like?  I'm glad you asked!  I found this video today, and greatly enjoyed watching it. I thought you might enjoy watching it too!






And I promised above that there was a part for even people like me who are not able at this point in my life to volunteer and go on one of these mission projects.  Today, I found out that it only costs $1,500 to sponsor one of these One-Day Churches.  Obviously, that is still a lot of money.  But for the people who are receiving these churches, it is simply an impossibility for them to come up with this amount.  But what about you?  And what about Me?  If we tried--couldn't we come up with $1,500?  I talked with my family, and we want to try and sponsor a church.  We have set our time goal as this Christmas.  I know our kids will not be able to help reach this goal very much.  Our daughter is only nine--she only has the money that we give her anyway, and our son is a poor college student!  But everyone can do SOMETHING.  And we do want to help inspire our children to be always looking for what they CAN do, not what they can't do.  If--for whatever reason--our family is not able to reach the $1,500 goal by Christmas time, we will still donate what we have saved.  And it can go with what another family has donated, and then we can together accomplish what perhaps alone we could not.

There is a LOT I would like to do--but I can't.  I would LOVE to sponsor a One-Day School, but that is far out of my budget.  I would love to sponsor an entire campus filled with One-Day School buildings!  I would love for no one in this world to be without either churches or schools!  But that is not possible for me.  But as I think about it, when our beautiful Jesus comes again, I don't think He is going to ask me to tell Him about what I couldn't do--but rather about what I could and did.

So here we go.  Our official family "Saving for a One-Day Church" project begins today.  Right now, this very minute!  How about you?  Anyone out there want to help build a One-Day Church?  Check out the web site www.onedaychurch.org, and pray about it.

~Susan