{Re-Organising}

Our day has been a good one so far. Chelsea has written a book review on one of her library books and reading books about the Human Body (with astounding interest I might add!) Joseph has been reading his library books and entertaining Callum on the trampoline outside (enjoying the sunshine, it's gorgeous here!) He has also helped me make the labels for the bookshelves. Tiegan has been drawing and writing lots of little stories, and all of the children have been on the laptop at some point to do various activities. We have even managed to walk the dog twice.

The "school" room is looking good. I do hesitate to give it a name really as it is just another room in our house and we certainly don't refer to it as the school room! It just makes it easier to describe on the blog really. I've taken a few pictures of it in it's current state. We are just waiting for more stuff to be churned out to add to the walls.

This is the view from the doorway. On the left there is a wall that you can't see in the photo - this will be the literacy wall for poems and stories, and book reviews etc. Apologies for its scruffiness. As you can see from the picture, the ceiling needs repairing and we refuse to decorate the room until it's done :o)

The science corner - the cabinet top can be used for experiments etc if necessary.



The bookshelves - all in order of subjects and labelled for ease of use. We have got a library bookshelf again - woohooo - hopefully no more lost library books! (ok ok, I'm kidding myself I know *shrug*).



Our sunny corner - can be used for anything, but the Geography work will be displayed here.



The cabinet is where we store various "learning" things like the microscope, electronics set, flashcards etc etc. The "neat" stuff is at the bottom of the glass part, the not so nice to look at stuff is hidden in the cupboard ;o)



Right must go and continue watching The Lost Land of the Volcano with the children, then go and make some french bread pizzas with the littlies...

{"But the Whale wanted to be free - and it needed a pen in case it wanted to write to us...."}

Hmm, odd title isn't it? But it is a quote from our darling Callum. He decided to "free" his whale bath toy. How? By flushing it down the toilet of course, along with a flannel to wash with, and a pen in case he wants to write to us. Oh dear. Yes, the toilet got blocked and needed to be removed from the wall to un-block it - hence us finding the culprit. Goodness only knows what else has managed to make a break for freedom. I'm mysteriously missing two of my rings - although Callum has denied anything to do with them. Kids are just great aren't they? :oD

So that was a good start to the day. What else did we get up to...erm, oh yes, we did our family read-aloud. Currently we are reading The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban. Thoroughly enjoying it too, although it has been a little sad in parts. After that we all sat and looked through the Usborne Children's Book of Art together. It was very interesting, and I think we all learnt something. The children were full of enthusiasm and ideas afterwards and they went off to draw, armed with oil pastels, chalk pastels, crayons, and pencils. Chelsea did a fabulous self-portrait which I must take a picture of. Tiegan did a very sweet self-portrait too, drawing herself with a princess crown. Interesting to see how she pictures herself ;o) Joseph decided to draw some still life items, and ended up with a picture of a can of coke and a few fruits. Callum drew a picture of his daddy :o)

Whilst they were busily drawing (and later on reading and discussing the World Wars again), I made some changes.

Yep, I'm at it again. Re-organising, changing rooms, or making more of a mess. I'm not sure which category it falls into ;o) I spent the afternoon changing things around. We now have most of the "school" type stuff in the large dining room - a much better use of that space me thinks. By "school" stuff, I mean microscopes, electronic kits, etc etc. I moved the bookshelves from out of the hall (wow, the hall looks huge now!) into the dining room. This was a job in itself, but it did give me the chance to thoroughly clean and dust the shelves and books. Yuk - just how does so much stuff manage to accumulate behind the shelves? The books are now cleaned and placed in some sort of order back on the shelves. I must make labels to make it easy for the children to find what they are looking for. I talked to the children about wall displays, and they want to allocate a wall space per subject. Initially their idea was to have a wall for each child, but after discussing things they decided that too many projects are family ones and it would mean splitting up the work. I think we may have difficulty with the subject walls in that respect too, as most of our projects are also cross-curricular, but we shall have to see how things work. At least we can have posters in the correct wall area anyway. I'm really happy with how it looks. We've got the large dining table in the middle of the room, but have turned it lengthways to suit the room now and give more space near the bookshelves. We have got a desk at the bottom window, which can be used for whatever it's needed for. I've seen it used for reading and computer work so far. The changes have meant that I've lost the desk from out of my craft room, but I'm sure I can work around that somehow. We've still got another table in the craft room which we can use for painting or model making etc - it's great for things that need to be left out to dry.

I'll add pictures soon when it's all done. I do love making changes, and going through the bookshelves so thoroughly has meant we have found lots of books that had been forgotten, so they will keep us busy for a while :o)

{All Change - New "School" Room}

We've had a busy but very fruitful day today, one of those days when you can sit back and reflect and think we did ok :o)

The morning started with a quick visit to the library. The children came home with a variety of books, both fiction and non-fiction, whilst I chose one book about the history of our village. I have a plan that we will put together a children's guide to our village. If successful, I would like to run off a few copies and give them to our library, I know that the children would like the idea of others enjoying their efforts. Anyway, we returned home and the children all immediately opened their books and started reading - so I left them to it and decided to potter about and tidy up our "school" area. Why is it, that my "tidy up" always leads to a huge mega rearrange and sort out?

I have moved our "school room" back to the back room - and it now looks like this...

View from the Doorway

I wish my window had overlooked palm trees when I was at school...

To see the photos with explanation notes added, you can visit the set on flickr here...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/classroomfree/sets/72157617003593175/