The Learning Tree

I've always liked the paper trees on walls in classrooms and decided to get one for our classroom from the parent-teacher store this year.  But what to do with it?  I know you can decorate it with lots of different things for different seasons and holidays, but I wanted the decorations to mean something to the kids, whether it was books read or days spent doing schoolwork without complaining.  For now, I've decided this is our "Learning Tree".

The kids and I talked about what they wanted to learn and accomplish during the year. Then we wrote their goals down on laminated leaves with a dry-erase marker and put them on our tree.  I told them I would put a coupon for something on the back, and when they accomplished that goal, they could pull it off and get the surprise.

We don't have a lot of goals up just yet, but some of them include: learning times tables, finishing a math book, reading the rest of the books in a series, and doing school without complaining for a week (who knows if they will ever get that one).  Maren also decided she wanted to write a report about the Titanic.  I don't know why, but I said sure.  We also set some small, easily attainable goals to help get them motivated, like completing so many typing lessons or finishing through a certain number of puzzle sheets.

All in all, I like our learning tree and think it adds something nice to our classroom.  I may change it up for different seasons, but I like this idea of having the kids set learning goals.

First Day of School 2011

The kids were very excited to start school last thursday.  Here are the traditional first day of school photos in front of the door.  I don't know why we always do them in front of the door, especially because the lighting is pretty bad on that side of the house early in the morning.

Maren, 3rd grade

Joshua, 1st grade

Christopher, Pre-K

Nathan, obedience school
seriously, this kid is everywhere

ah, I love these kiddos

In keeping with tradition (that we started last year), I wrapped the kids school supplies and stuffed them in their backpacks.  The kids loved opening up new math books and science things.  This year I bought a set of Magnatiles for our homeschool.  The kids love them!  I've been wanting them ever since I saw them at my sister's house a couple of years ago.  They are fun to build with and the kids have been playing with them constantly.

Christopher might just be a builder
(and yes, all the kids insisted on wearing name tags.  goofballs)

I also bought each child one non-school related present.  Maren got a charm bracelet, and Christopher and Joshua got angry bird "plush toys".  Joshua keeps referring to it as his "plush toy" and it just makes me laugh every time he says it.  I think he noticed because he said "that's what they're called, right?"

pleasantly surprised
I love surprises

What's really fun is when you combine the magnatiles and the angry bird plush toys.  That piggy is not safe in those towers I tell you.

direct hit!

Summer Reading Wrap-up

I think our summer reading wall was a success this year! We will definitely be doing something similar next year.  The kids were highly motivated to read.  I had originally put up 30 coupons for each child to earn, but Maren and Joshua both used them all and so I put up more, and they used all of those, so I had to put out more still.  I ran out of beach themed cut-outs, and so we had to use snowmen.  It's all I had in the drawer.  The kids thought it was funny.  I didn't do enough reading activities with Christopher, so he didn't get all of his coupons.  Poor neglected middle child.

Anyway, in case you wanted to know what my kids read this summer, I'm including a list of books. Feel free to ignore it.  Before they could choose a coupon off the wall they had to write down the title and number of pages in the book, but I didn't have them write down authors, and I don't feel like looking them all up.  You can always look up the book on amazon.  Maren read some shorter books, and she had to combine several to get her prize.  Joshua read some really long books (for a 6 year old) and so I gave him several coupons for those long books.

I put * by the kids' favorite books/series

Maren - 61 Books

- 11,366 pages

Lunch Money 222

No talking 140

The not just anybody family  149

Boy in the girls’ bathroom  159

Porch lies  146

fooled you   85

snow treasure  158

mist mantle book 1 282

the clue in the tower 173

the stolen saphire 173

the misadventures of maude 290

the earth dragon awakes  117

ive and bean #5   126

the secret school   153

turtle in paradise 191

hatching magic  242

home sick 163

too many blooms  192

kristina the girl king  176

who was william shakespeare  105

who was martin luther king jr.  105

who was leonardo da vinci   105

*Darke  641

the magykal papers  176

Isabel 203

Tales from the 1,001 nights  201

the fall  195

stargazer 276

the clue in the jewel box  181

wayside school  168

the fairies of nutfolk wood  243

2 ballpark mysteries  206

stone fox  81

the secret of the golden pavilion 184

3 jigsaw jones mysteries  217

case of the sneaky snowman 84

tic-tac-terror  185

sky sabotage 129

*the wizard of rondo 385

the book of time #1   213

mystery at the moss covered mansion   177

mystery of the tolling bell  181

*our only may amelia  253

the illyrian adventure 132

four clues for rani  117

the tiara club #5  68

the tiara club #2  69

the perfect party 80

the haunting of granite falls  216

early sunday morning 153

seeds of hope  185

the mystery of the ivory charm  179

the clue of the broken locket  178

*the wednesday tales  #1     427

the tigers egg  400

the lightning key  399

the magic thief  #3   374

it’s raining pigs and noodles   159

Joshua’s Books  - 25 books

    - 3,537 pages

the magician’s boy    101

*Harry potter #2      341

the new kid at school   91

MTH  #15  (stands for Magic Tree House)  70

MTH  #16  70

MTH  #17  72

MTH #18   71

MTH  #19   71

Batman 68

MTH #20  73

MTH #21  73

DSA #2  (Dragon Slayer's Academy)  70

MTH #22  70

*Beast Quest #22  78

Jigsaw Jones  #31   73

MTH #23   73

MTH  #24  72

*Charlie Bone  #1  401

Charlie Bone #2   402

DSA #3  90

MTH #25  72

Capital Mysteries #2  72

Charlie Bone #3   408

Charlie Bone #4   401

*Key to the Treasure  154

Christopher's Half-Birthday

Today my Christopher turned 4 1/2, and I know I've already posted about our half-birthday tradition, but I just wanted to share pictures.  This time I made a 9x13 cake, cut it in half and layered it, frosted 3 sides and the top and wrote half of each word on top for his half birthday.  The kids thought it was funny.

Nathan was especially excited to eat cake tonight, and as I was cutting it he kept screaming as loud as he could "me! me! me!" and shaking his clenched fists in the air.  It was a bit obnoxious, but also really funny, and although we tried not to encourage him by laughing, we couldn't help ourselves.  Well, at least I couldn't.  Jason kept giving me the "I can't believe you're laughing at this" look.

goofball.

back to school 2011

We are getting ready to start school again!  The public schools start this thursday, Aug. 11th, and I'll think we'll just call that our official start time as well.  I've been sorting through materials and visiting the parent teacher store and planning planning planning.  And yet I feel like I still have so much to do.

I will probably separate their desks when it's time to work.
Otherwise they just talk and poke each other. 

I've been trying to get our school space organized.  As you can see, I still have a lot of work to do.  We have lots of books, maps on the wall, a computer for typing, email and games, and various other things that haven't been put away yet.  My favorite part of our school room is all of our BOOKS!!! I love books.

I found this great bookshelf at a yard sale for $10.  One of my favorite purchases ever.
It's our nonfiction shelf.

early readers

more nonfiction and reference

In the adjoining room I have a bookshelf with all of my books.  I have the kids books separated by child and by if I need them every day or just once in a while.  That way things are easy to grab when planning.   I still have a lot to sort through. Notice the nice pile on the floor?  I'm really good at making piles.  If you ever need help with making piles, I'd be happy to share my expertise.

The kids have repeatedly asked if I'm going to wrap all their books again this year, so I'm thinking that is one tradition we will keep.  It helps make the first day of school a bit more exciting for the kids.  I'll have them hang their stockings backpacks on the back of their school chair the night before, and when they wake up they will be full of new books and school supplies.  I've also bought each one a little toy.  I know.  Not necessary.  But Maren was admiring this little charm bracelet and it was only $5, so I bought it for her when she wasn't looking, because she's my only girl and it's fun to buy her a little girly thing once in a while. And then I had to buy something for the boys so they wouldn't feel bad,  and they had these angry bird stuffed animals at walmart which I knew they would love (and I'm already thinking of some fun school related things we can use them for). So then I had to buy Nathan the roaring dinosaur flashlight so he'd have something to open too.  I had to.  (My husband didn't believe me either.)

opening first day of school books last year.  We've rearranged the room a bit since then.

We also will take our traditional first day photos outside the front door, and fill out "about me" sheets.  After, we'll read the ones from the past several years and see how their tastes and interests have changed.  I also have the kids write down a special dinner to celebrate the start of their school year.  Maren will get her dinner on Thursday, Joshua on Friday, and Christopher on Saturday.  They love choosing the menu. I just print out a sheet that has listed
Main dish:
Fruit:
Vegetable:
Other side:
drink:
and they fill it in.  We end up with some very interesting combinations.

I'm still thinking of other fun back to school things to do.  We'll probably do some kind of back to school treat, maybe the rice krispies treat buses like last year, maybe something else.   I'll let you know what I come up with.

Baby Prep

Remember me, the sister-in-law that never posts anything? Well, here I am, determined to start contributing to this amazing blog even if I don't have the killer ideas they put on here. I am pregnant with my second girl right now so all of our time, energy, and money are being put toward the preparation. I was an interior design major in school so I don't know how to do anything around my house without a clear design plan, even with just decorating. I made up an inspiration board and a big, long list of projects to do. With this being the second girl we should be able to save a lot of money but it also means we are already sick of the color pink. In attempt to do something for the nursery not-so-girlie but still save money, we have a lot of DIY projects on our to do list. I thought it might be a fun idea to post my plan and then projects as I go on here. I rarely share projects that I do (I get embarrassed) but maybe this will keep me motivated to keep working on all of them during these last hot few months of my pregnancy!

Here is the inspiration board. Some of it might have to wait until after the baby gets here because I don't want to overload my poor husband who has to do all of the painting and "hard" stuff.


Very non-girlie in color but still cute and fun. (Even after I posted that board I have already seen things I want to add to it. Like more peacock stuff and a mobile over the crib.)

The plan is to paint the walls, sew a crib skirt, make roman shades, paint the changing table, sew a cover for the rocking chair, paint a table lamp, make a toy box, make nesting tables, sew pillows, blankets, and a cover for the bassinet. Wow. Lots. I promise my husband loves to paint, repurpose, and do wood-working. We definitely don't plan on getting this all done before the baby comes in October but we will do what we can.

First project coming soon, the bassinet cover!

Cleaning up the Zoo (a.k.a. our house)

I've been wanting to implement a cleaning system with our kids for a while now but just haven't been able to get it done. With the new school year starting soon, I thought this would be a perfect time to help the kids get into a cleaning routine.

When reading a blog post on Chocolate on my Cranium, I saw that she assigns zones for her children to clean each day.  I liked that idea, but wanted to think of some way to make it sound a bit fun to the kids.  Ya know, 'cause I like to complicate things.  I decided since our house often seems like a zoo anyway, we'd just go with that theme.

I made a map of the downstairs of our house and labeled the rooms as areas of the zoo.


I made little square animal pictures to represent each person in the family.  The kids enjoyed picking out what zoo animal they wanted to be.  We decided daddy should be the lion, because he's the king of the jungle, Maren wanted to be a dolphin, Joshua is a monkey, Christopher is a tiger (I told him he should be my snuggle puppy, but he wouldn't have it), and Nathan is a kangaroo.  He's in a jumping phase right now.  I'm a chicken, or mother hen, because, well, we needed to have a chicken, right?

I made a weekly assignments chart where we put each person's picture so they know what area to clean that week, and a chart with written explanations of what needs to be done in each room to be considered "clean".

Now it gets a little tricky to explain, especially for me because I'm not always good at making sense.    I wanted to encourage our kids to do all the cleaning in their area by themselves in a set amount of time, so I invented different levels of cleaning achievement. I made a chart, and after the time is up, the zoo inspector comes around to check.  Their animal picture gets put on the level they are at currently. The chart is as follows:

zoo animal: does no work
assistant groundskeeper: does less than half of the work
groundskeeper: does most of the work - gets paid 10 cents
zookeeper: does all of the work - gets paid 50 cents
animal trainer: does their work and helps others - 25 cents for each additional area

the kids were all zoo animals until the first zoo inspection

My 6 year old said right away "I want to be a zoo animal" to which I responded "Well, the zoo animals don't get to watch tv, play wii or computer, read books at bedtime, and they have to take a nap during the day and go to bed early.  They also have to wear diapers in the house." (okay, I wouldn't really enforce the last one, but it made him stop and think.)  Finding out that the zookeeper is a paid position also helped him change his mind.  Nathan, of course, will probably be stuck as a zoo animal for a long time.

I know different people have different feelings about paying their kids to help with house work.  I would like my kids to have some money that they earn and are responsible for, to help them learn to work and save, and so I wanted to give them money for a job well done.  Jason thinks room and board should be enough, but I persuaded him.  Maybe 50 cents a day is too much, and if it is, we'll cut it back.  I kind of doubt any of them will make it to zookeeper status within the first month.  They tend to glance over things and not be thorough. I'm hoping the money will help motivate them to be more careful.

I'll be the zoo inspector for now, but I think in the future I'll let them take turns going around and inspecting everyone's work to help them be more aware of what is out of place.  Maybe I'll get a fun hat or zookeeper's vest to help them play the part.

The kids were really excited when I introduced the idea, and insisted I make a map for the upstairs as well, and they wanted to name their rooms.  Maren lives in "book bay" and Joshua and Christopher live in "genius jungle".  Joshua said "Get it Christopher?  'Cuz we're geniuses!"  Sure buddy.  Who was gluing stickers onto the paper earlier?  Awww, cute kids.  Nathan lives in "kangaroo cave", because Maren says his room is small.

We'll try to do our jobs before dinnertime, or after dinner if we have too many afternoon activities. It will probably vary day by day, but hopefully this will help keep the house cleaner, help my kids learn how to work better, and be a little bit of sugar to help the medicine go down.  I'll let you know how it goes.

(for more ideas to help make cleaning fun, see this post and this post)


linked to: raising olives