Last year Sofia went to public school for kindergarten. It was a pretty tough decision to make, but we figured we would give public school a shot. We both really weren’t thrilled about it. Luckily she had a wonderful teacher. She really couldn’t have gotten a better one. Sofia excelled as we knew she would, but she quickly grew bored. Her papers all came home with drawing on the back because she would finish and have nothing else to do or at center time she would end up doing the same worksheet a couple times. She was in the highest reading and math groups. She really enjoyed being with her classmates, but she too was feeling like she needed more. She needed to be pushed academically and she wasn’t getting it. It wasn’t her teachers fault at all. It was the fact that Sofia was already ahead of her peers going into kindergarten. We were doing kindergarten work in preschool. She basically did kindergarten twice. She is one that picks up on everything academically really fast. She must get that from her daddy, because she doesn’t get it from me. Anyway, we are homeschooling this year. She is so excited and wants to get started now! I’m not quite ready yet, but I have been tempted to start already myself. I think Sofia would really like to do it year round, but we are still trying to decide if that is for our family or not.
One thing to get ready for school this year is getting our space ready. Most everything will be done in the dining room. Most of our schooling will be at the dining room table, but since Adeline will also be doing preschool and some tot school for the little boy I watch I thought we really needed two spaces. Our other space is a child size table that we got when Sofia was real little along with two box shelves that we turned into benches. I like the idea of using the shelves as benches because we have storage. We have coloring books in one cubbie, and puzzles, busy bags, math manipulatives in the other three.
I have a Raskog cart from Ikea with all our binders and books, crayons, colored pencils, pencils, pens, paint brushes and the list can go on. I cannot rave enough about this little cart. It is so handy to have. Plus it is super cute.
Another thing I wanted was some sort of bulletin board, but I didn’t want it to look like a bulletin board. This is all in our dining room so I wanted it all to match the decor of the room. My solution was to take an old picture frame that my mom had given me. I put chicken wire and burlap on the back. I actually use magnets to hold everything onto the board. I wanted the board to showcase what we are working on. I have it right now set up for the first week of school. Adeline is doing the letter A and the number 1, Sofia is going to be learning about ancient Egypt so I put up a picture of pyramids and the sphinx. I also have our memory verses up for the week on there too. I have a couple more things to put up yet, but I like how it is turning out.
Next to the little table on the wall we put up a chalk board and dry erase board. We had an easel that wasn’t getting much use because it takes up so much space. We didn’t have the space for it so we decided to take the chalk board and dry erase board off and put them on the wall. Doing this has been a huge hit with the kids.
I feel as though these pictures 1) make our space look huge and 2) this space isn’t usually this nice and neat. Here is a little bit of reality.
While the space is a somewhat roomy it fills up when you have five kids running around the dining room (3 ours, 2 I watch).
This is pretty much how our dining table looks 80% of the time. It is always covered in some crafty project the girls are working on or my fabric.
I just really like how this space has been transformed and we can’t wait to start school. I hope this may give some inspiration and to show you don’t have to have a room dedicated to schooling.