Category:

Chaos Organized, pt. 2 - The Joy of Plastic Bins

9/28/2016

Don't you just hate it when you are looking for a pen or pencil and you just can't fine one? Or if you have a child constantly saying, "MOM, do you have jar I can use to do _______? Do we have any wood in the house mom??" or "HUN! I need tape! Where is it?!?!" All these questions....repeated constantly....with the needful demand behind them, and sometimes I felt like I couldn't keep up.

UGH!!!! It drives me crazy, so over the years I decided to create a full proof system.. and it's WORKING!!! Even hubby can find pens and tape when he needs them. :)

So what is my system? It's a bin organized system. Lots of bins. :) Mostly see-through which is a very good thing, as it means anyone can see what's inside without having to open bins you don't really want to waste time opening. :)

Pencils and erasers in one drawer.
Scissors in another.
On top.. our cardstock... useful in the making of minecraft figures, and other papercraft items. Useful to for making unit study/modified colour lap books.

Pencil crayons and pens.. all in one spot. Markers and compass kits. Sorted and easy to locate.

And our Lego.. not the neatest right now and my giveaway pile of books is sitting in the way, but when it is organized we have room for lego creations to sit on top, and pieces are sorted by type and size. Makes it SO easy to build lego which makes me happy.

I used to scrapbook. I don't do it anymore, but I still have my scrapbooking drawers. :) Some of them still hold the remnants of my scrapbooking, which unsurprisingly, are useful with creative children.

I've added two rolls of tape drawers, and a paper cutting drawer. oh.. and I think I have stencils drawer in there somewhere too.

The sticker and paper drawers remain (though their supplies are getting reduced). I do not consider that a bad thing.

Between the table and the window I have my large storage bins. When you have a child who can and will make items out of anything, having "stuff" to make it from comes in handy. :) It goes up and down in the amount of materials available as I regularly purge it (or bring it along to craft based co-op days), it works...and keeps it all contained. A good thing that eh?

The thing I like about plastic drawers is they are portable, it's easy enough to move them from room to room, it's easy to shift drawers around as you don't then have to shift everything from one drawer to another.. you just move it! :)

So tell me.. how do you store things such as legos, pens, pencils and what not. What have you done to ease the craziness?

More in this series:
Part One, Organized Chaos - Science Materials.

Four Tips to Time off

8/10/2016

You know what every home school needs? TIME OFF.

Yep. My home management tip for today is TIME OFF. Take a break, go on a vacation, or a stay-cation, or a week break for doing things out of routine.

As you know... I am not actually here this week, I am doing what all good parents do.. I"m taking a break! We are blessed enough to be able to leave our home for our vacation, but I know two families that are staying home this year for stay-cations, and having a blast with their families. So it all works. :)

Tips from my house to yours.

1. Pack well. Seriously. If you are gone for two weeks, pack enough for five-six days max. Give a limited size of container for your children or they will try to take the world with them, this way you teach them important skills of prioritizing and space management. This picture is of my clothes for two weeks. More tops than bottoms, I need to toss in a jacket as well yet. Everyone gets a container this size. Roll your clothes as they take less space. Save your loonies and quarters for the laundry and you are good to go.

2. Pack Food. Admittedly I don't have a picture as it's the first and last thing I pack. We do canned goods when we travel rather than prepare from scratch as we go to bear country and the less they can smell the better. We don't need mid-afternoon raiders on our campsite thank you very much. You'll notice the box of single serving chips... means no open bags of chips for bears to enjoy. We pack the fresh and frozen food last of course...We'd hoped to find dry ice this year to keep food frozen longer, but I think we'll be doing lots of ice instead...

3. Pack Carefully. I have changed how I packed things up this year. I had all the pans and whatnot under the seat, but it felt like too much wasted space on top of them, so I moved them over and was able to pack a ton of things on top. Even managed to roll the tarp and ground carpet up.. Used to take up 3 x 3 feet and was miserably awkward to move, rolled it fits under the seat for the most part. So rethink how you pack and you might be surprised at how you can make it work.

4. Be Delighted in the skills your family possesses. :)
We know have kayaks instead of a canoe as it offers more flexibility. I LOVE sales. :) anyways, how to travel with three kayaks was more problematic than move a canoe, buy my husbands ingenuity lead us to this great solution. We had to refit the bike rack to make it work (the bikes now travel backward) but it works and I am so thrilled with how he worked it all out. :)

So this post is part of the homeschool crews five day blog hop. In case you couldn't guess, the theme of the day was home management. :)

To see what others have to say, go a visiting, starting by clicking the image below. :)

Homeschool Organization: Supplies

1/5/2016

Lisa, over at Canadian Homeschooling has issued a challenge. Can we take 20 days to organize our homeschooling?

Week one: Supplies!

I thought it would be fun to do a post walking you through how I organize our homeschooling. Week by week.

The picture below shows how I USED TO organize our supplies. I still use the same containers but I've switched things around a bit. I used to put them up on a cupboard behind our table but two weeks before Christmas we started to renovate our living/dining room area so while hubby painted I worked on the bookroom so as to make room for dining room rejects and I actually get my CURIO cupboard OUT of the bookroom. Took a lot of doing. :)

Needless to say our pens/markers etc drawers needed to make a move. :)

So, anyways, that's where I had them last year. Now that I've moved them they are next to his table/computer. Immediately to the right of this is his table. If he turns his chair around he is sitting next to me at the big table where we do our joint work.

These drawers hold our rulers scissors, pencils, erasers, shapeners etc.
Our papers on top are cardstock which my son uses to make his many papercraft figures, we also use the cardstock for doing unit studies and lapbook type studies.

Stencils, markers, special crayons for our daily activities board. Pens and pencil crayons next door.

Tape and crafting blades are on the opposite side of room. I've had the tape in these drawers for a VERY long time and it amazes me that my boys repeatedly ask "where's the tape?" Does make me smile and shake my head at them. Smiles are good right? :)

I am thrilled that I've managed to contain our glue into one container.   The fact that I often have to track down the drawer is a completely different story.     Glue gun sticks and a crafty boy means the drawer travels. Currently residing in my lad's room. :)

So come join the challenge.   It's up on Facebook HERE.   If you are Canadian you can join in on the challenge and enter a draw HERE.

If you have organized your writing supplies... and tape and rulers and what not... let me know. Link up in the comments and I'll come visit and tell you want a marvellous job you have done. Deal?   :)

F - fixing up a room (blogging the alphabet) #abcblogging

6/4/2014

Did you know that in the spring the lighter comes earlier and stays later?

This is a lesson my eight year old has been learning and it's been driving him crazy!

"MOM!!! It's too light out! I can't sleep!!!!

So we set out one day last week while hubby was away at a conference to see if we could do something about that.

We found what we needed at JYSK. We found ourselves a bit confused for a while about our options but a very helpful sales clerk alleviated that issue quite quickly.

My son wanted these drapes, and had me pick out a version of a lighter shade. It was hard to choose and the lad needed to think how long our window was and how long our walls were. There were plenty that he liked that were simply way too long.

We almost forgot a curtain rod and once we had two in hand off we headed.
Time to put them up there were no instructions so needed to figure out how to put them up.
Drill, screwdriver and "get her done" attitude served us well. :)

From the diagnosis of the problem.

Our blinds are very old and over time and handling by children and adults, they have developed health issues.

Should we duct tape them? The lad thinks that will hurt them more, so cover them up we shall.

Let's open them mom? Can I do it???

Then came the work of threading the drapes onto the rods. It had taken a while to figure out how the rods work. The one rod slides into the other and it simply didn't want to come out! Rather frustrating, but perseverance proved key in this instance.

The lad's cat Milo was quite intrigued by all these goings on. He wasn't helpful when it came time to thread the drapes on the rod...all that movement was too intriguing for him, but he did a great job of monitoring where the drill was so we wouldn't step on it.

So what do you think? Will they do the job for one boy child and his mother?

if you click on the image below you will be taken to Marcy's site so you can join in! :)

The Hardest Subject to Teach

2/10/2014

As I pondered this topic for the TOS Crew Carnival I went through the list of all the things taught regularly. Bible, Science, History, Math, English, Social Studies, Geography, and such like I thought to myself... They aren't hard. What would I choose? Some are easier to teach than others due to the curiousity or resistance of my son, but overal they aren't hard to teach. So what is HARD for me to teach?

And then it hit me... Homemaking... THAT is the subject I struggle with the most. You see I am NOT a natural born homemaker. I was taught by my mom, and taught well, but it's not a task I appreciate or for the most part desire to even do. There are so many other things in life I would rather do... blog, take walks, read a book, play a game, care for my critters, talk with hubby/son/family/friends etc. So many more appealing things so I often neglect the house. I simply couldn't be bothered for the most part.

BUT... I married a fellow who was raised by a parent who thrives on the adage "cleanliness is next to Godliness" and he learned to thrive in a clean and tidy environment. He is not by nature a tidy fellow but he is less stressed when his environment is tidy. Reducing stress is an important part of this household and so learning homemaking skills is important. My son needs to learn how to tidy up the "untidyness" that he creates. :)

To that end I developed a lego organizing system to help him keep things tidy. But what does that do for other important skills? I remember teaching my replacement staff before I left my job to get married to my sweetheart... and how these 18-24 year old young woman didn't know how to sweep a floor, load a dishwasher, dust and so many other skills and I thought it was deplorable. How could they be living on their own and not know how to keep their houses in a relatively decent living condition? Not spic and span, but HOW of doing it?

And so remembering that it is important to teach my son how to do certain tasks EVEN IF he doesn't want to. But to teach HOW to and WHY it is important.

It is so much easier for me to just quickly sweep the floor than to have to remember to say Here son, let me show you how to sweep the floor. But he is learning to use a dust pan.

So not only is he learning the how, he learns why... if you don't sweep the floor you encourage insects and rodents to help you clean it up for you. Do you like living with ants on the floor? oh.. you don't.. well then in THIS HOUSE you need to sweep the floor. if you don't you know what will happen in the spring. :)

He makes his bed in the morning as it means there is more time at night for reading stories. :) Saves him time and vexation as a tidy bed is easier to sleep in. Do I demand perfection like my mom would have? NO. :) I don't demand it of myself (unless I'm making a bed for a guest) but regular stuff??? NO WAY. :)

Folding and putting away clothes is a skill he is well on his way to mastering. WHY? Because then you know what is clean, you know what you have available, and it's a good reminder to do the laundry before you run out. :) The washing machine and operation will be learned this year.

Likewise for dishes...he'll do the task complaining because I ask him to. But if I explain WHY we do the dishes it makes sense to him and he'll help without complaining (even though he dislikes washing them). But drying and putting away... he understands why it needs to be done.

I find explanations to be important to my son. He dislikes doing stuff "JUST BECAUSE" he wants a reason. If there is no reason there is not real impetus on his part to want to learn. With reasons he gets it and it becomes more important to him. Is he going to be a stellar homemaker? I don't think so.. he's got a lot of ME in him. But he will learn the whys and hows for when he lives on his own. And that to me is important.

He learns to cook since buying ready made food is more expensive and from having our exchange student here this summer, he's learned it's a good way to impress your friends if you can bake them treats. :)

Will the scene below continue to be a part of my life and his? Most definitely. :) but at least we know how to make it go away. :)

This post was written to be part of the TOS crew carnival on "The Subject I Struggle Teaching Most". It will go live on February 12. You can find that here. :)

Making Cookies

10/21/2013

Making Cookies when you have a helper is a fun way to fill an afternoon.

When you are a homeschooler, if it also a fun way to do math, science, following instructions, reading and so much more.

On this day we also learned the art of compromise. I don't do chocolate well (my current health stuff negates chocolate) and my boy LOVES chocolate (as does his dad).

So we make oatmeal raisin cookies, but half of them became oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

My lad is well named for being just.   He is quite good at making sure things are fair and did an excellent job at dividing the mixture in half before we added the raisins and chocolate chips.

Mom... How much chocolate can I add?

Oh... until it looks enough. :) Was my response.

He thought that funny and had a blast. They were very chocolatey.   :)

Here is the finished product.

Chocolate chip cookies for one boy and his dad. me... I get to enjoy the oatmeal raisin. Next time though I think we'll work on the fraction 2/3. I don't need to eat half of cookies recipe and only leave 1/4 each for the two fellows. Might as well make it more fair all round eh?

What do YOU think? :)

The Recipe and instructions

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Preheat oven to 375

Then take the following three ingredient and cream them together.

3/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

Beat in the following until fluffy

2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a separate bowl mix,

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 cups rolled oats

Then make a decision... will they all be raisin, or chocolate chip or ????
add about a cup of whatever you choose, or divide it up. Your choice, your tastebuds, your family needs. :) add a bit more than a cup if you have a fun-loving eight year old.

This recipe originally hails from all-recipes.com.