A more productive week

I am happy to announce this week there was more work and less loafing around. I still played Zelda but not as often or as long. Instead I used this week to clean up the library, finish organizing last years school work from Daniel, and rethink a few things for Emma.

My poor library has too many books and not enough space so I keep shuffling books around. Another problem is I bought the useless  5 shelf book cases from Target. There is just too much space between shelves...lots of wasted space, and the shelf in the middle is fixed so you are stuck with a nice huge gap at the top. Right now I have boxes stored on the top shelf but it looks messy and I would rather more books. I just did not want to spend lots on bookcases since we are renting and who knows what will be needed for the house we buy. So now I am always rearranging these dumb things and getting more frustrated by the wasted space.

I have 2 of these useless things. I also have 2 sturdy metal racks I bought for bookcases but once I put them together i realized my mistake. There are no sides to the books fall through. I ran two rows of wire down the sides to keep the books in. These actually are not bad, they hold lots of books and there is no bending of the shelves. The top shelf needs bookends but it is usable....more so then the target ones.

So with 2 crappy bookcases and more books then book case space I am always rearranging and pulling books from storage to swap with what is out. I do not think I can express in words how much I miss my custom made built in book cases our old home had...floor to ceiling, wall to wall...sigh.

Besides cleaning and reorganizing,  I spent time trying to figure out some things I was not happy with for Emma English wise. We tried (for the millionth time) the SL Language that came with core D but after 1 week I just could not use it. I honestly do not want to spend money or much time with English this year because Emma has had quite a lot of Language since she started school (FLL 1-3, BJU Language/Phonics K-3, Abeka Language/Phonics pre K-3). I really wanted to work on some skills with out them being to schoolish or forced. While working on the bookcases I was once again faced with a bunch of old Mailbox Magazines and Books I have collected over the many years. I have dwindled the pile down by half since we no longer need the pre K-2nd grade items, but it is still a nice amount of space they take up.

Almost a foot of book case space

The problem is every time I decide to get rid of them I open them up and see all the really great ideas. There are tons in there that I can use for homeschool. There was even a time I had plans to use just these books for ideas on all subjects for the year...no curriculum, just these...and you know, I believe it would have been a great year (I still do). After spending hours going through the magazines and theme/month books I decided we will use these for Language Arts...but a trial first. I have one Mailbox magazine and one Teacher Helper left that is for 2nd and 3rd grade and I will use this for July (it's the Aug-Sept 2004 issues but It will be fine).

I will avoid the busy work ideas/pages because Emma has gotten over her love of workbook pages. Instead I am focusing on writing and reading ideas with some grammar work thrown in. In the magazine pictured they have a great go along ideas to use with the Miss Nelson is Missing book that we will do next week: compare/contrast chart, make a missing person poster, finding the clues to the identity of Miss Swamp and writing to the detective to help him....along the way we will explore story theme, recalling details, analyzing characters and making inferences. The Following week we will work with the story Lon Po Po. In addition to those we will cover antonyms and synonyms, developing writing ideas, and cover some phonics for review. I believe that is quite a lot for the month. If we both enjoyed this month of Language Arts I will continue with the plan. The rest of the mailbox books and Magazines are for Intermediate levels 4th-6th grade which will allow me to pick and choose lending itself to more then one year of use.I figured if I am going to keep them I better use them....and after using them if I find they are not working, then chuck um, almost a foot of prime bookcase space is too priceless to keep items with no real value to me on.

Oh and one quick thing, can you tell me what I need with catalogs from 2004? I went through my stack of homeschool catalogs and found a few with old dates....with the exception of the SL catalogs that date prior to 2011, one does not need old catalogs, especially ones I have never ordered from. It is madness the things I keep finding...plain madness.