Part I - How We Homeschool...

This is the first in a series of posts about how we homeschool.  I am always curious about how others organize their materials and curriculum.  So, I thought I would show you some of how we do it...

We do most of our work in the kitchen.  I bought two inexpensive bookcases at the local drugstore, a fabric basket/crate, and put it all together in an empty spot in the kitchen.  You can see the two bookcases here, as well as a new dry erase/cork board, and our world map.  Now, to be fair, we have another bookcase in the living room that is filled with only books, and then we also have several random piles of books throughout our apartment.  But, the core materials for our homeschooling system, and the core materials for my graduate studies are housed in the kitchen.  I also keep all of my tutoring materials here.

A close up view of the two bookcases in the kitchen.  I am a bit of a type-A person, so our bookcases have a very definite organization to them.  The top left is primarily science equipment, and a box where I put my son's work after he has completed it, and I have reviewed it.  Every couple of months, I organize the box so that everything is by subject and date.  At the end of the 'school year', I go through and sort it further, reflect on how much we have or have not covered, and then I bundle it together with a list I create of material and subjects covered over the year.  That bundle gets saved in the closet for at least a year or more...another post will deal with record keeping.  

The top right shelf is full of books related to my graduate studies - poetry books, books on writing, poetry and literary dictionaries, and so on.  The middle shelf, on the left, is primarily tutoring materials (in the black bin), and a couple of dictionaries.  The middle shelf, on the right, is languages, literature, and history.  On the bottom left, we have binders full of curriculum for my son, curriculum for tutoring, and materials for my grad program, a binder filled with homeschooling, personal, medical, etc records, and so on.  The last shelf on the bottom, right, is all social studies and science.  

Now, the top of the kitchen bookcases!  This is one area that kind of makes me crazy.  I am constantly reorganizing and cleaning it up!  We keep all of our pencils, pens, erasers, glue sticks, and any other office supply type of stuff here.  

Above the bookcases, I just installed a dry erase board with a cork strip.  Next to that, you can see our world map.  I am a serious list-keeper, so the dry erase board will come in handy!  Along the bottom, tacked to the cork strip - a thank you note from the parents of one of my tutoring students, a flier for a farmer's market, and my son's birthday wish list.

I could go on and on, but just wanted to share a little slice of our homeschooling life in this post.  Next time, I will write about how I keep records for homeschooling.