Category: Inspiration

Our Classroom for a Perfect Autumn Day

A couple of Fridays ago we took class outdoors, what a breath of fresh air! It was amazing, fantastic, refreshing and down right FUN!

We love going to Hudson Gardens, several acres of God’s beautiful creation! We searched for leaves, watched ducks and geese, chased butterflies and bugs, tumbled in the grass and climbed a rock cave, we even did some bird watching.

Since we are now into to the Fall, we were thrilled to see the …

Hay Maze!

and…

Pumpkin Patch!

We also checked out a Leaf Explorer Pack from the Office, we learned all about leaves and trees. There were a ton of fun activities and surprises in the pack.

We also took along this, (thanks Scribbit!):

Thank you God for the Best classroom we could ever ask for!

October 2, 2011
Dream Homes – Dining Rooms & Kitchens

We headed out to our local Parade of Homes to take a peek at some pretty amazing homes. I will be breaking down my tour into several posts.

Dining Rooms and Kitchens

Love the colors used in this room

My Favorite kitchen by FAR!

Wow, imagine all your canned goods, cereals and numerous other items in here – a dream!

This is in a light filled room, just off my favorite kitchen.

I love the black and white in this dining room. The doors open up to an amazing outdoor balcony overlooking an outdoor living room.

I like how the flowers are grand but muted, and tall so guests can see each other.

Imagine the meals you could cook up on this!

It was a fun time, the boys were in awe.

September 11, 2011
Back to School Pictures

School Pictures! Looking around the web I found some great ideas! My middle child is not in this round, he was not in the mood so I didn’t push it. I will get him though! He will be next, may take some bribery.

got this idea from Pinterest. I showed him the picture and asked if there was anything else he would want people to know about him and he added “MarioVideo Game Master Player” – *too funny*

these signs are from iheartnaptime.net, thank u!

This was a fun project and I look forward to taking some more with my Kinder. Thanks to contributors of Pinterest for the inspiration.

August 26, 2011
A Prayer for Teachers

Are you on Pinterest? WOW! I have been super inspired since finding it. While cruising through checking out all the great stuff I came across a Class Rules sign on Pinterest. I love the sign, I printed it for our Homeschool Room.

I decided to visit the blog that it originated on and I found this wonderful prayer for any teacher. I hope to pray this prayer many every morning. I took the text and redesigned it to be “rainbow-ey”, if you like the prayer, click here to download it.

PS- the font I used for Lord and Amen came from another Pinterest post, ultimately from the eighteen25 blog, thanks ladies!

August 22, 2011
Stopping to Smell the Roses, Literally!

I love flowers, I love gardening. Before I had kids, most of my time was spent gardening. I researched, planned, plotted and planted. Fast forward 8 years and I have no time to garden, I figure I will be able to do it again once my kids are a little older.

Until then, I get my flower fix at my local public garden, called Hudson Gardens. 30 acres of God’s beauty in nature. It’s almost heaven!

I wandered through the Rose Garden and snapped some shots of my favorites.

Other Flowers:

Hope you enjoyed!

August 12, 2011
Fun with Shaving Cream

Recently I discovered another amazing blog! This one is called Meet the Dubiens. I have seen so many things on this blog that I want to do with my kids. Very inspiring!

Our first inspiration we did today. She mixed food coloring with shaving cream and used it as paint for her kids bath time.

We did not make it for bathtime, just craft time. I let them play at their little table and gave them some utensils.

I do wish I would have had primary colors, Oliver was mixing colors and discovering new colors, would have been more effective with primary colors.

I am still trying to use up the neon colors I used for Oliver’s Rainbow Cake.

The boys had fun for about 1 hour, record time for my 3 and 5 year olds.

Next time: More tools and Primary Colors.

FUN: YES!

August 3, 2011
2011 “Not” Back to School Blog Hop!

Last year while I was gearing up for my first year of Homeschool, I came across a Blog Hop. At the time I had no clue what a Blog Hop was… glad I found out. A blog hop is a place where bloggers with common interests can participate in a theme and submit their blog to one place. I poured through so many blogs, I was so inspired.

Home of the Matter Online is sponsoring another one for August.

This week’s topic is Curriculum. I am going to share 2 lists with you. My “dream” list and my “real” list! I have 2 simply because of budgetary reasons.

My Dream List:

Writing: Institute for Excellence in Writing

Science: Apologia Zoology 1 (Flying Creatures of the 5th Day)

Character Training: Positive Action Bible

Math: Math U See

History: History of Mystery

Here is what we will be using for my Kindergartner:

Sonlight Core 1

We used this for Preston this past year. Oliver is already doing math and reading so I am going to try Core 1 with him this year . He will probably end up doing the Apologia Science with us.

For My 2nd Grader and possibly my Kinder – Adventures in my Fathers World. I have this curriculum and it is for multiple kids. I am going to work through and may discover that I do not need the Sonlight Core. I will keep you posted!

Preston will also be using Horizons, we used it last year and liked it.

For all 3 boys I am going to use Positive Action for Character Training.

Thanks for stopping by! I cannot wait to see all the blogger Mommies and what they are using!

Next Week: SCHOOLROOMS!!! (did I tell you an IKEA just opened up in my city?!?!)

This looks perfect:

Love IKEA Inspiration!

August 2, 2011
Summer Centers

We love centers! I used them throughout the past school year for all 3 boys. Some structured some as free-play. The boys are always happy to pull them out and play with them it is a guaranteed 30 minutes of constructive play.

For the Summer I reorganized them, rearranged and grouped different things together to get the boys geared up for summer indoor activities.

I put everything in one cabinet thanks to my sister who gave me a nice white cabinet. Thanks Tia!

Melissa and Doug Pattern Blocks and Boards

Styrofoam shapes – Good for Math, Sorting and Building

10 Base T set – great for Math and Building

Random Tools (thanks Liv for the Magnifying glasses)

Colored rice, items are buried, fun!

Great for Math, Sorting, Building and Art

it’s also a Geoboard!

shapes

for building

Learning Robots, Phonics and Math

travel size Concentration game

card shuffler

One Happy Boy!

July 25, 2011
Making Art with Rice
I am always looking for fun ideas the kids. They love experiments and art. This Summer, I signed us up for the Activities Challenge at education.com. They have a sortable list of activities for kids. Arts & Crafts, Science, Games and Summer Fun are just some of the categories listed. We have done a few of the activities and the kids have really enjoyed them.

Today we chose the “Make Rice Pictures” activity. We needed:
- Rice
- Food Coloring
- Rubbing Alcohol
- Glue
- Paintbrush
- Construction Paper
The only step I added: I thinned my school glue down with a little water and let the kids apply it with a paintbrush. I only laid out the colors that matched the colored rice (that didn’t last long, lol). We ended up with a dolphin, a robot on a beach and a “fuzzy” robot.

Here in Colorado the rice only took about 2 hours to dry so we were able to do this activity in one day. The boys thought it so cool that is was colored rice. We invited a friend to join us.

Dyed Rice

Dyed Rice

the boys at work

applying some rice

This was fun and I recommend. We have a lot of rice left over so we will do it again. Might also use the rice inside an “I-SPY ” bottle. It’s pretty that is for sure!
July 7, 2011
Jesus on Worry

July 5, 2011