Setting Up Our Homeschool Environment

I always love the beginning of a new school year. Even though we basically do school year round I feel like each season brings something new. Winter is a great time to cuddle indoors and read lots of books and catch up on math lessons. Spring is perfect for starting to get outdoors a little more and appreciating everything in nature coming back to life, its the perfect time to start a nature study or science unit and get the garden going. Summer is our fun exploring the outdoors time while the weather is nice, we spend lots of time at the park, swimming, and taking little trips. Fall however is a great time for fresh starts and trying something new. I usually take the last few weeks of summer to go through all my things. I like to keep things simple and clutter free as possible. If we didn't use it all year then it is most likely going. Once that is finished I clean and dust all my shelves, and reorganize if I need to. I feel like this is essential to our homeschool environment. If things feel to cluttered I have a hard time focusing, and it can be distracting for the kids as well. I have finished doing this part of my end of summer cleaning and I feel freer already. I love the feel of being unburdened by stuff we don't need.

Now I get to do the fun stuff. Room set up. While I don't want my whole house to look like a school room I do have a little area set up for our morning meeting time. This is just the time in the beginning of the day where we all sit at the table for breakfast and discuss the day ahead. We talk about the Mother Goose Time theme for the day, we do calendar and weather, we read books, and we have conversations about what we will be learning for the day and what we already know about the topic, or what questions we might have that we are hoping to have answered. This year I think I am going to add in some cursive practice for my daughter and some printing practice for my son. I have also decided to end this morning meeting time by having a dance party. I am just going to allow them to pick some music out of our cd basket and we will just dance for about 15 minutes or so to get all the wiggles out before starting on our first lesson of the day. I'm hoping this will work out well for my son. He has a lot of energy and has a really hard time focusing sometimes. The area that we use for our morning meeting is set up using mostly the items from the Mother Goose Time starter kit that came with Septembers curriculum. I re did my board already and have it mostly set up. We are still doing the Superheroes summer theme so not all the items are up yet. Here is a look at how it is looking so far

On the board I am going to display the calendar, weather, number tree, and the days of the week once I laminate them. Next to the board I will put the monthly theme poster and under that the daily topic that we are working on will be displayed. On the ground I have a little basket with all the weather and days of the week clouds in them. The other wall has all the months displayed as well as the world map from last years Mother Goose Time. The board underneath is for my older daughters spelling and reading program, but pretty much everything else I have used to decorate this space was included with the Mother Goose Time kit. I love that these items are so cute and fun to use I actually don't mind that they are hanging up in my kitchen area and they help to create a fun learning environment, everything just begs to be looked at and touched.

The next area I have for our homeschool is this area by the kitchen table window just on the other side of the wall with all the months on it. I have this great shelf unit that fits all of our supplies.

I keep our months worth of Mother Goose Time in the cute school bus box it comes in and each night I pull out the next days bag and the accompanying suggested reading book and put it in the first drawer of the little rainbow rolling cart. The little cart is used to organize all the work for the day. I also use this shelf to keep all the reading books organized, and it also houses almost all of our art supplies. I have them easily accessible and organized so that they can pull out whatever they need. This is especially useful when we do the Invitation to Create projects from the lesson plans. The Invitation to Create project usually has a few suggested supplies to have out and I make sure to have those set up, but if one of them has a different idea of what they want to do they are free to go through the art supplies on the shelf and use whatever they need. I like giving them this freedom because it allows them to think outside the box, and to work on some independence and know that they don't have to use something just because mom put it out. They are allowed to have some creative freedom and they come up with some great art because of this. 

I also have this area with all of our books. We love books in our family. We are always reading and now that my daughter is a competent reader she reads to her brother often. I keep the books out and accessible to them so they can pick out books whenever they want to. I also use the book shelf to hold our cd player and the basket of all the Mother Goose Time CDs we have collected. They love listening to these CDs again and again. They each have favorite songs from all the months and they know right where to find them. I let them have control over this as well. I might tell them to put a CD on, or they might come ask me if they can. I have taught them how to use the CD player and liKe to give them some control when I can. 

Another thing we do to help create an environment that is conducive to learning and exploring is garden. We live in an apartment so we don't have an actual garden but I feel like it is important for them to grow some plants and see the life cycle of a plant in action. The garden center near us has a fantastic kids club and every month they get a gift. Most of the plants on our patio garden are form the garden club.

So far we have grown several types of flowers, herbs, strawberries, soy beans, and potatoes. Someday I would love a real garden but for now this is what we got and we make it work. I love seeing their proud faces when we water and take care of our garden together. 

The last area we have is a nature display area. We go on a lot of hikes and walks together and are always looking for fun things to observe. Most the time we leave things where we found them but every once in awhile I let them bring something fun home to display for awhile. We found the nest on the ground and the piece of robin egg shell during the same month we learned about birds with Mother Goose Time last year. 

We are also part of a nature exchange group so we get things to study from other states periodically as well. 

Now that I have our house cleaned and our school stuff organized I am feeling ready to start our September kit which is called My Amazing Body. I have already reserved and picked up most the books from the library. I just need to laminate a few things and I will be ready. I cant wait to start so we can check out all the new things that have been included this year. I hear there are magnetic story pieces!! 

My goal every year is to create an environment that is fun, accessible, and creates excitement around learning. Mother Goose Time helps me do this by adding little fun extra touches that feel like school but don't take away the I am at home and comfortable feelings.

Check out Mother Goose Time here

*Mother Goose Time has generously provided this curriculum to us in exchange for our stories and honest opinions*