Homeschool Is Messy

My husband leaves for work early in the morning, but the rest of us are here all day, every day. Before breakfast, toys are dragged into the living room. I sling bowls onto the table and notice the library basket being emptied. The rug is covered with books as I pull out the cereal.

Breakfast explodes all over the table and my coffee has disappeared in plain sight.

Balancing messes and lessons is a daily struggle.

To find out how I try to balance homeschooling and homemaking, please hop on over to Heart of the Matter Online. While you’re there, please share your insights and tips. I need all the help I can get!

Small House Homeschooling

Moving back to Idaho opened the outdoors to us, but it cut our living space indoors almost in half. We were perfectly comfortable learning and living in just over 1500 sq. ft. Now we have 888.

It’s not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. It has taken some getting used to though. Here is what I do to ease the squeeze.

1. Get rid of everything I don’t use regularly

(or replace it with something smaller)

Before we moved, all the stuff stored in the garage to fix someday was immediately purged. The television and entertainment center were given away. We’ve never had cable, so the computer suffices to watch movies.

I have a going out/give away pile that grows almost daily.

2. Keep toys small and few

My son is content with one huge box of Lego that slides under his bed.

My girls each have a shoe-box sized drawer to store all their little stuff: tea sets, dolls, and ponies.

One large wicker trunk holds all dress up clothes and a basket corrals their stuffed animals.

3. Hang up as much as I can

I hung hooks by every door in every room.

Pegs in the girls’ room hold their coats and bags. My son hangs up his music bag and sweatshirts. I thought of running hooks all the way down the hallway, but I dream of shallow bookshelves there instead.

The kitchen received the same treatment. A pan rack created out of a metal shelf and s-hooks freed up a cupboard. Cup hooks screwed into the edge of the kitchen counter create a place for towels and pot holders.

Inspired by this post, How to have open shelving in your kitchen without daily staging, I hung two shelves to display my dishes and freed yet another cupboard for food.

The brackets aren’t pretty, but they are what I had.

4. Decorate with creative containers (and books)

There isn’t room for lots of stuff to set about prettily, so I consider storage containers decorations.

• Jars showcase the rice and pasta.
• Small wooden boxes are stacked on a shelf.
• Suitcases work well as storage.
• Even my pottery usually has something inside.

My coat rack wouldn’t fit behind my front door, so I put it in the bathroom.
By hanging a bag on one of the hooks, I have a container for my make-up bag, brushes, and hair accessories.

5. Solve the issue of NO closets

I”m pretty sure the previous owners used one of the small rooms as a large closet. That won’t work for us, so I found some closet shelving on clearance and pounded it into wall to hang our clothes.

It’s not exactly pretty, but it is practical. And it creates a shelf for a bit more storage.

Wardrobes would be nice, but they might make our small rooms seem even smaller. The doors would have to slide or else hit the bed. For now, I’m calling the issue resolved.

6. Try to control clutter where it happens

A beat-up wicker laundry basket sets inside the front door to collect shoes.

My girls always have something creative happening, so baskets next to the craft table trap their art supplies. The largest basket I have stores their artwork.

I’m still working on corralling the laundry, but when we get the bathroom remodeled that will help. We’ll put in a closet for a laundry hamper. (I can’t wait! I’ll have a closet, a real closet!)

7. Embrace the process

Even though our house is still ugly on the outside, the inside is taking shape. It feels like home because we have the things we use and enjoy surrounding us.

Perhaps, these walls help shape us from the inside out, too. We have so many opportunities each day to prefer one another. We stumble over each other’s messes, wait in line to use the bathroom, and work together to improve what we’ve been given. Our closeness clarifies the importance of being family.

Works for Me Wednesday: Washable Markers

Small white boards are nice for practicing letters and drawing pictures. They are a sort of modern slate saving me quite a bit of paper.

The only problem was letting my little ones use dry erase markers, because no matter how hard I tried to supervise they would draw elsewhere.

I looked for alternatives and saw something called wet erase markers. Because that sounded very similar to the washable markers we already own, I pulled out the Crayola.

Washable markers work great! I just keep a wet rag close. The rag gets very colorful, but it washes right out.

I’ve also used washable markers on the outside of my refrigerator. It creates a large white board in a very convenient spot. I am a bit nervous about turning my new refrigerator rainbow colors, but so far I haven’t had any issues. I just clean it off immediately after lessons.

Washable markers work for me!

For more tips visit Works for Me Wednesday.

The Mighty Works of God: Self Government

History textbooks have a tendency to be boring, but I discovered a series of about American history to treasure. These books do not contain dry lists of dates or a simple retelling of events. Instead, they focus on the causes behind events: people and Providence.

The Mighty Works of God consists of three volumes for the early elementary years. They are not listed by grade-level, but gradually increase in difficulty. This review will focus on the 1st level, which is roughly 1st or 2nd grade.

The first lesson from The Mighty Works of God: Self Government introduces history as the story of God working in the lives of men and nations. For his title page, my son wrote,

You are the God who works wonders…Psalms 77:14

He was so inspired considering the works of God in his own life that he composed a song:

God, You are so good to me. God you set me free…

That moment I knew it was a good curriculum choice…

To continue reading my review and view samples from the text, please click over to Curriculum Choice.

Detours and Distractions

This morning started with a long pause as I scrawled arrows in the lesson book. My children were sick last week, so plans stalled. Copying a lesson from one day to the next used to frustrate me.

Why take time to write out what will become scribbles?

I thought it would be a good idea to capture the serendipity of whatever came next in our curriculum by simply writing down what we did each day. That way detours would be recognized as school, because learning really does happen when conversations turn and questions appear.

I quickly realized that didn’t work for us. We needed a general direction, a goal, a starting place.

Now I prepare for each week as it comes. If lessons aren’t sketched out by Monday, nocturnal me gets up before dawn to make it happen.

My plans aren’t elaborate: an idea with a resource or a page numbers from curriculum. Library day tucked in here. Activities listed on the side. Observations splattered here and there.

As we travel down the grid, record the distractions and detours. Because sometimes those are the things we remember the longest, the things that put life into perspective:

1/14/10 Prayed for Haiti. Looked at pictures of Faith Orphanage before and after the earthquake. Kids overwhelmed by compassion. They want to send their toys.

The plan isn’t the destination. It is a map of scratches and arrows attempting to reveal the One whose breath flung the Heavens and whose Spirit whispers to souls.