Our set up

This shows most of our school area. She does some activities at her table and some on the floor. On the left is our shelves. Her table in the middle has bins underneath which hold crayons, scissors, glue, and other things she may need to use for any given activity. On the right are my shelves. Books on the bottom, Sonlight on the middle shelf, printer and our workboxes on the top.

 This is our calendar. Month and moon phase on the top. 

The bottom has the current season and today's weather.

 This is just to show us what is on our agenda

for the day. We don't really need it, especially 

using workboxes, but it's good to see at a glance

which subjects we have left.

This is our workboxes. They way it works is you put one subject in each drawer. Then you just move on to the next drawer as you get to it. It helps me make sure we have everything we need all set out and ready to use. She also likes opening the drawers to see what's next. This only has 3 drawers and we do more subjects, but it works out. Sonlight books go on top since they don't fit in the drawers anyway. Cooking/craft doesn't get a drawer. ASL/French doesn't take up much space. I just put the info for that on a 3X5 card and put it in one of the drawers with another subject. Usually it will be Math, Science, and Phonics/Fine Motor that go in the drawers. 

Our new routine

We took Monkey out of the preschool she was attending per her request. We've always planned to homeschool, she was only going for something fun to do. Since leaving, she has shown great interest in going beyond what we've done in the past with her shelves. So I reworked everything we do and have started planning out our school days. We're still tweaking it as needed, but I think we have ironed out the basic plan.

We do school twice a week, for about 2.5 hours. We're using a couple of new programs that I've had my eye on for a while, but she is now showing interest in wanting to really do. Math U See - Primer and Elemental Science: Exploring Science.

Every school day, we do the following:

Calendar time - We talk about the day, date, and month. Sing days of the week. Check and talk about the weather, and talk about the current phase of the moon.

Sonlight - P3/4 - typically it includes 1 Bible story, 1 poem, 2 stories, 1 science or ss story, and 2 songs.

Science - Elemental Science: Exploring Science. I'm using their lesson plan schedule.

Math - Math U See Primer. We're doing this as "do the next thing" rather than sticking to a schedule.

Shelf activities - This is just like what we were doing before, only now I have less activities out and it's obviously not our main focus anymore. 

These subjects are done once a week:

Day 1:

Phonics - Hooked on Phonics or BOB books

ASL - I use Signing Time and I just teach her myself

Craft - Just some fun craft activity. She paints, draws, cuts, and colors daily. This I try to make something bigger and out of the ordinary.


Day 2:

Writing/Fine Motor - Either write & wipe boards or some sort of fine motor skills activity

French - Little PIM

Cooking - We head to the kitchen and make something.



She sometimes wants to do school more than twice a week. Rather than plan out more days in case we want to do school, I just made a modified plan for doing school on non-planned days. It allows us to spend time in the school room and she has fun, but doesn't need individual lesson plans, so we can do it whenever we want, as often as she wants. It doesn't include all the subjects, but is enough to satisfy her.

Calendar - This is done the same as a normal school day

Sonlight - We just read through some old favorites

Shelf activities - Done just the same


I'm still very flexible in our schooling. I don't believe in forcing it at this age and I only make it this structured because she really loves it and was wanting more. She has never not wanted to do school, but if she ever said no or wasn't enjoying herself, I wouldn't make her. She is generally very excited when I announce school time, if she hasn't already requested it.

More posts to come about our new routine and pics of our new setup.