As I promised yesterday, today I'll bring you for a little peek into our school room.

I don't know if this is the best picture to begin with but I am very excited about my favorite new tool for this school year:
Colored duct tape.

I was introduced to this amazing product in this thread from the 4Real message board. I’ve tagged important school room items with tape and I hope (and have actually been pleading, begging, and beseeching) that the items be returned to their home marked with a matching spot of duct tape.

Preparations for the new school year begin with the ritual of washing and scrubbing the oversized small table. In this photo, the table is set for a game of Leap Frog Letters as suggested by the Handwriting without Tears program. I like to spend a few days with the basic principles of handwriting before beginning Sound Beginnings.

Last year, I didn't worry about the aesthetic lay out of the maps on the wall. I wanted the children to be able to reach the map. But thanks to the Fair of Loveliness, I reorganized the wall directly behind the table.

I have my story disks from Five in A Row on a bulletin board, ready to be taped to the big map. I’ve also have some images representing titles from the Catholic Mosaic ready to put on the map as well. Many of our picture books and read aloud favorites are set in Europe, I’ve made a separate outline map of Europe. Since reading the Ultimate Geography and Timeline book, I’ve been more conscious of looking up geographical locations on maps as we come across them in reading. UGTB suggests using maps in the same way one would use a dictionary: look up foreign countries one comes across in reading in an atlas.

Where the ceiling meets the wall, we have our timeline dates. Mother of Divine Grace suggests dates in third grade, but not for fourth grade. So, since we were on our own this year we’ve decided to use an opera based timeline. (I’m still scratching my head in disbelief that my children really like to watch opera. I've been having a difficult time finding suitable operas considering my opinion of opera [guilty until proven innocent], more on this topic later.)

Getting ready for a new school year also means getting the art bulletin boards ready. This year we’ll begin with Van Gogh. He has a very recognizable self portrait. Last year I began introducing a self portrait of the artist alongside one of his works. I’m planning to repeat the same artists from last year (with a few new additions) and then at the end of the year line the self portraits in chronological order.

( I finally hung my Way of the Mother above the art bulletin board.)

First Friday of the month is a reminder to me to change the bulletin board. It is fairly simple to cover 6 – 8 artists a year this way.



This bulletin board holds the self portraits of the artists.

Under this bulletin board, I’ve squeezed in a bookcase. While one painting of Van Gogh’s hangs on the bulletin board, for the rest of the month, we'll have access to more of his work by leaving a book open on a bookcase.


Dinah Zike in Big Book of Books,suggests managing your paper supply. She suggests in order to avoid waste, try not to keep all of your best paper accessible to the children. I’ve set up two boxes according to her suggestions. Scratch paper refers to whole sheets of paper with writing on one side, such as cast offs from the copy machine. Scrap, for me, refers to cut up colored paper.

White boards make memory work easy. Poems, prayers, phonograms, Latin/Greek roots, scripture, and catechism Q&A can easily put up on the boards and quickly reviewed. It is easy to find them. I’ve tried charts with the younger children and have yet to find them helpful. But, the older children do very well with their weekly lists.

Some unfinished business:
Tintoretto
I began to collect pictures of Tintoretto's works on the back of the school room door after making this post. As the year progressed, I stumbled upon other works of his. We'll have to do something about this.

Dot to Dot
Based on the suggestions from the 4Real thread on organizing books, I made a detailed plan for color coding my books. I think the paper with the plan is stuck inside one of my books and so the plan is still waiting implementation. I hope I don't run out of colored duct tape before having a chance to color code my books.

Frames purchased for one dollar.

Sometimes I really despise the sale rack. Now, I feel pressure to buy posters to fill these frames.

I am considering highlighting an art school, but haven't come up with a good idea.