Let's Get Organized, Organized.

I have done and redone our school room several times over the years. Moved desks into rooms. Hung a giant white board. Tried quite a variety of arrangements, and we always end up schooling downstairs in the kitchen, living room, and our bedroom.

So I decided this year, why fight it? I searched and searched for just what I wanted to make the most of the situation. I don't want our kitchen looking like a school room, but also don't want school stuff just piled up all over the counters and fireplace like it has been...because why put it away upstairs if you are going to just bring it back down the next morning? Ugh. So it stays a mess year round.

I finally decided on a bookcase from IKEA and picked up some containers from there too. I was so excited when the boxes showed up and grabbed my screwdrivers and allen wrench and went to work. I mean, there are no words on the directions so this should be easy, right? It wasn't quite that simple, but wasn't too bad. At one point though, P said, "Why don't we just return them?" but that would be admitting defeat so I took two side off and flipped them and tried again and it worked. Woohoo!

So this:

Became this:

And I am so happy. C does all his work in his room and is good about  keeping it up there. I've bought several organizing tools for his desk this summer too to try to keep it nice and neat this year. So this has T and P's books in the top two cubbies, the things we do together or teacher's books in the bottom right, and things for our bonus kiddos on the bottom left. I need to change that out now that we have a 2 year old bonus one...this was when we were supposed to get a 6 year old so things have changed a bit. I have their books on CD in there and lots of paper, pencils, etc on top. It is great to have it all together.

I also cleaned out our cabinet on the other side of the room under the fish tank and am using it for extras and craft stuff.

While I was in the organizing mood, I printed out all our memory work "week at a glance" pages for CC and got them ready for the year. I have a set in each of T and P's daily notebooks (the striped ones in their cubbies) and then a copy here for me. I'm so thankful for my amazing friend that typed these up for us to enjoy. She is awesome!!

 Back to the kids notebooks I mentioned...I'm trying something new this year with their notebooks. I took the idea from halfahundredacrewood's blog and tweaked it to work for us. Like her, I found a few things that the kids didn't know, that wouldn't take them long to learn if I just took the time to teach them. So I'm taking the time. In their morning notebooks, they have things to copy and learn, geography to draw each day, Bible study and prayer time pages (I'll be reviewing one of those for you soon that I LOVE!!!) etc. I'm excited to see how it works this year.

So, that's that. I'm feeling more organized and just in time! We finally got a foster placement of a 2 year old and I now have no free time. Thankfully God prompted me to get organized earlier in the week so we are ready to go!