Back to Home School: Mini Office

Well, it's that time of year again, Back to School!  Or Home School for my kids. If your kids are anything like mine, they probably hate sitting next to each other to do school work.  There isn't a minute that goes by that I don't hear, "get off MY side of the table!" or "Stop looking at my paper!"  So after doing some searching on the interwebs, I ran into "mini-offices," and thought it would be a great solution to a couple the issues that the kids have.  This concept reminds me of back in elementary school, during state testing the teachers would take file folders and stood them up so we could have privacy dividers. Except these folders can be decorated or even better made into a reference source by adding all the information your child needs to refer to during a typical day.

For Teenie I chose some phonics sheets and math concepts that she is currently working on, and also some things that she is having issues with such as a skip counting chart.  For Sonshine I found liquid measurement conversion charts, prime and composite numbers chart and Roman numerals. I have found a great deal of information just by googling "free mini office printable" or by typing in what I was looking for specifically i.e. "printable periodic table of elements."  The beauty of these mini offices are that you can make specific ones for specific subjects, or if you are lazy like me, just make one that has all of the general information that your kid might need.  Either way it's win-win, because eventually after referring to the information and seeing it over and over, the kids will start to memorize it!

All you need to make these is 2 new or used file folders (or more if you need a bigger office), a glue stick and some printable (check out the links at the end of this post)
 I used 3 folders per kid.

 All you do is open up the folders and overlap them glue them in place with a glue stick and let dry.  When they are dry you can reinforce with clear packing tape.

Add your information and you're good to go. (Cute kid cameo apperence by Sonshine).

 

 Here's a close up of the mini office I made for Teenie.

Laminating will make them last longer, but is not necessary. You can also use strips of clear packing tape (get it from the dollar store) to "laminate" as well.  Kids can them personalize the front cover by using stickers or markers.
 
Some links to get you started:
Busy Teacher Cafe
Nicholas Academy
Maths Charts

When Desert Living Meets Mother Nature Up Close

I will be the first person to tell you that I HATED the desert when I first moved here when I was a kid.  I came from the city and the first thing I did was look around and wonder, "Why in the hell would any one live here?" There was nothing, NOTHING, NOT A DAMN THING for miles around. I immediately hated it.  Flash forward to my adult hood... I had my son and immediately began to see the desert for what it was, a beautiful, quiet place to raise kids.  Then the housing boom came and screwed that up for everyone. McManisons sprung up in every empty lot, crammed together so tightly that you can practically stick your head out of window and end up in your neighbor's house.  With it came graffiti, trash and crime.  No longer the ideal place it used to be.  Then the bubble burst and a lot of the people moved away leaving bunch of empty homes, some parts of the high desert look like ghost towns.
When the hubby and I were ready to buy a house, we wanted out of the city and something more "rural."  We found a quiet place in a decent neighborhood that we liked. Not rural but it will have to do for now.  And we have a great view of the mountains thanks to the riverbed across the street. With all the paved roads and sudden surge of businesses popping up you tend to forget that you live in the middle of no where until you are walking your dog early in the morning and encounter a pack of coyotes. Step on and get stung by an scorpion in your kitchen, or you have to call animal control because there is a snake in your car (or just yesterday in the garden!  Yikes!)   We tend to forget that we are on their turf.

Click! Caught you just hangin' out in the backyard!

As a family, we spend a good amount of time outside, educating or kids about our desert habitat.  We we quietly observe various insects, lizards and birds we find in our yard or when we are out walking the neighborhood.   This is a great learning experience for the entire family and it's free!  The best thing to do is take a digital camera and take pictures of a bug or plant or whatever creature you may see and go home and research it using sites that cater to the identification of wildlife in your local area.  Using this site, we were able to determine that the lizard pictured above was a Granite Spiny Lizard. At least that's what we think, we may be wrong but it was still fun to do the research.  Using this method we have spotted various types of birds, including owls, bats, squirrels and scorpions (from a distance of course).  Next time you are on a walk bring a camera, and take pictures of the unfamiliar, you will be surprised at what you find with a little help from the Internet.

Tolkien Crafts @ Geek Crafts!!!

Geek Crafts | Tag Archive | tolkien

The boy-child aka "Sonshine" is currently obsessing over everything Tolkien and watches the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy of movies every night.   I am definitely trying some of the crafts featured on this site ASAP!  I am constantly making stuff for Teenie, I even named my blog after her! I rarely make things for the boy, because he thinks homemade stuff is "lame" and would rather have "store bought" stuff.  Which is funny, because my mom crochets non-stop and makes him stuff all the time and he LOVES it.  I guess he's just too embarrassed to say, "my mom made this for me."  Arrgghh...pre-teens...

When he sees some of the stuff on this site he is going to poop his pants.