The Card Table of Organisation

The morning begins all quiet and organised, here it is another Friday.

I have a winter system and a summer system, of course right now, being in the northern hemisphere and in the north at that...we're in the winter system right now. That means we do our main homeschooling in the living room since that's where the wood stove lives. In the summer system we use the dining room table for any crafts or seat work...it's bigger but not near the wood stove!

I have a system which seems to work well for me, a disorganised, flighty person. I set everything possible out for the day ahead of time, in the winter I use a card table for this morning set up. Four kids work is put in or on their lap desks ready for them. Pencils (plenty of them) glue, scissors, ruler, pencil sharpener, any craft materials needed. Any books I plan to use or videos or DVDs we plan to watch. I get it all ready on my card table. It doesn't stay nice and neat for long but it gives me a starting point for each day.

Ready for another day. Here is the Card Table of Organisation.


And the kids get up! Hayley and Freeze seem to be semi awake!!


The mornings tend to be fast paced for us. Today was:

Tristan math and phonics

Colin math and LA plus he read a short book for me about comets

Hayley math and LA

All four children, reading from today's event in 365 Days of Celebrations and Praise. I don't remember to use this every day but I try. The kids enjoy all the fun and sometimes crazy special days in the year. Today was National wild bird feeding month there was a fun craft to make, it was a lot like the pine cone feeders we previously made but this involved paper cups.

You take paper or plastic cups, cut a hole in two sides, tie string in the holes and tie string together at top. Cover outside of cup with peanut butter (or shortening which I let Hayley use as she despises peanut butter)/ Roll cup in birdseed and then fill inside of cup with bird seed.

Colin and Tristan particularly liked this activity.

Silly boys want to be in ALL the pictures! Close up of the completed cup bird feeders, these are a good idea! Even when the birds have pecked off the seed outside the inside of the cup can be re-filled.

We hung the cup feeders on the Christmas tree outside. Our pine cone feeders are bare. We have been re-loading them about once a week but it's harder to do now they're tied to the tree. These cup feeders will be easier to refill.

and right away some birds find these new feeders!

Back indoors we settled down with some popcorn and a movie, the movie is Beethoven Lives Upstairs. It was very good. I made the popcorn holders out of rolled up 12x12 scrapbook paper. I find that I have an over abundance of those great huge mixed packages so I end up using the paper for many things. LOL

Flower is more interested in the popcorn than Beethoven! Whenever we have popcorn we have to give Flower some, it's his favorite food and there's no peace unless we share.

After Beethoven with popcorn Trevor did his math & LA.

Trevor and Hayley viewed Teaching Company math and world history.

I cooked dinner, spinach whole wheat pasta. Ugh. I had high hopes for this but I don't like whole wheat pasta much at all anyway and the spinach did nothing for it. I made cookies (we needed a reward for getting through the whole wheat spinach pasta).

The mail arrived with the usual junk and also the newest God's World News issues, we'll incorporate those next week, a Netflix movie, we'll watch tonight or tomorrow, a postcard....

I read the postcard and became distressed. I didn't understand who it was from but they would apparently see me soon and would have photos to share...the kids are picking up some Spanish it said...I don't get it??!! It made no sense and I was truly worried that someone I didn't know was going to come stay with us for some odd reason and show us many photos of....where is this postcard from I hadn't even noticed...Honduras...OH I think it's coming to me...I had a student in my animals class whose Mom was from Honduras, the names make sense now! Awwww that was nice of them to think of us and send a postcard. That Mom was a nice lady, she had a hard time with her English, had a very, very busy toddler in addition to her two older children and I tried to make conversation with her when I could...yes, I do know these people and they're not stalkers or impending, unexpected house guests, phew.

The afternoon seemed to be taken up with computer games, drawing, tic tac toe, hamsters, ferrets, Freeze the puppy, running around making a lot of noise with a toy laser gun set (boys), screwdrivers of two different sizes were needed by two different boys (Trevor, Colin) no idea why, watching the birds at the new feeders and identifying a few, Tristan thinking he'd seen an ant which I highly doubt at this time of year in NH. Tristan is scared of ants (baffles the mind, his brother is bug boy and he is scared of ants!) so he kept trying to see if he could find another to prove they were already back for summer. That is soooo wishful thinking, it was below zero this morning and hardly made it to 20F. Supper-leftover spinach pasta was offered and refused, pizza and sandwiches were decided upon instead. Madagascar 2 from netflix was put on and soon it will be bedtime.

The end of a productive day a messy card table and my ever present diet coke.the little bottles are soooo the best!