quiet books. do i dare?!

Something I have always wanted to do is make my kids Quite Books.  It has always seemed so overwhelming and time consuming to me that I just kept pushing the thought to the back of my mind.

Well, no more!  I am going to do it. 

Thanks to my pal Pintrest I have been doing a lot of research and idea gathering.  I've found some great stuff that I want to use and I've found a lot of inspiration that has sparked my noggin and got the wheels turning to allow the ideas to be unique and personal to my kids and their likes, skills, and personalities.

Wish me luck as I start.  I am just in the sketching stage and will soon be gathering materials.  I am by no means trying to get this done fast.  I think these would make great Christmas presents! :)

 Sam's Quiet Book Ideas:

 James' Quiet Book Ideas:

 Chloe's Quiet Book Ideas:

 A few of the larger sketches for Chloe's book.  They are very rough, but they make sense to me (and that's all that matters!) :)

weather station

At the beginning of the year we read a lot of books about weather and studied the different types of weather that we experience. The kids had fun making these weather plates so that we could display the type of weather we have each day.
Anytime you make what you learned in to something you understand it better. We had so many different conversations about each type of weather as we made these.

Our Alphabet

My kids finished this a while ago, but I realize I never documented it. It was so fun to make. As we studied the letters and did our phonices activities we would make something for each capital and lowercase letter for our wall to use as a reference when we needed it. The great thing about it is that now only does it show them what they letters should look like, but it gives them a picture to help them remember what it sounds like.
I got the idea here.

This has also inspired our newest car game. Someone picks a letter and then we think of things that start with that letter. It's been a lot of fun.

And here's a glance at our classroom as it has evolved this year...

popcorn words

To help my son get motivated to memorize his sight words we made a popcorn bucket to fill with the words he passes off.


He was done so well with it and has already earned one popcorn party and it close to his second.
I love how easily you can motivate kids....if it was only so easy for us adults! :)

home classroom

I've been busy, and here's why. I have been putting together our home classroom to get ready for the school year. Here it is. I am SOOOO happy with how it turned out, but I am even happier with how the school year had been going.
It is a very gratifying feeling to have a vision and be able to make it a reality.