This year my son is officially starting Preschool.  Because his birthday falls in October he is one year behind all his friends who started Kindergarten yesterday.  Now rather than sending my little guy off to school, wearing a backpack that is bigger than him, taking tons of pictures, and crying all the way home, (cause you know I would) I'm cheating and keeping him home with me.  HA!  Yes, I am homeschooling.

Now, technically I homeschooled him last year too.  We did nursery school.  But that was mostly fun stuff and I made sure never to burn him out.  So if he got tired of something or didn't want to do it that day we didn't.    He really already knew the things he was supposed to learn anyway but I didn't want to push him and make him hate the whole idea of school.  I figured I would just use that year as a sort of practice year to get him used to the idea.  Some days we worked for five or ten minutes.  Some days he wanted to "work" all day.  And some days we didn't crack a book though we usually at least watched an educational video and read a book.  And whenever he sat down with a book to practice drawing his letters or numbers or puzzles or whatnot my daughter would sit down with him and draw or color.  Most days he would ask to "do school" so I consider the year a success.

This year is "for real."  Not that I plan on pushing him to the point of hating or disliking school.  The curriculum only calls for about 45 minutes a day 4 days a week.  I will probably add some fun supplemental stuff too.  If something is not clicking with him we will find another way of doing it or revisit it when he is ready.  I have already had him look through his preschool reading curriculum and it looks like he is actually ready for the kindergarten so I think we will just breeze through that and move on.

We will officially start the day after Labor Day because I have this firm belief that school shouldn't start until September.  Maybe because school started in September when I was a child or possibly because my birthday month is August.  Regardless, I refuse to start school in August!

Of course, as I am getting "prepared" (and by getting prepared I really mean thinking about and planning on getting prepared) I have been obsessively stalking Pinterest and anything and everything that will help me organize and set up my Homeschool Room.


See, I have officially decided to make my "bonus room," (that is kind of a room and kind of an extra space located between and kind of part of the dining room and living room) into a combo homeschool/craft room.

So, I have a pretty good idea of what it needs to look like.  Some combination of...


&


with a little of...


Cause we are going to be all organized and create a learning environment round here.

I even drew up a little diagram of what it will look like.  I seem to have misplaced it at the moment...

Can't imagine why... being all organized and such...

For some strange reason when I showed the plan to my husband he laughed.  He seems to doubt my organizational abilities.  He responded by asking me what made me think setting the room up the way I planned would end up looking any different than it currently looks.

Umm.

See, there is one little hitch in my plan.

The room currently looks a bit like this...

and by a bit I mean exactly like this...

Now, why do you always act so shocked and surprised?  NON-Domestic Mama remember?  You were warned.

And now you truly see.  I have to admit, even when I show you pictures of my mess, I usually show you pictures of my lesser messes.  To show you the mess in it's entirety is sure to shock and horrify you.  I like to save up the shock and horror for little spurts.  Maybe give you a video tour for Halloween or something.  The ultimate horror show...

Anyway, I do have to say this is the messiest room in my house.  You know since we really didn't know what to do with the room it tends to become the catch all.  Luckily it is tucked away right next to the entryway.  So, it is basically the first (or second) view people get of my house.  Because we wouldn't want to give them any false impressions.  Imagine the tragedy if they somehow got the idea that I was domestic or something!!!  Best to just throw it all out there.  Unless of course my mother-in-law is visiting.  Then you see us clean up that area real quick and stuff boxes full of stuff into our bedroom! :)

So, somehow this...

Needs to become this...


I have a plan.

First we need to get the extra dresser out.  It has been there since the slab leak in the kid's room.  We will finally be moving it back!  Then we need to move all the boxes full of Christmas decorations out.  I am soo glad we took the Christmas tree down and put it into boxes, because that was so embarrassing...  Then of course we have the 5000 boxes of junk mail to shred... one page at a time... so that will be easy and quick...

Just like that we will have the space to move some things around and before you know it...

Perfectly organized homeschool room. :)

I've already started.

See?

Nothing in the files yet but I spent a good 15 minutes last night putting them in the crate.  Whew.  Time for a break!