And School Starts tomorrow!

I can't believe its already here!

So I had this great idea that I would spend the summer having fun with my family and friends and not start the whole school planning thing until August.  Because last year I had the opposite idea plan first, have fun later.  And of course I planned all summer!

Not this year though!  I had the best summer ever!

And now I'm completely ready to start school tomorrow!  Over the summer I deep cleaned and organized the house so the school year would be less hectic.  Jon put up shelves in the kids bedrooms so that their projects would have a place to be displayed and valued other than the kitchen counter.  I have bought all the school supplies, all the curriculum, and laid out a very well planned day. Everything is copied, my bulletin board looks great, I have great learning incentives planned, and I have all those fun back to school celebrations planned that I pinned on pinterest!  All we need now is a good night's sleep and a well balanced breakfast packed full of protein!

Not!

Not only is my bulletin board not finished, I'm still cutting and laminating!

  The kid's school supplies have been bought but they are all in a bin in the basement(don't even ask me if I have presharpened the pencils).

 I do have this really cool incentive plan-in to motivate the kids in their school and housework but its sitting on my pinterest board.

 I did get a lot of cleaning and organizing done this summer-however it is far from finished.  And those shelves-well I have the wood stacked neatly in my basement. Please don't even look at my laundry table.

Instead of being full of energy going into the 1st day I have a cold-I have to blow my nose every 5 min and sit down to rest every 15!

  Here is a picture of our school schedule for the week I printed 3 days ago:

See all that stuff written in ink all over the margins.  Yep, my pretty looking schedule is already full of corrections.

The perfect 1st day of school is not going to happen here tomorrow.  I wanted it to be perfect. I thought it would be perfect.  And up until this morning I was convinced that everything had to be perfect or I was not valuing my kids education and upbringing enough.

But I was wrong.  I was wrong because WE LIVE HERE.  We don't live on a pinterest.  I spent the summer making memories with my kids.  I played my little ponies for an hour today when I knew I was still trying to plan the perfect 1st day of school. What's more my family will continue to live here for the remainder of the school year-and it will never be perfect.

It's because we live here.

And because I'm terrible at organizing!

And school starts tomorrow so I'm going to give you a quick tour of our school room:

 

This is my kitchen/school room.  We do most of our school work sitting in here. I'm excited to have 2 white boards this year instead of just 1!  Notice the calendar in the middle still doesn't have numbers-that will have to be fixed by tomorrow.  The envelope on the right contains our music cards and I will probably add our memory verse to the empty spot on the board at some point.  Right now it is written on the white board.

This is the cabinet in the kitchen that contains almost all teacher's guides, workbooks, school supplies, etc.  that we use on a regular basis.

Here is the newest addition to the kitchen-Samantha's preschool stuff!  I am super excited that Samantha now has her own space instead of being crammed into the cabinet!  I am hoping this will help her be more independent with her work.

Our newest bookshelf in the living room!  I just bought this and I am still working on filling it up and organizing it.  On one shelf I have all of our history texts for Ancient Egypt.  Another shelf full of library books to complement what we are studying each week.  I have another shelf with reference type books-dictionaries, children's encyclopedias, and books I'm reading.

This is our Math area.  It's in my bedroom.

Math in the bedroom-its so romantic!(Insert bad math jokes here)

 We started doing math upstairs in my bedroom last year because the girl's were taking naps downstairs and this guaranteed them some quiet.  Samantha still takes naps so we will still be doing math upstairs in my bedroom.

Kaitlyn also does take school work to her room to work on independently.  She normally does this because Matthew likes to make noises when he works and she can't stand it.  I can relate to her so I allow it as long as she gets her work done.

The school room tour is finished so I guess there is no delaying finishing up all these loose ends.

And school starts tomorrow!