The School Shelf - Spring 2009

Here we have the Shelf. The Shelf has become an institution in our home. As we have made the transition to more structured, schoolish homeschoolers, I have come to rely on the Shelf more and more.

The most recent change has been to remove the clutter from the top of Shelf replacing it with a few household items. The aloe plant I have managed to keep alive since February. I figured it deserved a permanent place. I unpacked some pictures (which had been away since we had the floors done...a while ago). Much more homey.

This school year began with a Shelf Spa Day back in August. I assigned subject areas to different cubes, cleared out the excess stuff, planned out a term's worth of work and set up notebooks and binders. Without a while lot of additional attention, the set-up that was done has held up. The magic piece of the puzzle, me thinks, is the blue lidded bin I keep at the bottom left of the Shelf. I'll save the particulars of that for another day's blog. Although the stationary supplies need a good tidy up, we've made it through the school year with everything we need very close to our fingertips. I'm so impressed with myself, that I'm actually looking forward to planning and organizing our next school year.

In fact, I'm so looking forward to diving into new books and planning fresh work that it's all sitting there waiting in front of the shelf. The red shopping bag is full of next year's materials. I thought the additional clutter of a bag sitting there would bug me - but I look at it and I'm excited about getting next year set up.

Over on the other side of the room, I've added the small white shelf to control Shelf overflow. It fits very snugly there under our display boards. It looks especially tiny beside the tall table, but one doesn't complain about such things when they are working in such a small living space.

There's only a few more weeks of school work left. Officially, we're about to start Week #35 of 36 weeks. As the school year is wrapping up, we're relaxing a bit and we'll finish when we finish. The kids are happy with that arrangement as it leaves plenty of time for sleeping in, bike rides, soccer and playing with friends. My motivation to finish up has not waned, though. (I think the March conference really helped!) I'm excited to see what the Shelf will look like once the planning is done and we're ready for September 2009.