Creative Homeschooling...

I do not remember very often to share about homeschooling, but today I was able to again combine the worlds of sewing creativity and learning for my younger two, and thought it would be fun to pass the ideas on. Bell is in first grade and Noah is in preschool, but both of them have some basic learning that they can do together. Sounds of the alphabet is still a bit of a struggle for Bell, so having Noah right along side her is a type of cheerleading she needs. Today I felt I really needed to figure out some kind of creative way to help with their memory, something tactile. So, I came up with two fun ways to learn the alphabet.

First we decided to create a new letter each day- "the letter of the day." Today was the letter "A" of course. The kiddos helped me pick out the fabric, I cut the shape(nothing fancy) and sewed them up, and the wee ones then stuffed each of the letters while we talked about the letter and it's sounds. I don't know if you realize this, but stuffing is one of the most fascinating things to a little kiddo-mine could come up with 1001 ways to play with stuffing(polyfil). Here are some of the pics...

Next I worked on some capes over lunch time for each of them. Very simple, but they each had two squares of velcro attached in the middle for "the letter of the day" . They became super letter heros! Each day we will attach a different letter of the alphabet to the cape for there lessons....

Since they have been wearing the capes long after school is over, it also helps to remind me to keep bringing the letter into our conversations throughout the day. I need a little help sometimes too:) School should never really end.

And those capes---yes! they were made from reclaimed bed linens:)

Home Life...

Just a few fun snips of life around our house.I was sitting next to Noah while working with the kiddos this morning. Noah is 4 and a real character! I asked him to color inside the lines for his lesson on the letter "A" this morning. What I heard from him still cracks me up. Very quietly, in a whisper and with determination, he says to himself "come on...concentrate" He was working very hard to stay within this skinny little line on the ambulance.
Bell and Noah are a fun pair to school. I work in short segments of time in order to keep their attention. I am currently painting their school table, so we were at the dining room table this morning.
We gathered up some more out of the garden yesterday. I am attempting to ignore how icky the garden looks right now in order to resist the urge to rip everything out. The end of the season always looks so tired and overgrown, but it is still producing and I need to insert some patience . But this was a fun bunch of food to gather up! Pumpkin seeds!!! That is the first on my list!
Yesterday afternoon, I dragged all the odds and ends of furniture that has accumulated in the garage awaiting my attention and hauled them outside to get sanding underway. It did not take long before the older kids had finished their studies and were out next to me begging to do some sanding. There is just something about that little sander that is so therapeutic, everyone wants a go at it. I didn't mind sharing, giving my arms a break! Everything is getting a fresh coat of crisp white making the mismatched bunch, look somewhat coordinated.;)

A Few Organizing Ideas from the Whimsie Dots Studio...

The space that I work in is always in flux, it seems. Since the materials I work with are ever changing, coming up with storage solutions needs to be as well. I thought I would share just a few ideas of how I store the materials I work with. Getting to this point has been a gradual process over the years. Acquiring the right shelving and containers has not happened overnight. A lot of the time, it has been trial and error to see if something works. But I have given the area of storage some of my energy because if it is done right, it does in fact save me time when designing new items as well as aiding in the clean up. "The hunt" for the right colors or textures for projects is not so daunting but in fact has become a joy. The area I will show today is strictly recycled wool that is used in the making of mittens, hats, pillows, brooches etc that I sell. I have winded down the "winter" creations for awhile, but have been able to get prepared for when it arrives again.

These shelves originally were used in our playroom, but as the kiddos have been growing older, so have their toys-and I have now inherited these shelves. They were just simple shelf kits we purchased at menards for $20. The open shelving, I have found to be much more productive than crates-having everything at eye level helps in the choosing. And for those of you who have not been following me long-I should share-my "studio" is simply in part of our unfinished basement. These shelves are lining my laundry room area-nothing fancy:) But like I have mentioned before-the fact that the basement is unfinished means that I am never buried in a room working- I have the blessing of being around the kids while I work. So while I may be "distracted" sometimes I am never "unavailable" :).

As a matter of fact, at this moment, my wee ones are sitting at the cutting table with me working on "colors" for the 3 yr old and on "letter sounds and penmanship" for my kindergartener.

For the wool scraps I use for embellishment on my hats and mittens as well as for making brooches, I have finally seperated them out by color. I used to have them all in a big bin and was finding it extremely difficult and time consuming to gather the pieces I needed for projects. Over Christmas when we were all couped up with the flu, I took some of that time to sort(which was awful!!) but how incredibly wonderful the result has been. I have each color in a little laundry basket under my shelves.

And here is one more little organizing or storage idea that I am using right now. I took some regular old clothes pins and hot glued them to my shelves. The are wonderful for clipping my finished mittens and brooches to.