Where the learning takes place

To participate in the Not-Back-To-School Blog Hop, this week I will describe where our learning occurs.  Obviously, like all homeschoolers, we learn all over the house, yard, and car.  A majority of the reading is done in our living room on the love seat, first thing in the morning. Me with multiple cups of coffee, boys with chocolate almond milk.

This love seat is right next to the fireplace, which is easily "turned on" on rainy, chilly mornings.  We have a gigantic coffee table that stores our math, plus two baskets of quiet toys for Henry to play with only during school hours (tinker toys, magnetic cars).  Truman's antique wooded desk is also in this room, next to the doors so he has a lot of natural light.  We do not necessarily sit on the love seat to do our work, more often than not we spread our stuff on the floor in front of the fire. 

In nice weather-or even in not so nice weather, we sit out on the porch, where there is another school desk I acquired for free (but needed serious painting).  In really nice weather, we can be found on a blanket in the yard, although this tends to make us all sleepy. 

 I have sent Truman out to read in his hammock in the pirate ship, he escapes to his bunk to read by himself, and I have found him up a neighborhood tree with a book more than once.  I have recently branched out into audio books, and so far these have been used in the car just once.  We do not drive enough to get any substantial listening done, not to mention I like to use that time for singing at our loudest. Loveseat listening is easily more pleasant, and I can fool around on the computer while the boys are drawing and listening.  This semester Robin Hood will be the first audio book, read by some gents with accents, but we will be following along in our books.

A major part of our schoolwork is telling daddy what we have read about and done that day over dinner.  I have a beautiful map to put up beside the dinner table so that we can show him places in our readings-just need to fix the frame.... Right now I cannot take a picture of the table because it is covered with a Cub Scout sewing project, and is quite a mess.

And yet another place to "do school" is in bed at night.  We read to the boys for at least half an hour, most nights even longer than that.  When Will has call the reading can go on for HOURS, but only because it starts awfully early.  The boys are not aware that these bedtime books are free reading books recommended by the AO advisory, they are just our nightly reading.  Always my favorite time of day.