In which our heroine thinks about organization

My Five in a Row, Volume 1 book has arrived!  I'm thrilled and looking forward to gathering up our resources for the fall.  We might also end up putting together a unit for Blueberries for Sal, in part because there are so many great activities that can be done in connection with the book and in part because it's just too great of a book to miss.  A friend's wild blueberries will be getting ripe soon, so I need to get moving.

In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out how to set up our school area.  We have a relatively small house and no spare room for a dedicated school area, so we'll almost certainly end up working at the kitchen table.  It seems like our lives revolve around the kitchen table, so this comes as no surprise.  I'd like to approach education as an integral part of life rather than something to be sequestered away during certain hours in a certain room.  Because of that, I want the physical evidence of our learning to be out in the open, part of our everyday life, and so it can't be an eyesore in our very open floor plan.

I'd like to put together some sort of a wall unit, along the lines of the command center at the Caldwell Project, to serve as both a holding and organizing area for all of the bits and pieces and papers that end up stacked on the table and as our school.  Originally, I was thinking of a bulletin board or (if it weren't so ridiculously expensive) the Thirty-One Hang-up Home Organizer, but I think the wood unit would look far nicer.  For now, it would probably end up with favorite bits of artwork, the activities for whatever book we're reading, and other things of that sort, but eventually, I'd like to have whatever poems, hymns, Bible verses, and so on that we're memorizing hanging up, as well as one picture at a time from whichever artist we're studying.  We're taking it very slow and won't need those spots for a while, but they'll be good to have in the long run.

I will say that taking it slow is hard sometimes!  I know I could push Moose and succeed in teaching him various skills, but I'd rather let him have these first years as a time to learn and grow organically, without pressure.  Still, it's ever-so-tempting to teach him now, if only to impress others.  I've taken this quote from Charlotte Mason as encouragement to do so:  "In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mother's first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing time."

Well, maybe not quiet.  After all, he is three, and Sprite does have a good set of lungs that she likes to exercise regularly.  But gentle, that we can do.