Our Classroom, Schedule, and Fall Sensory Bin

I took some pictures of our "classroom" so you all can see what we do every morning.

Our morning meeting area where we do our calendar and weather. We also do the pledge of allegiance and sing various learning and memory verse songs. The bookcase is one that my awesome dad made when I was a little girl and it has followed me everywhere. It works perfectly for our classroom, as I still have things I need to put on the shelves.

Our "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" tree. We read this alphabet book every Friday and put up the new letter that we have learned about all week.

My Montessori sensory play dough area. This month I made play dough and put cinnamon in it. It smells sooo good!

They have apples and stuff to make apple pies. There is also an assortment of fall cookie cutters that I found at the Target dollar spot.

The Sensory Bin all put together. Whenever they play with this, I set it on this cream fleece and everything must stay on the blanket, and they are also required to pick it all back up.

Here are the contents of of Sensory Bin. There are two real mini pumpkins, some fake gourds/flowers/leaves. There are two small animals I found at Michaels, and also some colorful acrylic acorns and pumpkins. There are green leaf buttons and some brown wooden 3-D shapes. The fabric pumpkin and felted acorns I bought on Etsy, as well as the wooden bowls and acorns. The real acorns were mailed to me by my wonderful parents who went on a hike and picked them up just for me! And of course, you can't have fall leaves without a rake!

I have a schedule that I try to follow every day. Of course, between play dates and swimming lessons, and the fact that not every day is perfect, it changes a lot. That's okay though, we try to be flexible. I like a schedule because I feel that I and the kids function better. There is less arguing and fighting when they have provided activities to do. I have also been doing "room time" with the kids since they were babies. I read about this in my Babywise books and I firmly believe that it has helped my kids be the independent kids they are today. It has helped them learn to play on their own, and it also provides me time to work one on one with Josh since Callie's room time is longer. The kids thrive on having this one on one time, and I love it too! Once they are both in room time, it also allows me to get some cleaning done their lunch ready.

Here is our schedule (all these times may vary slightly depending on how it's going):

8:30: rotate between music and science
9:00: go out to our classroom and have the morning meeting and sensory play
10:00: Callie's room time and Josh's school time
10:30: Josh and Callie both in room time
11:30: Free play
11:45: Lunch/Clean up/Free play
12:45: Art
1:30: Josh's nap time and Callie's school time
2:30: Callie's quiet time
3:30: DVD and snack
4:00: After 4:00 is just open. They play a lot with daddy since he is usually home by now. We do activites as a family and have supper together.

I know I have had questions about how I structure my day, so I hope this helps!