Inventory

This isn't going to be a philosophical post, and I'm not saying that these things are either excess, required, or sparse.... it simply just Is.  For us.
Maybe someone wants to know what or how we do it if we don't do curriculum or lesson plans.  (Though lots of folks around here do things the same way we do, certainly!)

We just play!  So here are some of the things we play with.

Maps.
I'd love a hundred maps up... but I simply am out of wall space. We do, however, have a few displayed.

These are two art shelves - they're in the den.  One shelf holds oil and chalk pastels, a box full of watercolors, Mama's magic pencils -as Maddie calls them- my markers (I need reliable, not-dried-up markers, thankyouverymuch, and  the books are coloring books and art books.

First case (Reading, Peoples)

•  On the top: light bright, number and letter cards, and scrabble pieces with tile stands for Maddie.and a wooden set of alphabet letters.

• Second shelf: a set of books containing stories of peoples around the world.  And our holiday books - there simply because I have no where else to store them!

• Third shelf: bios, places, and culture books

• Bottom shelf: reading stuff - workbooks for pre-k thru 2nd grade, and some classics.

Next case (Art):

• At the tippy-top is chalk, wax for art projects, a box of clays - modeling, heavy, and air dry, a box of odds and ends for sculpting and making collaged art, and a box foam letters, foam shapes, beans, tiny wooden tiles, sparklies, paper mosaic pieoces, those bendy wax-stick thingies, and pixos.

• Shelf #2 holds two weaving looms, a large tray of beads with many different kinds (including different kinds of letters and seed beads), things for sewing, fabric pieces for looms, and wool that we've dyed - some of it spun.

• Shelf #3 : a box with pull-out trays (this one belongs to Mama) - it holds scissors, a compass, glue sticks, glitters, pens and pencils, tapes, tacks, brads, etc.... mod podge and tacky glues also live on this shelf... as well as all of our washable paints and biocolors.  (The watercolors live upstairs, but these down here are used mostly for refilling the smaller bottles and pots, which reside upstairs on the "used every day" shelves.

• Next shelf: paper!  all different kinds and colors of paper.  There are also four containers of craftiness - popsicle sticks, pompoms, assorted stiff paper pieces and shapes, and buttons. The white and clear boxes are also sort of mine - they contain feathers, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, wooden shapes, plastic laces, and pinwheel supplies.

• The bottom two shelves on this case are for Science: 

•  First up is books ... all sorts of books... but certainly not all of our science books - we have several in every room of the house.  On the bottom shelf are our science kits:  

• Magnetism, Static Electricity, and Tornadoes, Clouds, and the Water Cycle
• Magic School Bus "Journey Into the Human Body"
• Physics Discovery
• Chemistry+
• Inventions
• Light
• DNA 
• Awesome Bubbles
• Chemistry Blast!
• Magic School Bus "Soaring Into Flight"
• Visible Man.

Third case (Science):

• On the top is our microscope, a lovely Elements chart, and our human torso (it comes apart).

• Next shelf is a glass milk bottle, a box full of crystal-making kits and supplies, and a box of miscellaneous - eyeclops, solar beads, netting for water/tension experiments, prisms, alligator clips and battery holder, prism glasses, etc

• Next shelf: Four boxes - one has magic sands, instant snow powder, and super snow,one has beakers, ph paper, goggles and chemistry stuff, the third has things that need to be sorted :) (evidently I was in a hurry when I brought them down from upstairs)and the fourth overly-full one on the right is our biology stuff - casts for bones, owl pellets, microscope slides (prepared and empty), petrie dishes, forceps, dna tubes, Eosin Y, and Methelyne Blue.  There is also a stack of goldenrod paper here, for acid and base testing.

• On the bottom shelf are the WildLife Fact FIles - hundreds and hundres of cards on species and ecology.  To the right of that are a few sets of animal cards, and a plant press.

Next case is Math!

•  On the top lives a little box full of weights and dice and jacks... different things to play with on the balance scale. There are a couple of rulers, a timer, our catapult, an abacus, and a box full of various things... rubix cube, rubber bands for the geoboard, the gyroscope, and stuff for math bingo.

• Second shelf is a box full of all different kids of magnets - including a neodymium and iron filings.  There are also two other boxes that have different magnet things in them - shapes and numbers, mostly. The balance scale is on this shelf, as well as two sets of dominoes.

• Next shelf : Jenga blocks (used for lots of different things), and a box of stuff for light and prism experiments.  The cuisenaire rods are here, as well as the wooden shapes for tangram games.  The cards for the shapes, as well as the Mighty Mind kit and book is here... and books for mathy projects.

• Fourth row is our box of stuff from the Build and Learn Geometry kit, a box of one inch wooden cubes (for play and measuring), and some of the Physics kit tools.

• On the bottom live the puzzles and the tangrams set - ours is Parquetry Pals.  The wooden puzzle games also live here with the puzzles.

On the next case
are Zoobs, many collections of ZooMorphs, and lacing cards and extra large beads.
We also have MoonSand, Kid Knex, Gears, and cobbler benches here.

Next is music!

a keyboard, cowbells, tambourines, a spirit flute, a recorder, bongo drums, xylophone, triangles, shakers, whistles, maracas, an organ... lots of different things.

Over here

is a big box of playdoughs and tools, a large collection of storyboard felt things as well as shapes and letters and numbers, a "dig" fossil kit in progress, and these build thingies that are foamy and loopy for making crazy things (Zoobs and Toobs?  Something like that).

phew!

Next we have the building section...

 a marble run (a large set), small legos, lincoln logs, large legos, and a big box of wooden blocks - all shapes and sizes.

Games!

 Oh dear.
These are not all of our games, these are just the kid ones, that our babes are loving right now.

• On the top is a stone and stick game that we made a little while back, a box full of card, matching, and number games, Qwirkle, and another box of bingo, cards, and checker pieces.

• Second shelf is Blokus, a Hex game we made, The Allowance Game, Guess Who, pick-up sticks (that we also made), and Operation.

• Next we have Pirates Gold, Shut the Box, Mystery Garden, Earthopoly, Twister, Leaping Lizards, Lewis and Clark, Subtrax, The LadyBug Game, and BaffleBlox.

• On the bottom we have Cadoo, Duck, Duck Goose, Diego 123, and Cootie.

An' there's dress up stuff (and stuff in a couple of drawers)

and Thomas stuff.

Oh - and a sixty foot time line.  Can't forget that.

Oh, dear Heavens, I forgot about the software.
Good grief...
we have at least six dozen computer games.
I just don't know if I can link all those!!!

And the Magic School Bus videos.  Can't forget those.  LOVE magicschoolbus- you know that, right??

We have two book cases that sit just off the kitchen -

there are a few things that live here permantly - a box of scrap paper for Madd, a library shelf, a shelf with a box of colored pencils, a box of crayons, a tub of markers, the water colors.... there is a shelf for books that we're liking at the moment that usually live upon other shelves, a large box of stamps, a box of paint tools, a box of paints... and a couple of shelves for whatever projects we're working on or loving right-this-minute.

Other than the usual stuff - library cards, small gardens, netflix, memberships to local Cool Places, bikes, barbies, kitchen stuff, rockets, skates, swings, dirt, hands, noses, and eyes,

we have a Mama and a Daddy who like to check stuff out, too.

Ah.
It works.


Guess I'll add this one to the "Things To Do" list.
Add the things you love, too!