Our Schoolroom

This is our 3rd year homeschooling and our 2nd year in our lovely school room. 

 

I never would have made a special room for school (well, maybe not never, but it wasn't at the top of my list), but it was on my husbands.  After living through our first year (with only one child) he was terrified of the potential explosion of "stuff" all over our living room, kitchen and dining room.  Really.

 

It was pretty justified (we moved from one at home to three), but I figured we'd live through it.  He figured he'd turn our toy room into a school room by building some custom furniture and we'd be a happier family.  He was right.

 

This is what you see as you walk in the door (well, the door frame, we took off the door so it wouldn't get in the way of our white board). 

In the middle of the two maps are the personal coat of arms made by each of my kids during history last year.  I've kept them up because they're kind of cool and each one really does say something about who they were when they made them. Plus, I want to replace them with our homeschool coat of arms which we haven't made yet.  But we will, it's going to be one of our first projects this year.

If you turn to the right, you see these amazing bookshelves my even more amazing husband made for me.  There are three sets of three shelves (and I'll go into more detail later about how we use them).  Late last year I also added a few cubes to each side for a little more storage.  On top we keep a few things too big for our shelves, the globe, stereo and pencil sharpener. 

Okay, the sharpener would fit on a shelf, I just like it on top. 

As you keep going around the room you'll see the closet doors (inside are all our toys, these doors are not allowed to be opened during school time) which are usually covered with posters specific to what we're studying.  There will be a periodic table poster (it's being laminated right now) and some classification labels from Confessions of  Homeschooler's Road Trip USA curriculum all ready to have animals sorted under them throughout the year.

The last wall is completely covered by a HUGE white board.  My husband was able to pick this up for nothing because an office in the same building as his was throwing these out during a remodel.  We were very, very lucky!!  During school it's usually half covered with projects and artwork that I hope to move to the top of the map wall this year. 

The other main element to my tiny schoolroom is this table (which my handy husband also made for me).  It's a little bigger than our dining room table making it very easy for all 5 of us to fit around it comfortably, even with our things spread out. 

My favorite part?  The glass on top.  EVERYTHING wipes right off: glue, marker, dirt, boogers... 

Sorry about that last one, please tell me it's not just my kids that go through phases where they wipe them all over?

The shelf section all the way to the left is full of curriculum we aren't quite to yet and things we work on together as a group.  There are also extra supplies in the bins on the bottom shelf.

 

The middle section has some supplies we use all the time on the top shelf, like our 3 hole punch, rulers, calculators, stapler, colored pencils... 

 

The middle shelf has shelves for each of the kids (the empty ones, during the school year they're full of all the papers they need to put away in their notebooks), our extra lined and blank paper and my basket of to be checked papers.

 

The bottom shelf has our construction paper, flash cards and science supplies.

 

The right shelf is full of all my kids individual subjects and their notebooks.  Makenna has the top shelf, Ben's the middle and James shares the bottom shelf with his preschool aged brother Josh.

It's not a big room, but it's been a bigger blessing than I imagined to have an out of the way place to organize all our "stuff." 

Where's your favorite place to get your school on?

Good luck to all of you in your learning adventures,
Leah

I've linked up with iHomeschool Network's 5th Annual "Not" Back to School Blog Hop.  Go check out more classroom ideas for TONS of great inspiration!