School Room (2013-2014)

This is our fifth year homeschooling, and our third school room. 

That’s a lot of moving around school stuff!

While we do use this room to do some of our school work, a lot of our group stuff is done at the dining room table.  We are lucky in this house to have the space for an official room, as well as lots of other spaces for the kids to work.

Here’s the basic set up of how we are organized for now, and how the space works for us.  I always like seeing how others set up their own spaces, especially when we were first getting started.  If you are new to homeschooling, don’t think for a minute that you need to have a school room to make it work.  You don’t.  We use it because we are blessed to have it, in addition to a large storage closet in the basement that holds the rest of our “stuff”.  We truly use our home as a place to teach and train our kids, rather than just doing school at home.  Whatever your style or space, creating an environment where learning is fun is an important part of successful homeschooling.  That, and a little bit of organization can go a long way!




We use a couple of portable pantry’s and a 9-cube shelf for most of our “everyday” things.  One is full of Language Arts/Reading materials, Math manipulatives, and Science tools.  The other is full of curriculum: Science, History, Spanish, Readers, misc. workbooks, and Preschool Letter-of-the-Week stuff.

You can see Olivia’s Preschool workbox system on the end with our paper shelf on top of it.  On top of the 9 cube shelf sits the kids’ individual school supply baskets and their Calendar Journals.



The other side of the room is a work table and our bookshelf, which is crammed full of our favorite books.  Above that, our IKEA picture hanging system.



Every school needs a mascot, and ours comes in the form of a cat named Duck.  He regularly sleeps in our school room, sunning himself under the big window.  That makes him a basic component to our set-up, right? 



Here’s a closer view of the main wall.  The far left is our “Circle Time” corner, with our Calendar and two flip charts (see Spanish one here for printables).  Above that some more IKEA organization shelves and cups for community supplies like paint brushes, paint rollers, fancy and regular scissors, glue sticks, markers, and a few other items.

The rolling file/file box is full of our file folder games, Bible curriculum, and themed preschool files. 






This front wall has Olivia’s Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree and our pocket chart.  A map of the United States is a fun new addition from a friend this summer.



We have a cozy little half closet that hosts our craft supplies, sensory items, and even more preschool tools.  Another closet in the basement holds the rest that gets rotated out on a weekly basis.



If it looks like organized chaos, that’s exactly the look I was going for….

Believe it or not, there is a rhyme and reason to the closet organization.  We use a very multisensory approach with our schooling, which is why we have so much stuff!  Most of my kids are “hands-on” learners.  I’m always on the lookout for fun new tools to use to enrich their schooling experience.  I find almost all of our things at thrift stores, consignment sales, and garage sales and have only bought a couple of things full price through the years.  We are at a point now, that I’m not buying too much anymore.  Probably in part to our youngest being in preschool, and partly because we are running out of space.  Really, it’s too much stuff, but we do use it all.  I guess I’m kind of just a nerd that way!

Want to see our other school rooms?

2012-2013

2011-2012

Our School Room {2012-2013}

When we first started homeschooling, I daydreamed about a beautiful room with desks, and pencil cups, and loads of books that were alphabetized.  We would start promptly at 8:30 and each child would be ready and eager to learn.  They would be calm and respectful, helpful and of corse, brilliant.

Then a big brick called reality hit me. 

We were lucky to start by 9:00 and almost always that first year dressed in PJs for half the day.  There were piles of books, papers, and crafts.  Toys and game pieces littered the floor, and we never could seem to locate any of the new sharpened pencils that were supposed to be in the pencil cup.  We had attitude problems, motivation issues, and several cases a day of Antsinthepants that prohibited any sort of calm learning environment, let alone the dreamy picture of homeschool that I had envisioned for our family.

We lived through the messes and ended up loving our first year.  The next year was much better with the addition of a couple of storage shelves and a bookcase, but I still dreamt of having a real school room.  When we moved, we found a house with a fantastic school room, but sadly had to move just 4 months later due to a severe mold problem.  That puts us to our current home.

So do you want a look at where we hang out?

Welcome to our school room! Though, to be honest, it almost never looks this clean. Like any other room in our house that really gets used, it gets messy often.

I love having this school room!  It’s a great place to gather and learn together and store all of our schoolish things.  Though we start off our days here, we usually end up schooling all over the place.  Some at the dinning room table, some in the family room, some in the kitchen.  And that’s okay too.  We use it because we have it, but if you're new to homeschooling don’t think for a minute that you need a fancy set up or formal area for school.  The kitchen table suited us fine for our first few years.

So here’s our basic layout.  It isn’t perfect, but it works for us.  Nearly all of the furniture was handed down to us or bought second hand.  Someday I would love to furnish a brand new setup with separate desks for each student



The infamous Big Red Sofa, a hand-me-down from a friend of a friend.  This is where we read a lot of books.  The chest is full of dress-up clothes, shoes, and purses that the girls change in and out of a minimum of 4 times daily.  It’s totally normal for the floor in this room to be covered in them too.  Probably because it’s just too hard to put them back, you know when you’re in a hurry to meet Prince Charming.



The back wall holds storage cabinets, the kids T.V. hidden in the armoir, and the table we use instead of desks.  It’s folded down here for more room to play.  You can see the Solar System  is still up from our fun Outer Space Unit.



The Circle Time corner is next to our comfy reading sofa.  Above that you can see our Wall-of-Fame courtesy of  IKEA.  Elaina is still waiting on me to buy more white paper so she can finish her ABC wall.  Jeepers…you know I really planned on getting that done this summer….Next to that is a ladder shelf with frequently used books.  The rest of our books are stored on a big bookshelf in the playroom which is next to our school room, and is currently, and normally, impossible to navigate through due to a huge mess.



I’ve thought off and on about changing this table for separate desks.  I like having it for art projects and group lessons like our Character Building Unit. 



The Circle Time corner is the most used part of the school room.  We start every school day here for basic calendar skills, a sharing time, and almost always a story or two.  There is a basket of puppets and story prompts on the floor and storage of school supplies above it.  This year we are adding a new element to our Circle Time: Spanish Circle Time!  Isaac is the most excited about this I think because he is hoping to be able to de-code our secret language.



Our flip chart has various songs for learning days of the week, the months of the year, family names, etc.  There is also a section for color of the day and 100 day count down.  A pocket chart that we use for lots of activities, but is loaded now with numbers ready to teach skip counting to my Kindergartner.  A basic calendar, our new Spanish Flip Chart, and a clock flip chart is here too.  Each of the kids has their own job in the morning, even the baby who can’t seem to keep her hands off all the little pieces.



This storage system from IKEA is brilliant for school rooms.  It’s hung just high enough to be out of reach of little hands.  The cups are easily removed to set on the table for crafts.



I don’t think I could live with out these storage cabinets.  The middle shelf is full of toddler toys in the bins.  On top of that are File Folder Games by subject and magazine folders that hold the kids’ assignments for the day.  The little shelf is full of various manipulatives and craft supplies.




The white cabinet on the left holds school books for each kid, their Calendar Journals, Book Report Journals, and a few unit studies that we will do later in the year.  The right cabinet is mostly craft supplies like paint, play-doh, and stamps.  I also store our sensory bin stuff in here.



The ladder shelf has more toddler toys, Color Discovery Boxes, Knobless Cylinders, early readers, and board books.



Since it’s technically part of our school, I’ve included the closets.  This one is under the stairs and has a big toy box full of Little People sets and Weebles that get rotated out.  All the rest is puzzles.  Yep.  That’s right.  An entire closet full of puzzles.  Kind of ridiculous, I know but they all get used often.  And to be fair, nearly all them were bought at thrift stores for $1 or $2.



I know this looks crazy but there is an organization system here.  Various games on the top shelf, felt board and story prompts, preschool toys, marble towers, blocks, Lego's, and lots of other active games.  The white cabinet has more preschool/early education tools like teddy bear counters, practice clocks, and magnetic numbers.  The colorful drawers are full of papers and the shelf above that holds math games.


These shelves are the Language Arts shelves.  Below those are lots more toys.  The rolling shelf and black box are where we store our preschool packs and theme units.  The dresser holds science tools, lacing/beading/stringing activities, and older math manipulative's like Cuisinair Rods, Place Value Cubes, and play money.


We feel so incredibly blessed to have this school room and all of these fun tools to learn with!