Our School Room

I drool over various homeschooling school rooms on blogs and Pinterest on a weekly basis. I have serious school room envy.  I have visions of grandeur about what my school room will look like one day.  *sigh *

Until then, we make do with what the Lord has provided us for the time being.  We currently live in a 900 sq. ft. two bedroom house.  That doesn't leave a ton of space for schooling so we work around our daily living spaces.  I've tried to contain organize all of our things in some sort of orderly fashion, but most days you will find papers, pencils, crayons, and books strewn here and there throughout the house.

We do the bulk of our school work in the kitchen.

Mostly at the table.  We can spread out all of the books and supplies we will need for that days lessons without worrying about small toddler hands running off with our erasers just when we need them.

We do utilize the rest of the kitchen as well.  We often use the sink and counters for science experiments and I even use kitchen utensils and pantry items as math manipulatives at times!  We use the floor space when needed.

 

 When my toddler is napping and I am working on something with my oldest, we sometimes pull out this small table and chair set that I keep tucked in a corner in our kitchen and work in the living room.  We can get more comfy on the couch for read alouds and sometimes it's just nice to have a change of scenery. 

Notice Daddy's feet as he is napping in the recliner. :P

For certain things we use our long hallway.  I have several shelves lining the walls there that contain building toys like Kid K'nex, Duplos, Lincoln Logs, Bright Builders, and more.  The brown shelf holds our puzzles and board games.

Finally, I purchased five of these bookshelves from Walmart.  They aren't the best quality, but they'll do in a pinch until I can get the ones that I've been drooling over at Ikea.  One holds my books and my husband's books and another holds all of our children's picture books(yes I have five shelves worth of picture books).

Then I have one that holds all of our craft supplies divvied up into clear plastic containers.  We have everything here from sidewalk chalk, glue, and craft foam to pipe cleaners, yarn, and paint supplies.  The blue collapsible fabric bins hold the coloring books, flashcards, construction paper, and one has just random supplies that didn't fit into the other boxes like cotton balls and our paint aprons.  The blue bin on the very bottom holds all of Aron's animal crafts he's been making throughout this past year in his Animal Play curriculum. 

This shelf houses our math manipulatives, some educational DVDs, file folders of the children's work, notebooks, binder, finished workbooks, Gabby's American Girl book collection and our library books.  The two blue bins on the fourth shelf towards the bottom hold the supplemental books that go along with whatever subject Gabriella is learning about at the time and the other one holds her composition book and binder for her first grade work (starting after Labor Day!).

The last shelf holds all of our school books and school related books.  The top shelf holds most of the preschool material, the next holds the majority of the upcoming year's books, then comes the books and binders that go with the year we are currently wrapping up.  The bottom two shelves hold books waiting in the line up to be family read alouds and living books on a variety of topics that go along with the things that we have or will be learning about.

On top of this shelf live a few stray materials such as our balance scale and the art supplies that overflowed.

Here's next year's books waiting patiently! Only a few more weeks until they will be cracked open and put to good use!

Well, that's how we do school around here.  Do you have a traditional school room or do you use your entire house?