I just finished sending an extremely lengthy message to a friend looking for ideas for her new school room, and it occurred to me -- I can blog this! :) Since the work is done, here it is..........our school room!!!
So, what I love, starting with:
Picture 1 - our white board, that we use for All About Spelling and All About Reading, and makes a great place for explanations, if we need it. Under the whiteboard is a storage bench. It holds files of the kid's work from this year that I'm going to save, our small whiteboards that they can take to their desks, any extra book lists, etc that I want to reference, but don't need very often, and all the homeschool catalogs/newsletters that I get and want to hang on to for future reference. To the left of the whiteboard is our morning board, with a hanging file box under that. The corkboard has a picture of the flag on it, The Pledge of Allegiance, and our memory verse of the week. The file box holds our Bible lesson plans, our doctrine question book, the other verses of the week to come, and our read-aloud Bible.
Picture 2 - J just got his own little desk (found it at Sam's Club for $20 around Christmas time) and he uses it all the time. This also shows where our room is. It's the first room when you walk in the house. I was't sure about how this looks to visitors, but I decided that we are the ones that live with it every day, so it's for us. I LOVE having a room with a window, and I LOVE being so close to the kitchen and laundry room so I can sneak away to get my housework done (or warm up a cup of tea) whenever I have a quick break.
Picture 3 - The 3 older kid's desks. We used to have chairs, but they always were getting knocked over, and I was afraid J was going to get hurt, so we switched to the storage cubes. They keep some extra reading books, their rock collections, and things that they don't want to throw away, but I don't want to keep, in there. The corkboard for each kid is a new addition this year, and I love it. There's always something they should be memorizing, or things they can't remember for math, phonics, handwriting and grammar that I post for their reference. The pink, purple and green sheets you see are their workbox numbers. I copied the workbox system from confessionsofahomeschooler.com and it has worked fabulously. If you go on her website, and search for workbox, you should find this setup. Her room is setup differently now, but for the ages of my kids, this works much better. Their shelving holds their work for the day. I load their boxes the night before, and put a velcro number on each box that has work in it for them to do. The first boxes are the ones they can do on their own. Ever since we started school, I have either been pregnant, or had a baby or toddler in the mix. Giving them work first that they can get started on their own while I clean up breakfast, change a diaper, start laundry, etc, is a wonderful thing! With the numbers on the boxes, they can see right away how much work they have to do that day. This system is an absolute Godsend for me - I don't know how we'd do it without it!
Picture 4 - My desk and the bookcase. Starting from the top of the bookcase - on top are the things that don't fit anywhere else, or need to be out of reach. The top shelf has my books and teacher's manuals that I use frequently, and the kids math and literacy center folders. The next two shelves hold the kid's books and workbooks that we are currently using. I have two other locations for books. Close by I have a cupboard of books that we will use this year, but we aren't to them yet, then in the basement in our storage I have 2 bookcases for books that we are not currently using. As soon as we finish a book, it goes down to the storage bookcase. The 2nd shelf from the bottom has 2 bins. The right bin holds our Science experiment supplies, the left bin holds Pre-K manipulatives. The bottom shelf has 2 crates. The right crate holds learning things for toddler/preschool age (for J to pull out any old time he wants while we're homeschooling), and the left bin holds all of our Math manipulatives. On to my desk (whoo, we're almost done!). I finally bought a comfy chair this year, and that was a great purchase! On the right side I have our electric pencil sharpener (from Sam's Club), tape, a stapler, a box of wipes (we're always cleaning something off of something around here...), an iPod with a speaker, and the kid's "turn in box". Above that, on the wall, I have another hanging file box with 3 slots that holds the kid's upcoming weekly lesson plans. On the front of that I have binder-clipped our school calendar. The corkboard above my desk used to be functional, but now I made it inspirational with a couple quotes about education, a prayer, a verse, our daily schedule, and some other helpful things. Also on the desk is my laptop, which I just got this year and I absolutely LOVE, and my color laser copier/printer which is a wonderful gift from my techie husband, which I absolutely love as well (completely unnecessary and expensive, but when you're both engineers, well, you know)! The shelves of my desk hold a basket full of construction paper, my laminator, a 3 hole punch, a 12 in. paper cutter, and a box full of stamps, envelopes, etc. I used to keep extra supplies/markers on the lower right shelf, which was super handy, but since we have a toddler that enjoys coloring on walls (reference picture #1) and floors (reference the rug in picture 3), we have moved them!!
And, last but not least, eggshell paint so that marks USUALLY wipe off the walls easily, along with furniture/furnishings that are my taste, so that I love the look of our schoolroom and actually LIKE spending time in there (it helps if the teacher wants to be there)!
