Our School Room

I am linking up with the Not Back to School Blog Hop hosted by Heart of the Matter Online. and the Show Me Your Homeschool Classroom blog hop hosted by Mama to 3 Blessings. Last week we posted about our curriculum, this week is all about school rooms or wherever you learn! I am so excited to see everyone's learning spaces!

As for us, we use our office/den for most of the lessons that require my teaching, and for the worksheets and other activities, we do them at the kitchen table. We also try to do school outside any time we can. The kids love to spread out a picnic blanket and do their work in the sun. We will try to do this as much as we can before the cooler weather starts! The den is cozy and sunny though so it is nice in winter too.
There are two big leather rocking chairs (could only fit one in the picture but the other is on the right also) that are nice for reading, with an end table (which has two drawers that I use for extra books and things) between them. On the left is the computer desk/hutch that has doors that close (so nice for hiding messes, not that I have any- *cough cough*). The kids use the mats on the floor to have their own space while learning so they are not fighting about "that is my spot!" or "I was sitting there first!". It works out pretty good. The bookcase holds my personal books and photo albums as well as the curriculum manuals we use on a daily basis. Against that is our red felt board, white dry erase board and some posters we are using right now. To the left of the bookcase are my file boxes. On top of those are the kids' dishpans that have the things they use daily- clipboard, notebooks, pencil box, etc. The red dishpan on top of the bookcase hold some books we will be reading the first couple weeks of school.

The den is not that big as you can see. I have a feeling we will be doing more in the family room or kitchen this year, especially with a toddler to keep an eye on. The den is fine for me and the two kids doing lessons, but there is not much storage space so I use several other spaces for that. One place is the kitchen cupboards! I am fortunate to have many cupboards in my kitchen so I have a few that I use for homeschooling items.














In the cupboard in the left picture, we have our music items, extra school supplies, Abeka flashcards and teacher manuals, as well as two totes for Wii controllers and Leapsters.

In the cupboard in the right picture, we have some of our art supplies, like coloring books, crayons, markers and playdoh. The rest of our art stuff- paper, glue, crafts, etc, are in the basement in a 6 drawer cart. (:

Our next learning space is in the family room. We have a little reading corner next to our couch where we keep a small portion of our books. I got the spinner rack for free with bonus points from Scholastic book clubs. Love it! I also just started putting books up against the wall like that and I noticed the kids are looking at the books more.
Okay, now I am going to take you to a place that not too many people have ventured to. It is a scary, dark place otherwise known as our basement! Seriously, it is so embarrassingly messy that we bend over backwards not to let anyone down there. But for homeschooling's sake, I will show you a select few places! About 75% of our homeschooling supplies are down there.

These are the kids' workboxes. We started using them last year and they are working out pretty well! I am continually tweaking them to fit our needs, but they have definitely improved the way we do things!
Next is where it gets a bit scarier. I still need to do some more organizing here but I thought I'd still show you where I keep things. The shelf on the left is my shoe box bins where I keep just about everything from extra school supplies to games to math manipulatives. I also have two big rubbermaid totes of bigger items- one for math and one for all other subjects.

On the right is my shelf of teacher resource books. I have them grouped by subject and would love to get some holders to contain and label them, but this works for now. We also have another shelf like this in my son's room with more kid's books. Oh, and about 5 more totes of books that I don't even have room to put on a shelf! I try to rotate them with the ones I have upstairs as often as I can.



















Well, I guess that about covers it. I feel like I have way too much stuff and am trying to pare it down, but it is so hard!! I keep thinking "we will use this one day"! Plus I have another little one that will need this stuff in couple years so I can't get rid of anything yet, right?? (; Anyway, hope you enjoyed my little "tour" of our learning spaces!!