It is FINISHED! Our school rooms are finally ready to be used for the new school year! It is never quite so exciting to get started before you have your space ready – but now, it is finally DONE!
We have never confined our learning to just one room – not that any homeschooler really does – we’ve just always felt the most comfortable moving from room to room to do our work. This is a great help for boys who LOVE to move around, and a little one who gets squirmy after a while. While I had hoped we would eventually have a “one-room school house”, I’m so thrilled that God has blessed us with a space that we can use multiple rooms for our needs. Here’s our tour of our all-room school house.
Upstairs we have our back room converted to less of a play space and more of a reading and relaxing space. It’s here I’ll be doing Five In A Row with JJ and Keeker while The Boy does his own reading in his room. We have a couple of bins of toys we will rotate, some picture and science books, and a basket where our library books will go. The white cart in the corner has puzzles right now, that will eventually go down to the “official” school room once we get a love seat for more seating.
Our living room is supposed to be an off-limits room as far as playing goes. We entertain guests here – when we can get them out of the kitchen, lol! – and have our piano and school cabinet in this room. But you’d never know! ;0)
Open up the doors and there’s loads of supplies in there – on the top left shelf is everything for my supplies (pens, pencils, glue, scissors, sharpies, etc.), below that are a few little games. Then all our reading material (science, literature, art, unit studies) and the bottom is for paint.
This is what it looked like last week when I was organizing it!
The right side holds some more crafty stuff (which I hope to eventually move all downstairs – except the messy stuff of course), our RightStart math books and manipulatives, some hands-on activities for Keeker while the boys are busy, and our extra paper.
The small cupboard on the right is the kids’ art cupboard – they’re allowed in there without asking for colouring and drawing supplies to their hearts’ content!
Follow me down to the basement! Here is the main area where we will be schooling! I’m thrilled to be able to customize this room to our needs. We have couches down there as we’ve been leading a small group in our home, and it works out great for having comfy places to read!
The boys desks are along the one finished wall in the basement :D They’ll be doing all things literature, reading, writing, etc. at these desks (the things that require good posture and such). Our All About Spelling magna-board is around the corner from them, so easily accessible for our needs.
The giraffe cupboard holds my supplies (I finally caved and bought almost doubles of everything as I was tired of trying to figure out whose pencils belonged upstairs or downstairs, where my pens were, what happened to the glue sticks, etc.) and everything I’ll be working with Keeker on.
The trofast unit beside holds our hands-on toys and manipulatives, mainly for Keeker and the boys love to play and teach with her if I’m working with another one!
I sectioned off an area for some more “creative play” – I’d love for this to become our craft corner eventually. It is missing a splat-mat (which I’m hoping to get or make) for quick clean up, but I think the kids will really enjoy using this space.
Behind that is the “house” we built for Keeker. Being the only girl she needs her own space, so we made her a little play-house area, and she’s already loving it!
The black expedit units hold everything from extra binders to things to be filed, reading books to toys to games, puzzles and craft supplies. I need to get labels on the bins yet so we’re not searching for things all the time! And they very nicely hide the storage space my hubby built behind!
Our bookshelves are a work in progress. I have novels we want to read in future near the top, readers separated by year (which is growing) based on recommendations from Ambleside, Sonlight, etc., science books (we LOVE science :D) and extras by category (IE oceans, backyard animals, earth science, etc.) and any future curriculum I already have purchased is stored here. You can see I’m already running out of space!
Thanks for touring our all-room schoolhouse! For more great school rooms, visit the ihomeschool network‘s blog hop!
