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Last year, when homeschool bloggers were coming together to share their curriculum for the upcoming school year, their schedules, and their schoolrooms, my family was busy settling into our new home.
I was bummed that I didn’t have a seamlessly organized schoolroom to showcase during all the blog hopping and carnivals that were going on at the start of the school year. I participated anyways and featured the blank slate that I had to work with – our two front rooms, the dining room and living room.
The school area has slowly been coming together over the past 6-8 months and I’ve been waiting, and wanting to do a “reveal” when the room was just right – perfect.
Only that just wasn’t happening. I came to the realization that it will never be perfect.
And ya’ know what else I realized? That, that’s okay!
If it was perfect and everything was put away all neat in its place and untouched, then that would mean there was no learning going on in there, no living taking place in there.
I want my schoolroom to be a little cluttered, a bit messy, with books and crayons out of their place.
Then we are learning. Then we are experiencing. Then we are living.
So, without further adieu, here is our homeschool room(s) –
When we built our new house, our plan was to use the formal dining room and living room as the designated school area (who needs formal dining and living rooms anyway?).
Here were the before pictures:
I cleaned the room just for all of you – that stuff was not supposed to be on the table for the pictures, but like I said, it will never be perfect and doesn’t have to be. The “dining room” is where we do most of our schooling – this is where most of the action takes place. For our table, we use the first dining set we ever purchased from a local furniture store as a married couple, as it no longer fits our whole family for mealtimes. You may interested with the custom Marri dining table Perth as your first dining table because of its durability. The rug was purchased from Overstock.
When I saw this rug, which may be similar to those vintage rugs, I loved it (and it was the only one my husband and I could agree on), but it was a wee bit more than I wanted to spend on a rug – a couple days later, I found it on Overstock for half the price! Score!
These cabinets provide an abundant amount of storage, and one of the benefits to having cabinets is that I can close the doors and not have to look at the mess!
Most of our Busy Bag ideas I get from Pinterest, or I have several books where I get ideas from. Books that I have used are Activity Bags, 20 Instant Math Learning Centers That Children Will Love, Shoe Box Learning Centers – Math, Shoe Box Learning Centers – Phonics, and Shoe Box Leaning Centers – Alphabet.
This is our calendar/bulletin board area. I bought the calendar from Lakeshore Learning (I so miss having that store nearby) and the day of the week/seasons/weather activities to the right of the calendar are from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Most of the posters in our schoolroom come from Trend Enterprises. The Days of the Week and Months of the Year poster I turned into interactive posters. I did this by covering up the words on the poster with cardstock (in a matching color to keep it pretty). Then I just printed up the days of the week and months of the year using Microsoft Word (in pretty, matching colors again), laminated them and used Velcro to stick them to the posters. Now, whoever is working on learning the days of the week and months of the year can remove the labels and put them back on in order (that’s the idea anyways). And as a side note, just to keep things real, I took these pictures in March (calendar time kind of slipped by the wayside this past year).
If you are a homeschooler, you can never have enough bookshelves.
This little area is an extension of my desk (my desk is in the “living room” which you will see in a minute). It has all the current curriculum and resources that we are using in it.
And here is another Pinterest idea. I use these clip boards to hang the girls progress charts for their reading, our daily schedule, and our schedules for subjects that we do together (like history and science). At Clean & Scentsible, Jenn uses them to display her children’s artwork.
Through the french doors is the “living room,” AKA – my office and independent work area.
Here is my desk. This room is usually messier then the other room – this doesn’t help my case that the kids are the ones that make all the messes. My desk is also the Sauder brand like the shelves and cabinets, only we purchased the desk directly from a Sauder store.
More shelving, with too many books (at least my husband thinks we have too many books).
A close up of my desk. A homeschooler’s desk wouldn’t be complete without a toy car, a couple of pairs of shoes, and some baby wipes on it.
This is where the older boys do their independent work. We bought these two desks at Target; they are just the right size and perfect for our needs. And Mr. Max’s swing is in Mommy’s office to keep him out of harm’s way from his 2-year-old twin brothers.
So there you have it, our schoolroom(s). Do you have a schoolroom post? I’d love to see it – share the link in the comments below.
Oh, and in case you are wondering about the wall color, it’s called Calming Space (how appropriate, right?) by Behr. I just love it!
