Our Home Schoolroom 2012

It’s about time I posted about our schoolroom here on Home Schoolroom!

We have a formal dining room in our home…and we aren’t formal dining kind of people.  After it sat unused for a couple years, I turned it into my office and crafty space and painted it a deep red.  I’d always wanted a red room!  It was great because we could work on projects and leave them out.  Then we decided to homeschool so now it’s still my office and a crafty space, but it’s also where much of our school supplies reside.

In the middle of the room you’ll find our work surfaces.  This is my desk.  (A lucky find years ago when a university was selling old furniture for $15.)

My desk isn’t usually this neat–I cleaned it just for you.

The basket lamp is great for hiding some of my desktop clutter. The shallow basket is a good place to pile my papers that I plan to deal with soon.  {Note to self:  I must actually deal with the papers in it soon.}  You’ll also see a basket on the floor on each side of my desk:  one for yet more papers-I-plan-to-deal-with, the other for small sewing and knitting projects I hope to finish soon.  Baskets are a necessity, they make my messes look nice.

This is the schoolroom table.  The kids work at each end and enjoy having their own workspace.

The schoolroom table. Also not usually this neat.

At their workspaces are a wooden organizer and plastic drawer unit, both from Target, to hold pens, pencils, glue runners, a pencil sharpener and anything else to keep them from having to get up a dozen times when they’re working.  They also have the 50-count pack of Crayola colored pencils.  If you have the money in your homeschool budget I recommend upgrading to that pack.  We use colored pencils a lot for lapbooking and notebooking and our nature journals.  Having lots of colors to choose from is fun, and I find they work hard to look at the details to choose just the right color from all that variety.  The organizers let them have the supplies they need, gives them a defined workspace, and still look cute!

The bench beside the table is perfect.  If the three of us are working together on something we all sit there.  I hope they’re never too big for that.  (And that I’m not either!)

An older laptop tucks in here.

Tucked in between their spaces is my old laptop that they use for typing, Xtramath, Khan Academy and any educational computer games.  We just slide it forward as needed.

Directly behind my desk is one of only two large wall spaces.

Maps, a poster rail and magnetic board–use every inch!

The large magnetic board is used for All About Spelling.  Finding a whiteboard that magnets stick strongly to in the size needed wasn’t cheap.  So we purchased a large black frame at AC Moore with a coupon for about $15, then had our local sheet metal fabricator cut a piece of galvanized steel to fit (he even let me pick the piece I wanted) for about $20.  I simply removed the glass from the frame, slipped the steel in, and added the frame’s backing.  It was less than many of the large magnetic whiteboards I saw, and I love the way it looks.

Above that is an Advantus Grip-a-Strip display rail.  I use it for maps, posters, timeline cards, art–you simply slip the item between the rails and rollers hold it in place; just push up and then pull down to remove it.  The one complaint I have is that laminated items can slip out of the rollers.  An easy solution I figured out: place a piece of blue painter’s tape on the top of the item.  It doesn’t show but keeps the item from slipping.

Above that is yet another great find from the school sale:  a set of roll-up maps (for $5!).  I had wanted roll-up maps since I saw them used by Tricia at Hodgepodge as window blinds.  Since we’re limited in wall space I thought it was a great idea!

Super-sized maps–be still my homeschool mother’s heart.

I am in love with these and can’t wait to put them to good use.  My only hope is that our homemade hanging system stays secure and they don’t come crashing down on me.  It took us half a day and around $35, but I trust my safety to our finished project.  Good thing since it hangs right behind my head.

The wall you see from our kitchen is the “art wall.”

An easy-to-change art wall.

The two black rails make it easy to change out the artwork, and they were simple and inexpensive to make: paint two long boards, use Liquid Nails to glue on some clips, and put picture hangers on the back.  It’s a perfect place to enjoy the kids’ art for a while before it goes into their binders.  (And a good drying place for wet art so the cat can’t walk on it!)

Below the art is our writing center.  I was excited to organize our materials into a writing center after reading through the WriteShop teacher’s manual.   For us this area is actually a combination writing, notebooking & lapbooking center.

Our writing, notebooking & lapbooking center.

Something looks a little strange, doesn’t it?  You see the blue outline on the rug?  That’s where my new favorite piece of furniture is going: this set of lockers I scored for $10 at a school sale.

A little elbow grease and these will be perfect in our schoolroom!

If the humidity ever drops around here so I can spray paint them, they’ll look gorgeous.  The plastic drawer units beside them I picked up in January when organizers go on sale.  (I have collected half a dozen over time and am always moving them around using them for different things).   This writing/notebooking/lapbooking center holds all sorts of paper (cardstock, printed scrapbook paper, stationery, specialty papers), papercrafting  supplies (trimmers, fancy edge scissors, paper punches, adhesives, brads, stickers), a dictionary and thesaurus.  Two lockers are reserved for my children as their writing cubbies.  On top of the lockers will sit a desktop organizer for paper (lined, plain and colored), envelopes, file folders, sheet protectors, and a binder with notebooking pages for my children to choose from.  {Note: so far all my notebook pages have been free.  Most are from The Notebooking Fairy, Homeschool Share, the Handbook of Nature Study Blog, and abcteach.}

There are a few items in this section that are science related.  (I had to overcome the organizer in me who really likes to stick with the theme.)  One drawer holds experiment tools:  goggles, beakers and test tubes–the stuff that helps us feel like real scientists.  And on top of my lovely lockers will sit two new-to-us very exciting items that we picked up at the school sale:  a compound microscope (along with a wooden box to store slides) and a stereoscope that will be helpful for examining interesting things we find.

On the opposite wall is a row of bookshelves (yup, all different sizes and wood finishes).

In case you’re wondering, “Mr. Gooey” is a human body model with squishy organs,  and “Mr. Bones” is a skeleton model that came with a book from Workman Publishing.  Sorry I can’t give you an inexpensive source for the eye and ear: we got them for FREE at the school sale in our area.

As you can see from my description of the schoolroom table, writing center and bookshelves I like giving the kids their own spaces:  they like the ownership, and it’s nice to call for a “cubby clean-out” and have them be responsible for their areas.

This last photo shows the home part of the schoolroom:  our dog’s bed, our cat’s cube, and a big comfy rocking chair.

The “home” in our home schoolroom.

The rocking chair was the one I rocked my babies in and now makes a great quiet corner to read.  I can even still squeeze in with one child to work on something together.  In small jars on the windowsill beside the rocker is our collection of sea glass from our ocean-side camping trips.  On the wall between the windows is an antique printer’s tray that with a very special collection of  heart shaped rocks that we’ve gathered for years.  These are the items that bring the love of our family into our schoolroom.

Of course our “school” items spill over into the house.  Nature field guides and binoculars are in the living room, a large hutch in the hallway holds the messier art supplies and educational games, and chapter books are in a bookcase outside our bedrooms.  A lot of schoolwork takes place outside of this defined room:  reading on a blanket on the lawn or cozy next to the fire, nature journaling on a walk in the woods, science experiments and art projects on the kitchen island…learning can happen anywhere!

I’m linking up over at iHomeschool Network’s Not Back to School Blog Hop.  Click over to check out other schoolrooms!