Blog Hop ~ School Room Week

It's week 2 in the 2012 Not Back-to-School Blog Hop.  Last week was Curriculum Week where I listed what curriculum we will be using this year.  This week is School Room week where I get to show you where we do a lot of our schooling.  Because it's specifically School Room week, and we're blessed enough to have a school room in our home, I'm showing it off.  HOWEVER...I don't want you to think that this is the only place we do school OR that a school room is necessary to homeschool your children.  

We did some rearranging in our home to create our school room.  It used to be our main family room.  The room where we hung out the most!  Luckily, we had one of those "formal" living rooms (which was incredibly un-formal) at the front of the house that was rarely used, so we moved furniture, re-routed some cable lines, and began using the front room as our main family room and it gave me space for a wonderful school room!  The absolute only reason this room is well used and functional as a school room is because it is in the same area of the house as the kitchen and laundry room.  It is actually wide open to the kitchen, but we put up some shelving to give it a little bit of a wall space.  The kids are able to work in the school room and I'm still able to work in the kitchen and do laundry, and still be within ear/eye sight of them.  Plus, we still use our whole house as a learning center.  The kids' computer sits on the bar in the kitchen, science and art projects take place at the kitchen table, nature walks happen out doors, the trampoline makes for great PE workouts, etc.  My point is, while I'm very happy to have a school room, we're not stuck in it all day because I want to make sure that we're learning from real life, just as much as we're learning at our desks :)

Now for the pictures!

Okay, so first I'll take you on a clockwise tour around the room...

Now around the room, clockwise, with a few details...

This is the Ikea Expedit and it is fabulous!!  It has so much space that I can just organize to my heart's content!  The cubes are so versatle and Ikea has some wonderful things to go in it!  The tan boxes came from Ikea, along with the drawer inserts, door inserts and magazine holders.  My only problem with this piece of furniture was that I kept forgetting which cube I had what in, so I resorted to my label maker and just made up some labels.  Amazing how much that helped my feeble mind :).

Next is our first of three bulletin boards.  We made these boards out of  a sheet of underlayment that we picked up from Lowes.  It was less than $20 and we cut all 3 bulletin boards out of it!  Last year we covered it in fabric, but the fabric I chose, while I liked it, was just too busy for a bulletin board.  This year I went the standard classroom route and used paper and borders.  Much more "school" looking, but the girls had fun choosing the board/paper combinations :).  Also in this picture, you can see the first of many inspirational quote posters (above the bulletin board) that I picked up from the dollar store, a rocket poster that our rocket-launcher-cousin gave to us and my great-grandmother's rocking chair.  This chair is where I sit in the mornings to do our first morning group-time type lessons.  Love that it has such family history with it and is included in our daily lives still. This bulletin board has our memory items posted on it right now.  It will later include math concepts that need more practice, vocabulary words that we're working on, or anything else that needs some extra reinforcement.

Now is my best find in the whole school room.  I was looking for a white board, but didn't want to spend a ton of money on it.  I posted a "wanted" ad on my local freecyle list and a local private college contacted me.  They were remodeling their school and had 1 white board left.  It's conference room style, so it's this on the outside, but both doors open up to have a nice open white board space on the inside.  When you google it, these styles/size are upwards of $1000+!!  I got it for free :D.  It was quite an adventure getting it in my SUV  with my 3 girls assisting me - that sucker is HEAVY, but we got it and absolutely love it.  It's a white board that takes away absolutely NO wall space because I use the outside for all our morning discussion pieces.  The calendar and weather pieces for from the local teacher store, there's several more inspirational signs (a theme for our school room LOL) and our virtue from We Choose Virtues that we're working on at the time (Contentment at this point). 

Just a quick pic of one side of the white board opened up.

Next is our bookcase and game shelf area.  The bookcase desperately needs to be sorted through and we need about two more game book cases, but it's what we have for right now.  The small table in front is a very old, well used kid's table that the kids like to sit at to play games, color, etc.  It's just kind of a fun place to go and it's so beat up that I really don't care what they do to it.

Next is our story couch and "book basket" space.  Sorry for such a bad picture - I didn't close the blinds until after I took this picture LOL. We used to have a couch from our living room in here, but it was very fluffy with too many pillows, and I just didn't like it.  So, we went to Ikea again ;).  I wanted something compact, but that had enough room for us to sit and read stories.  We decided on the Klippan Loveseat. Since it is technically a love seat, it won't fit all of us forever, but it works great for now.  I don't like that it is a slipcover, but other than that, it fit all my other requirements, so we went with it.  The slipcover does slip, and get wrinkly and everything that goes with that, but it's not HORRIBLE, so we just deal with it.  The rain gutter book shelf behind the couch holds are "book basket" books.  These are a selection of [usually] library books on whatever topic(s) we're studying at the time.  It's filled with Olympic books right now :).  The kids can sit here and read to their heart's content :).

This is my desk area.  The desk is the same kind the girls have in the middle of the room.  It's here from Walmart and was cheap, so it works :).  The bulletin board (not one of our homemade ones) holds pictures of my girls, along with all the creations that they make me.  In the corner is our telescope.  On the floor are 2 black crates.  These crates hold our school work for the entire year.  The one on the outside of my desk has folders for the first 8 weeks of school (one folder for each kid, per week) along with all the books that we'll be utilizing regularly during those 8 weeks.  The one under my desk, against the wall, is the rest of the school year.  I'm loving this folder system so far!  I can have the year planned out, and add things as I come across fun ideas or things to do, and yet don't have to erase anything to do move things around.  More details on the system I use later :).  The bookcase next to my desk is filled with my office supplies and the rest of books/supplies that I want to use this year, but am not using at this time.  On the desk are pen/pencil/clip holders that my girls made for me for christmas, a ceramic pencil holder that I painted when I was just a kid myself, and in front of my desk is a globe that my brother-in-law donated to our school room :)

This is our tv/wii/map area.  When using Amanda Bennett's Olympic unit study, we plug my laptop into the tv and were able to watch all the video links and such on there.  It was great and I look forward to using this more in the future!  The green basked is where the kids turn in all their completed papers.  The mirror on the side is just because I haven't found a good place to put it yet ;).  The red baskets on the bottom hold the Wii games and accessories so the kids can still play the Wii in a room other than our main living room.  I love the map right here because the kids climb up onto the coffee table (bad mom) and examine the heck out of the map.  I will often find Sav in there just sitting there, seeing what new place she can find.

This is our 3rd bulletin board (currently displaying our Olympic medal count chart).  Under the bulletin board is another rain gutter bookshelf for library books that aren't necessarily related to what we're studying.  The drawers to the right of the fireplace are Mir's workboxes (without the labels because we just switched to these drawers and I haven't put the labels on yet) and the black crate on top holds her MFW preschool toys and activities

Here's our solar system from our Astronomy Studies of last year.  We like it so much we still have it displayed.  I'm sure it will come down eventually, but for now, everyone enjoys it.  The little yellow spots you see on the ceiling are stars with sight words on them, to help reinforce some reading skills last year and they just haven't been taken down yet :)

Well...I think that's it!  I hope you've enjoyed looking at our school room as much as I enjoy looking at everyone else's!  Let me know if you have any questions and I'd love to hear any comments or suggestions you have on it!  I have fun adding new things to it :)  See you next week for "Student Photo Week"!

That's all folks!