School Room

Since all our family lives out of town and there are no plans for visits anytime soon I thought I’d share my latest project on our blog-“Our School Room.”

The past 2 weeks while the kids have been sick, I’ve been working on our “school room.” Its been pretty disorganized and hard to find things which makes me rather stressed.  So I knew if we were going to start more consistent learning times this fall I needed our room to have some order.  

I’m still working on other areas of the room but here is the main part of it:

This is the reading nook.  I got the fabric from Ikea last week for $7 and covered a pillow we already had.  I used this magazine rack I already had from Ikea to house our weekly books.  I choose different books every week to go along with what we are discussing that week.  For example, this week we are continuing the letter T.  So I chose books about teeth, toys, tigers, turtles, going on a class trip, etc.

This section houses the kids craft supplies.  I made this “ABC” art to cover holes in the wall but it turned out to be a neat design element.  I just used paper, frames, and felt I already had in the house.  I thought it turned out pretty cute even though I would have chosen different paper and felt if I’d purchased something specifically for this project.

These boxes aren’t labeled, yet.  I need to order new ink for my label maker but I have a box for Bible, English, Math, and History/Science. That way when I come across cool printouts, games, books, crafts like the new ABC bingo game and Dinosaur flash cards I just got from the dollar bin at Target, I can just throw them in the box and pull them out when I need them.

The easel I purchased from Ikea several years ago for $14.99.  We are using it to display our daily weather (I picked these up at Target for $2 a few weeks ago!), Letter of the week, and Memory Verse of the week.

I picked up a corkboard and fabric from Ikea last week for under $10 and a magnetic board in the “damaged goods” area of Ikea for $5 to display the kid’s crafts and notes.

All the baskets house various toys Elle can play with while Luke and I are working. Here she is working with the megablocks last week.  Her “activity” today was a jar with cotton balls. She was highly entertained with by removing the cotton balls and then putting them back over and over again. 🙂

I’m really happy with how it turned out.  I still have some other things around the room I’d like to do but this is a good start.

Looking forward to spending lot of precious time in this room with Luke and Elle in the coming year.  By the way, we attended the Southeast Homeschooling Expo 2 Saturdays ago.  I learned so much and was thankful I attended.

Another thing I’m so thankful for is God’s guidance.  I can see His leading down this homeschooling path for our family for so many reasons.  One of the reasons was confirmed to us last week.  Mike took a new position at his job that will require him to work a “hybrid” shift.  Basically, he’ll be going into work around 10 in the morning but not coming home till 7:30 or 8:30.  If I had put Luke in preschool this year, he would not have been able to see Mike much at all during the week.  I’m so thankful that even though Mike might only be home to tuck the kids in bed at night that we’ll be able to have every morning together as a family

God always knows what He is doing. I love how He has such a unique plan for every child and family.

(PS. Sorry all these pictures are blurry!  They aren’t in my Iphoto.  It happened when I uploaded them to wordpress.)