Our "School Room"

 

This week's topic on the Not Back-to-School Blog Hop is School Rooms.  And again, we don't fit nicely into a box.  We kind of use the whole house for school.  But here are some of our school spaces:

I wrote here, about our homeschool bookshelves on one end of the dining room. And for the most part, they are still like that.

One change I made was to put the pens, pencils, etc (that I had in jars) all into a crate that slides onto the shelf.  Little Bit was just tall enough to grab the edge of whatever jar, or pencil sharpener or whatever was closest to the edge and pull it down, so, while having them out was more convenient for the big girls and I, we needed to contain them in the crate for the sake of toddler-proofing (especially now that Little Bit has learned to take the caps off markers and pens.

Next to the bookcases we have our maps. My dad helped me find some little, but STRONG, magnetic things designed to hang on the wall in a garage or workshop to hold tools, we hung those at the top 2 corners of the map and then we can use magnets to hold whichever map we're currently using on the wall. The other maps (we have 2 different US maps, plus a world map) slide in beside the bookshelf, you can see the world map peaking out there.  We could also hang any other charts or whatever on those magnets.

Another dining room wall holds our white board. It's kind of messy at the moment, we have our "consequences" chart hanging there, the small blue framed white board in the middle has the day's Bible copywork verse. I bring that into the family room with us while we discuss Bible, then we hang it on the big board when the girls do their independent work (currently the Bible copywork, handwriting worksheet, and sometimes a Spanish worksheet). There's also a sheet with how to write all the cursive letters, some alphabet magnets, etc on the main white board.

We started our new fall curriculum this week. For Bible, we're learning about church history using felts .It's a full size set of felts, intended for church, so kind of big for home use, at least OUR home. Originally I'd thought we'd hang the backgrounds on the "map magnets" in the dining room, but the chair rail would get in the way (the backgrounds are taller than the maps). So I decided to just take the cushions off the couch and lay the background against the back of the couch. It's working well, the big girls can sit on either side of it to change the felts as we read through the story, and they are LOVING it.

And my final picture is of my crate. The recliner is my main "teaching" spot in the living room. It's also where I nurse Little Bit. It works well since my laptop can sit on the sofa arm (they're at right angles right next to each other). And I tend to put "stuff" in the corner between the recliner and the sofa. It's ideal because Little Bit can't get to it very well. And I can reach it when she's nursing or sleeping or as we're doing school . . . BUT it tends to get messy, so when I found these great crates (the same kind I used on the bookshelf in the dining room) at Walmart this year I put one in my "corner". It keeps everything contained, stands the books and papers up so I can reach them more easily than if they're laying on the floor, and they don't get wrinkled as easily, AND I'm hoping it will force me to keep things "pared down" to what I really need to be able to reach, by cleaning things out when the crate gets too full. While it's not ALL school stuff, this does hold our Spanish teachers guide, My Bible First "quarterly" (which is our Bible stories for church, we read them in teh evening), pens, sticky notes, etc.

So that's at least SOME of our "school room" spaces. The whole outdoors is another one. The dining room table is where the girls sit to write, the spare room upstairs holds our printer & photocopier, and the girls often use that room for doing crafts.