This Is Where We Do School

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This week's post for the Not Back-to-School Blog Hop is "Schoolrooms". . . We have a schoolroom, but we tend to do school all over our house too! So I thought I'd just generally show you where we do schoool . ..

But we'll start with the school room. Our school room serves LOTS of purposes. . . it stores all our school stuff, it's where we can sprawl around and do read alouds and other school,  it has some "secluded" areas for when one of the girls wants to be abit more "alone", it's also as close as we get to having a "guest room".

So come on in . . .

Standing in the doorway, this is kind of what you see. The beanbag conveniently stores (some of) our extra stuffed animals and is a favorite seat. The "milk crates" are "cubbies" for each of the girls to keep their school stuff in, and others hold things like musical instruments  and books. the green plastic drawers hold scrap paper, collage supplies, and specialty papers. Hooks on the wall hold the girls' backpacks so they can quickly grab them and fill them for on-the-go school (the pink one really is on a hook, it's not hanging from the lamp). The cedar chest and square "cat cube" serve as seating and also hold bedding, etc for when it's a guest room. The wooden shelf forms one "wall" of one of the "nooks" where there are pillows on the floor for them to be abit more alone (another "nook" is on the other side of the cubbies.

The door into the room is right next to the green fabric drawers. This is where I sit when we "do school" so the bottom wood shelf has my pens, etc. In the fall and winter we usually have a seasonally relevant playsilk covering the green fabric drawers and use that surface as a small nature table. We haven't done any "nature tabling" this summer. The drawers hold things we use on the nature table (sticks, small wooden animals, etc) the bookcase is mostly just . . . books . . . a couple of the lower shelves are Little Bit's picture books. Also I have a few art supplies stored on a couple of the higher shelves. The wooden shelf has my current "file cabinet" (the black milk crate) on top and most of that shelf is things I am currently using or planning to use soon. . . books I want to remember to incorporate, etc. The white bins have some art supplies and such in them. On top of the white bins is my laminator LOVE IT, and our color printer.  The short little door goes into attic storage space. Right now it's just piled full of boxes, my long-term goal is to organize that space with shelves to store things so that I can have less "storage" in the room itself . . . someday . . . The pink crate is the beginning of the wall of cubbies, it's currently empty, waiting for next time I need to store something LOL. The basket on top is musical instruments.

The "nook" behind the cubbies. The easel serves as one "wall" of this nook. Little Bit loves to draw on the chalkboard, and we use the white board for various schoolish things as well as a place to stick things with magnets. The file box under the backpacks is Ashlyn's WriteShop box. The basket sticking out of one cubby is books for them to choose from for independent reading if they tell me they have "nothing to read".

The bookcases along the wall hold books, and more art supplies on top. The space beside the bookcases in the corner holds things like wall maps that we're not currently using. The black cubby is Lexie's (it faces into the "nook". T he purple cubby AND the fabric bin on top of the blue cubby are Ashlyn's (actually one of her projects over the last few days was consolidating those together, the fabric bin is now gone). The blue cubby has our Learning Palettes. Under the empty pink cubby is one with our Bilibos and other "get the wiggles out" type toys. Under the Learning Palettes cubby is one that holds our Wedgits. Under Ashlyn's purple cubby is Little Bit's cubby and, as mentioned above, under Lexie's is a cubby (facing the other direction) with independent reading books.

 The other side of the room. More shelves of books with art and school supplies on top (the black plastic drawers are more of the same). The couch folds out into a queen size mattress and becomes our guest bed! We had a generic equivalent to an aerobed (that we stored in the cedar chest) but when it sprung a leak and I needed to replace it, I decided to go this route, so leaks wouldn't be an issue. The girls love sitting on it, doing gymnastics on it, etc! And our guests tell us it's quite comfortable to sleep on. If I had it to do over again I think I'd get 2 twin size ones instead, but we have this one now. It's lightweight enough to pull out to get to the books and games on the shelf behind it. On the slanted ceiling is our ancient history timeline.

On the other side of the door is our photocopier and another bookshelf.

While we love our school room and use it daily (for school and play), we also use the rest of our house.

The kitchen is where messy projects happen. The white dropleaf table (right side of the picture) can open up to a square  table or rectangular table, depending how much work we need. Messy art happens there. The tin pails on the shelf above the table hold paint, chalk, etc. for those projects.

Of course the living room is a great place for read alouds, just curling up on the sofa to work on homework, and watching videos.

 The other side of the living room . . . Ashlyn practices piano, and Lexie stores her violin here. (Lexie generally practices in her room or the school room). Between the piano and the TV is our hard-working printer. Under the TV are DVDs and games. One thing this house lacked, when we bought it, was places to store my huge book collection, so to help with that problem (in addition to squeezing shelves into every available inch in the schoolroom, my dad built bookshelves instead of a banister along the staircase, as you can see, I have it jammed full! The white canvas drawers under the windows hold art supplies and play dough stuff. The bottom cube has library books and current read alouds that we usually end up reading downstairs.

 Finally, the back door leads us out into our OTHER classroom, the whole wide world! While you can't actually see it in this picture, on the shelf under the counter, closest to the door is a basket full of field guides for when the children discover something interesting in the yard. Outside you'll find a driveway for bike riding , sidewalk chalk, and basketball, a swingset, container gardening on the back porch, and some in the flower beds, a creek for wading . . . all kinds of fun, without even leaving home! :)