The School Room

I plan to share some of the things I have found in all my searching for ideas to make school fun and exciting this year! First, I thought I'd start with a brief tour around our almost finished school room. We have a great basement to use for our school room. It has one big room where we will set up desks, tables, and center type things. There is a closet that we will use as our supply closet to hold toys, games, craft items, books for later in the year, etc. We also have a bathroom and the laundry room is in the basement so that makes changing out laundry very convenient for me during school!

Here's a big picture of our room. It's almost complete...needs the chairs (just waiting to get them cleaned up!) and a few more things I'll be adding to the walls like our big maps.  

I LOVE the chalkboard! It turned out great! We have our handwriting charts under it. I saved the space above for some paper dolls that we will make the first couple weeks of school. The table beside the chalkboard has another of my new favorite things...a laminator. It has been such a help in trying to preserve some of the activities I have been making.

This is our calendar wall. We will go over everything on it first thing every morning. I'll share more about it another time when I share our calendar folders that I just love, but the younger two will practice place value, counting, money and more by using this wall!

Here you see some things I had a blast painting. The magazine holders which we'll use for books (probably for our adaptation of workboxes) turned out super. I have four more to fill in the spaces with once I get more lime green! The second shelf has a basket containing the items used on the calendar every day, trays for papers, pencil sharpener and the bottom shelf has our read aloud missionary books, dictionaries, and some extra notebooks. 

This is where I will keep some center type activities. So far, most are geared to the younger two but I am working on searching for ideas and brainstorming for Hayden to be able to do some as a break from book work. For Keaton it will be used as productive learning time while I am teaching the older ones. He'll be able to sit at the little table for a change from his desk. I'll be sharing all the awesome activities that I have found and links to great websites.

Oh! Notice the buckets? They were part of my bargain finds at a dollar store in a previous post. The blue ones were the right color but the ugly grey ones are now a lovely lime green! Eventually, I would like to do the yellow baskets on the top and the little chairs but for now yellow works!

This table sits at the far end of the room and will be for art and other activities.  See the basket on the left? It used to be a peachy pink color with yellow stripes. Now it's brilliant blue and lime green on the inside! And then we have our book basket. These are some of our collection of books that I will rotate out unless I am able to add a few more of these crates. Found them at walmart and the colors were almost perfect. The green isn't so limey but it will work! The name book basket comes from our curriculum where we will be adding in additional library books every week to further explore what we are studying. The baby dolls haven't found a home yet. Siara only plays with a couple dolls so I'm thinking the rest need to find a storage bin to live in for now!

And finally, our computer station! This will be a favorite I'm sure with my kids! We'll use it for learning games and typing practice. The table was left here by the renters before us. Even though it's not in great shape it works beautifully as a computer table with a drawer and cabinet to store things. The box on the table is going to become a mailbox soon.

Hope you have enjoyed the tour of our Little School House!!