What does your "school" look like?

[Handsomesmomma]

Do you have a specific area where you do school? If so what does it look like? How about where you keep all of your goodies...supplies and such?

I am looking for ways to get WAY more organized than I am right now. Having three little boys seems like a constant battle of picking up and cleaning throughout the day and it has seeped into my previously semi-organized life
I have everything I need in one closet which I am trying to revamp and improve upon since it is just not happy right now.

We have set up one area for school last year but it got shifted to another during the year and now we have done some construction in our home so we are looking at a completely new area now. My house never stays the same for very long

I would love to hear what you ladies have to share.

Thanks for the ideas in advance.

[elizawill]

we do have a "school room", but it's not intended to be the only place we do school. we read a lot, and that takes place on my bed or the couch usually. if the weather is nice, we go outside a lot. the school room is mainly for organizational purposes. previously, we had books ALL over the place. i was very disorganized and could never seem to find what i needed when i needed it. now we have a table and chairs, books, maps, resources & supplies, etc. all in one area. the room is there if we need it (which we do enjoy it a lot), but it's not the only place we find ourselves

i have pix at my blog (just scroll down). it's not my "ideal", but we have limited space and share the room with my dh.

hth.

[LilyGrace]

We don't do school in any one place, but we do keep our supplies in mostly one area. In the dining room there is a bookcase for all curriculum and reading books. I need to get magazine holders to put in there so the thinner workbooks can be found/put away easily.

We have a LARGE cabinet (floor to ceiling) for manipulatives and oversized books that don't fit on the bookcase. Each shelf is devoted to one subject: language arts (including foreign language), maths, history/geography, and science, with the top shelf or two commandeered by mom for out of cycle work. We use silverware trays to keep the small things organized, and bins or pencil boxes for sets of things. Games are stacked up beside that, all on the right to give a uniform look.

Behind the dining room table is what was dh's ugly entertainment center stand from when he was a bachelor. It's black wood, not my style at all, but the two foot wide shelves give us room to lay out the cheaper art supplies and stacks of paper, organized by medium (one shelf for paints, one for doodads like pipe cleaners and such/cutting equipt, and one for crayons/colored pencils). Each shelf has a tray with the stuff on it along with its own stack of paper, so when the kid wants to do art he can take a tray to anywhere he wants.

[eclipse]

There was a thread a couple of weeks ago in which several people (including me!) link pictures.

We have a den/office that is used for our stuff. The den has a bookshelf (mostly with 3 y/o's toys), a futon, and a tv with an xbox to use for dvds. Then you step up into the office. The office has a wall of shelves, a large table in the middle, counter with cabinets, two computers, etc.

pictures:
http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e2...799/001-11.jpg
http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e2...e799/002-9.jpg
http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e2...e799/003-9.jpg
http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e2...e799/004-9.jpg
http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e2...e799/005-6.jpg

Like the pp, learning isn't confined to that room, but we tend to use it for messy projects because the table and floor are easy to clean, and it's a good central storage place for all the "stuff."

[Savoir Faire]

I'd show you a picture but it looks like a bomb was dropped in there.

We had to move this spring (out of state) and I INSISTED we have an extra room for school. We have a formal dining room that we've turned into the homeschool room.

It has a kid table I bought off Ebay (pretty cheap) plus two chairs off ebay. I have my desk and computer. I keep all the homeschool books I use in a big file container (with lid). I also have file folders in there that I'm organizing by week.

On the walls, we have wires my husband strung up so that we can hang artwork. We also have two bookshelves-- one full of books and the other hardly being used except to house some playdough.

The kids are going to grandma's next month so we will be doing a major overhaul then!

[Mama~Love]

http://www.mothering.com/discussions....php?t=1112057

Here's a thread about other people's areas where they have theor stuff. We do ours in the dining room.

[earthmama369]

We "school" all over the house...the yard, the neighborhood, the state.

Organizationally, I have a bookshelf in the living room dedicated to our homeschool resources. Top two shelves are classics and fairy tales, next is nonfiction by subject (magazines, French, English/reading/phonics, history and biographies, math, maps and charting, brain teasers, plants, animals, dinosaurs, fun science experiments, etc.). The bottom shelf is workbooks and my educational theory and curricula books.

In the living room and home office are two art bins for supplies -- the one in the living room is the one I'm OK with the kids going into on their own. The one in the office is for things like glitter, scissors, glue, and stickers...items that I've learned, through painful experience, are best kept up!

A lot of our hands-on tools are mixed in with the kids' toys in their room. Stethoscope, measuring tape, microscopes, CDs and CD player, solar-powered prism, measuring cups, and so on.

Most of our activities take place on the living room floor. Some at the kitchen table, more outside in the yard.

[Brisen]

We've homeschooled in 4 different homes now, but our basic set up has remained the same. We start out our mornings in the living room; we have book shelves in there & I just gather up whatever we're using that day & pile it on the coffee table. We have a small playroom/catch-all room just off the living room with a big cabinet for supplies & games & some toys.

In our other homes, the floor plan was more open and we stored schooly/consumable stuff in or near the dining/eating room, since they were usually used at the big table. Now that we have more storage room elsewhere, and we have an eat-in kitchen instead of a separate eating area, I don't store schooly stuff there. We lug it in when we want the big table & then lug it back. It is nice to have my kitchen space for kitchen stuff now, though.

[midwestmom]

Our homeschool 'room' is the dining room. That mainly means that we keep all of our stuff organized there. I had a kid table in there, but I found that I hated sitting at it b/c of the size and my kids often wanted me there so I got a reg size table off of craigslist (with booster seats for the smaller kids). We have posters and artwork all over the walls. We do plenty of stuff in other parts of the house, but it is nice to have a homebase to keep everything somewhat organized.

[Lillian J]

I started out thinking we'd have a special spot in the house where we did school, but the reality turned out to be far different. We were all over the place - in the living room, in the kitchen, in a home office, outdoors, reading and watching videos bedrooms, all over the neighborhood and community, in community classes, traveling around the country and even overseas. Learning materials were all around the house. - Lillian

[Handsomesmomma]

I'd show you a picture but it looks like a bomb was dropped in there.

That is exactly how I feel right now.

Thanks for the link to the previous thread Mama love. I am off to read now.
Elizawill that is how we are too. I will have to check out your blog Love looking at new blogs.

Thanks for all the input

[eclipse]

This thread got me motivated to clean up in my office/school area! I threw out a whole trash bag and a half worth of old scribbled on papers, broken crayons, inkless pens, dried out markers, etc. It's all (somewhat) neat and tidy now!

[dotnetdiva]

We are all over the place but have several dedicated rooms to homeschooling. I just posted pictures of our reading room here:
blog post: http://satorismiles.com/2009/07/20/l...-reading-room/
picture: http://satorismiles.com/wp-content/u...07-opg-029.jpg

Our loft is where we do most of our lessons. We sprawl out on the floor and do reading and other stuff. Pic to come tonight, I've been organizing the loft and need to take updated photos.

Art room will be painted next week, but it is in an unused kitchen in the basement, so we can get messy. The cabinets store all our art and craft supplies, paper and more. I'll have to update this photo once we finish painting.
http://satorismiles.com/our-home-school/

The entire basement floor is a "chalkboard" and is good for winter physical activity, or even coal mining in the basement.
http://satorismiles.com/wp-content/u...opolis-008.jpg

We live next to a national forest so we also of course use our deck and backyard a lot.

[MissRubyandKen]

Some of the spaces in the other thread are just lovely! Being in a small apartment, and living on our budget, we only have so much space and limited options when it comes to redecorating . I do have some organizing planned for the next month which I hope will help next year's flow. I'm going to make or buy baskets for holding books related to the topics. I'm thinking of purchasing or making two upright paper holders, one for each child to hold their workbooks separately. We'll be hanging a very large cork board above the work table for holding work related posters, charts, etc, as well as hanging pockets to hold assignments and space for displaying some finished work. I'm also going to tidy up and organize our new supplies, which are just haphazardly shoved on the shelves as of now. I need to make space for binders too as we'll be doing some notebooking/lapbooking. If I get to it I plan to make some holders that are more visually appealing than the plastic cups we're using now for our pencils, markers, colored pencils, etc. I'm planning some art projects around it anyway to enlist the kids' help. We have clay, felt, tagboard, etc, I'm sure we'll come with something neat.

[craft_media_hero]

Eh, our school room is our living room.

We're in a small apartment, too. Our living room is a combined dining/office/viewing area. Yeah, a lot of activities in this one room. I WISH we had an extra room hanging around that I could commandeer for art/school room, but for now we're okay.

Specific HS related books are all kept on one shelf. The rest of our books are organized by loose categories on their own shelf (science shelf, lit shelf, art books shelf) on tall bookshelves.

We are getting a lot of manipulatives in the mail, and we need a specific space to put them. I'd like to set up a Montessori-type long shelf on an under-utilized wall so that she can have her own self-guided area.

The office area kind of wraps around our dining table where most of our table work is done. In the couch/viewing area, we keep a big crate of our library books for easy access. The round coffee table in front of our couch is moved around, and we use it a lot for games, coloring, etc.

Considering how much happens in this space, I think we stay marvelously organized!

*Oh, I forgot to not that OUR ART STUFF IS EVERYWHERE!! I just finished 4 years in studio art school and had to bring all my stuff home, so large boxes and rolls of paper are tucked away behind the couch and the corner of the desk unit....we also have a big chest/trunk under the office desk that holds the "professional" art supplies. The office desk has a writing pencil jar, brush jar, sharpie jar, drawing pencil jar, and clay/modeling tool jar, LOL. Next to the wraparound glass desk (great for printmaking!) is DD's art bin--regular plastic 3 tier bin, top is drawing materials, middle is modeling, bottom is painting.

She also has a floating Ed Hardy hanging file box where I tuck worksheets, activities, etc. She only uses this maybe one day a week? so it's kind of a space-taker.

Probably all sounds like a huge jumble but it's really not that bad. We're "art student homeschooling chic" here. Very contemporary, heh heh.

[mommy2abigail]

We don't have a 'school space' but we do have a supply place. We converted the garage into a play room, with AC since we are in FL. I have a huge metal shelf in there with games, puzzles, and materials organized by subject. I also have a bookshelf in there for 'teacher books' basically idea books for the elementary grade (science experiments, math file folder games, ect.) and three 5-drawer tupperware bins for art/craft supplies, manipulatives, ect. We also have a HUGE table in there (from Ikea, I LOVE that place!) where she an sit and write if she wants, and a swing and mat space so that E can be playing while A 'does school'. There is a basket on the kitchen table with her bible book, some workbooks, and the current read aloud that A is welcome to go do at any time. It's up to her when to school, I just set interesting things out.

[Icequeen_in_ak]

we don't have the space for a school room. Our house is 1300 sq feet and it also houses our business (which appears to be taking over more and more space each year as it grows) so our school area is the dining room table and our hall closet has been devoted to housing school materials.

I'm a bit of a neat freak, so having an area that I can tuck it all away really helps to calm me. We have EVERYTHING in that closet (art supplies, curriculum, music books, even her keyboard).

Of course, this is our first year homeschooling... so who knows if this is going to work long term.

[BookGoddess]

Originally Posted by dotnetdiva

We are all over the place but have several dedicated rooms to homeschooling. I just posted pictures of our reading room here:
blog post: http://satorismiles.com/2009/07/20/l...-reading-room/
picture: http://satorismiles.com/wp-content/u...07-opg-029.jpg

Your reading room is beautiful. It has given me ideas for our spare bedroom.

[Radish4ever]

http://photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._7089932_n.jpg
The 3 main shelves we use - supplies and books, supplies and readers and flashcards, and the white "to do" box, green "done" box, and the workbooks for "fun" stuff to the side

http://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._3236031_n.jpg
Grace's workbox and all of its contents ready for a new day! (Ignore the laptop and the pile of misc. This is our dining room table.


http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._7076227_n.jpg
Grace's schoolwork chart - She marks them off as she finishes the corresponding activity bag

[Ravin]

I'd show you a picture, but I don't have a handy camera. Our front living room is where we do lessons. The front door has a raised parquet section before it. Blocks live next to it and often on it and people come and go through the garage. On the wall to the left of the front door , there are:

A 1-100 number chart
A US map and a World map
A big dry erase board for the Plan of the Day (haven't implemented this yet, but going to)
A cork board (for reminders, artwork, whatever)
A calendar (appointments, events, etc. get put on it and DD marks off the days)

Strung along under all these is a clothesline that we're using as a timeline this year. A picture or narration for each weekly history lesson will be clipped to it.

The rest of that wall is taken up by a large 5X5 cubby-style bookshelf from Ikea. This is where most of the school books, etc. live. The cubbies go like this, top to bottom:

First row: Children's literature, chapter books. Harry Potter gets his own cubby and Horatio Hornblower shares only with Madeline L'Engle, at respective ends.

Second row: 1. some of my collectibles, 2. seasonal holiday books and a plastic shoe bin of colored pencils, 3. homeschooling/parenting books and curricula I'm not using for the current year, 4. books/curricula we are using this year, 5. binders for Spiral Scouts and SCA stuff and, for some reason, DD's jewelry box

Third row:1. children's poetry, 2. shoebox of art supplies and DD's bead set. Theoretically, markers or crayons go here (or in the one above w/ the colored pencils). 3. Picture books 4. children's nonfiction books 5. plastic bin with paint supplies

Fourth row: 1. Phonics manipulatives, games, and readers, 2. math manipulatives, 3. More picture books, 4. DD's school box theoretically goes here, but currently it's on the couch and her toy laptop is here instead, 5. library books

Bottom row: 1. and 2. jigsaw puzzles, 3. legos, 4. basket with musical instruments and toys, 5. basket with skates and protective gear

Across from this wall, from the front of the room by the window to the hall-side, there are: My desk and sewing table, the family altar, which has shelves below that hold religious books as well as all our mythology and folklore books, and a large sectional couch. DD mostly does her lessons sitting on the couch, or at an end table next to it, sitting in a little chair. We have a kid table, but she prefers having it in the TV room where she can paint, etc. during the day while I sleep. There's a big blue rug on the floor over the fugly brown carpet, and DD's toy kitchen is at the end of the sectional, across from the cubbies. There's also a craft table, under the window between my desk and the door, and a chalboard/whiteboard easel, that migrates around the room.