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Does anyone have pictures of their schooling area/organization?

post #1 of 35
3/15/10 at 1:13am
Thread Starter 
After months of looking at an overstuffed bookcase, I decided to tackle it today and organize it. Well I'm halfway through and at a stand still. I have three "stages" of curriculum to organize. (Our oldest keeps her curriculum in her room). The three younger kiddos are doing three different types of curriculum right now so I'd like to give them each a "shelf" and then put all the school supplies ie: paper, pencils, etc in a desk. I also plan to put all our craft supplies (paint, play doh, clay, crayons, markers, etc) in a four drawer clear Sterilite type cart.
I don't know if this is the best way to do it so naturally, I wanted to see how everyone else organizes their stuff.
How do you keep it all organized? Thanks
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post #2 of 35
3/15/10 at 2:59am
We've got far less curriculum but I can still share what I did. I can also do pics but it takes me forever to get stuff uploaded so I'll just try to explain.

I've got our most often used art and school supplies (including things like blocks for math) in a hanging over the door shoe holder type thing. It has been so much more convenient than anything I've done in the past organization wise. Each "pocket" actually has two spaces--one for each shoe--so I have 42 pockets in it which is plenty of room for us.
I actually attached it to a room divider we have rather than a door.

On a kids table in the kitchen I have a three divider art caddy type thing (I think actually it's meant to hold books in a library or something) and in one space is drawing paper and another space holds crayons in a repurposed jar and colored pencils in their own jar. The boys have legos in the third space at the moment.

My bookshelf:
The top shelf of my bookcase is paper--extra drawing, extra printing, and colored paper.
Second shelf is things like Kumon workbooks and reference materials for me, two stearlite containers that are labeled (one is holding a limited number of assorted rarely used art materials that I actually could move to that shoe holder but I decided to leave the space open given the rarity of using this stuff). I've also got stuff like chalkboards for our writing program here. It sounds chaotic but it's a limited amount of stuff and organized by type so it's really not chaotic.

The third shelf (most accessible shelf) has my currently used curriculum by subject. I would like to get magazine holders to group them by subject but that's an unnecessary expense so I'm forgoing. It's also got supplies like handwriting paper we're using at the moment w/the curriculum.

My next shelf has three stearlite containers--one large and two small. The small ones hold playdough tools and playdough respectively. The large one holds all our paint supplies except water colors which are in the shoe holder. This shelf has room for some upcoming curriculum too.

The bottom shelf is for bubbles, outdoor chalk, and some other things like that. Right now it has some non-school related stuff too.
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post #3 of 35
3/15/10 at 4:28am
Pictures I don't have. But I can give a bit of a run down of how we're dealing with storage

Craft & art materials: These are on a shelf in the linen closet (which I have halfway overtaken.. working on relocating the rest of the linens now hehe). I have one of those cardboard pigeon hole paper stackers with most of our paper in there. On the inside of the laundry room door, is a kids size over the door hanger... I think it has about a dozen pockets. It holds paint brushes and misc stuff.

Books/curriculum: We have a 4x4 expedit shelf unit that is used as a room divider in oru family room (to hide the ugly treadmill). That houses *most* of our curriculum, books (library books get a cubby of their own on the top shelf, there are many of them), and misc manipulatives. It also has a fair few small coloured plastic bins w/lids for holding various types of crayons, pens, colour pencils, lacing cards and such.

There is also a 2x4 expedit in our computer room/office that holds my planning stuff and a few things that I don't like for the 3yo to have access to. The boys math u see books & dvds are there, along with the History Odyssey planning binder, and the boys personal whiteboards etc taht they use independently

I try to keep the amt of STUFF down to a managable level.. but yeah.. we've got geoboards and white boards and manipulatives and games and art stuff lol. I've had to get organized with it or it'd take over! Hope this helps a wee bit.
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post #4 of 35
3/15/10 at 9:58am
our area is half of a room (other half belongs to my husband). it's not grand by any means, but we love it for organizational purposes. here are pix...

http://mytwomonkeys.webs.com/apps/ph...lbumid=6914952
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post #5 of 35
3/15/10 at 5:33pm
subbing as we accumate more and more i need ideas.

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post #6 of 35
3/15/10 at 5:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by elizawill View Post
our area is half of a room (other half belongs to my husband). it's not grand by any means, but we love it for organizational purposes. here are pix...

http://mytwomonkeys.webs.com/apps/ph...lbumid=6914952
the shoe box sized tubbies -- with smilies on them -- what are they used for??
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post #7 of 35
3/15/10 at 8:45pm
elizawill- Nice! I love your space and that table rocks.
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post #8 of 35
3/16/10 at 2:17am
Thread Starter 
Thank you everyone for taking the time to respond. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get back to this thread. I was gone all day today.

Elizawill~ I'm a bit green with envy over your space. It's really cool!
I too am wondering what the clear containers with smileys are used for. Also, are those the simple carts you get from Target in the laundry aisle that you're using to put the clear containers on?

I'm hoping to work on the shelves tomorrow. I think part of my problem is that I still don't have a "curriculum" picked out for my 5th and Kindergartener. We're using a mix of different things so it makes it harder to put it all into "categories".

I think I'm thinking this through a little too much
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post #9 of 35
3/16/10 at 9:30am
the containers are just a very modified version of sue patrick's workboxes. they are numbered 1-12 (but we don't always use 12 boxes...especially with my son). as my child finishes a box, they remove the number and put a smiley face in it's place. when only smiley faces are left, we're done. we used them last year consistently, but we've kind of gotten away from them lately. i may return to them though, as our days really do feel so much more fun when we incorporate them. there is an active yahoo group for workboxes if interested. and yes - they're from target (i think it's a shoe stand if i remember correctly).
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post #10 of 35
3/16/10 at 12:09pm
I just uploaded some pics of our craft and science room. I'm a big crafter, and we're all into science. So, we have a lot of supplies:

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...hp?albumid=308

I'm going to take pics of where we keep most of our books, activities, and curriculum as soon as we finish hanging up some things...

Holli
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post #11 of 35
3/16/10 at 2:57pm
Here are a few pictures of our space. I have to say bookshelves are your friends Ikea was the answer for me!
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post #12 of 35
3/17/10 at 2:13am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by sarahf. View Post
Here are a few pictures of our space. I have to say bookshelves are your friends Ikea was the answer for me!
Love the pics! Do you mind explaining the super cute tree on the wall with the handprints? It's adorable but I can't see what's written on the hands and wondered if it was a Science lesson?

Holli~ You are so super organized! I'm jealous I love all the craft supplies and am slowly building ours up
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post #13 of 35
3/17/10 at 11:07am
It's our season tree...we change the leaves based on the season...That was for the fall so it has handprints with things we are thankful for and general harvest type words....
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post #14 of 35
3/17/10 at 1:00pm
I haven't posted yet, since I'm not as organized yet as I'd like to be, and I've been starting to separate subjects into different areas. I also don't like clutter and tend to hide stuff in closets and cupboards, but I do realize it is handy to have some things in sight and accessible...

Here's a few of our areas, pictures already need to be updated though for the Main Lesson room:
Craft Room
Main Lesson Room
Reading Room (I am thinking of making a library with a wall of normal shelves and converting this to a bedroom)
Game Closet
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post #15 of 35
3/17/10 at 6:10pm
I barely get to post here on MDC but am glad I found this thread, I love seeing others pics.. everyone's spaces are really great. We just started our journey this year and it just feels very jumbled to me and we use my daughters room. I hope next year to step it up a notch.
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post #16 of 35
3/17/10 at 7:52pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by sarahf. View Post
It's our season tree...we change the leaves based on the season...That was for the fall so it has handprints with things we are thankful for and general harvest type words....
omg so CUTE! I'm now stalking .. er.. following your blog Nice comfy space you have set up!
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post #17 of 35
3/17/10 at 8:31pm
Okay, this photo is three or four years old, but I can't resist. This is what 'creative chaos' looks like in our house. The actual details have changed as the kids have got older, but the principles are the same.

Some counter-inspiration, perhaps?

Miranda
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post #18 of 35
3/18/10 at 9:21am
Quote:
Originally Posted by moominmamma View Post
Okay, this photo is three or four years old, but I can't resist. This is what 'creative chaos' looks like in our house. The actual details have changed as the kids have got older, but the principles are the same.

Some counter-inspiration, perhaps?

Miranda
miranda, i really enjoyed your blog. i just spent way too much time there, lol. your family is lovely!
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post #19 of 35
3/18/10 at 11:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by dotnetdiva View Post
I haven't posted yet, since I'm not as organized yet as I'd like to be, and I've been starting to separate subjects into different areas. I also don't like clutter and tend to hide stuff in closets and cupboards, but I do realize it is handy to have some things in sight and accessible...

Here's a few of our areas, pictures already need to be updated though for the Main Lesson room:
Craft Room
Main Lesson Room
Reading Room (I am thinking of making a library with a wall of normal shelves and converting this to a bedroom)
Game Closet
I LOVE your library room! Inspirationoal! I see my son's lego room being changed to a reading room very soon.
Just a FYI (for me) how many coats of magnetic paint did you need to do? I've done 3 and think I need to do at least 2 more.
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post #20 of 35
3/18/10 at 4:33pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by sarahf. View Post
Here are a few pictures of our space. I have to say bookshelves are your friends Ikea was the answer for me!

We have the same kitchen! Isn't is so awesome?
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