Our Schoolroom

Thanks to my friends and family, and to my new friends from the homeschool groups & forums, for their positive emails & comments! I have to admit I was rather proud of myself for tackling this project! Now I'm off to look up verses on humility:)

Ok, so on to the topic for the day....our schoolroom.

Since homeschooling is my subject and my life, I thought I'd show everyone where the learning takes place. Actually, it doesn't all take place here, it takes place sitting on the couch, at the kitchen table or counter, lying on the floor or bed, sitting on a rock or the grass outside, in the car, on a nature walk ,and, for one of my kids, sometimes standing on his head...but you get the picture. Even though we have a schoolroom, learning is happening all the time, no matter where we are.

Some of you have seen this room, but maybe haven't been told all the components of it, and for those of you that are new, I'll do my best to describe it. Enjoy the tour!

Our schoolroom is in our den, which is right off the kitchen, so you do see it when you come in the house. Not my ideal location, but we make it work. There is a woodstove in the room, so we get to read by the fire on cold days, so that is really pleasant!

This is the boys workbox system. (More on that later) The bookshelves are inexpensive ones from Wally-World. They are sitting on top of a large credenza which houses supplies for our workboxes: math, science, language arts, thinking skills, teaching aids, music cd's. The workboxes are dollar plastic shoebox bins. Underneath are two blue bins, which hold the boys current workbooks until they get placed in the workboxes. Lulu has her own bookshelf in her room with her books and she works off a checklist.


This is the bookshelf where various supplies are kept. The top shelf holds teacher manuals, art & game books, Highlight magazines, Zoobook magazines and my workbox components. The other shelves hold art supplies: scissors, punches, adhesive, crayons, markers, pencils, etc., coloring & how to draw books, stickers, Math-U-See manipulatives, construction, drawing and origami paper, and some other misc. how-to books. Above the shelf I have posted the books of the Bible on index cards. The kids are working on memorizing them. Conman has actually memorized all the OT books. To the right is a poster of the Ten Commandments (which I got at the Dollar Tree!) and a word strip holder (another $ find) which we use for spelling words or parts of speech. The red bin in the corner is full of building blocks. Always popular no matter what age you are.

This is our table for crafts, planning, etc. Right now I'm working on putting together mini-offices for the kids, so that's what's spread out on it. This red bin on the floor is where our current read alouds and library books are corralled.

Here is my comfy teacher chair & the whiteboard we're going to start using for group time. It's not going to stay there, since it's in front of the woodstove. I'll probably move it to the kitchen for use.

Here are just a few of our books. The bookshelf on the left is arranged by subject: science, bible, history, space, writing, reference, etc. The bookshelf on the right is arranged by grade. The books piled on the top of that shelf are free reading. I do have a program on the computer for keeping track of these. I'll post a link to it later in case anyone is interested. We have our United States map and World map on that wall, along with the globe on top on the bookshelf for our geography.

This is our geography basket in the living room. In it there are reading books, coloring books, atlases, word searches, wrap-ups, map workbooks, flash cards, games, puzzles, and anything else I can find that relates to geography.

This is the final item in our schoolroom-a place for the kids to sit. Yes, it really is a church pew!

As for me, I have some areas where I keep my goodies. I use the bottom half of a curio cabinet for extra school/office supplies. I keep current books I'm reading or researching in a basket by my chair in the living room. I plan out schoolwork either at the table in the schoolroom, my desk in the office area or sitting in front of the tv. All in all, it works!

Tomorrow I think I'll introduce you to my students!