Our School Room

The wait is over.... After weeks of procrastinating I'm ready to share our 2013-2014 school room with all of you! I'm linking up to the "Not" Back-to-School Blog hop at iHomeschoolNetwork! I can't wait to check out everyone's school rooms (EEK!)

So here is goes... Prepare for photo overload!

We started our school room re-do back in January of 2012. It has been a long process to get things to where it is, but so worth it. Most of the work was simple like painting, but it took a lot of time to find the right furniture for our space and budget! When we started homeschooling a few years ago we were working at our dining room table. After a few months of that I decided that just wasn't working so we started dragging all of our books, craft supplies, and games up into our "bonus room".

This was just the beginning.... A few months later we started to prep the room for paint!

Little Man helping Daddy sand out some rough spots

Ahhh! All primed and no where to put that mass of "stuff" hehe

 

Finally painted and ready to be organized... 

Fast forward 18 months (bahahaha)

Our view from the doorway

View from back of room looking towards doorway

Computer area (This is to the left of the doorway when you are first walking in)

Chalkboard area right next to computer desk

We store all of our extra paper (computer and construction) and old crayons inside the white cabinet. 

 This area is to the right when you come in the door. I put plastic crates on their sides and stacked them for extra shelving. We store all of our curriculum and extra workbooks here. Usually both of our white boards are hanging on the wall, but two days ago the one decided to fall :( The top board is where I write down important things we are working on, so I guess I should be thankful it was the bottom board that fell. 

On the top row of crates inside of the pencil boxes I store all extra glue sticks, markers, color pencils, pencils, scissors, erasers and tape. Pencil boxes are super cheap to begin with, but I snagged all of these after the back to school sales and paid $0.25/box. I got our crates on sale as well for $2.50.  I was worried that our crates wouldn't hold up being used as shelving, but so far it is working great and you can't beat the price! I love that our binders with printables are able to fit here as well. On our white cubbies I had to lay them on their sides.

We found these little desks, the large table, and four metal chairs at a used furniture store here. We got an amazzzzing deal. If I remember correctly we paid $115 for everything. The table started out with the same type of top and wood as the desk in front of the little white door.... We are slowly working on refinishing everything to look like this:

Too stinking cute, right? It is so much work though. 

All the kiddos helping Daddy sand down one of our desks

For now hubby put the other desks back together until we have the time and patience to tackle the other two. The little metal chairs at the computer and art desk will all have white or black seats (one day) as well. Originally I wanted all three of the desks together, but we recently bought new furniture and our sectional was moved into our school room. Since Little Man needs extra help, I put his desk close to where I sit.... Also he can't bug the "bigs" when they are doing their work :D Win, win!

Speaking of the sectional ... This is our new seating area. Seriously the sectional is so beat up, but we have so much more room to cozy up together now. Although this is our school room, we also hang out in here all the time. Before we had a tiny sofa (that black one in the first picture) and only two of us could sit on it. This is so much better even if it takes up a huge chunk of our room.

Above the sectional we have an art line. This is probably one of my favorite items in our school room. I love seeing all of the artwork my kiddos make, but hate having it scattered everywhere (yes, I know.. Bad Mama!).... They are allowed to keep their art projects up as long as they want, but only if there is room on the line. Afterwards everything gets recycled.

On our tv stand we store not only the kids dvds (some on the shelf and the rest in the middle box on the bottom shelf), but extra games, puzzles, and board books. It really is a catch all area, but I'm thankful for the extra storage.

Our amazing school library area! 

I am absolutely in love with our cubbies. For months I begged the hubby to go to Ikea, but it is quite a drive from us. One day when we were in Lowes we noticed that these cubbies were on sale, plus we get 10% military discount! I can't remember what we paid exactly, but it was almost 50% off each unit. I ordered the fabric bins off of amazon (6/$30.. I think!). The black "mini crates" were another after "back to school sale" steal. I keep extra chapter books and leveled readers in them. I seriously don't know where we would keep all of our books if I didn't have these.

Here is another view of our cubbies. As you can see in the middle row we store games, puzzles, and activity boards and some of our bigger books. Inside of fabric bins we keep everything from craft supplies to music instruments and flash cards They are really a HOT MESS! I need to tackle them this week and sort out any of the junk. It is easy to forget whats in them when you don't have to see the mess though.

This is Little Man's calendar area. It is a work in progress. One of these days I want to make it super cute, but it just hasn't happened. I'm sure you noticed in the other photos that it is not centered above our cubbies. Originally the cubbies were on the other wall where the sectional is and I had a rocking chair and the white paper cabinet by our calender area... The sectional had to be on the other wall, so we have a "make it work" type of situation because I refuse to move the board and make more holes in our walls :D

So there you have it! Our school room. It is not perfect and we have some more work to do, but I am so thankful for this space. It has made our school days so much easier not having to move everything multiple times a day to eat. It has made this Mama happy not to have to dig out legos or other small toys from inside of toy boxes since they all have a place in our school area. And MOST OF ALL I love having everything in one area!!!

What does your school room/area look like?