We are so very blessed to have a basement where most of our homeschooling is accomplished and our stuff is stored. This leaves the upstairs to look neat and tidy, most of the time!

Would you like a tour of our basement? I didn’t grow up with a basement and this is very exciting for me!

At the bottom of the stairs are these lovely closets and room for Alex’s sensory items and puzzle drawers (there’s another drawer to the left on the other side of the closet). There was no pretty angle to take this picture! I was balancing on the stairs! My husband built the sensory table. The purple bin holds our Montessori sand tray and under the table is our light box with manipulatives.

‘Round the corner, my main kids’ school books shelf…past and future Tapestry of Grace, science, Bible books go here. Also, some reference books are stored here that the kids don’t use as often. The bottom shelves store some Color Wonder, Do-a-Dot books, magnet books, dry erase books, and Educubes.

Our “main” school room. Tori’s and Katie’s matching desks. So pleased to have these. They match the girls’ bedroom sets, so eventually they may fit in their room, or they can take the whole set with them someday (in a far off future!) I found them at yard sales. I also found the awesome table and chairs set at TWO DIFFERENT yard sales – totaling $35! I keep our theme books in the little gutter tray under our picture frames with our daily lessons. The bulletin boards haven’t been updated with our weekly Bible verse(s) or themed word wall yet.

The window is worthless because the deck covers it and it messes up my whole wall arrangement! Oh well, we rent, so there’s nothing I can do. I’d rather not see the window well and all the critters in there. Maybe I could just get a BIG white board and cover it all up.

The girls’ cubes (modified workboxes since they share) are on the opposite wall of the above picture. I also have their weekly word family wall above it.

Alex’s corner. I moved our calendar to his area since he’s the one who needs to work on it now. There’s a chair railing than goes around the ENTIRE basement – weird and it messes with my poster placement! grr!

Every classroom should have a fishtank, no? ack, it needs cleaning!

Our media center and choice vicinity of family read alouds. The TV is my husband’s dowry, lol. He really wants to upgrade. I suppose after 8 years, we should. The screen is pretty much done – sticky and written all over.

Behind the sofa, we have our reading center. The shelf on the left holds all of Elizabeth’s books that the girls are now inheriting – American Girl, Dear America, Royal Princess Diaries, Magic Tree House, some classics. The little shelf on the right holds picture books , among them our vast collection of Berenstain Bears, Magic School Bus, and Dr. Suess.

The light green cube on the left holds current unit/week Tapestry of Grace books for the girls.
The dark green cube on the right holds our living math books for Alex and the girls.

Here is Elizabeth’s cube system (in progress). One cube per subject – history, foreign language, Bible, math, science, LA. The striped basket holds her art books and supplies. The notebooks propped on the floor need to be gone through- old papers put into the portfolio, reorganized, etc. Liz likes to do her work upstairs (away from the little ones and I don’t blame her!) I’ve given her a letter try to turn in completed work for our conference. Her agenda and TOG binder and Kindle are on the left. In the magazine file are her minioffices with a big bunch of notebook paper.

We have a craft room too. Liz’s and my sewing machines are here (messy with mending piled up!) That’s my grandmother’s sewing basket on the floor!

Here is our new craft table! I need one more chair and the three girls can sit here and work together on projects. They worked here, decorating their math journals last week.

Back upstairs is MY domain and conference area. On the left, on the other side of the wall, is the piano keyboard and kids’ computer.

There’s also another bookshelf, just inside the doorway. These two bookshelves hold reference materials and “my” books on literature and Bible. I also have some nicer children’s books on the bottom shelves that I monitor so they don’t get messed up. Some were mine when I was a kid!

I know we’ll not have this much space probably every again, but it’s so nice to be a little spread out while we can!

See our curriculum list for this year here!

We moved to Utah from Hawaii.

It’s a BIG change.

Here is our workbox wall.

On the left, our calendar/circle time “corner.”

Here is our desk wall and calendar. The clock is set to “Daddy Time” in Afghanistan.

Here is the rest of our school space that we finally cleaned up and organized.

We are so blessed to have a finished basement in our rental house to use almost exclusively for learning space. When we move, I have no idea what we’re going to do because I doubt we’ll have anything like the space we have here and we’ll have to downsize! We came from a small 3 BR 1-level house where we “did school” at the kitchen table or on the living room sofa to this great 6 BR 2-story with a basement. God made it all possible. :)

That corner wasn’t really working out, so here are our updated circle time boards on a pocket chart rack. They are two foam boards hooked together. (I am working on changing it up for the week so there’s blanks.) A word wall is in the red pocket chart on the back.

Our reading nook.

Our weekly preschool manipulatives are in the cubes (from Target).

I use the shelves (yard sale finds) to store pencil boxes, AWANA cards, felts, a Beka cards, big puzzles, our book of centuries, and nature journals. The tops of the shelves have our pencil sharpener, a basket of magnet letters, a portable DVD player,  paper towels, Kleenexes, etc. The rainbow cart (had this forever) on the right holds magnets, push pins, do-a-dot pens, geoboards, cork boards, play doh…On top of the rainbow cart are our Education Cubes and tot trays.

Here is the same wall from another angle. I found this very sturdy table at a yard sale for $15 and the 4 chairs at another yard sale (on the same day) for $20. That was a good day!

I put our daily tools in little metal buckets on a lazy susan on the table. The bulletin board above the computer station shows off my 2 preschool daughters’ Bible crafts. To the left of that bulletin board, I have created pictorial timelines for my daughters with pictures of each of their birthdays to show their growth. They love it! Underneath those, a little blue pocket chart holds a weekly Bible verse.

The bookcase holds all my teaching materials and extra books that I want to keep nice. The bottom two shelves have some manipulatives like dry erase books and magnet dolls. The colored plastic drawers hold lots of Melissa & Doug and Lauri puzzles. On top of that is our bin of circle time stuff.

There is another set of folding doors to the right of these, but it’s still messy. I store board games in here. We have labeled plastic bins with all of our school and craft supplies like construction paper, paints, stamps, beads and baubles, pipe cleaners, feathers, etc.

We also are so blessed to have a separate play room for toy storage and another room that is supposed to be my personal sewing and craft room (right now it’s seeming to be storage!)…

We also have our TV and sofa behind the reading nook. It’s nice to have a not-so-central location so it’s not on very often. We use it more for the Wii anyway.

Our school room in the basement…

Maybe should’ve taken the picture before school time?

(Although, it looks better than most days! Notice I’m not showing you the play dough tables and accessories all over the kitchen floor! Nor the glue dollops and collages that are stuck to my plastic floor pad under my computer desk…)

We do workboxes, sorta. Love my cube unit for activities the 3 littles share. The girls are about to outgrow those little pink and purple desks! The bookshelf mostly holds Elizabeth’s books. A plastic crate holds board books. Bean bags and pillows are on the floor.

There’s another bookshelf in Tori’s room that holds the picture books and early readers.

Elizabeth has an entire setup in the room that should be a formal dining room. We turned it into her music studio and desk area. She has her keyboard, workboxes, a storage shelf, desk, and computer station.

This setup is working for us this year!