School Room in Ohio 2017

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August 19, 2017 By Jennifer Leave a Comment

We moved to Ohio this summer.

It’s been a huge transition for us.

The kids have a basement again for the TV – that was in storage for 3 whole years.

Also, their desks and bookcases and manipulatives are in the basement for our homeschool time.

My office has its own little room beside the front door.

There are two lovely windows along the left wall.

Along that wall is a mess.

It’s a work in progress since this room is where all the unopened boxes currently are living until I can get organized.

This house has lots of storage and is the nicest we’ve ever lived in!

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Homeschool Space in Hawaii 2007

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December 3, 2015 By Jennifer 2 Comments

It’s always a challenge to set up homeschooling space in a new house.

We used closet space for our homeschooling materials when we moved to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii in 2007.

Tori was 2 and Katie was only a few months old. Liz was only 7.

I had plastic bins of toys in the girls’ closet.

When we began homeschooling in Texas in 2005, we just used the kitchen table for book work during the two years we lived there.

We had this HUGE storage closet and I started out using it as a homeschool room to keep things organized and out of the way. It had built-in big shelves along one wall. I wedged two bookcases and a desk in there.

It worked for a while to keep the toddler and baby out.

But Liz didn’t like being so isolated in a closet.

Who could blame her?

We bought new nicer bookcases and a matching desk.

I moved it into our humongous living-dining room combo and divided that space into the sofa area and the school area.

Elizabeth liked doing her book work at the little table (which was mine when I was a child!) or desk while I did planning or blogging at my desk.

Sometimes, Victoria sat at the little table and colors or cuts and pastes.

I loved having all my work items in this nice space!

I love looking back and realizing how little I needed to “do school” then with a baby, toddler, and early elementary.

We’ve gone back to basics, but each big kid has a desk now!

Linking up: Sonlight

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Our School Space in Germany 2014

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August 11, 2014 By Jennifer 1 Comment

We went from having a whole finished basement in Utah for school space to a little office in our new townhouse in Germany.

We’re about to get real.

This is not some Pottery Barn catalog. We don’t have the luxury of having the nicest furniture to last years and years and stay in one place forever. We don’t get to do fun DIY projects on Pinterest with reclaimed barn wood or pallets because all that would get destroyed in our many moves around the world.

We prefer to invest in travel and experiences than things.

But I need, love, want BOOKS.

One wall houses our bookcases.

Tori and Kate have their desks along another wall and on the opposite wall is Alex’s desk.

Alex loves his All About Reading board and the calendar.

One of the closets we are provided holds our sensory bins and some other school items in bins.

Our open shelf has other manipulatives.

The sensory table is in front. Yes, totally blocking the closet. That’s the plan to keep little fingers out.

In the upstairs landing, I put the art table and supplies. It’s a round dining table I got at a yard sale and it fits perfectly. I also recently scored a lovely Lane chest for $50 to store paper! You can see the round table in last year’s learning spaces post. I still want to paint the top.

Liz typically does her school work on the sofa…

Tori and Kate have a bookcase in their room with chapter books and historical fiction.

Alex has a bookcase in his room with picture books and early readers.

Liz has a bookcase in her room with sci-fi, historical fiction, and her Civil Air Patrol items.

Update: Still working for us after a year!

Linking up: iHomeschool

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Our Homeschool Learning Spaces in Utah 2013

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August 14, 2013 By Jennifer 9 Comments

Welcome to our tour of Our Homeschool Learning Spaces…

Our front room on the main level is my office. I have two overflowing bookcases. I love my desk setup! I have everything I need within reach.

We are so blessed to have a basement! We use it for our main learning space. I know we probably won’t have this luxury when we PCS in a year or so.

I keep many books on this bookshelf that we’re not currently using, but we will use again for another round of history, science, Bible, or art. The green cube holds scrap paper for crafts. I also have magazines {Nat Geo Kids, Ranger Rick, Zoobooks} in the files on the floor beside the art boxes.

I found these matching desks used and the girls’ bedroom furniture is the same design and company. I love shopping at thrift stores, yard sales, or online at ksl.com. I have buckets of school supplies on a lazy Susan on the table in the corner. Teacher books are on shelves in that table too. And new stuff is stacked on the floor ready to begin in a couple weeks – after our Yellowstone trip!

I found this amazing table and (don’t they match?) 4 sturdy chairs…at TWO DIFFERENT YARD SALES ON THE SAME DAY. Score! The girls use that cube unit from Target for workboxes. I jot down our themes each week on the pictures for each subject. Our clean new empty Tapestry of Grace Year 3 notebooks are propped on the floor for now.

We do lots of lessons in front of our All About Reading board and our We Choose Virtues board is above that.

Our messy book nook with easel and magnets. We can never have enough books!

This is the wall where Alex does his preschool magic. We keep our Montessori mats for all the kids in that basket and toys in the bins. Our calendar is on the cellar door. I found this awesome school desk at Savers and he LOVES it!

That cube unit is from Target. All About Reading posters and a U.S. map from the $1 spot with a fun U.S. magnet game. and trucks. Always trucks!

Here’s Liz’s setup in our sewing/craft room. Also a cube unit from Target. {yeah, I love em!} She has one cubby for each school subject {history, foreign language, Bible, math, science, and ELA} and a thrifted basket for art. Notebooking binders are propped in between.

Wanna see what curricula we’re using this year.

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A Tour of Our Homeschooling Spaces

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August 13, 2012 By Jennifer 4 Comments

See our curriculum list for this year here!

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?
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.

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 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.

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!

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Our School Room in Utah 2011

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January 22, 2011 By Jennifer 6 Comments

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, geo boards, 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 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 now!

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