Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Our School Room

I've just discovered Heart of the Matter (remember, new blogger here!) and was excited to see they recently invited homeschoolers to show where they do their schooling. I loved looking through all the posts and saw some great ideas. So even though I'm almost a week late, here's our school room -- my favorite room in the house. It is truly a multi-purpose room: guest room, office, school room, and craft room. The room is over our garage and separated from the rest of the house, and this arrangement has served us well. Last year we hosted an art class in our school room and I never had to worry if the rest of the house was clean!

This is your first view of our school room when you enter. Those of you with hyperactive kids know what the trampoline is for! I bought the table years ago for a craft table with intentions of painting it. Just one of the many projects waiting to happen.
The bed is where we do all our read-alouds, Bible memory work, and DVD/VHS watching. It can be a little too comfortable when the sun is shining through the window, but I've only fallen asleep a few times.
This TV with the tiny screen is across from the bed. So far the DVD player has not fallen off, but clearly we need a new setup here. Ignore the awful popcorn ceiling.
Here is where most of the written work gets done. I bought the desks cheap from a former homeschooler at my church and the chairs from Biz Chair. The rolling cart is used to hold extra supplies and hanging files that keep everything from completed assignments to catalogs. We have very little usable wall space in this room, so hubby installed a great bulletin board above the desks -- great spot for our timeline and other helps.
When we first started homeschooling I thought this book case would be sufficient for our homeschool books. Is that laughing I hear?
Thankfully, we already had two larger book cases around the corner. Now five of the ten shelves have been taken over with homeschooling materials.
This was one of my smarter ideas this school year. The bin holds our library books in the order we plan to use them, divided by subject. As you can tell, we are due for a trip to the library -- usually it is stuffed to capacity.
Here are two of my favorite things in our school room -- our view and sentence diagrams written in window marker. It's really scary that sentence diagramming gives me such pleasure.
The artist in action. Below Anna is the state quarter collection that is still missing Hawaii. Has anyone seen a Hawaiian quarter yet?
And this is one of the strangest things about our school room. The previous owners used this room for a home-based business and therefore needed lots and lots of outlets, some in very strange spots. This room boasts 21 electrical outlets and 7 phone jacks (including 2 in the bathroom)! How crazy is that!

I hope you enjoyed the tour of the Blue House Academy school room.

6 comments:

  1. I love these pictures. I need to post our school areas as well.

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  2. I loved seeing the pictures of your homeschool. I love that you found Heart of the Matter too. Its such a blessing to be a part of the team. PLUS, we are going to PRINT---how awesome is that?

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  3. Oh my! I love, love, love your school room! I love getting ideas from other moms and stealing them! ;) You may see your library basket idea in my next homeschool room re-design! :)

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  4. Oh! I forgot to say that I *love* the idea of diagramming using window markers. Thatcher would think that is very cool!

    Jennefer

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  5. I like the box of library books idea as well. I've read about people using crates or whatever for the library books but the dividers idea is the best bit.

    Thanks for the pics. One day we might do "school" somewhere other than the dining room and the couch.

    ~ Sharon

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  6. I'm so glad I stumbled across you blog. I found the posting about memorizing phone numbers using MUS blocks. We are going to try that this week!!

    I LOVE you school room, it looks so spacious. I like the large windows used as a dry erase board! Check out our school room.
    http://eagerlittlemind.blogspot.com/2009/09/our-learning-room.html

    We are having our first giveaway. You guys should enter.
    http://eagerlittlemind.blogspot.com/search/label/giveaway

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