I love homeschooling and I enjoy decorating my home, so it's natural that I've always loved seeing pictures of other people's homeschool rooms. I had always meant to share pictures of my own school room once it changed rooms in our house, but never got it done. But now that we're starting our final year of homeschooling, I figured it was now or never, haha! Yet, the timing does seem a little harsh. I grew up on the Texas Gulf Coast and I have family and friends who live in the Naples/Ft. Myers area of Florida. With so many people dealing with damaged or destroyed homes or worse suffering, it does seem a little worldly to be sharing pictures of a school room. I'm grateful for God's blessing of a home, but I hurt for those who have lost so much.
With one off at college and two teenagers at home, we really don't even need a homeschool room anymore. Yet, I still love having a homeschool room, mostly just because I love this room. More than any other room in our house, this room tells our story: it holds the books we love, things we've created, mementos we've collected on special trips, gifts from friends and family, precious items inherited from loved ones who are no longer with us, not to mention all the documents and less pretty items that prove our existence in the world.
It's purpose has evolved and it's more of a home base. It's where you'll usually find me on my "throne" with two dogs at my feet. It's where we work through math problems together or just chat about life. It's my spot for Bible reading, praying, menu planning, bill paying, and (a few times a year) Netflix binging.
The magnetic white board that was used for so many years for All About Spelling, diagramming sentences, and working logic puzzles is now mostly used for announcements and reminders. This room started out with a student-sized desk for Grace and then was replaced with a regular adult-sized desk, but last week she moved all her stuff out to work at a desk in her room. Ryne also works at a desk in his own room, which is separated from the school room by a bathroom. The laundry room is conveniently located on the other side of the school room so I have no excuse to get behind on laundry. The hallway that connects all these rooms is lined with six of these Ikea bookcases for our family library, but most of the homeschool books are kept in the school room.
The school room itself is a mishmash of my parents' belongings and Ikea. The focal point of the room is The Beast, my mom's dining room hutch. It weighs about a million pounds; Marc and Ryne and I almost died getting it up the stairs several years ago. But somehow (with lots of tears and screaming on my part) we finally got it up and now this room will forevermore be a homeschool room because The Beast is never leaving. I swapped out the glass shelves and 70's gold hardware and now I can't imagine not having The Beast in this room. The sofa also came from my parents' house. I was hesitant at first because I thought it was the most uncomfortable sofa ever, but that was because it was in one of those front-of-the house living rooms that never got used. Once the sofa hosted a few hundred read-aloud sessions it acquired a more relaxed look. And now that the dogs have adopted it as their daytime habitat it has a very relaxed look!
There's a bit of an outdoor theme going on, inspired by some nature prints that belonged to my mom. We've had this color of sage green walls in every house we've lived in since 1995. I took a picture from a Martha Stewart magazine (before she was a household name) to the Sherwin Williams store and said make me something that looks like that, and I've just used the same color code three more time since then. No matter what the light, it always makes for a calming room. Calming + Homeschooling? Now, that's a Good Thing.
When we first started homeschooling, our school room was in a room above our garage that had served as an office for the previous owner's construction business, so even though we used the room as homeschool room/home office/guest room, we always called it The Office. We laughed about how other kids went to school but ours went to the office. And now that our current room is slowly becoming less of a homeschool room and more of an office, we're pretty stuck on calling it The School Room, of course. And like I said earlier, The Beast is not moving until professionals move us out of this house someday, so the school room is staying as it is. My official homeschool journey is ending soon, but there's still a lot of work to be done in launching these kids on the paths God is laying out before them. And I'm guessing a lot of that work will still be done from this room that I love so much.
I hope you enjoy the tour.
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Other Blue House Academy homeschool room posts (a fun trip down memory lane):
Our First Homeschool Room
History Timeline
School Room Switch-a-Roo
Homeschool Room Closet
(the closet has evolved too -- we outgrew the need for workboxes and this summer I cleaned everything out and got rid of almost half the contents of the closet!)
Christmas Homeschool Room
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Linking up with the 9th Annual Back to Homeschool Blog Hop