When we moved into our new house this past Spring, we set up the extra bedroom as the homeschool room. But now that my brother is living with us, his room is the “homeschool room”.

I’ve moved things around and now we have an office/homeschool room!

While Wesley is living with us this will be our homeschool space:

I love it! It’s cozy and I was still able to organize all the materials where they are easily accessible and stored in a way where you don’t look in this room and see a huge mess. Now, that might be a different story once we actually start, but such is life!

See?!

And, you know what? This just may be our new permanent homeschool area. Our house is our home first of all and we are inviting school in. At first I wanted an area of our house that was designated just for school. My thinking has changed on this a bit. I do still want a specific area to store the majority of our homeschool materials. My organized self can’t help but function in this way. However, I’ve come to realize that we aren’t going to walk into the school room at 9am and “do school” and then walk out at whatever time and resume home life. No, homeschool is home life. Learning will take place in every room of our house, whether it is official “school time” or not. Having our “homeschool room” in a more central location to our home – instead of in the back of the house in a bedroom – is just looking way more appealing to me at this time!

And now for a little tour around the room!

I have two main areas of storage for homeschool supplies. The first are these three sets of drawers that fit perfectly against this wall in our little homeschool area.

In the three big drawers on the left there are: random craft supplies in the top two drawers and math manipulatives for Saxon Math K in the bottom drawer.

In the smaller middle drawers there are: materials specific to Little Bug (top), materials specific to Sweet Pea (middle) and Ready-Made Preschool supplies (bottom).

In the smaller drawers on the right side there is: paper, paper and more paper! Cardstock, foam and construction paper to be more specific.

On top of the 3 big drawers there is a basket that has all of the Ready-Made Preschool materials for the first 10 weeks of lessons. I’ve organized the materials by week so that each file folder contains the materials for one week’s worth of lessons.

Next to this basket is our general supply box that has scissors, glue, crayons, markers, tape, etc. Our CD player and the lamp a student gave me when I taught 4th grade also sit along the top of all these drawers.

Above these drawers I hung (well, Dave hung) a corkboard so the girls can have a place to hang their finished work!

I went to Hobby Lobby to look for plaques with Scripture on them to hang on our walls. I scored big as all the metal plaques were 50% off. I ended up buying five plaques for less than $25! Psalm 25:4-5 hangs above the corkboard in the homeschool area.

On the wall to the right of all the drawers is our Calendar and Weather Chart.

Of course I moved the little table into the room. My dad built that table and chairs for Wesley and me when we were little. The basket will hold books that are specific to that week’s lessons/themes!

We already had these bookcases in the office and it just so happens the entire right bookcase was practically empty so I had ample space to store homeschool supplies!

The top shelf is for curriculum we are using this year. It has our Bible curriculum materials, Saxon Math K teacher’s manual and the Hands-On Thinking Skills book. The second shelf has materials specific to Little Bug: ABC trace and wipe off books, literacy games, Calendar Time materials and literacy manipulatives.

The third shelf has materials specific to Sweet Pea: puzzles and educational games and toys. The bottom shelf has more educational materials for both girls: our letter magnets, alphabet stickers, stamps and sponges for painting.

I believe this area will serve us well this year! It will be interesting to see how this space in our home changes over the years as our needs change!

- Elaine