The School "Room"

I have been blessed to have an official "school room" this past year. How do I know I've been blessed? Because every homeschool mom I meet tells me so! lol Unfortunately, it really hasn't been such a blessing. The room is in our very partially finished basement, complete with science waiting to be explored in the form of spiders, mice and sundry other insects. It is, quite frankly, creepy and not at all conducive to learning.

During the winter, it became too cold for us to go "into the dungeon" so we were forced to move our school time upstairs. When spring arrived (the end of May!), the girls literally begged me not to move them back downstairs! Thus, the "school room" became an extension of my closet...full of clutter.

Truthfully, I like to have a dedicated space to do our schoolwork in. I have never been one to desire our home to look like a classroom of any sort. However, desperate times call for desperate measures :) I did have some concern that school work and and projects done at the kitchen table would continue to cause the scratching to a table that I very much like! The only solution I could come up with was to cover it. The surface had to be both protective and also easy to write atop of. Walmart sells a heavy plastic tablecloth material by the yard which worked fabulously. (A note to those who are "frugal" like me. The $5.00 plastic tablecloth in the package will NOT lay right on your table. Spend the money on the heavy stuff. It is $2.96/yard.)

Another "problem" with moving out of a dedicated room and into the kitchen was the fact that I need a large world map for geography and do not have any wall space in the kitchen for one. The plastic solved that problem as well. I simply slid the map under the plastic. This makes for very interesting supper discussions. I think the girls have learned more geography in one week than they did last school year, simply by exploring at the dinner table. Little do they know that I'm going to go find a large carpenter ant to put on the table one of those days and let it wander across the globe :) Letting them "follow" its journeys should prove amusing as well as educational.

And I can still put the centerpiece and runner on the table and give the dining area some semblance of normalcy once school is done. Problem solved.

We have a nice large whiteboard downstairs as well. The solution to this problem was to use our girls easel. It has a whiteboard on one side and chalkboard on the other. It's rather small but I also had a larger whiteboard put away that is usable. My husband put some screws in the tray of the easel to prevent the larger whiteboard from slipping off and voila'...a whiteboard big enough for "school time" while retaining the original use of the easel.

A nearby closet, generally used for "overflow" was cleaned out. The first shelf (and only one that is easily accessible to me!) was used for books & supplies. A rolling cart was put underneath that shelf for manipulatives, charts and the girls daily textbooks. I found red, white and blue rubber baskets at Walmart on clearance for only $2.0o/3. Each girl has their own, complete with their books and pencil box of supplies that can easily be pulled out each day and put back when we're done. The purchase of a small set of shelves and a quick clean-up of mom's desk completed the project.

Even though our intentions were to start our school year about a month ago, the Lord had other plans. This is one project that I believe is going to get our school year off to the right start! Tomorrow, I'll blog about our curriculum choices for the year.

© Adorning Grace 2010