In January of 2020 we moved from our tiny 1050 square foot home to our current home which is double the size of our last house...2094 square feet. And while I loved our first home together so very much, I have been SO happy with the extra space.
One of the greatest things has been that I now have a school room/craft room/play room instead of having all our of school stuff right in our eating area. I made it work for seven years in our other home, but it was hard always having to clean up all of the school and craft supplies at every snack or meal. Having a space designed for our homeschool journey is just wonderful.
I've had a lot of fun planning out this room and love where it's at right now, but know that it still has some work to be done. There's still too many things in the room, and I'd like to organize it better, get a more sturdy table, and some new chairs, maybe some twinkle lights :)
But I wanted to share where we are right now...
I painted this room first because I knew it would be the room we spent the most time in. Every wall in the house was gray and I'm a white wall kind of girl. I spent 8 hours over 3 days painting this room when I was a few months pregnant. It was the first room I ever painted. But I'm happy with how it turned out.
The table was my grandparents from years and years ago and is starting to fall a part so I'm on the lookout for an affordable farmhouse style table and chairs...maybe a bench as well.
My desk is something Nathan put together for me in our previous house after years of using a falling a part desk. It's made from ikea units and butcher block and I absolutely love it!
I wanted a chalkboard for the school room so Nathan helped me DIY this one. He did all the taping off for me, I painted & cured it, he cut, stained, and nailed up the trim. So it was a combined effort but he definitely did the bulk of the work which I am so thankful for all his help with it!
I hung a cork board for Liam, Alanna, and Jude to hang their special drawings on. On the unit under those holds all of our supplies like colored pencils, crayons, glue, laminator, tape, math manipulatives, index cards, femo, beads, yarn, our globe, and some other things. I really want to go through these baskets and boxes soon and create an even more organized system for them so the kids can find and put things away easier.
Over here I have all our reading books from easy readers up to the higher grade levels. I keep the easy readers on the bottom few shelves to make it easier for Jude and Alanna to reach them.
I also have a big unit I found a Good Will that holds the toys that Jude plays with a lot, along with Alanna's legos and her Little Critter toys. This unit has Melissa And Doug toys, marbles, magnets, cars, felt money, animals, potato heads, legos, etc.
I had all of these up in the boys room but then every single day the boys room was just a disaster from Jude dumping everything out and it was exhausting picking it up every day. When I brought it down into the school room, I was able to help him get one thing out at a time and put it away easier since he was closer to me. He also wanted to be near me and not in his room since he's still only four and prefers to be wherever I am most of the time.
This unit is our nature space. I have our shells we've collected from all of our beach vacations or day trips, a basket for little treasures the kids find outside like sticks, feathers, pinecones etc. A printers tray to show off their favorite finds, a nature poetry book, magnifying glasses, chalk, chalk boards, water paints, and stamps. In the baskets are more Melissa And Doug style toys, drawing books, coloring books, paint, playdoh, and school books.
So far that's where our school room is at. Like I said, I am happy with where it's at but have plans in my head of some things I'd like to change up to make it a little less cluttered, and then other things like hanging the Alphabet cards, and pictures of the kids around the room, then reorganize some things.
I know a lot of people are venturing into homeschooling for the first time and so I hope this helps you find some inspiration into creating a fun space for learning.
We spend about 3 hours a day together in here doing our morning basket and school. And then I do most of my coaching work in here as well. The kids spend hours in here crafting outside of school time. They usually begin crafting/coloring as soon as we're done snuggling after they've woken up and then they just love to craft and be creative or play with their toys in here.
It's probably my favorite room in our entire house because of the memories and creativity that goes on here.
