Welcome to our school room!

I recently turned part of our playroom into the schoolroom. We used to have the set up in the kitchen, but I really wanted my kitchen back. I already was using the closets in the playroom for school stuff, and I just really like to change things up!

When we started homeschooling last August (2008), I set up the kitchen into a nice little school corner. I wanted to paint a chalkboard on the wall, but Joel didn't think that'd be a good idea. His question was about painting over it being difficult or something. Well, hello, honey. . . we are going to homeschool forever, I don't think the need for a chalkboard will be changing. But, we did it his way and painting a thin board with chalkboard paint and nailed it up with a pretty little fram made from moulding. Well, I decided when it was time to move school that he is probably the smartest man I know! We just took that sucker down and moved it to the next room - and isn't she lovely?!

This is an overview shot of the school area. To the right is the playroom area - couch, rocking chair, tv, computer, treadmill and floor space for playing.

The table was given to us (free!!!) when some friends of ours moved and no longer needed it. Thanks to facebook, I posted on there that I was looking for a very cheap to free table, and with in 10 minutes I had this one offered to me!
This is behind where I was standing to take the first picture. I have some family pictures, a curtain rod to hang artwork, and these bins that hold everything! We store crayons, markers, stickers, coloring books, construction paper, and other art stuff. The other one has some of our learning games like the leap frog letter games, playful patterns, nuts and bolts, wipe off placemats, etc. The picnic table is for playdoh, art projects, etc.

One of the closet doors - we have our current sight word in the top red pocket chart, and ones we've learned on the wall to the left. Colors and days of the week are on the bottom.

The next picture shows the wall between the closets with our very fashionable princess clock, our schedule, and our baskets for our chore packs (I will have a whole post about those soon!). The canvas drawers have various supplies - pencils, pens, readers that we aren't ready for. . . The pocket chart has the activity that each girl does during alone play time. I separate them for 30 minutes in the afternoon to do an activity on their own. The girls really look forward to this time of day!

And, the chalkboard area - the papers on the left are each of the girls' AWANA verses. I have our cd player down there - we listen to Mary Helen's Sparks lesson on there and her Hooked on Phonics lesson. We also play praise music during other times of the day. Mary Helen loves to listen to "Mommy music about God" :)

This shelf is between the kitchen and play/schoolroom. The green baskets (from the dollar tree) are for free reading (they each have 30 minutes a day of reading time, and I rotate these baskets - the missing one is by the recliner in the living room). The purple baskets hold daily school stuff - Mary Helen's math and reading workbooks, and her finished worksheets. The bottom basket has magnetic paper dolls, a magnetic tea set princess party book, and a wooden doll book that you dress the doll (one of Anna's weekly activities during alone time).

Here is Mary Helen doing her Hooked on Phonics lesson.

And Anna doing her coloring sheet during school time.
Thanks for taking the tour! If you have pictures of your school area, please put a link in the comments, I LOVE to get good ideas for school areas!