Now, on to the purpose of this post: Our homeschool room! We just started homeschooling last year, so we just kicked off our second year this week. Over the summer, I had been reorganizing and rearranging our school room. It previously served as a school room/craft room/office, so stuff was everywhere. I moved my craft table out and organized my craft clutter, so now the room is dedicated to homeschooling, for the most part.
While rearranging the room, I had done a little research because I knew it was time for a good desk setup where the girls and I could enjoy working together. I came across the popular posts from Confessions of a Homeschooler and I really liked the table/drawer unit setup she had put together from IKEA. So I sold a bunch of stuff I had sitting in the garage and quickly raised up the money to purchase our own setup. So here it is! Please excuse the poor lighting. These pictures were taken at the crack of dawn. :)
I will try to go over the breakdown of what's in the room.
Below is our wall space and our new desk setup.
The desk top is made with two LINNMON table tops from IKEA. These measure 2.5'x 5' each, so when they are put together, it makes a 5 x 5 ft. table top.
Instead of regular table legs, the table tops are sitting on four IKEA Alex drawer units.
If you've read the many other blogs from other homeschoolers who use the same or similar setup, then you already know that there will be some kinks that need to be worked out in order to make this setup work. The problem is that the setup doesn't come with hardware to secure everything in place. So the table tops slide apart, as well as sliding out of place easily, especially with kids leaning over them to reach supplies or just plain being fidgety! After reading up on how other moms dealt with this, I opted for the easiest solution, also from Confessions of a Homeschooler. She used a 4x4 sheet of pegboard to hold up the table tops, and then a rug gripper on top of the pegboard to help the table tops stay in place. This worked wonderfully!
I got an 8x4 ft sheet of pegboard from Home Depot and had them cut it in half so I have two 4x4 ft pieces. I plan to hang the other sheet on the wall as an art display for the kids' beautiful art work. I think I have just enough wall space by my desk.
Below, you can see that I taped the rug gripper to the pegboard just to be sure that it stayed in place. Probably not necessary, but I'm weird like that.
Now for the rest of the room... Our wall space is limited, and you'll see why in the next couple of pictures. Our school room is only 10 x 12 ft, so I was a little worried about how everything would fit, but it works. This is our one main wall for displaying maps and whatever else. Right now there's not much displayed except for a map of the U.S. and a world map, and then some crafty things I made myself. Eventually, I would like to get some smaller maps and display more helpful stuff for the girls. We also have an alphabet along the top of the wall. The girls don't need that, but eventually my 1-year-old will, if I am still homeschooling by then, Lord-willing! You see the baby's toy bin in the corner there. That keeps her occupied somewhat while we do school...not really, but it's the thought that counts.
Next, there's the teacher's desk. I have my personal laptop where I can see out the window while I work on household business or just stare at a blank screen after a long day. I have an L-shaped desk, so when I am facing my laptop, I have another monitor to my right. That monitor screen is facing our group desk so that I can display relevant videos or pictures for the kids if we ever want to look anything up, which we do often. I highly recommend dual screens if you can do that. My husband just happened to have an extra monitor lying around, so he set it up for us.
To the right of my desk, you see our small, yet cozy reading nook. I picked up this comfy chair at WalMart for $25 and the girls just love snuggling up on there with a good book. Just how I imagined it!
Below are two pictures of the same spot in the room, so we have two tall 5-shelf bookcases to the right of the reading nook and then one small 3-shelf bookcase over to the left, which is by my desk. The tall bookcases were only around $30 each at WalMart. They're not the best quality, but they do the job on a budget.
Don't get overwhelmed by all the bins you see here. I've had friends tell me they feel like their school room is missing something because it looks like we are just stocked to the ceiling with school supplies, literally. Keep in mind this used to be my craft room before we started homeschooling. So about half of those bins are actually filled with my craft supplies :)
We also house our quite small, but growing, library on those shelves.
Our school room is adjacent to the kitchen, which is nice. So here is the view walking in from the kitchen. I made a paper bunting just to add some fun color to the room. Nothing but a few coordinating pieces of scrapbook paper, a few hole punches, and some pretty ribbon. Super easy.
I also made the chalkboard sign at the very top that says "Living for His glory." That is the motto for our homeschool, but it is also the motto for our lives. Soli deo gloria -- to the glory of God alone.
Now I'll share a few small details about the room.
The drawer units come with 5 drawers. They are filled with the girls' school books by subject, so they can quickly get the items they need. It's only Day 2 of putting this setup to use, and they've already memorized the contents of each drawer. The top drawer is filled with their school supplies: crayons, markers, pencils, pens, glue sticks, erasers, etc. I got these awesome drawer organizers from the Dollar Tree (one of my favorite stores). They come in stacks of 3 small square ones or 2 long rectangle ones.
I love these magazine holders. They are perfect for organizing books, workbooks, papers, whatever you can come up with. I use them to organize the girls' reading books for the year so they each have their own set of books. On the second shelf, I have their CLE workbooks organized by level and subject. And on the tall bookshelves, I also have some organized there with construction paper, file folders, notebooks, journals, and teacher's manuals. These are great, and I got a set of 10 from Amazon for about $10, give or take a little. They're cardboard, but they do the job.
Below is our homemade 4x2 ft. chalkboard. I got this piece of MDF board from Home Depot for under $4 and covered it with chalkboard paint that I already had on hand. It's not as easy to work with as a dry-erase board, but chalkboards are fun.
Here's another chalkboard sign that I made. This is a Verse of the Week chalkboard that hangs up on the wall between our maps.
And last but not least, here's a picture of one of my girls putting our reading chair to use!
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If you made it this far, thank you for reading! I will end by saying that none of this is absolutely necessary in order to homeschool your children. If the Lord calls you to homeschool, He will equip you with everything you need to carry out His will, even if it's just some books, paper, pencils, and a couch. We are very grateful for our homeschool room, but know we would be just fine without it. I believe that learning takes place everywhere in life, and that is something I am trying to be better at -- having the mindset of "lifeschooling," not just homeschooling.
Feel free to comment with questions and I will do my best to get back to you!
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