Saturday, February 25, 2012

Our New Classroom

Our new house has a big room off the kitchen that was perfect for a classroom. It has huge built in bookcases that go from floor to ceiling. It is bright and sunny thanks to a sliding door that leads to our backyard.

I planned and planned this room so it would function as a inspiring learning environment. What we ended up with surpassed my expectations. We all love this room. In fact we could probably do away with the rest of the house. It is so amazing when your classroom is your favorite room!!!

This wall is made up of the largest and smallest "EXPEDIT" units from Ikea. They are perfect size for storing all of our learning tools and keeping then visible so we remember to use them! I did not have a red and black theme in mind when i started it just developed over time and I love the way it turned out. It is so inviting and vibrant.

All of our manipulative's are labeled and in hands reach so the kids are putting them to good use and remind me to use them as well.


I got these inexpensive file holders at Office Depot. They are the perfect size to hold all of our centers and lapbooks and our "Letter Of the Week" that we love, from Confessions Of A Homeschooler.


Our table is really two tables put together. They are small table tops from Ikea with red metal legs attached. The chairs I got from our school district. If you homeschool the property control staff at your school district should be on speed dial. I have gotten chairs, tables, desks, rolling carts, projectors and more from them over the years for pennies on the dollar. It has been a huge budget saver. These chairs were an ugly blue. I paid $2. each and spray painted them red to match my decor. For $15.00 I got 5 beautiful chairs!
You can just make out our easel and reading corner in the back there. We have big red throw pillows we use for reading time and the easel gets a ton of action every day!



This is our calendar area and white board for our "All About Reading" and "All About Spelling" We also have our map displayed here for our Geography. We use a combination of "Little Passports", "Expedition Earth" and my own creations. I use the Little Passports only to introduce the country. It is not a school quality curriculum in my opinion and I was disappointed when it arrived on my doorstep. It has very cute items in it but the information is fluff. I immediately ordered Erica's Expedition Earth program and as usual have not been disappointed. We have made it stretch two years and we love it!


Each side of our calendar area is bordered by those built in's so we use them as book cases and for our computer. Wyatt does research for his history and geography projects and his Teaching Textbooks math program on the computer. My little ones do learning games for reinforcement and typing practice. We all do the homeschool version of Rosetta Stone Spanish here as well.

I made this little clock for the wall out of a $3.00 clock from Walmart. I saw the idea somewhere on Pintrest and fell in love. It is a great tool for learning to tell time.

Our sight word wall was also a Pinterest score. We all high five our sight words a few times a day. It just feels good!
So there you have it. Our favorite room. I even study in here!