Homeschool Room (in progress)

Over at secularhomeschool.com is a discussion about what members' homeschool rooms look like, with a request for pictures. Since we've been intermittently snowed in for the past month, I've had time to straighten it up a bit and actually take pictures. Not that it's particularly noteworthy, but it's my contribution. And perfectly appropriate blog fodder.

Less than a year ago, I finally convinced Dawud that we should move our sleeping quarters out of the master bedroom and upstairs to the unused bedroom. We'd be down the hall from Khary, and could transition Khalil to sharing a bed with him more easily. Besides, I'm a big believer in the "bedrooms are made for sleep" theory and don't allow tv's, computers, etc, so we really just needed to fit our bed and furniture in there. Then we could make the former master bedroom the homeschool room, where we could leave projects out, put posters up, keep most of our books, craft supplies, and on and on. AND shut the door when we didn't want to look at it. ;)

Pardon the poor photography, the disheveled appearance, and the laundry drying over the vents... The table is a hand-me-down that I received 10 years ago, so the boys can do anything to it short of burning it without me getting the slightest bit upset. (I do find that it's too tall for them to do bookwork at it, though, but I have yet to figure out a solution beyond "lapdesk.") Puzzles are atop the bookcase on the left, which houses (top to bottom) my own reference material, old magazines (both reference and for cutting), some storybooks, and a couple shelves of old encyclopedia-like reference series. The red center shelf houses current "schoolwork," basic art supplies, manipulative toys,  and LEGOs and wood blocks. The tall yellow shelf--which is actually two stacked shelves--holds up a bin of random potential craft/science supplies and houses craft supplies that need permission at the top, less permission below that, some sensory toys, and then some seasonal bins at the bottom. I insisted on getting a futon so we'd have a cushy place to sit and read, but we end up going to the living room usually for that. Besides the computer, it's the  most expensive thing in the room, so I feel I need to justify it, lol--but it's less useful that I'd imagined.

From the doorway.

This view of the room will hopefully change in a couple months. We will replace the window with a door to our back deck, and we'll also hang a glass storm door so we can just swing the main door open all summer (it's on the north side of the house) and let some light in. So that short bookcase will need to move somewhere. The door in this pic is to the master closet, a honking walk-in thing that still serves as seasonal clothes storage for Dawud and myself, in addition to being the laundry sorting area, games storage, dress-up storage, and where the vacuum cleaner lives. I can't decide if our timeline will go at the top of this wall or the wall that is currently red (but which will be repainted after installing the door to the deck).

The desk,  door to closet (door to room is on the right, where you can see the doorknob)

This is the view from that back window-soon-to-be-door. You can better see the LEGOs spread out, as well as the alphabet border I made, our dry-erase month chart, 100's chart, and US map. The snowflakes and Chinese New Year rabbit calendar will be replaced by a world map as soon as I find one that doesn't distort like the damned Mercator projection that is ubiquitous and a big, fat lie. I'm picky about maps. And globes, which is why I haven't found the perfect one at an affordable price just yet.

from the back corner window. The door you see is to the bathroom, which is infinitely convenient since much of what we do is messy, including science experiments!

So there you have it. We'll be changing things around a bit in a few months, and probably again and again as the boys grow older, but for a 2yo and 5yo, this works pretty well!