Friday, August 12, 2011

School room on the Not back to school blog hop

Yay!  Another week of blog hopping in celebration of NOT going back to school.  This week we are sharing our classrooms.  The environments in which we learn.  I've been perusing a lot of the blogs that have already linked up this week over the past few days, gleaning ideas and just generally feeling somewhat green with a little bit of envy.  But a few posts I read yesterday really spoke to me about contentment.  About being content to learn wherever we are.  I needed to hear that.  We have an amazing home.  One that I still feel so blessed to be living in a year after we moved in.  It has it's quirks and we have no garage or outside storage at all but we have a roof over our heads and we have plenty of room to play and learn.  I am content.  I am content with learning in the playroom this year.
This is our playroom.  That is the main wall, with the world map and my teacher shelf - it's best that some things are kept out of reach.  The door on the left there is the closet, the shelves and bins of toys are in there.  That drawer unit houses our various games and activities by subject (not my LOTW stuff, other random things).  And there's a poster of the alphabet.  And above my teacher shelf is our alphabet train.

This is the opposite side of the room.  That little table is where Spider and Princess can sit and work/play.  The larger table against the wall is for Squirrel and Howler to do their work.  The shelf above Howler's head has some of our manipulatives (we have lots of these) and the bookshelf houses more manipulatives and our alphabet magnets, Spider's activity bins, the magna doodles, the play kitchen food and dishes, and the bottom shelf is for Princess with her baby/toddler toys.


And this is looking from the window to the door of the playroom.  Behind the door is the basket of stuffed animals and dolls.  The posters above are the alphabet and numbers.  Howler is sitting in our other reading corner.  With the basket of books and a random pillow.  Don't ask.  mostly cause I don't know.  Above him is the calendar, to the right of the calendar is our weather chart but you can't see it because it's taped on the jutted out wall.  I might add a few more components in this area - namely a hundreds chart, and a days of the week spot where we can discuss that today is Friday and tomorrow is Saturday and yesterday was Thursday.  This is our main classroom.

I am content with containing our art messes to the dining room table.

I am content with reading our stories on the loveseat in the living room.

I am going to be especially content once I have the laundry room clean and get our nature center set up (no more rocks from mars sitting on the computer desk!)

We learn just about everywhere in our home.  We learn just about everywhere outside our home.  It's what I love so much about homeschooling.  Homeschooling is not creating a sterile classroom environment in your house.  Homeschooling is creating a natural, loving environment where the natural curiosity of a child can be quenched.  Where google sees it's share of random questions on a regular basis and not only are the children learning in the playroom, the living room, the dining room, the laundry room, and everywhere we go but *I* am learning so much too!  I think that for the first time since I was really young I have a genuine excitement about school because of what I can learn!  And our tables and chairs are really just tools we can use to help move that along nicely.


PS: my office is upstairs on our landing.  It's where I keep what we're not currently using for school.  It's a total disaster right now so I did not get pictures of it.  I also did not snap pics of the boys' weekly file boxes.  but they look like the one below and will hold their weeks worth of activities and work.  I have not yet decided where I'm keeping our FIAR stuff organized.

If you've stopped by from the blog hop I'm so happy to have you!  If not please head over to the blog hop here and check out all of the other terrific school room posts this week!

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing your space! I like your focus on contentment! Great reminder for me.

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  2. It looks like a wonderful, happy place to learn together! We love reading together on our couch, and we do lots of dining-room table projects as well!

    Have a great year of homeschooling!

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  3. I love your dining room! You have such a nice large space!

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  4. Thanks for stopping by my blog. I really understand what you mean about homeschooling all over the house...we use the dining room table, the couch, the front porch swing! Hope you have a great homeschool year!

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