Our School Room

I would like to introduce you to our school room. We started our homeschool journey in a different home but recently moved. In our old home we used our dining room as our school room. When we decided to move we were able to search for a home that would better fit our family's needs. In our home there are four people who are almost always here. My husband works from home and has an office which is located in our finished basement. We considered putting the classroom in our basement instead but there were factors that made it less than ideal. We have cats that reside in our basement and I have a mild allergy to them. When I am in the basement my eyes get very itchy and i sneeze a lot. I really didnt realize how much of an allergy I had to the cats until we moved them into the basement and I wasnt constantly around cat fur/dander. There is really no way that I would want to spend most of the day down there. So my husband, who has no cat allergy, has his office in the basement and he is happy to spread out and take up all that lovely space. We have two floors to our actual house (not including the basement) and our second floor has the bedrooms. We chose a bedroom as our school room because it is out of the way of household traffic. I did not like having our school room in our dining room at our old house because we would always be disturbed when my husband would come down to the kitchen for a snack or drink. With our new school room we can close the door when we need quiet. Also I can close the door when we are not in the classroom so that the toddler doesn't wander in and either destroy the materials or injure herself.

Without further ado, here is our school room:

This is the view of our room from the doorway. The table and chairs are from IKEA (just about all the furniture is actually). The table folds on both sides, in this picture it is about half of its total size. On the table you will see our iPod nano in an iHome speakers. These were both things we already had. The iPod I used quite a bit before I got an iPhone and then it sat there. I decided to put it in the classroom for music. The iHome speakers were my husband's but he rarely used them. I love that it also has a digital clock with the date on it. 

Our beautiful bead cabinet. I was VERY lucky to get this cabinet for the price I did. I scour craigslist for Montessori materials at least a couple of times a week. I happened upon a listing for a Montessori school that was closing and sent an email immediately. This is a gorgeous set of complete bead materials and a lovely cabinet from Bruins Montessori. I got it for less than I would have paid for the discount montessori website materials. I have some beads from a couple of those discount websites and they are no where near the quality and beauty of these beads. 
The white doors are a closet which I store my teacher materials, unused material, etc that the children wouldnt have access too. At the moment our IKEA easel is also in here but Im not sure it will stay there.

Language and Geography shelves. There are more unused shelves on here than it appears. All of this was from last year and needs to be updated. I have several things that do not belong for my seven year old. 
Grammar solids, grammar cutouts, moveable alphabet, metal insets, tray and paper with colored pencils. Clear clock with gears that we made last year. Fractions wrapup game. Landmarks lesson, chimalong metalaphone, small chalkboard, drum, rhythm sticks, snap circuts, lego contraptions, kapla blocks, some cooperative games,tanagrams, puzzle maps, hug-a-planet globe pillow, magazines, calming jar, some international coins and other items, Egyptian sarcophagus, pink tower, brown stairs and knobbed cylinders got cut out of this pic (you can see them a little in the nature table pic)

Math shelf. Again has things that dont really belong in this area. I need to organize better.
crayons, colored pencils, reading folders, geometric cabinet, geometric solids, money, binomial cube, trinomial cube, algebraic binomial cube, subtraction snake game, stamp game, math mat, golden bead material, multiplication and division bead boards, painting board, clock, wooden golden bead thousand cubes, knobless cylinders. 

Our Science Lab which is a connected bathroom. This particular bathroom is only a sink and counter. You have to go through another door to get to the toilet (which is attached in the same way to my son's room). I love having access to water and a counter to work on messy things with no carpet underneath. This way to dont have to run down to the kitchen when we want to work on science. We also do some semi-messy art projects in here. I moved our bookshelf in this room when we got our bead cabinet this summer, im not sure if it will stay here or not.

Science material shelf. Lots of fun things here. Our rugs in the corner are in a cardboard box, they wont stay like this but we just got them and I havent found a proper basket to hold them yet.

Some closeups of what is on our shelves. Lots of rocks/minerals, field guides, brain model, brain puzzle, pocket microscope.

More rocks, magnets, bones from a owl pellet he dissected, bucket with a meteor crater lesson, box of wild life treasury cards, microscope, model tooth he made, envelopes with 3 part cards for the puzzles.

Botany, animal and insect puzzles, Botany cabinet, star chart, science kits that my son loves to do. These are Young Scientist's Club kits. I personally find them to be very simple and Im not thrilled with the quality of the items included but my son just loves them.

Our workspace. The cute little tabletop sweeper is from Target dollar spot. We have a green version for our dining room table for my son to sweep crumbs.

Sink with some extra science storage underneath. The glasses and hanger are from IKEA. We use the hanger for hanging paintings to dry.

Science Lab metal sign. I found this at a science surplus store and I had to have it!

Our nature table. It is a little small but in our classroom we only have two windows and they are both in that one corner. The table fits nicely under the window sills and the plants get some sun. We have cactus, a terrarium, bamboo, a root viewer and other random pieces of nature he finds and brings in. Right now there is a strip of birch bark, a dry piece of bamboo and a bug box that has a magnifying glass on it.

I hope you enjoyed this little tour of our school room. We are learning as we go along and I know I have quite a bit of organizing to do still. We havent ordered our materials for this year yet so I'll be posting more when I do and pictures when they arrive.