Welcome to a tour of our “classroom”. Currently, we have a portion of our basement set aside for our school room. Though not always my favorite place to be (especially in the coldest and gloomiest days of winter), I do feel fortunate to have a space where I can store all of our stuff.
Now, just because we have a school room doesn’t mean we stay in our school room! Often our Bible and calendar times are completed upstairs on the comfy couches. Sometimes, the girls take their work outside if it’s a nice day and we just want to get out. Sometimes, we just stay at the kitchen table. I have everything set up to be pretty portable, so we can do that!
Compared to all of the “beautiful” homeschool rooms I see on Pinterest, ours isn’t really too exciting–but we’ve used what we already have, what we’ve been able to find inexpensively, and what others have given us. Most important to me is that it serves our purposes, and while I’d love one of those beautiful rooms, I’m so grateful for what we have!
Here’s a visual tour of our homeschool classroom:
Our table and whiteboard were bargains I found at a school-closing auction. You’ll notice I still have my God’s Little Explorers map up. I just can’t quite part with it yet. It’s such a reminder of how God takes something so small and uses it to bless others!
Next up are our bookshelves with various school supplies, whiteboards and magnetic drawing boards (sorted with our Pizza Box Paper Holder), teaching books, thematic books, and math manipulatives. The file cabinet was a gift from my grandma and holds all of my teaching files by subject. The box on top is full of recyclables to sort.
My oldest daughters use Teaching Textbooks (you can see our other 2014 – 2015 homeschool curriculum choices here), so we set up our computer in the class so I can keep on eye on them. Our map gets quite a workout now that we are in Classical Conversations, and I use the large magnetic board for our All About Spelling lessons.
To organize all of the free homeschooling resources and other items I already have on hand, I use a milk crate! I’ve put in a file folder for every week, and when I find something to go along with our theme or what we are studying, I just slip it right into the correct folder. It’s a super-easy way to organize our homeschool resources.
A few other homeschool organization ideas we’ve use in the past:
- Shower caddy reused to hold pencils, colored pencils, glue, and scissors
- Drink carrier organizers — Math Minute & Reading Workshop
- Recycled spice rack craft supply holder
- Calendar binders for each girl
- Learning Bags and Baskets
A few years ago, I shared about our craft and supply wardrobe. In my quest to simplify, I’ve gotten rid of quite a bit since this picture, but you can find everything we used to store in it on this post.
One of my favorite posts on organizing craft and school supplies inexpensively is this 10 Back to School Organization Ideas post!
Find tons more organizing ideas and new rooms to peek at over at The Not Back to School Blog Hop!
We keep everything we aren’t currently using in our basement and do most of our work at the kitchen table. I’d love to use the basement space, but it’s so basementy. Yuck. I love your carpeted space.
I know exactly what you mean by basement-y!! When we first moved in, I just stained the concrete thinking it would be okay that way, but it felt so cold and gloomy down there. The carpet has definitely helped make it feel a little more “warm”.
Thanks for stopping by!
That looks great, I’m glad you got it up! The little table must be very useful. What a blessing to have a basement, we don’t have those here in Texas.
Thanks, Kyle! We live in the heart of “tornado alley” and I’ve been too close for comfort in a few storms, so a basement was high on my list of must-haves when we bought the house!
Wow, your classroom looks so spacious and organized! Our classroom is in our basement too and I know what you mean about the dark, gloomy days of winter. That’s when we tend to move upstairs and do schoolwork by the kitchen window!
I love hanging crate files–I tend to “lose” stuff if it’s not within easy reach and there’s nothing easier than an open file, especially if it’s colorful and fun!
Have a great year learning together!