Our Little School Room

Over the past few years I've continually tried to rearrange our small little school room to make it work for our family, and the sometimes overwhelming amount of school books we've collected over the years.  The last time I gave you a tour was back in 2009.   It was still pretty crowded and cramped, but we made it work.  The only problem was the table in the middle always seemed to collect piles of "stuff" and would make the room look so messy all the time.  I also had a very difficult time maneuvering around the table when I was pregnant... There just wasn't much space left over.  Last year I finally moved the table to under the window, between the two windows, which you can sort of see in this picture,  but it still looked funny. Since we needed all the extra chairs for our dining room table (yes, we have two very different sets of chairs at the moment, but at least we have chairs for everyone!) I finally just removed the table from the room and left an open area on the floor to pile all the stuff for the children to play games, assemble puzzles, and read books.   Anyways, last Saturday I finally spent some time cleaning, decluttering, and organizing this room!  

One day last week, when my mom stopped by, I asked her for a few suggestions.  (I had a few big boxes and baskets of books all with no where to go, in addition to lots of other stuff that needed to be sorted and put away.  I'm sorry I didn't take a before picture to share with you all.  I should have, but it really was rather embarrassing.)   Anyways, she suggested that I push the desks together, under the window, to allow room for another bookcase near my desk.  I had never considered that because there is a book case on the end of Rascal's desk, and the floor vent is directly under the window.  She said that if I switched the desks, putting Rascal's on the right and Captain's on the left it would work, and sure enough it did!   Not only does it look so much better, their desks are so much more functional!  (In the past Rascal couldn't open his bottom drawer because it was blocked by the computer plug, and Captain couldn't use the keyboard space, due to the little shelves on the back wall.)   

I also moved the printer back to the school room (from inside my closet) and placed it on Captain's desk!  Now when I want to print at night I can do so without upsetting my husband! ;)    My old iMac is set up on Captain's desk for the oldest four children to use for Math, and the CD player is on Rascal's desk for audio books and the three oldest to use for their spelling - Phonetic Zoo.   

On the back wall I have a stack of shoe shelves/closet organizers that we have been using as extra shelving.   The children each have their own shelf on which they keep their Timeline Books, Special Artwork Boxes, State Scrapbooks, and art supplies.  On the bottom/floor I have a couple tubs with extra crayons and safari toob figures.  

In the past I kept the rest of the art supplies on top of these shelves, but I moved some to the small curved book shelves to make room for our Puzzles (in a case similar to this one) and stacking blocks! 

Our puzzles include a set of four Schylling Wooden Puzzles (the school bus, the fire truck, the cow, and the duck), various Lauri Puzzles, a shapes puzzle, US puzzle, and a barnyard puzzle.  We have a few others that don't fit on the case which I placed on top of some books on the bookcase.  

I love wooden stacking toys!  They are so pretty and the kids have so much fun playing with them!  On this shelf you can see the Little Flower Wooden Stacker, a set of Stacking Birds, the Stone Cave,  Rainbow, Fire, Water Waves, and a little wooden Peacock from last year's family Easter Basket.

To the left of the shelves is our basket of puppets!   We have a couple large puppets (Ziggy the Zebra to go along with All About Reading and a fun Gray Squirrel) the rest are small Folkmanis finger puppets.  My children have discovered these in their Easter baskets and Christmas stockings in the past.  They are all so cute!

I purchased the book shelves from my parents neighbors years ago when they moved.   The corner shelf is huge, and had to be placed in the room through the window, but I really love these shelves!  I'm able to fit so much on them!   I had been using the corner shelves for various seasonal things, but since I needed the room for books I packed all of that stuff up and rearranged everything!  

The children each have their own Martha Stewart Magazine File Box (I purchased more with a teacher's 50% off all Martha Stewart coupon in the fall!) to hold their Lap Books.  They also each have a Black Closetmaid Fabric Drawer for their current school books.   

This past week, during our study of the past Popes, I hung up our old Pope Chart on the back of the door.   It only lists through Pope John Paul II, but the children have loved looking through all the popes pictures and reading a little about each of them. 

Also just inside the door, hanging on the wall is our Alphabet of Saints Dolls (there is a matching poster  on the wall, up above and to the right) , and to the left of those, on top of the shelf, is Rose's Wooden Fairy Tale Village.   It's another set of toys that comes down when she wants to play with it, and then gets put back up when she is done.  :) 

I've given you a little peek at the calendar I have hanging on the wall behind the door before...  It is  where we store any current Lap Book Mini-Books in clear ziplock bags until we are ready to assemble the actual Lap Book.  

Underneath the calendar I have our Geo Safari USA Search hanging on the wall.  It apparently decided to stop working this past year...  I was hoping new batteries was all it needed, but they didn't seem to help.  Oh well.  :( 

And that just leaves the other wall, where you find my desk.   I still need to do some work on this side of the room, sorting through the plastic bins of school and art supplies.  (One which came from my closet!) I'd like to eventually paint (or replace) the desk and then get one more bookshelf to place in the corner.  

On one of the shelves is a model ship my husband started building when we were dating (maybe someday he will have the time to finish it!) and on the other I have a few of our Pop-Up Books, safely out of the reach of the little ones:  Sounds of the Wild: Nighttime was a Christmas gift from my mom, The Sound of Music from Rose's birthday, and Snow White which was a gift from a friend a few years ago!   They are all such awesome books!

I did end up getting a few more curtains to cover the opening/shelf above the hallway.   We actually had to move the intake for the heater to the other side so now there is a big silver pipe going through that area, along with all the various Christmas, Easter and other seasonal items that need to be stored.   

It's nowhere near as organized and beautiful as some of the learning rooms I've seen online, but I've been able to make this small space work for us.  And after filling 3 bags of trash and 3 boxes/bags to donate, everything seems to have a place at the moment!  It has been so nice this past week to finally have an organized school room again!  Now to move on to my closet and the kids bedrooms...  I think I need a full week of Saturdays! ;) 

{this moment}

"Somebody rode his wheely bug into the (recently cleaned and organized) schoolroom and found a couple of his books immediately."

From Instagram/Facebook, because it was just too cute to not record on the blog!  

The New School Room

I've been meaning to post a few pictures of our new school room for quite awhile, and just haven't had a chance until now.

This room has gone through many different stages.  When we first purchased our home over 9 years ago, just a few months before our oldest was born, it was to be the room for our children.   At one point it belonged to our three oldest just before we added on more bedrooms.  At that time, the closet was removed from this room (to add a little extra space to our small living room) and a hallway was built into it to attach the addition making it much smaller than before.  With the new bedrooms for the children, it became a storage guest room.  After Snuggles was born it then became the nursery.  Though, honestly, Snuggles rarely slept in this room.  In the winter months it is just too cold at night for a baby, plus being so snugly, he always preferred being close to his daddy and momma!  Now with another baby on the way, it was time to shift everyone around to make a little better use of our home.  The boys went to the old school room (which also was our old master bedroom when we first bought this home), the girls moved into the boys old room, Snuggles moved into the girls old room for now (he'll join his brothers in a year or so) with plenty of room for the baby to join him, and that left this room for school.  (Our home doesn't have a dining room, and the kitchen is just too small...)

It is much more cramped cozier than our old school room, but it should work just fine.  Plus, trying to figure out just what to do with everything has really helped in making our home a little more organized.

Well enough explaining, I'll get on with a few pictures!  I took these pictures a couple weeks ago (or so) and I am still in the progress of fine-tuning the room, which I am sure will be an ongoing process as we begin using it more often starting tomorrow, our first day of school for the year!

~ From the Doorway ~ 

My desk is just inside the door (it is a bit cluttered right now with two computers as I work on transferring everything over), the boys desks are on either side of the window, and the table takes up the rest is in the middle of the room.

Since taking this picture I did give-up on trying to squeeze around the end chair, and it has been moved out for now.  We don't really need it right now anyway.  You can also see the beginnings of the girls Madeline Lapbook in the basket on the table... It is still in progress and the girls have been having so much fun with this one.

~ The Boys Desks ~ 

The desk on the left has a built in bookcase on the end which I use for our CD's (Glory Stories, Music Masters, Wee Sing, and a few others) as well as all of our Father Lovasik books and other religious books.

The desk on the right didn't have a bookshelf, but I placed one I already had at the end to use as well, since I never seem to have enough room for all of our books.

The boys also have their shared American History timeline above their desks...

... as well as a basket each for their binders, geography scrapbooks, science lapbook, and Book of Centuries .

~ A little more artwork by my Aunt ~

~ Liturgical Year/Seasonal Shelf ~

I am hoping to paint this someday either brown or green... I will have to take a picture now that it is filled with all of our Feast of the Assumption books and crafts!

~ On the Opposite Wall from my Desk ~

There is our United States map... I am still trying to decide whether or not to hang up our World Map, or just stick with the globe.  It could go above my desk, but that's about it...  We'll see.

Our Art Shelf is below the map, on top of some stacking shoe organizers which are now holding puzzles, pattern blocks, lacing shapes, and other school time toys.  (Thanks again Jen for the inspiration!)

~ Just inside the Door ~ 

Just inside the door are some darling bells I purchased at the Homeschool Conference in May from Our Father's House, a picture of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (from the Monks in WY ) since she is the patron of our homeschool, a magnetic calendar for our saint magnets, and a little cabinet which holds some more books and craft supplies. 

~ From the Window ~ 

I have my bookshelves along the hallway wall.  Here is another picture from a different angle... They were SO hard to photograph!

 

~ Lots of WONDERFUL Books ~ 

History and Liturgical Year Picture Books

Some of My Favorites!

And LOTS of paper and file folders.

As you can see, I've managed to cram quite a bit into a pretty small area, but right now everything has a place, it is organized, and it seems to be working much better than the old school room...

Now, I do have one area that still needs a little work... It is the shelf on TOP of the hallway, which you can see above the bookcases -- just not in any of the above pictures.

Here is a closer look:

It looks kind of funny right now with just the one curtain hanging down in the middle, but what my children don't know is that behind that curtain are quite a few of their Christmas gifts all wrapped and ready for December.  

My plan is to keep items I am not using this year (or season) up and out of the way. I also want to try and find (or perhaps make) a few curtains that would nicely hide it all.  The rest of the craft supplies, the ones we use on a frequent basis, are now being stored in my closet -- and another work in progress as I try to organize it all, but it is coming along nicely.

So, there you go... A little peek at our School Room.   Now I am off to finish getting ready for tomorrow!!   I have a few Schultütes to make.

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Speaking of Setting Goals...

...of rather, unrealistic ones...

I did it AGAIN!!

Last month ;) my hubby and I purchased some furniture from my parents neighbors who are moving. Well, the rest of it arrived Thursday night! I was very excited, but not quite ready.

You should have seen the look on hubby's face when my dad arrived with that trailer full of furniture! Where was it--3 more sections of bookshelves, a new table for the kitchen(we have outgrown ours), 6 chairs, a matching hutch, and a corner hutch--all going to go???

The kitchen was fairly easy... It is actually too much furniture for the size of our kitchen, but we hope to add on that dining room someday... Maybe this will be more incentive! :)

Before Pictures:

After Pictures:

So, what do you think?? Someday we hope to have the same flooring in both the kitchen and living room... But for now, we need to put something under one end of the hutch to level it out. I am excited that I will have more cabinet space now!!! It does make for a rather cramped kitchen though, and we don't even have the extra leaves in the table!

Anyways, that was the easy part... The hard part was fitting the new book cases into our, already overfull, school room. It was going to be necessary to move, or remove, the wood bookshelves--that I recently convinced hubby to bring in from the garage just before Easter. He was not really willing, to say the least.

So -- we added the bookshelves along the far wall where you see those desks, along with the computer desk (which you can see here) that had already taken those desks place. The room was packed to say the least.

Well, Friday I ended up staying home with the girls and Snuggles (since he has been sick) while hubby took the boys to Mass and to work with him for a few hours. I thought "I can surprise hubby and do it myself before he gets home!!!!!" ummm... yeah right!!!! That was a totally unrealistic goal!

I began by taking everything off the bookshelves and placing it all on the table in the middle of the room, as well as on the boys new desks. Then I thought -- it sure would be nice to keep these book shelves in this room... I wonder if they would fit in the closet??? I measured them, and sure enough, they would just clear the ceiling. So, I then took everything out of the closet and added it to the middle of the room. At this point, the room was filled with stuff!

OK. At this point I had about 3 hours till hubby was due to arrive home. :)

I then called my dad, and he walked me through how to operate a power drill so I could unscrew the bookshelves from the wall. Yes, I am pathetic when it comes to tools. I actually used a fire poke thingamajig to pry the closet shelf loose. It worked!!

I inched the huge, heavy, solid wood, bookshelf towards the closet, and tipped it to try and get it in:

Here is where I got stuck:

Argh! I couldn't for the life of me get it to stand up. It was too darn heavy! And time was ticking!!! I had a total panic attack! was starting to get stressed!

Well, one of the benefits of coming from a large family, is that there is usually someone that you can call if you are really in a bind! My dear sweet brother Scott came to my rescue! THANK YOU SCOTTIE!!! Not only did he help me move all the bookshelves, he helped me move all the old furniture into the garage, took pictures of it all for craigslist, and organized it too! All before my hubby got home. Hubby had to agree that it looked much better, even though everything in the middle of the room needed to be put away!!!

Well, that was yesterday... Here are some pictures from today:


The School Room Closet:

With the extra shelves, I was able to add almost all the board games from the hall closet!! This will make them so much easier to get to!

Our School Room:

These were both taken from the doorway - New Table, Chairs and Desk.

The far wall. I'm thinking of hanging my world map there, but I'm not sure. Eventually I would like to get a white computer desk/armoire to finish off the room.

Here you can see the new bookcases. I LOVE THEM!!! Does any one have a good suggestion for making the most use out of a corner bookshelf, to where it still looks nice/organized?


And, here is a closer view of the boys new desks.

My Aunt Roxanne, who is also my godmother, gave me some of her art while I was visiting!! The boys wanted theirs above their desks, rather than in their room, so I hung the "Train" above Rascal's desk and the "Boat" near the door. She is mailing me the "Airplane" for above Capitan's desk! Aren't they cute?!?!?!

(She also gave me this one for the girls room, and the Monkey, Giraffe, and Lion for Snuggles room. I love them all! Thank you Aunt Roxanne!)

Well, the school room has sure come a long way this past year. Once again, I am glad that tomorrow is Sunday. I better hurry up and get the groceries put away, make a cake, and then get some sleep. I'm exhausted!

I hope you all have a very Blessed and relaxing Pentecost Sunday!!