Our School Room

Welcome to our school room! I am almost "finished" with this room. I would like to add a couple of benches on the long sides of the table and some plants. I am sure there will be additional, minor changes as our needs change. For now, we are very pleased with it.

When designing the school room, it was important that it was functional, but would also be a place that we would WANT to spend time in. I want this room to help foster learning! I have to say this is probably everyone's favorite room in the house.

We made the built-in desk by using Ikea Alex drawer units and topping it with off the shelf kitchen countertops from Home Depot. Super functional and easy to clean. The drawer units hold the kids office/school supplies such as pens, pencils, erasers, scissors, rulers, notebooks, clipboards, etc., 

The chairs are vintage Haywood Wakefield Woodite Fiberglass school chairs.

We finished our basement about a year ago with the intention of making a school room and a playroom. Our playroom houses the kids toys, our home library and a sofa where the kids can curl up with a book. Our school room serves as the school room and home office. Everyone has their own desk area and personal computer. My husband, Marc, has worked extremely hard networking everything together. The kids are able to use their computers for school and for fun. Marc has installed a program in which he can access the kids computers from anywhere, at anytime, from any device in order to monitor the kids activities or troubleshoot and solve tech issues.

I love having the table in the center of the room. This is where we do most of our group work. It makes a great spot for art projects and science experiments! This is where I would like to have a couple of benches. For now, the kids just bring their chairs.

I love having a dry erase board in our school room. We use it even more than I thought we would.

Our bookshelves hold all of the curriculum, resource materials, and art supplies. Shelves are organized by subject. The hanging file folder under the flag is where the kids turn in their homework.

The glass containers with stainless steel lids hold crayons, markers, colored pencils, and colored pens. The two clear plastic totes on the center bottom shelf hold our paint. The black totes hold art supplies, excess school supplies, and science materials. 

Student subject binders. This is where I keep the children's work after it has been completed and graded. Each child has a full set. Each subject is a different color: Red= English Language Arts, Orange= Math, Yellow= Social Studies, Green= Science, Dark Blue= Health/P.E., Light Blue= Spanish, Purple= Art, Music, & Life Skills. These are on a shelf directly above my desk so that assignments are easy to put away after they have been graded. At the end of the school year, I will pull examples of work from these binders to show to the assessor and then file them away. Everything else will get shredded.

Each Binder is divided into four quarters. I also label the homework assignment with the Quarter, Week, and Subject so that it is much easier to remember what and when it is from. Example: Quarter 1, Week 2 Math assignment would be Q1W2Math. This is mostly for me and my record keeping.

The kids each have a full set of colored notebooks as well- one color to match each binder color. The front of the notebooks are labeled with the subject. These are for written assignments, note-taking, scratch paper for working our math problems, etc.  


I hope you enjoyed the tour of our school room! 

-Heather