We just moved here at the end of March so this is a new school room for us. This is the first time we've had one in the basement. The other times our school room was the bonus room on our second floor. I'm a little worried that it will be cold in the basement in the winter, especially since we live in Minnesota. We do have a small heater in our school room so hopefully it will help keep it warm. I do really like not having to worry about the walls being angled like in our past rooms. I feel like I have so much more wall space now.
Here is most of the room looking from the stairs.
This is on the left side coming down the stairs. There is a line for hanging up the kids' art, an easel, and a small table that the girls like to use when they're drawing. The red containers have art supplies. The letters at the top of the wall say "Every child is an artist."
The door goes into the playroom, which we are still unpacking and is a big mess.
To the right of the stairs are bookcases that hold our curriculum, with a different subject on each shelf. The white shelf holds the printer, and there are different types of paper in the drawers.
This is a reading area for the kids. These shelves have picture and chapter books.
Next to that is a computer. The map above it has stickers for each state we've visited.
The windows look out to our backyard.
Under these windows is our timeline. We aren't using the whole thing right now. In history, we've gotten to the 1800s so I have the timeline starting in the late 1500s and going to the present.
We do a lot of reading aloud so I always try to have a couch in our school room.
We've had this table for a few years now. I couldn't find one as big as I wanted so my husband made this one. It has shelves underneath for storing supplies.
I painted a lazy susan blue and added small pails to hold pencils, glue sticks, crayons, colored pencils, etc.
The wood cabinets hold craft supplies. The shelves under the maps hold most of our everyday things. On the left side of the picture are drawers for all our math supplies. The colored drawers are the kids' workboxes, one for Colin and one that the girls share (5 drawers for each of them).
I saw this idea a couple years ago and started collecting letters for it. We never really had the extra wall for it before though. While unpacking, I was surprised to find we had all the letters except I (for some reason we also had an extra R, 2 extra Os, and 2 extra Qs). My 10 year old made an I from craft popsicle sticks and painted some of the letters. I covered some with scrapbook paper.
I wanted to somehow incorporate into the room places we've been. I hung some of our postcards on this board. Hopefully I'll be able to find more of the postcards we've collected to add.
Now I just need to do some baby proofing. I'm hoping we can do the majority of our work while my almost 7 month old naps. She doesn't always sleep well though so I can't count on that and need to get it done before she becomes more mobile. I plan to find a space to have a basket of toys for her. I think I'm going to get a high chair for that room so she can be at the same height as everyone else. She can use the tray to play with toys, and for snacks once she's eating finger foods.
