Organizing Our Homeschool Room

I’ve spent a lot of time reorganizing our homeschool room this year.  I know lots of other homeschoolers are sharing pictures of their learning spaces in the not-back-to-school blog hop.  I thought I’d share some photos of our homeschool room as well.

In the picture below you see our 3-ring notebooks, the craft table, LD’s writing desk, a bookshelf and DD’s desk (back by the window).

A lot of our learning takes place together seated on the carpet in front of the craft table.  We do collection (our group time) there. Some subject we do together include history, science, German, songs, and read alouds. In fact, most of our hands-on activities are done together (experiments, geography projects, crafts, etc.)

Turning around a bit is the new space I made for ED.  She now has her own writing desk and another area where I set out a new game every-other-day or so. At the far side you can see bookshelves. We keep our library books on display in the red book area (I made, but you can only see the back of it) and the one opposite it.  You can see our workboxes on the right.

Here’s a close up of ED’s new learning space. She uses it off and on all day! I’ll do another post about some of the new logic games that we’ve added in another time, though I’ll talk about the one she’s been tackling this week. In the two photos below you can see a game she’s been playing daily called Clever Castle.

Clever Castle is great for thinking logically and sequentially. It’s perfect for 4-year olds and up (it was a bit hard for her last year, but now she’s able to do the puzzles independently.) They progress in difficulty. ED is working on the easy level. The photo on the right is “super hard” level.  ED had to figure out where each piece went, using the clues provided.

Back to our homeschool room! Then turning around you’ll see DD’s desk space and the other reading area. The desk in front is generally my space. It has the calendar/planner where I jot down what we accomplished each day. Some things we use daily that just permanently sit out on that table like the stapler, 3-hole punch and that kind of thing.

In the picture above you can see the beautiful free Water Cycle poster I ordered this summer.

This corner seems to be one of our favorite places to snuggle up and read. It has pretty views out both windows. I spent a lot of time earlier this summer going through the books and got rid of two bags of books!

Keeping Papers Organized:

As for keeping papers organized, I have a much better system this year. I do a lot of prep-work in advance and have to have a way to put things away (and to be able to find them again when the time comes!) We’ve had these wonderful plastic files for papers that I bought when we lived in Australia. I don’t know if they sell them in the U.S. They allow me to store things with small pieces like math manipulatives that are a bit more bulky as well as 3-part Montessori cards, file folder games, take-it-to-your-seat centers, and things like that. My cousin moved back to the Seattle this summer and didn’t want to move her filing cabinet (from N.J.).  I went through all my plastic files and got rid of old papers, relabeled some and put them into the drawers.

We have some larger plastic file boxes as well that I use to house the good quality art supplies, spelling sorts, German, and some of the bigger Montessori sorting materials.

I guess that’s it for our tour!  I linked to the homeschool room linky party, but if you’re a classroom teacher you might enjoy the room set-ups over at The School Supply Addict: Awesome Rooms to Check Out.  I also enjoyed browsing through the organizing tips and linky party at the bottom of Rainbows Within Reach: Organization in the Classroom.

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Related Post: Click here to see our Homeschool Plans for this year (grades 2 and 4).