Posted in My Homeschool FAQs

Over on The Company Porch  the question "How do you deal with all of the (homeschool) "stuff"?" has been thrown out.  Since we had A LOT of homeschool "stuff" I thought I would attempt to answer the question. 

We are very fortunate to have a dedicated schoolroom.  It is the upstairs loft space (That could have been a 4th bedroom had the original owners chosen that option.)  It's approximately 15 X 15 and is a great size for a schoolroom.  The other nice thing about it is it is not visible unless you go upstairs, so it keeps the schoolwork contained and out of site.

So, what do we have in our schoolroom?  On one wall we have 5 floor to ceiling bookcases. (We have 11 bookcases in our house all together!)   I have them organized into categories.  The 1st one is all our Christian books.  Next are children's classics such as Dr. Suess and picture books by Eric Carle, Lois Elhert, etc.  The next one is  misc. paperbacks  that we love and re-read (Little House Series, Narnia, Huck Finn, etc..).  Next is Mom's books,  Homeschool books, natural health books,  pregnancy books.  The final one is all Scholastic books.  I have purchased inexpensive magazine boxes and organized the Scholastic books by catergories.  This is very helpful.  If the kids want to read about the human body they can get all the books out at once and take them to their room or school desk.  (Some of the categories I have are human body, geography, holidays, Arthur books, Wishbone books, Magic TreeHouse Books, etc...)  This is a great way to keep all those thin little paperbacks that you can never find organized and handy.

At the top of the staircase I have another bookcase with reference materials.  This is where we keep our encyclopedia, dictionaries, Colliers Jr. Classic, Children's Encyclopedia set, etc.  It is very handy to have all the reference materials together to grab as we need it.

Across the room from the 5 bookshelves are 2 floor to ceiling wire storage racks.  These I have separate shelves for Science, Language Arts, Math, History, Art, Music, record keeping, and a current year shelf for each child.  On these shelves I keep games, supplies, etc that are not specific to a certain school year.   Between these shelves I have all our past years of Sonlight curriculum boxes in Rubbermaid containers and stacked up.

Next to the wire racks is our craft cupboard.  This is a white cabinet with a door I can lock.  Inside is FULL of paint, craft supplies, scissors, chalk, craft kits, etc.  I keep a detailed list of what is on each shelf so I can easily find what I am looking for.  On top of the craft cupboard is our globe and microscope, someday they will be down lower when the baby is older and I can trust him not to abuse them!  LOL

My desk is also in the schoolroom.  This is where I write out school lessons and store all my teacher stuff.  My kids also have desks in the room, but we rarely ever sit at our desks to do school.  My daughters computer is on her desk which she uses daily.  My son opted to have his computer in his room instead.  We do school all over the place, but we try to return the schoolwork to our desks at the end of the day to keep the house a little bit under control.

Above my desk is the open loft area to the downstairs, so I don't have as much wall space as I would like.  Above the kids desks are 2 windows.  I made cute little schoolroom curtains for the windows with fabric that has little teddy bears writing on a chalkboard.  Between the windows we have some homeschool related bible verses and our State Quarters United States Map.

On the floor we have a cute school bus rug, I lucked out to find on clearance at Target years ago.  Right now we have a large folding table set up so my son can work on his World Geography Puzzle.

I also have 2 filing cabinets.  One with files and the other storing paper.  I buy cases of spiral notebooks every year when they are 10 cents each at back to school time.  One drawer is just for the notebooks.  The other is construction paper, printer paper, envelopes, etc.

So that is our schoolroom in a nutshell.  I would love to hear about yours!

Per the request of msack I am adding some pictures of our schoolroom.

My Desk


Reference Materials


The Children's Desks


1 of 5 Bookcases


Scholastics Books Organized


Messy - But Organized! Someday I am going to make a curtain to cover this!


Our School Bus

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Comments

Posted by msack

Do you have a picture?

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Posted by jaminacema

I will work on taking some pictures and posting them. I suspect we will need to do some clean up before we can take pictures! LOL

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Posted by mom2ZAW

Thanks for visiting my blog. I know what you mean about socks. I often find them in the oddest places. For a while I thought the washer was eating the mates, but then I would find them in the couch or stuffed under a pillow, etc. It did explain how they would run out of socks just 3 days after I would wash socks though. I loved living in Phoenix! At least 9 months of sandal weather!

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Posted by mom2ZAW

By the way, I love your school room! Isn't it nice to have a room for school?

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Posted by homeschoolhelp

Wow! You can come and organize our homeschool stuff any time -- your school room looks great!

I'm sorry about the passing of your mother-in-law -- and what a special gift she gave your family by taking the time to write her memoirs to pass down to the next generation. I read the eulogy -- she sounds like a wonderful person.

Thanks for stopping by my blog and answering the Question of the Week!
Blessings,
Dianne

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Posted by mamaduso

Very cool! I wish I had that many bookcases! We are busting out the seems in books. I have an office (our 4th bedroom). Two of our girls share a room. I have my computer on the desk that goes from one side of the room to the other. I have shelves that my husband made that is above the desk. There are a total of 8 shelf compartments. I have another book case on another wall. It has most of our fiction, bible, how to/non fiction books on it. The shelves above the desk has most of the homeschool stuff and more kids books for school. My husband has two of the shelves. I should rewrite this on a post and take pictures too. Yesterday I would not have taken any pictures. The offic eis also a catch all room and it looked awful. But today my husband and I cleaned it out and it looks great. We can actually use the room now!LOL Oh yes, I have a tall filing cabinet for home stuff and another shelf unit that holds all the kids games, puzzles, and other learning things. That is in the closet. There is enough room on the desk for two of the girls to do school. The youngest doesn't do school yet. Oh ya- we also have a nother small book shelf that has all our vidoes, dvds and cds.
Susan

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Posted by KarenW

You are an inspiration! Everything is so neat and wonderful!!

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Posted by Leigh2

Okay...now I want a school room! Technically, this house has room for it, but we have to do some major renovation of our basement to get it. Now I'm wanting to get started! Thanks for sharing!

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Posted by jaminacema

I thought I would explain how I have aquired so many bookcases. Starting about 6 years ago for all my birthdays, christmas and anniversary presents I started asking for money to go towards bookcases. Every time I would accumulate enough money for one I would go get a new one. They all match so as we have moved around from house to house I have been able to reconfigure them in whatever way best fits the current house. Right now there are 6 in the schoolroom, 4 in the living room (These are full of my husbands books.) and 1 in the family room. My dreamhouse has a room big enough to line the walls with all of them! I think we are to the point where we will not be buying anymore bookcases. I have begun the process (gasp) of weeding out some books. I am trying to buy less and do the library more. I have a new "rule" that if we need to use the book for less than 3 weeks we get it from the library. This allows me to spend more time and space on Christian materials that are not easily found at the library. Of course this rule is quickly broken at used book sales and Scholastics warhouse sales! LOL BTW, I just realized I am only counting the matching bookcase in the 11! I actually have 2 more in the kids bedrooms (The inexpensive white laminate ones), a small Little Tykes one in the playroom and another 4 foot laminate one outisde the kids bedroom doors. Maybe I need to check in to getting help for my book addiction! (That's 15 bookshelves in all!)

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Posted by telmar

I am inspired to get mine more organized. I thought i was doing good when my husband turned my front closet into a bookshelf. It is nice though because I can close the door on the mess and it has 6 shelves in there.

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Posted by momonajourney

I LOVE seeing pictures of how other people organize their things! It always inspires me. I did some updating of our school room this week and am going to blog about it. How do you put pictures on? Cut and paste?

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Posted by jaminacema

I post my pictures by uploading them to photobucket.com It is free. Then you just post a link to your picture at their site. You will need to edit the photo to 50% before linking or they will post HUGE! Once you have them resized you double click on the url under your picture, copy and paste that into your text and viola, your done!

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Posted by carmatlock

Where did you get those Book organizers that are yellow....I need those! You are so organized...and yes I love having a school room also!

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Posted by pajamasmith

Miss Jamin! Did you say COLLIER'S JUNIOR CLASSICS?!?! I knew there was something SPECIAL about you! (Well, besides JESUS, that is!) So help me, all I ever knew of any value as a child, I learned from those ten precious books! I can't tell you how many times my mom threw them away and I went dumpster diving all over town until I found them again! I still have them, I love them, and my children love them!

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Posted by marthamcgiver

Oh my gooodness! I really like the look of the desks you have for your kiddos. Please tell me where you found those. We are just starting our homeschool adventure next year, so I've been busily setting up our classroom. I couldn't afford any of the desks I've found around here and in catalogs...or I didn't like them......sometimes BOTH!...so I had settled on the idea of using a folding table like the hard polyethylene ones from Costco. I have 3 students and would have to use the 8 ft. table in order to give them all enough of their own space to make it work, but I prefer the idea of them each having their own desk separate from each other. After all, they are siblings and fairly close in age, so the rivalry goes without saying. Any input on this would be GREATLY appreciated!

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Posted by jaminacema

<<Oh my gooodness! I really like the look of the desks you have for your kiddos. Please tell me where you found those. >>

I bought the desks at IKEA & they were cheap. I think I paid $24.99 each for them! To be truthful though we hardly ever use them. We almost always do School at the dining room table where we can all spread out and work together.

Best wishes!

Jamin

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Posted by Tiff @ The Faery Inn

I have a question: What if your house is only 1200 sq. feet, and you have four kids, ages 5, 4, almost 3, and 1.

I am doing kindergarten with my 5-year-old, and my 4-year-old wants to "do lessons". We have one room available (sort of). It's our office/sewing/craft/guestroom. It is directly adjacent to the dining room & kitchen - it's really one long room with carpet in a 12x12 or so section at one end. I physically cannot dedicate this one room to homeschooling alone.

I don't want to ramble on and on, but if you had to narrow it down, and if it were your room, what would be your biggest priority for making a school "room" with such limited space?

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