What causes a homeschooler to jump up and down in pure joy and excitement?  A new bookshelf, of course!  And what causes that same homeschooler to almost faint in her excitement?  Finding out that the bookshelf was FREE!!

A house was recently torn down on our church's property and no one else wanted the bookshelf.  No one wanted a free bookshelf???  Since it's so heavy, it's home is on the porch until another big, burly man wanders around to help my husband bring it up into the schoolroom.  You can bet I have great plans for it once that happens!  :)

Someone on the Five In A Row Message Boards was asking for us to share pictures of our school rooms.  So, here goes....

We school in our upstairs bonus room.  It's been a tremendous blessing to have a whole area devoted just to school!!  Our previous house was 950 square feet!  We had school "stuff" tucked into every corner, cabinet and nook & cranny we could find.  We also "did school" in the living room and kitchen, basically because that's all we had besides a bathroom and two small bedrooms.

At this house (where we've lived a little over a year), most school supplies, books, art work, games, etc are kept in this room.  We also do most of our school in here, although we still work at the sunny kitchen table some days and do most of our reading on a comfy couch downstairs.

This picture shows the computer, a small bookshelf with "special" books - Christian fiction, devotionals, art, science experiments, nature study helps, Bibles and my catalogs.  The tall bookshelf holds the curriculum.  At the very top are our notebooks for each subject.  Next is the language arts shelf.  Then the math shelf.  Next, the science shelf.  And finally, the history/geography shelf.  (Yes, that's a baby sleeping on the floor.) 

The back wall shelves hold all our art supplies, manipulatives, "busy boxes" (full of things for the 6 year old to do when the 10 year old is still working), and games.

This wall holds most of our children's and chapter books.  Yes, I said most.  Believe it or not, I pared this down by almost 1/2 last year!!!

This is our work table.  Some days it's neat and tidy, some days it's not.  Today is half and half.  In the bins at the end of the table we keep all the pencils, markers, crayons, rulers, glue, tape, scissors, scrap paper, lined paper.......

This is a wall that leads to a small play area.  There are maps, a BIble timeline and learning posters that change every so often.  The keyboard is there only temporarily.  My parents just gave us their piano (Thank you Mom & Dad!!!!), but it can't be tuned for the next three or four weeks, so the keyboard has had to find a new home upstairs for a little while so practices can keep happening.

Finally, these are the steps that lead to our school room.  We've turned the walls into an art gallery.