Not Back-To-School Part 2

It’s week two of the Not Back-to-School Blog Hop, and time to put the spotlight on the school room.

Oh, yikes! That room is still under serious construction at the moment! I promise to offer a current photo a little later in this post so you can appreciate how truly disorganized it is. But first, please allow me to share a few shots I took of our school room last fall when things looked most presentable.

This is our classroom in the basement. Glass French doors separate it from the family room.

These fun mini-organizer tool totes for scrapbooking also work great for daily school supplies like scissors, pencils, glue sticks, ruler, eraser and crayons. I found the mini-sized ones last fall on clearance at Archivers and bought one for each of my daughters to keep on their desks. Unfortunately, I just did an online search and could no longer find the mini size, but the regular size Tote-Ally Cool Tools Tote is still available and would hold even more tools and supplies!

This bookcase from Ikea was another very useful purchase.

Besides the fact that it holds loads of books, I love that the shelves are perfectly sized to hold these boxes and many other containers that Ikea sells, too. I have labeled each square by subject or category. So, for instance, we have a square for math and another below it for boxes of math manipulatives. I also store 3-ring-binders for most subjects, boxes of small toys, boxes of school supplies, handwriting paper, construction paper, magazines, flashcards, music CDs, and our listening lab books here. When we first purchased this shelf, my youngest was not quite 3-years-old, and I liked that I could put several books within her reach and store special books and other items safely out of her reach on the higher shelves.

Learning at home doesn’t just happen in the basement, thankfully. The whole world is our classroom! And likewise, the whole house also ends up being our classroom, too. For us, the kitchen area is frequently used, and one item that has been especially useful there is our sensory tub.

In the photo above, the girls are using the tub to sort seashells from our Florida trip. It’s also great workspace for some science projects, but the main reason I purchased it was for educational entertainment during the winter months when it’s too frigid to spend much time exploring outside. The girls have played with dry oatmeal, cornmeal, sand, rocks, rice, water, snow, ice, and play dough in it. The possibilities are truly endless! For more sensory tub ideas with straw, magnets and other items, check out this helpful little video that I found on YouTube:

Okay, if you’re still with me, here’s that work-in-progress photo I promised at the beginning of this post.

See what I mean? Gasp! I better wrap up this post and start putting all this stuff back where it belongs!

Happy blog-hopping!