My New Schoolroom...

I finally decided I needed to just embrace the fact we're homeschoolers and turn our dining room into a schoolroom. And yes, you can see all this as soon as you walk in my front door. This is our reality though. We love having our schoolroom here. Before the twins would be locked in here while we were across the gate working in the kitchen which made them crazy and had me hopping the gate like a jumping horse :)

So I bought these great white cubbies and can store so much in them. The centerpiece is the great school table I got such a great deal on. The twins love it being in here as well because they drive their cars around and around and around!

This is Jackson's side. We use the great boxes as our workboxes. On the shelves we keep clip boards and our three ring binders we use for Galloping the Globe and copywork.

This is Ashton's side with her 12 boxes, mini office and copywork binder.
The twins sit right across from the table at their little table. We use this table all the time for schoolwork and those naughty meals we eat in the living room.
This is the bookshelf I bought with the school table. I have it organized with Jackson and Ashton's separate book and on the back are our unit study books.

This is my favorite part. I keep all their workbooks right there within arms reach. It has made us be much neater as we can both just reach right behind us to replace them. The shelves are just tall enough that the twins can't reach the markers and pencils on top- thank goodness! The red bins at the bottom have a lot of math manipulatives and center materials in them.

This is my other favorite spot. This is Tot School central. These shelves are ideal for their tot trays. They can choose to work at their table which is close, on the little carpet or sitting in their cute chairs.

I had to include this picture because it shows where most of our "teaching" has been occurring lately :) I was always anti-mini potty. I figured you might as well teach them to use the real potty from the get go. Then I started potty training twins and spent the first two days taking one or the other over the gate to the potty all day- literally! Then I decided they needed one their size and easily accessible. Plus I love that they have their books right behind them.

I happen to have a super supportive and handy husband who listened to my pleas for more storage space for school materials. He moved my washer and drier from the laundry room right off the kitchen to upstairs in our bedroom closet. It has been wonderful because I don't have to carry all our laundry downstairs and then back up. Plus, now I have an amazing amount of storage.

This is my new wireless printer (more awesome handy husband!), teaching books, science supplies, Play-Doh bin, orange bin for oversize Tot School stuff and the purple bin for things I am hoping to make into tot tools.

The best part is the 6 rolling drawers I was able to put where the washer and drier had been. They are STUFFED. They hold office supplies, art supplies, extra workbooks and tons of center supplies.

This used to be used for workboxes and now is on overflow space which also houses my beloved laminator!

We also have a world map that goes with Galloping the Globe. I was so glad to be able to move our bookshelf downstairs from Jackson's closet. It is much more convenient. I adore this bookshelf because my beloved grandfather built it for me as a child. Now it is two shades of blue because we painted it to match Jackson's old Blue's Clue's room and I can't bring myself to repaint it!

I am ridiculously excited about how organized these books are. Some are by author and some are by subject, but I know where everything is which is a small miracle.

This is the other side of my laundry room which is also my pantry. My husband installed all these shelves (this post is beginning to be an ode to him isn't it!). This makes me laugh because you know you're a homeschooler if your pantry has more school stuff than food! Only the third shelf has food on it :)I finally have a good place to store all our board games. They are even sorted by age. I'm hoping this encourages us to play them more. We all love to play games and I have no idea why we never seem to :(

Now we move back into the living room. We have a very good sized closet in there that I claimed for Tot School supplies. I have all our tot toys on the top 3 shelves because I only get them out during school time.

These are the bottom shelves which house their every day toys.

So, as you can see, it's a good thing I embraced that this is the house of homeschoolers because it is obviously taking over the house like it or not! In the interest of full disclosure my house is never this neat. I was part of a homeschool room tour my local homeschool support group did so I cleaned up for them and knew I better snap pictures while the opportunity was there!

Just wanted to share our space!