Hi everyone! This week is School Room Week with the IHN Not-Back-ToSchool Blog Hop!
We’ve stuck with a similar room setup this year, with a few fun additions! The above picture is an overview of our room, and now we’ll get into the nitty gritty of our setup!
Along the big wall in our room is an Expedit 17”x15”x72” shelving unit and an Expedit 31”x15”x58” shelving Unit. I keep specific phonics and math manipulatives on the top two shelves. These are things we use often and I didn’t want them to get lost in the rest of our things. The shelving unit on the right houses all of my teacher’s manuals. They’re separated by student, so top left is Strawberry Shortcake, right is Turbo, next row is Tinkerbell and Teeny Tot. The bottom shelves are teacher’s manuals for subjects we do as a group.
Next to the above shelves is our new reading bench. This was a new addition this year that we love! I purchased an Ikea Besta shelving unit with adjustable shelves plus Besta round legs. ($50) We made the cute pad specifically for the bench. Stop back by tomorrow and I’ll share a tutorial on this super easy and cute bench cushion tomorrow!
The next shelving unit is the Expedit 25 cubbie shelving unit. The top row are all of my LOTW binders and our school work binders. I keep all of their finished worksheets in their annual binders, then at the end of the year, they go down to the basement for storage.
The next row of blue bins are books, lapbooks, then some other miscellaneous games and activities. Mostly for the Teeny Tot. The Blue Organizer Bins are from Lakeshore Learning.
The next row are one of my favorites. They are Small (10×11) Clear Document Cases from The Container Store. They house all of our manipulatives, math links, alphabet tiles, color cubes, lacing buttons, wooden shape blocks, etc, etc.
The bottom two shelves are miscellaneous games, etc. Then the bottom is full of DRÖNA Boxes ($4.99) that house puzzles, wooden blocks, coloring books, etc. If you’re curious, each cube is 15” deep x 13” high and 13” wide, so there is a LOT of space in these!
Here is the whole wall for you to see, or as much as I could fit into one photograph!
Here is the wall to the right of the shelves. It has our Alphabet Palm Tree, calendar time bulletin board, and All About Spelling board. Along with a few ducks my husband hunted.
Another new addition is the Micke Desk in white ($69.00). I needed something for the kids to do typing and piano on, plus a workspace for me as well. This one was a great addition because it’s not super deep, but its long.
On the desk is a Bosch pencil sharpener, one of my favorite things! It sharpens like nothing else and at record speeds!
We also have the Mala Tabletop Paper Holder ($6.99) which is awesome! Drawing Paper Roll refills are are $4.99.
We kept our Ikea Desk setup. It survived the whole last year and still looks great! Whatever it’s made of is really easy to clean and has held up well. There are some dents on the sides of our swivel chairs just from banging into the table tops, but otherwise it’s held up really well and I’m very pleased with it! I will have a detailed post on how this is put together tomorrow!
Here is a close up of my Vika Alex Drawer Units $79.00. There are only 5 drawers in these, so right now we’re putting two subjects in a couple of the bottom drawers.
Each of my kiddos has an Expanding Acrylic Drawer Organizer in them with all of the supplies they’ll need. This keeps them from getting up a thousand times during class to get something!
In the center of our desk is this super cool Making Memories Caddy was one of my old scrapbooking items. I dumped out the supplies and filled it with markers. Yep, you know you’re a homeschooler when you start sacrificing your scrapbooking supplies in the name of school.
Where’d I Get that?
- Making Memories Caddy (I purchased mine at Michael’s Hobby Store)
- Alphabet Palm Tree on wall
- 10 Drawer Workbox Carts (I purchased mine at JoAnn’s Fabric Store)
- Giant Whiteboard (Check www.craigslist.com I found mine for $5!)
- Blue Organizer Bins on Expedit Shelving
- Seasons Calendar Poster (This is held onto a cork board with small thumb tacks. Click here to see a closeup of our Calendar Activities)
I have set-up the Ikea table/desk like yours and even bought a piece of plywood to put under it to stabilize it. But, now the table tops slide very easily. Did you do something else to prevent this? Thanks for all your wonderful ideas.
Melissa,
I used brackets to secure both table tops to one another so they don’t slide all over. They do slip a little, and I plan to have my husband screw the tops to the drawer units some day…
Also try the rubber liner one would put under a rug to keep it from slipping.
I LOVE your room. I am just beginning homeschooling with my dd. She is a 1st grader this year and we are having a great time. She is our only child so I don’t have to worry about kids interrupting each other…only keeping her on task. 🙂
I really like Ikea too and we are using some of their stuff as well. We are set up in our family room because we are remodeling the room we planned to use. Once we are ready to move into the other room I am going to use some of your ideas. They are really amazing!
Peggy,
I tried to leave a comment on your blog but couldn’t get signed in. I also tried to find an email address for you but didn’t see one. If you see this, please contact me at my own site. Thanks!
Love this room, it’s awesome! Did you end up getting rid of your workboxes? I don’t see them!
Hey! i love your room! do you no longer use the workbox system?? i was thinking about doing it (i read one of your older posts) but didnt see them in this one.. curious why you stopped:)
thank you!
Hi Erica,
I am still a semi new homeschooler and trying to figure out what system works best for us. I love the workbox idea but with limited space I had to get creative. I had hubby mount a magnetic piece of metal to the wall next to their desks and we use magnetic pouches for our workboxes. I like it and it works well, but now I am trying to find a way to organize their WEEKLY work. Neither my husband or I have ever been a big fan of those plastic bins with drawers (the 10 drawer mulit colored ones that I think you used to use for their work next to their desks), but I feel like that may be my only choice for weekly storage at this time. In these pictures I see you are still using them for something. Can you tell me what? I am looking for something large enough to hold anything other than paper that we might need (for example, flash cards, games, manipulatives, dice, small compostion books, etc.) I am now willing to go out and buy one of those organizers, but upon looking at reviews the biggest complaint is that the drawers arent big enough or that they dont stay on track or wont hold anything other than paper. Can you please give me your input on them? Are you still using them? If so, for what? Would you recommend them? Do you have an idea for anything else that may work for what I am looking for? Something with minimum 5 drawers per child (I have 2 boys). Thanks in advance for your time, advice, and all you do. 🙂 God Bless and Merry Christmas.
Today, I went to the beach front with my kids.
I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old
daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She put the shell to her ear and screamed.
There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear. She never
wants to go back! LoL I know this is completely off topic
but I had to tell someone!
I just love it. I myself am trying to transform an area into our homeschool spot but since I have a climbing 2 year old desks are out of the question. Which we had little tables and chairs but they were not sturdy enough to handle my 2 year old so I am looking into about how much this all costed you in total. I looked on the IKEA website to get an idea but I couldn’t find what you had exactly. So until then the kitchen table and the floor will do. I have my shelving for each child but the kitchen table and chairs are just to big and with a climbing tot….whew! So I am on the search for the proper items for us. Thanks for the wonderful pictures.
Erica,
Thank you so much for sharing! I am inspired to get our homeschool more organized. We have four kids and I was at my wits end trying to figure out how to get everyone organized! The video for this post was awesome! Love Ikea!!
I had one quick question for you. What was the shape games that you have? I was curious becuase our oldest is autistic and I am looking for hands on things for him to help him focus. Any help is appreciated. Praying for your sweet family!
this is beautiful! my question is, do you find marker/crayon/pen stains a problem on the white table top? i am looking to update our room to white soon and this thought popped in my head.
thank you for sharing and blessing us readers with your time and efforts.
This is what I want my classroom to look like! You are awesome 🙂