after taking you on a little tour of our playroom & my studio space, i wanted to give those of you interested a deeper look into the homeschool side of things.  if you have no interest in homeschool stuffs, then feel free to move on from this post!

and please note, i am not a full time homeschooler.  i do this part time, and i don’t have it all figured out.  but i am on my 5th year of doing this, so i have learned a few things!

 we have very little wall space in our playroom (homeschool room), so i have had to get creative on space.  aesthetically, it pretty much goes against every bone in my body, but i’ve had to learn to give up on lots of things in here!

 i keep a big roll of butcher paper on hand for random projects and it works great to put up the poems the kids are working on reciting.  i also put up the latin words the kids are learning at school.  now, we rarely ever go over these words, but with what they’ve learned at school and seeing these flash cards posted all the time, they totally know these words.  they are just on 3×5 cards and taped up with washi tape i got from target.

 i am a huge fan of the workbox system!  i was introduced to it sometime last year i think and it has really helped smooth out our homeschool days.  not only does it help keep the kids on task, but also keep me organized!

 since our school is a combo of at home and at school, we get this thing called “the grid” that sets us up for our week – all our curriculum layed out for us – books, page numbers, everything.  up until recently, i just stacked the grid for each kid and then thumbed through them when i needed to set up the boxes.  but now i have each grid attached to each kids’ workboxes and it has saved me so much time.

each of my kids have their workboxes set up differently.  gracie has hers sitting right next to her, lily has hers tucked under her desk (she has the biggest desk space), and silas’ is on top of the desk space next to him.  its not ideal, but it actually works really well for us.

 this is our biggest stretch of wall, and i have tried to use as much of it as i could.  i used to have the workboxes lined up where the book shelves are, but i really needed space for books, hence the odd positioning of our workboxes now.

we use the white board throughout the day and the kids love standing on a chair to do work there.  since we are focusing our studies right now on america and colonial times, i was ok with putting our calendar up over europe and asia.  i’m not sure at this point where the calendar is going to move to, but we have enjoyed having it as a new addition to our room.  the kids love seeing what is coming up in our month ahead.

the yellow and green papers on the door are sight words on post it notes i got from an office supply store.

 so, i’m not super crazy about the gutter book shelves.  i do love that it displays so many books front facing, which really is so much more enticing for the kids.  but… the books tend to fall forward rather than lean back against the wall.  and the gutters are sagging because some of the supports pulled out of the wall.  and only shorter books can go on the bottom shelves.

also, there are these random sized spaces where the supports had to go, that won’t fit books.  thankfully, i needed a spot to hold our whiteboard supplies (and a few other small things).

 this is the start to our timeline.  i have always shied away from doing a timeline on paper, but having a tension wire (from ikea) has made it more interactive and repositionable.  so after the kids read about a historical event, they can draw something to add to the timeline and we just pin it up in the right spot.

 these shelves are above lily’s desk and hold most of our random homeschool supplies.  those books are more of our books from previous years of school.

 next to lily’s desk are some of our manipulatives.  the bottom 2 shelves hold the math manipulatives and the next one holds the language arts manipulatives.

on top of silas’ desk is a cute dr. pepper crate holding all of his books for his kindergarten year, some that he will eventually read to himself and some that i read to him.  lily also knows that all of these books are at or below her reading level, so she can grab any one of these for her reading time.

and here’s my homeschool space!  these are all the random supplies i need to get the workboxes ready and books marked; printer ink; supplies; 3-hole punch.

and that’s it!