"Not" Back to School - Our School Room {2011 - 2012}

Two years ago we set up a school room area in our family room. It was great while I had just two children I was homeschooling full time. Now with the addition of Ava Mae doing school with us I decided it would be a good idea to move to a bigger table. Our dining room is really a wasted space in our home. I love our dining room table but, realistically we only use it a few times a year for special holidays and when we have company or a party in our home. The table seats 8 comfortably so more than enough room for the 4 of us to sit at it which means my only big purchase this year to finish out the area was a new bookcase from IKEA. It has worked out so well for us that my good friends Jennifer and Tammy both decided to pick up one or two for their school rooms. {I mean seriously, this bookcase can hold a large amount of curriculum and supplies!} Each child has a green basket and a straw basket. The green basket holds daily work such as Math, Reading, Spelling, etc. The straw baskets hold items such as individual art supplies, drawing pads, and reference materials for their curriculum {items they will not necessarily need every day}. The shelves have more than enough room to house all of our curriculum for three children with room to spare. Plus, I have plenty of room for all of my homeschool notebooks, supplies, and lesson plans. In our family room we have lots of bookshelves that I am using to store general books and old curriculum that we may or may not go back to using. The kids also have bookshelves in their bedrooms to store reading they do for fun.

The wonderful thing about the new space I have chosen is because of the bookcase location, behind the half wall, when guests walk into our home and come upstairs their first view will not be of a school area - it still appears to be a dining room {other than the tripod that holds a white erase board and map that I can easily collapse and put away}. I am so happy for this new arrangement ... plus, the bonus, I now have a dedicated craft area in our old school room and, because I still had one extra school table left over, our girls now have a craft/sewing table in their bedroom too! So that is our space ... hop on over to "Heart of the Matter" and see all the great school rooms fellow homeschoolers have in their homes!

{Note: For those of you who have asked ...the IKEA bookcase we bought is the EXPEDIT.}