Homeschool Schoolroom Make Over

Year 4, five children, one room, six desks, what is a home educator to do with our school room?

Step One:  Look around and PANIC because what you thought you had done, doesn't look to hot by week six of your homeschool year.  It's year four and all and you *should* have this under control right?  Right?  No.

Step Two:  Think of the kids, how the function, where you need more space, which direction are the windows, stop starring at the disorganized and incredibly FULL bookshelf in the room, and definitely STOP thinking that DH needs to finally build that really cool one you saw on Pinterest and want so bad.

Step Three:  Keep Calm and grab some coffee.

This, my friends, was me last week on Friday.  I thought I had organized the schoolroom for the 11 billionth trillionth time and that it looked good....but, but...once we started using the room, it wasn't functioning.  So it was time to give our schoolroom a Make Over!  I didn't want to go out to the dreaded Dollar Store, one more, time....so I worked with what I had in the house.  Double brownie points for me in the end when the room looked FANTASTIC and I got to brag that we didn't spend one more cent on it.  So here is our new school room, in pictures.  I will caption each section describing in as much detail what I did and why I felt it made a difference.  Enjoy!

This is our Word Wall.
As the children learn new sight words we add them to the word wall.
It's their "trophy" for conquering the new words.

This is a close up of the Letter Tt on our Word Wall.
I have chosen to BOX the letters so that the children continue to see the shape of the words.

These are the children's Workboxes.  Each shelf has nine workboxes.
The ones on the left belong to our second grader, he uses all nine boxes.
The ones on the right are shared by our first grader who uses boxes #1-6
and our preschooler who has boxes #7-9.

This is our preschooler's desk.
Next to him are three bins (red, yellow, red) with the flash cards he likes to use.
Thankfully, he is not a daydreamer so facing the window isn't an issue for him.  His desk and chair was a FreeCycle find....yep, they were free!

These desks belong to our first and second graders.
They use the little space under their seat to store their independent reading book,
their dry erase board tablets, and their daily journals.  I place the old play rug under their desks so that it keeps the desks in one spot in the room plus it protects the wood floor.  I got these two desks on FreeCycle (yep, for FREE)...they were dirty and written on so I cleaned them up and got them back into good and usable shape.  I love free finds like these!

This is the corner next to our preschooler's desk,
the top of the shelf are items for the teacher/mom ONLY. ;)

This is the supply shelf, I used small coffee tin cans to store supplies like pencils, rubber bands, chalk, scissors, glue, etc.  I covered them with a pretty paper I made, if you are interested I can upload them, just leave me a comment.  The old wipe tub holds blank index cards which the kids use to draw on or to write notes to friends/family.  The second shelf stores their flash cards. The first one is Religious ones, the middle one is Math and Science, and the right one is Reading. They are either in individual small ziploc bags or with rubber bands. Only one set per child is allowed out at a time.

I added the green curtains which my MIL gave me a while back and I didn't know which room to use them in so they were sitting in a closet.  They match the containers in the bookshelf perfectly.

THIS is the main reason I started this Make Over, the bookshelf, it was such a mess...
what I did was use these little crates I picked up at the Dollar Store long ago...
I had them full of junk/toys basically and now they store books.
On top of the shelf I placed the supplies I do not want the children handling without my help.
The first shelf stores my books which I make copies from or I use as resources.
The second shelf has books from last year which I use to go back to when needed in addition to our Scholastic Readers Series. The third row has green containers from the Dollar Store which now have our easy readers in two, our little Father Lavasik religion books in another.   The last two shelves have educational puzzles and games which we use frequently. Most Dollar Store or Marshalls finds.

This room has two entrances but no doors this is the view from the living room into the schoolroom and what I consider the front of the room. The student workboxes are in the front.
In the corner there I have little tables with papers, notebooks, construction paper, colored pencils, and other supplies for the toddler to use.  It's his "desk" when he "does school"  :)
The tables are big enough for him to work his little puzzles on which are located to the right of him.  

This is the other view from the side entrance into the school room.  Here you can see the children on the left.  They are on the school room computer.  You can see the front of the room here, the map, the calendar, our Morning Message Board, and our teaching board.  On top of the boards is a line with clothespins to display the work of the children.  On the opposite corner (on the left of this picture) is our eldest son's desk/computer.  But recently, he likes to go to our dinning room table and spread his books out.

Here you can see our Morning Routine calendar and morning message, our prayers and our focus of the week.

This is the dry erase board I use for our Morning Message and also has the Letter of the Week for our Preschooler, the Feast Day, and our Count Down of the Week and Day of School.  To the left of this is our calendar.  I bought these dry erase boards on Craigslist for like $10 for two of them...the one on the right is the one I use for teaching.

Hope you have enjoyed our school room make over!

Thanks for stopping by.

Blessings,