A few weeks ago in the mail, we got a giant box of kindergarten books and supplies…and all my dreams came true.
I asked my husband if he, too, were feeling his heart pound in euphoria as he looked at the mounds of curricula. Funny…he wasn’t.
Well, I’m excited anyway. (Even if the first day of school is like 20 days after I birth a child. At least I made some breakfast burritos for the freezer…I’m thinking that will solve 75% of my problems. Right?)
A few months ago I asked on my Facebook page: should we do “school” upstairs in the playroom (which is a great space), or downstairs where we eat/play/live life?
I was leaning towards downstairs, until my mom offered her opinion. Jessica, that upstairs space is PERFECT for school. I can’t believe you wouldn’t use it!
And so… (big sigh) I decided to go heed my mom’s advice, because (big sigh) she is rarely wrong about these sorts of things.
We’ll see how it goes, but I will say I’m thrilled with our little home school space.
This is the playroom. We actually always refer to it as the “man cave,” although to my poor husband’s dismay, it is probably the most un-manly man cave ever (at least grown man-ly).
I’ll display our work on my $3 creation, the artwork hanging device above. Although not technically “school stuff,” I love the hooks that hold their dress-up clothes!
This the little nook where we’ll do school. Don’t mind all the glue and markers on the table. It actually cleans off easily…you just have to clean it. Oops.
Here’s my crowning achievement…The Shelves. Don’t all those little labels make your heart race? Really? That’s just me?
I saw a similar art supply arrangement on a blog somewhere. I loved the blogger’s idea of keeping supplies always accessible to little ones, so they are free to create at any time. I found these bins at IKEA, though they’re actually flower pots.
We’ll use the world map and calendar for our Sonlight curriculum, and the letter charts are for the reading curriculum, Sing, Spell, Read, and Write. Also, I watercolored the mule hanging in the center? Impressed? You should be.
Thanks to my mother-in-law, who is a retired kindergarten teacher, we have a lot of extra games and manipulatives, which I store the “man cave” closet. Some of these I’ll use for Ty, my three-year-old, to do his school while we do kindergarten.
So there’s our tour! I love how organized and clean it is was for the fifteen minutes I took these pictures. We’ll see how it goes August 25, on our first day of school!
If you do preschool/homeschool, does this look similar to your space, or do you prefer “informal” learning spaces?
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Looks great! What are the coloring books stores in? Where did you get those?
Organized is definitely a great place to start! I love the art and dress-up clothes hanging up too.
I would love to have a dedicated space, but until we do some work on our house, there is not room for a permanent school area. I did find some awesome rolling carts with about 12 plastic drawers each (from Costco) for our art and school supplies so that’s a great help. Having everything accessible is key for me.
We are taking more of an “unschooling” approach to preschool for now because my kids seem to learn so much just from daily life, but I do want to aim for a couple of structured learning activities each week too.
Could you please tell me what you think of the Sonlight curriculum? Have you done a post I’ve missed? From what I can tell it’s pretty expensive. Worth the cost?
Hi Jessica! I’m planning to do a follow up post. Basically, yes, we liked it. Are you doing kindergarten? There are a few resources we didn’t use that much. We did not do their language program so I can’t speak to that. Overall it was so nice to have them tell you EXACTLY what to do. If you want additional info email me at jessicasmartt at gmail.com.