Monday, August 10, 2009

Our homeschool room *slash* play room.

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We currently live in a rent house while we decide what we want to do (build or buy). It has this ugly paneling that I can't stand so I decided I would try to cover as much of it as I can! lol Just a warning in advance of the *ugly wall situation*....

Our homeschool room was our playroom but I decided to use it for both. Actually when it was just the playroom, the boys never played *in* it. They would go get the toys they wanted to play with and bring them into the living room. We also keep a few of their favorite toys and the train table in our living room anyway. I like to have them in the same room as me anyway so the playroom could actually be called the toy storage room!

I started converting it over this summer. I'm not completely finished with it but wanted to share. This is the monkey wall!! I just put this up today. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. Maybe a word wall as I have tons of bananas left AND a printable to make more. Maybe an art wall, although the older three have their own bulletin boards for things like that and you can see a bit of their art on the wall anyway. Maybe just a pretty to brighten the room? I don't know. Any ideas??
I am not sharing the desk area right now. lol It's a bit messy as I redo the bookcase, storage thing, and closet. BUT it is a 6 ft table and you can see the top of the computer in this picture. Also you can see our ABC border. More for pretty than anything else. We are going to add our ABC bible verses to the bottom of the border as we go each week. The bulletin board on the left is Kaleb's and the one on the right is Nathan's. I don't have Nathan and Gabriel's names on their boards yet...I need to get on that. I have their workbox schedules on their bulletin boards instead of on strips. I thought this might be easier for us. The red and blue sheets in between are their workbox grids. Then you can see the world and USA maps on the wall with the Minnesota Vikings calendar. Under the calendar is one of our storage bins. There are two shorter ones under the table. I want to add some corner shelves for more storage space but we haven't gotten there yet.


On the same wall as the maps and calendar, there is our main homeschool storage. There is a window in between that I didn't get in the picture. On the wall next to the bookcase is a 100 chart, ABC manuscript poster, and K and G's math art that they did last year. I just like it so much that it had to stay! =) Under the 100 chart is a little toddler table that right now has books piled on it. Soon it will be where K and G sit for circle time and do their little tactile letter craft every Monday morning.

On the far left in the pic, you can see Gabriel's board. The bookcase is currently under construction which is why it is so messy right now. All of the beginning/phonics readers are in the white storage on top of the bookcase and on the first shelf. I still have more to put up there. Thanks to my obsession with buying Nathan tons of readers when he was learning to read in public school and my desire to keep everything and anything remotely educational, we have plenty for Kaleb to read. lol Our globe and a mess of things that need to be put away also are hanging out on the top of the bookcase. The rest of the shelves are full of various books and activity books we've bought over the years. The bottom couple of shelves house Gabriel and Drake's books and a few toys. The *toy* part of the room starts below G's board with the toy bin that needs to be overhauled and extends under the monkey wall.

My plan is to move more of their toys to a toy box behind our couch in the living room to make more room in this room. It's the plan anyway! =D I haven't gotten to it yet.

Nathan has a bookcase in his bedroom that houses all of his personal books and other personal items. We have two library book baskets in the living room and a book basket in each bedroom including ours. We also have books stored in a (suppose to be decorative not functional) bookcase in the living room. My *goal* is to get all of the children's books into the school room eventually....or at least close. I'm going to get another bookcase for right outside the schoolroom which is at the end of the hallway to add more storage.

I will be so happy when we finally get a bigger house!! lol Until then our little school/play room is nice to have and we enjoy it!!

5 comments:

  1. Cute kiddos, thanks for sharing!

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  2. I love the title of your blog..monkeyschool...that could soooo be my homeschool name as well:)

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  3. I love your monkey theme!

    Happy Homeschooling!

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  4. LOL Thanks a lot! I have the same panelling and I own my place! :P

    (Ok, it isn't my fave feature and I'm just faking being offended. But we bought our house for the space, not the decor. You know how it goes. But how funny to see "my" panelling on your wall. I think everyone in the 60's used this stuff. It was like, a law or something back in the day.)

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  5. You can use 1/2 water/starch and a cool patterned cloth to cover up the paneling. My mother did it in one of our rentals. It doesn't mess up the wall just use water and sponge to remove before you move.

    As for the monkey wall... which is really cute. You could use your spelling words for the month, or science words or anything you want them to see daily to memorize.

    Your room is cute despite the dark panes :)

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