My school room in all its reality

Well, I had meant to do this post about 2 weeks ago to link up with the Not Back to School blog hop at Heart of the Matter.  I somehow had this idea that I could get the school room all nicely set up and clean before I took photos.  Reality check Jen!!  You live in a house with 4 boys and an adult male and none of them, repeat None of Them, is interested in cleaning up after themselves or anyone else.

So here are my school room photos.  This space is actually a really large bedroom in this strange old house so one end is our lounge room and the other end is our school space.

Mum's shelves

On the top shelf are my LLBean totes, one for each child.  These are our workboxes.  They can stand on their own and I llluuurrrvve them.  On the next shelf down is my filing box with our worksheets photocopied for the next term,each filed by subject and then book title.  I also have my printing supplies and some stray worksheets and notebooking pages.

The colourful plastic files are my way of doing workboxes.  Each child has a colour and they are numbered.  The plan is to fill them each day with their worksheets or a photocopy of the cover of the book they will be working from with me.  These go in their tote along with a set of pages set out as a checklist.  My children share a lot of resources at different levels so this I keep them in my purple day crate.  On this shelf I also store our pencil jar, our erasers and our sharpeners in little metal buckets.

Mum's shelves and purple day crate

The middle shelf  of the shelves houses a box full of preschooler activities.  These are the product of many printing, laminating and cutting hours.  I love creating them but am still to get my 3 year old to be able to fully appreciate them.

My purple crate fits in the empty shelf when it is empty and the books out of it get sorted into the bottom shelf by subject.   I fill the purple crate each day with our books for the day.  I like to file them in the order I will need them and just work my way through the box.

The crates to the left in the picture contain some craft supplies and a much larger LLBean tote that I use for the library or just about anything actually.  Did I say I love my totes?

Sonlight and craft shelves

This bookshelf contains my eldest's Sonlight books and some extras that are for this year but not this term.  Down low are the supplies and activites my 6 and 3 year old are allowed freely.  Up high are the electrical kits, maths manipulatives and special paper supplies.  Just to the left edge is our morning notice board.  I have a calendar chart on here and I use the rest of the board for teaching.

These shelves are more for storing the boys' work.  I am not the greatest at filing.  Erk!!  So when the boys have art work or worksheets that need to be kept they are put in their own crate.  Once a term I pull them out, throw out the rubbish and file the rest.

Of course I also store the obligatory laminator, paper cutter and other tit bits here too.  The plastic boxes (a favourite storage method of mine) contain past school work, past art work and more craft supplies.  Some day I should just let the boys have free reign of the craft supplies, photograph the worthwhile creations and throw the rest out.  Some day!

The posters are for our Zaner-Bloser hand writing curriculum.  When we get back to being able to use our school table (see next photo) they will be a great reference as we work.  I love my printer but this one is dying.  Please pray it will hold out another 12 months until next year's tax refund.

School table taken over by dh fixing up a computer

The computer will be moved back to the desk against the wall soon and we will be able to get on with school more easily. Yay!

The reality of a lounge floor and no toy storage

This is the lounge room floor right now.  It is probably only 15 minutes away from clean but it hasn't been on my radar for a while as I have been spring cleaning my kitchen.  That is my youngest in front, eating a very healthy breakfast of a chocolate weetbix biscuit.  Groan!!!

Ok, I did it.  It took quite a while to get it all put together but now you know how homeschooling with 4 boys looks.  Messy!

Best wishes
Jen