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I’d thought I’d share our little homeschool area.

Since we’re living in a townhouse, we’re limited on available space and we’re limited in options. First, though most homeschoolers take over their dining room area for homeschool, I did not want to do that. First, we host a weekly Bible study in our home, and I like to keep “public areas” ready at any time so that we can share our hospitality when needed. So that cut out our living room and dining room areas.
The other rooms were the master bedroom and the playroom. Well, the playroom is out for obvious reasons, even though in some ways it would make the most sense. It is the biggest room in the house, but there are way too many distractions for my highly distractable kindergartner! And I would prefer to keep the master bedroom as a hideaway and sanctuary.
So, our little homeschool is in our girls’ bedroom.
Above you can see our bulletin boards, and some of my oldest’s work I’ve hung up on the wall: her self-portrait showing her senses, her turtle, etc. To the left of her desk are my file bins, and to the right is a little garbage can (made out of a plastic coffee container- one day I’ll mod podge or something and make it cute) and little shelves holding her Lil’ Carry All with all of her supplies, and the bottom shelf holds her Couisinaire rods that we use on a regular basis. Inside the desk cubby is construction paper and coloring books to keep Lily occupied when she’s home with us. The rug is there to keep the chair from scratching our hardwood floors.
Here is the wall pocket hanger I got on sale at Staples. I use it to hold all of our “active” work, our math books and various materials, our library books, and unit folder.

Here is the girls bookcase (I just love this bookcase, it’s one of the things we added when we remodeled this house). The square tote at the top holds all the math manipulatives. The basket on the third shelf holds of our Spanish flashcards, and the basket below that normally holds all of our Leapfrog Tag Reader books (I am a HUGE fan of those, by the way!) and all of our Spanish language books.

To the left of our bookcase is a new addition to our little homeschool! Since Abby is now progressing with her reading, I created flashcards with all of the words she has learned to this point. Now we can use those flashcard words to play our “word game” (i.e. make sentences).

And quite often we will spread out on the floor right in front of this area with our work, when sitting at a desk just gets to be too much for our antsy selves.

And here are my “teacher” files. Inside are the teacher handbooks, the big binder of Abby’s work, record book, etc. The basket on top holds highlighters, pens, stapler, and the electric pencil sharpener (my personal toy). Also in this picture you see the trimmer and 3-hole punch. Seriously they should write on the front of the teacher’s manual how much you need these things! I could not live without them.

And this bin is our curriculum organized in folders by unit. I’ve organized our books with the connecting unit as well, so all we have to do is grab the next set of books and folder and get started. That really takes a lot of the pressure and stress out of homeschooling, and I wish I could say this simple, brilliant idea had been mine. But nope, another homeschooling mom came by and mentioned her idea and I copied her gladly!

So, that’s our little homeschool. I’ve seen other homeschool pictures that have amazing, ornate set ups — but I am happy to say it IS quite possible to homeschool, even if you have only a little corner to make it work.

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