wow. Amy that is only my dream room for my girls we don't have anything like that. That is so neat. Thanks for sharing.
No ladies my dining room table doesn't look any thing like that either but I did think it was neat. (Most houses around here are just one story--except the new very expensive ones). I am going to be putting up a weather center and school like calandar and alphabet chart and taking down some of my coke cola decorations for the cause.
I wish we had a room like that, or even the space in the living room to do something like that, but space is very limited here & we can't even add a room on because we live in a rental house right now. We're going to have to move by next summer though, we have a new baby due Christmas and you can't put 3 kids, even if they are all girls, in the same bedroom. At least not in this house, the rooms aren't big enough.
We have 3 girls in the same bedroom. It is the Master BR (It was the biggest, and we did have to give up the bathroom in there). We are also in a rental house, so we have to work with what we have. We have bunk beds with a full on the bottom. All 3 share the same bed. When money is tight, you just have to do with what you have. The difference in price for a 4 BR house here is about $600 a month... WAY more than we can afford!! When we move next summer, I'm really hoping for a 4BR house. I'm prayng hard about that!!
You are lucky that your master BR is that big. We gave the bigger bedroom to the 2 girls when we moved in here. Just the girls' beds are in there, we keep the baby's clothes in our room & the older hangs up all her clothes, so that saves on needing a dresser in there. There is no way, that 2 cribs and a twin bed are going to fit in there & leave enough room to walk in there. Although our youngest may be in a toddler bed by Christmas, you never know what she's going to do next. Plus, my sonogram wasn't exactly clear on whethere it's a girl or boy. They think a girl, buy my S-I-L looked at my sonogram and said she saw little boy parts, not little girl parts. DH is hoping for a son anyway. We all know how men are about having sons...
Amy, I took down a good bit of my cow pictures to make room for school stuff. It makes me wish for a whole separate classroom.
2 more weeks and I will have a classroom/office. Thats when my daycare closes and my son doesn't need the toy space, he getting kinda older for toys, he only has a few small boxes now. I wish is could be like these peoples class room. But I will just be happy to have a room for all our school stuff, instead of taking up a corner of the living room.
Phoenyxstarr, I understand about the clothes space. We also gave up the walk-in closet with the MBR. All 4 kids clothes are in it, beacuse my son's closet has no clothes bar, only shelves-- great for toys, but not clothes! We have a dresser inside that walk-in closet, beacuse there was no room for another in the BR. Right now 2 of my girls are sharing a dresser, because of space, but there really isn't enough room in it. We have to hold the clothes down and slam the drawer! It makes it hard to teach them to put their clothes away neatly, because really, they can't. When you open the drawer, things fall out!
I feel like a guilty bunny..... My kid's classroom / playroom is almost exactly like that! My husband built a loft bed to fit a queen sized bed, for the twins. It doubles (As you can imagine) as a Fort, Reading Spot, Hiding Spot, Pirate Ship, etc. My youngest's bed is under that, but it is a flex pace and eventually, it will be a built in corner desk. The loft bottom of the bed is 5 feet up, so an adult (ME) can walk underneath it. In another room (Our masterbedroom) is our classroom / playroom. This is about 15 feet by 20 feet. There is a large double window on one wall and on another wall, there is a smaller window with a deep window sill. (The wall on that side is one foot thick.) We use this as a science window (Plants and what-nots). That side of the calss is made of full sized bookshelves back to back, with one side against the wall. There are 6 total, so they look like a small library. We have a large 12foot by 9 foot rug on the floor. and a sitting level large square table. (Got it from Ikea for $40!) We have an old small end table in a corner with the 21" TV/DVD player on it. Oh! And we are in a 3 bedroom apartment, so we cannot change the building, like we could in our house. (We did things like "Dutching" the doors. (Cut a door in half, so you can close only the bottom to control the babies. MUCH MUCH MUCH better than ANY baby gate!) Oh! And we used to have three matching "School Desks" that were FABULOUS for about 2 weeks, then they fell apart and we realised that we just needed some cliboards and a nice open project table... Here are some photos taken at various times.... This was when the twins were 4. It was taken in our old house.... http://pic20.picturetrail.com/VOL88/101032/3663765/45012252.jpg Our Science Window... http://www.jennifererix.com/images/apart09.jpg Various photos of classroom/playroom, right after we moved to the apartment.... Again, it is BAREN compared to now.... http://www.jennifererix.com/images/apart10.jpg http://www.jennifererix.com/images/apart06.jpg http://www.jennifererix.com/images/apart07.jpg http://www.jennifererix.com/images/apart08.jpg And here is our patio.. http://www.jennifererix.com/images/patio01.jpg http://www.jennifererix.com/images/patio02.jpghttp://www.jennifererix.com/images/patio02.jpg
Jennifer, I love the idea of the two bookcases back to back. I never thought of that! You would think I had never been in a library. I am going to talk to my husband about doing something like that with shorter bookcases for my youngest daughter's books. Thanks for sharing the pictures and ideas.
Jennifer, Your classroom looks wonderful, it's my dream room do you think you could help me do my room. Remember we live in a RV and there is 4 of us.
I need to take some photos of what it looks like now. However, my camera needs bateries and that ain't happening until next friday... I do not recommend anyone doing what we did. What I mean by that is, we spent waaaaaay too much money on the "Classroom" stuff. Heck, there is NO way we will be able to consume all of the consumables. Mainly because I am adicted to school stuff! But all of that happened BEFORE we moved to this city. Beforehand, we had nothing around us and had to buy everything we used. For example, we had one teny tiny library, with nearly no resources.. But now.. WHEW! We have a library system that is just FABULOUS! WE hardly buy anything now. Nearly everything you see was baught when we lived out in the boonies. Now we keep wat we have and use it. ANd borrow most everything else from the llibraries. Now, not everything is a regret, of course..... The loft bed, was a need and was a SMART investment! Especially with it being a Queen sized bed and having my husband build it with "Rails" all the way to the ceiling. The theory was to create a playspace, like you would have a MDonalds. We have 9 foot ceilings, so it works out. It was about $100 for the mattress and about $350 in wood and supplies. But it is better and more solid than anything you could but for $2,000 around here... The bookshelves do not match, because they came from all over the house. I robbed my own house! haha! They were originally about $30 each. The TV/DVD was $99 at Christmas-time at walmart. The table it sits on was a throw away from my Mother-in-law. The large 12 foot by 9 foot rug (To prottect the apartment's pale, light tan carpet) was $79 at GardenRidge. (LOVE that place!) We got a large globe from walmart for $15. I used to belong to "Brighter Vision" and have tons of their workbooks, manipulatives, stickers and hardback books. But I canceled it. ($15 a month!) I have an entire level of a book shelf of Childcraft encyclopedias (Whole set for $5 at a thrift store!) I have an entire row of a bookshelf of Text books, all for about $.25 each!! I have listed these before... We have a large 3 foot by 5 foot American Flag on a pole that hangs at an angle off the wall. ($15) We have a TExas flag, too, from my family. We have glow-in-the-dark stars and nine planets on the bedroom ceiling ($5) There is a local teacher supply store, nearby that has my photo next to the register, with the words, "Do not sell to this woman under penalty of law!".. Ok, Kidding.. but it did get rediculas (SP) at one point. I have learned, or I am learning that pencils and papers can be just as workable as tons of workbooks. (Sigh) Then, in the middle of all of this, I spent too much money on printer ink and reams of paper printing everything I found on-line. (Stupid, stupid stupid....) Now, we do not drink, smoke, do drugs, party, go bowling, have friends over, play bingo or lottery.. or well.. ANYTHING.. so all of our money goes to bills and the kids... Of course, if I would have been more frugel (SP) with my money, I would have had more saved for emergencies... I am doing that now. We do not print or buy anything that is not going to be used in at least two months, unless it is a prepackaged curriculum or other major steal. WE regularly OVER-use our local libraries. And I spent more money on blank 70 sheet $.10 notebooks and pencils than anything else! So don't be like me... Never buy or print anything you do not plan to use within a month or two... (Exceptions to every rule, of course) Oh! And we have maybe ONE shelf on ONE bookshelf that has regular reading books on it. WHY? Because I figured it out hat buying reader books was a waste. WE no longer buy things that are not consumable, and so, we use our libraries for everything else! At any given time, there are about 30-50 items from the library in our home. We have a special shelf for library items. You can even get computer games! Name brand! I have used my flatbed scanner for library books and stuff like charts and stuff... (I scan the page, then print it, or SAVE it till later...) Oh! And I allways print in DRAFT!@ It uses about 1/3 of the ink! << Great tip! I will take better, updated photos, when I get more batteries. As far as helping anyone else. I do not know. I do know that having more than one use for something, such as more that one use for a space, is VERY helpfull! jen
Here is a security tip: When you have two bookshelves back-to-back, such as these, it is always a good idea to bind them together, somehow. Depending on the type of wood or type of bookshelf, there are many ways to do this. Our shelves are cheap partical baord $30 bookshelves. Therefore we did not care what bolting them together would do to them. So we simply used a drill to drill a whole 2/3rds of the way up through the backs of two shelves. Then placed a bolt through the hole and a washer and nut on the other side and screwed it all together. For further security against CLIMBING monkeys... Bolt each of the bookshelve to the wall, from the side that is touching the wall. Again, about 2/3rd the way up.
I'm praying for a new apartment so we can have 3 bedrooms. It would be so nice! Right now our living room IS our classroom. And I wouldn't take pictures of it. LOL
Wow! What great rooms. . .Jennifer's and the family in AZ. Makes me want to turn our bonus room into our classroom after all. That was my original plan, but then I found it easier to do school with Rachel at the kitchen table so I can clean as she works in her workbook and can be there quickly and easily as she asks for help/wants to show me what she's done. The bonus room is upstairs, and I guess I just didn't want to deal with constantly going up there to do school. Maybe we could have the classroom up there anyway, but still do some work downstairs at other times. . . Hmmm? Something for me to ponder. Right now bonus room is the "playroom" and there are toys everywhere! Organized of course, but just a lot neatly everywhere in the room along the walls. I'd have to reorganize stuff to make it a classroom.
I will resist. I will resist. Even after seeing Jennifer's fantastic photos, I will still resist! LOL Three years ago, when we moved into this big house and started getting things together for homeschooling, I envisioned exactly what that family in AZ has. A loft, desks, a computer nook, books everywhere, posters, etc. Basically, I pictured a big ole' reproduction classroom. Thankfully, we didn't have any money at the time to put toward The Cause. I say thankfully because I really don't think it would've worked for our family. My children are small and they keep on coming. Holing myself up in a classroom for hours at a time, separated from the rest of the house, trying to keep babies happy in there - ugh. If I had a 14 y/o and several other older children to help like the lady in AZ, then maybe. But, I don't. And at this point I'm as happy as a clam with the children doing sit down work at the kitchen table. I laughed out loud when I read part of that article. "Many homeschooling families are forced to spread their things out on the kitchen table", LOL! What if we do it by choice!? I don't think there is anything wrong with the school-at-home approach, if that works for a particular family. I thought it was what I wanted -- I still want the loft and all the books, though! LOL. But, I feel much more relaxed knowing that I can use our whole house and our yard for school. I hope we can make it work for years! If the computer is in the master bedroom, someone can be up there doing a Spanish program. Older kids can read all of their history, science, lit, on the couch or in their beds or on a blanket outside. Math and writing need a table, but the kitchen table is fine for that if children rotate. A desk in a bedroom might be a good idea for kids that need quiet. Not all children do, though. Some learn best while they toss a nerf ball back and forth with their brother. I still love brightly colored posters of the continents and mobiles hanging from the ceiling. When I think about it, though, it's because that's what I'm used to. That's what I associate w/ school. I'm not convinced that my children will learn more with a floating teradactyl above them, though. I'm not bashing home classrooms. They really work for some families. For me, though, school is part of what we do at home. I want it to be seamless and relaxed. I love the idea of snuggling up with my youngest ones, reading on the couch while the older ones do seatwork at the kitchen table just 10 feet away. I love the togetherness of that I love schooling in a homey, cozy, unfabricated way. And, yes Jennifer, it's cheaper, too! LOL. I just would hate for any of us to feel inadequate if we don't have rooms that look like they're straight out of a school supply website. It's not the red bookcases and snazzy map rugs that kids need to learn. It's a loving, stimulating environment where they can really learn to love learning, and be HOME with us Maybe I can fit the loft in a bedroom??? LOL.
I am a pregnant woman with insomnia, evidently feeling very passionate tonight about kitchen tables Sorry for such a looooong post. Night
heh Jacci I agree, I love the idea of having a "classroom" with all that stuff but I know deep down, when I get my extra room it will likely be a playroom for all the toys with extra storage space for our School stuff. I might even get nutty and put up a bulletin Bord (I love making those things!) but Sami will probably still come do her schoolwork in her favorite spot... smack in the middle of the living room floor. I can't even imagine how she thinks it's comfortable. there is no rug (tile floors) and she has a nice desk with a computer and a small table and chairs her size AND a princess school desk. Even so, she picks the floor 100% of the time. She dosn't care about a schoolroom, she wants to be in the middle of everything.
