Our "School" Room

It's kind of funny, we moved into this house a little over two years ago now and had yet to do anything creative with the basement. It was pretty much finished off, a bit cold in temperature and hard feeling with the concrete floors but the lighting was great and the space was pretty much amazing speaking size-wise. For awhile my husband had his exercise bike down here, we had an extra single bed, then he moved a desk down here but he never really used it. It's been a ho-hum space to say the least. Fast forward to this past January when we started talking about homeschooling. I slowly started re-inventing the space with the idea that we may be homeschooling down the road...I wanted to see if I could create a space that would be fun and inviting. With minimal cost, (the only items I purchased for the space were the rugs, chalkboard, plastic bins and one of the bookcases) I am happy to report that I was able to put this together for our school room this year without breaking the bank! The couch we got from our local thrift shop and it's different variations of brown stripes and made of scratchy 70's material, but covering it up with a grey comforter makes it look so much better, I added some bright pillows and it's a nice place to relax now.

I used to teach a Montessori preschool so I do have things arranged a little like they were at our school simply in the way of having little "stations" set up. I really like having a space set aside for reading and relaxing, a place for all of her literature and "school" workbooks to be kept, a science station and bookcase, as well as an art area. I have additional supplies kept in an adjacent room off the school room on a shelf and we'll bring them out as we need them throughout the year. The pull-down chalkboard map was something I had when I was growing up, my dad still had it and I was thrilled that he gave it to me to use since we are studying world geography this year! The back side of this is a map of the united states.

Here is a shot of our science area...

and our art area.

This is her bookcase for literature, language arts and history...

And here is a shot of our room from a different view...

Our science bookcase...

And Z wanted to have a place for things in progress or for stashing things she uses on a regular basis. I toyed with the idea of purchasing an actual locker but for $100 I just couldn't justify it! I opted to pick up these plastic crates from Wal-Mart instead. They were $3.97 each so the price wasn't bad at all. We stacked them up and then I put a screw through the top one going into the wall so it won't wobble. It works!

Here is a shot of my craft/office space. We'll see how much crafty stuff I get done this year while homeschooling! Not setting my expectations very high right off the bat so that I won't be disappointed.

And last but not least, here is a picture or our traditional black chalkboard. Zoey wanted one so badly and I actually found this one on Pottery Barn's website on sale months ago. It's really nice quality, I'm glad I splurged. As you can see, it's already getting some use.

It makes my heart happy that Z is so excited about homeschooling! I hope you enjoyed our little school room tour!