A Tour of Our School

I thought I'd share some pictures of our home classroom today. It's a work in progress, but the basics are there. I've heard a few people say that they don't think it's necessary to have a room dedicated to homeschooling, but in our case I think it will really enrich Aspen's experience, as well as provide some needed structure to help her focus when we're doing school.

So, without further ado, welcome to our classroom!



This is our very own children's library. Our book collection contains mostly books we've been given, plus a few special ones from when my older girls were small. There are even a few leftovers from my own childhood. The books featured on top of the bookcases and the little shelves are titles we'll be using in our ocean unit for the month of June. The little bulliten board display says "Dive Into Reading". Aspen thought that was neat. The toys are there for Abby to provide something interesting for her to play with other than the books.



This is the main wall, and it has our classroom flag, state homeschool card, the ABCs, Fruit of the Spirit posters, our calendar area, and the bulliten boards featuring our ocean theme. Our calendar area is interactive, something we'll do each morning. First, we have a little fun attendance game that I designed, just to create a definite transition to school. A small chart says "Who is here today?" and little disks with fish on them have Aspen, Abby and Ashley on them. When we start everyone puts their name disc (velcro) on to the chart to show they're here. Aspen gets to do Abby's for her until she's old enough.



Next we'll do calendar and a days of the week activity that also features a velcro chart. Squares that read "today", "Tomorrow" and "Yesterday" will each get placed on the proper day to help Aspen understand the sequence of days. A similar chart, also velcro, for the weather will be done daily. I found these adorable sets at Confessions of a Homeschooler, my absolute favorite homeschool blog. The post I linked to is an older one about her calendar time and has download links for her super cute days and weather charts. If you're a homeschool mom, or a digiscrapper, I encourage you to check out her whole blog, it's full of terrific free downloads and super creative ideas.



On this wall, which is to the right of the main wall, we have the continuation of the ABCs as well as numbers 1-10. Aspen is way past that in counting, but is still learning to write numbers, and so I went on and put these up for her. They were part of the ABC set. I got that as well as the other bulliten board items at a local Education Express store. In this area you'll see Aspen's workbox and temporary desk. This little white table and chairs is a set I bought when she was a baby and painted and it's seen its share of use over the last five years. She's a little big for it now, hence the temporary status. My mom has a bigger desk that's just perfect for her, and she'll hopefully be bringing that down here from VA sometime in mid-June. On the workbox you can see little apple number cards on each drawer. She'll start at #1 and work her way down each day. Most of the activities will be done with me or her sister for now, and as she progresses there will be more independant work as well.


And of course, no post would be complete without little Abby, who thinks the table is the coolest thing since sliced bread. She and Aspen christened it with a tea party consisting of goldfish crackers and sweet tea the other night when I brought it in from the garage.

For some of the displays I created, I used graphics from the following digital scrapbook kits: A Pinch of This & A Dash of That and Fish Are Friends.

I'm really looking forward to sharing our homeschool adventures with my readers again, so I hope you will all share your comments and come by often to learn with us! Stay tuned!