Monday, August 13, 2012

Our School Room 2012 - 2013

It is time for the Not Back to School peek into everyone's classroom week. This is my favorite week! We use our living room, which is our largest room, as our classroom. It holds our dining room table and works wonderfully for us.

The second photo is the view of our music corner. We have a lap harp, piano, and also a  harmonica. The kids use Freepianolessons4kids.com to learn the piano. You can also see behind the piano that we use the stairwell for educational posters, our world history timeline, and our U.S.A. map. I use this website to make our timeline figures.




At the bottom of our stairs we have the bookcase I got for free last year! It holds all of our math manipulatives, geography books, continent boxes, and most of the history books. Following that picture is a close up of one of our continent boxes which holds postcards, pictures, money, crafts and artifacts from each continent.


Next is our computer area. This is where the kids do typing lessons. They use the headphones so that the songs and games on the program don't disturb other learners in the room.

As we move around the room, we come to our table where all of our seat work takes place. I have found that my current set of children need the structure of sitting at the table as their workload has gotten harder. My oldest, who has graduated, could learn under the table, in bed or sitting on the kitchen counter. My younger set of kids do their best work at the table. You can see that we use a laptop for math (Teaching Textbooks), and the CD player in the background is used often for books on tape and Story of the World.

After the table we have our "ready to go" game baskets and therapy corner. We spend many hours every week in doctor waiting rooms and the baskets hold all of our games that are easy to pack and go for educational entertainment while we are waiting to see doctors. On the floor is our physical therapy corner for our youngest who needs some corrective physical therapy for her turned-in feet.

This is our circle time board.  On the board is our current character trait that we are working on, a poem from our quarterly poet, artwork of our quarterly artist, calendar and reminders, and our Bible verse or story of the week. Circle time is also when we work on coming-of-age skills (such as hygiene, social skills with friends/strangers, and skills for growing up responsibly, respectfully and refined).



The next bookcase holds the majority of the books we use daily. This bookcase also holds our FIAR (Five In a Row) and Beyond FIAR resources. 

Right by our front door is where we have our white board and spelling corner. We are using All About Spelling this year and so far we love it.

Lastly, we have our row of bookcases that holds most of the rest of the books in the house. The red bucket holds our weekly library books.


We also do lots of reading in our sitting room which has our red love seat.


Hope you've enjoyed a look at our classroom this year.

Blessings, Dawn

15 comments:

  1. I love your rocking chair by the circle time board! And I am soooo drooling over your timeline. Love it!

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  2. I love your piano! Thank you for that website too, I'm going to check into that (for myself mostly!). I wish you the best year!

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  3. It looks like you have a great setup. It looks very organized and well structured. I hope you all have a wonderful year.

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  4. I love all the baskets! Nice job! Have a great school year. :)

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  5. You're an inspiration, as always! Thanks for the piano link, too; we'll definitely utilize that this year.

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  6. You have done such a great job with your space! I think the timeline is fantastic, and I love the game baskets. Thanks for sharing!

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  7. What a creative and fun room! Have a great year!

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  8. I love your home! It looks warm and cozy. You are able to pack a great deal of learning gear in there, and it all looks so organized. I would love to learn in that space!

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  9. Oh, always nice to meet a fellow CMer and I do think I am going to have to borrow your idea of the continent box (since we're doing world geo this year) and I am now following you (esp. since we're hoping to adopt SN child(ren)soon). Love your learning area! :)

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  10. Hello Dawn,
    Thanks for commenting on my blog. It's nice to meet you!
    I will be using your idea for the continent boxes. What a great idea!
    Have a wonderful school-year!
    Candace @ Growing with the Greniers

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  11. Love the timeline tape! I'm going to look into the piano lessons. My oldest lost interest last year, so we're looking for something different to try.

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  12. I am planning to make continent boxes for next year, so I will try to pick your brain for ideas when it gets closer to the time. It's great that you have so many bookcases. Those baskets for waiting rooms are a great idea!

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  13. (This is Belinda, signed on with my dd's login). I don't think I'd ever seen your school room before! I love this combination of fun and function. I'll ask you the same question that I pose when I show my own school room: does it ALWAYS look like this (LOL)??

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  14. Thank you for the detailed tour of your school room. It looks great, full of learning opportunities! Have a successful year ahead!

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