New School Room- 3/2009

Tour of the new school room

I’m so pleased with how it came out. And the best part?  We spent $0 on it- everything in it was given to us or found or we allready had.   Gotta love that.

SO- HERE ARE THE PICTURES OF OUR NEW SCHOOL ROOM!

Standing in the doorway, scanning from the left side of the room towards the right, all the way around.

On the left, our “fireplace”, picture of Monticello and bust of Jefferson sitting on top of our current read pile.  The antique secretary Kip brought home.

The room has a beautiful light to it all day thanks to these windows.

The bookshelf is one of the first things Kip ever gave to me.  TV in the corner for watching our Math-U-See lesson. The two wooden chairs are Uncle Karl’s caned chairs.

The school desk was listed on the homeschool email loop for free to whoever wanted to come pick it up.   Uncle Karl’s father’s medicane cabinet.   I think it’s tiger maple, not bird’s eye.  Colorful map that I bought at yard sale several years ago for a $1 and had never found a place to hang it.   The basket was my grandmothers- it’s filled with board books, a ball and an extra “giraffy” for Savannah.

You can see our bean bags in the corner nook.  The kids like to pile up in there with books.   The bookshelf on the left is the nasty one that Kip found- you can see it came out pretty good!   The armoir on the right is one we allready had- there is a complete set of Hooked on Phonics on the top shelf.  Another storage find…

A close up of our big table.

A better look at the bookshelf.   The balance thing on the top is a math balance from RightStart Mathematics.   Also on top is a geared clock for the unit on time we will be doing soon, the circus tent set (the rest of it is in the purple box below it) and a Lava lamp Kip’s sister gave him several years ago.   When I was deciding which toys to bring up to the schoolroom, I chose all quiet toys so that Nathan and Savvy wouldn’t create a loud disturbance.   I also have our dominoe set up here and our Indian set up here.

When we bought this house almost three years ago, we wanted to buy our forever house.    With that in mind, we really tried to think about what we would need in the long term, not just in the immediate time.   One important factor on our list was a large room that could be used as a school room down the road.   I know it’s not necessary and that there are lots of homeschoolers who don’t have the space for a dedicated school room.   But still, it’s a nice thing to have.   Lucky for us, this house had a fairly large bonus room.   We initially used it as a storage place and then as a guest bedroom.   However, a few weeks ago Kip said to me that he was tired of us doing school in the kitchen.   Tired of seeing things piled on the hutch and workbooks on the table.   So we decided to go ahead with converting the bonus room from guest room into school room.

We were SO blessed because within days of making that decision my Mom’s husband, James, called us with the offer of his old conference table.   It’s huge- 8 feet long x 4 feet wide.   They live 2 hours away, in South Charlotte (near Southpark mall)- James brought the table up that Thursday night after work and helped us get it upstairs and put back together.

Then, the next day, Kip found 2 pieces of furniture in storage.   A beautiful, antique secretary that just needed to be dusted.   And a neat old bookshelf- it was nasty- dirty, yellowed from cigarette smoke BUT I loved the layout of the shelf.  He brought both pieces home that night.  I cleaned up the secretary while he washed the bookshelf up, sanded it and then used leftover trim paint to paint it white.

We had several chairs from my Uncle Karl’s estate.  He was blind and caned chairs for a living. A dear friend bought them for me at auction and I’ve been storing them in the bonus room for a year now with no proper place to put them.  Uncle Karl’s father was a very talented furniture maker.  This same friend also got me a medicane cabinet made out of bird’s eye maple made by him.   You’ll see that hanging above the little student desk.