Schoolroom pics.

UPDATE:  Other people's learning rooms.

Today I treat you to pictures of our schoolroom, as is.  (That is, I just walked in --- didn't clean up at all.) 

We moved into the house this winter, and decoration has been a low priority, so the walls are pretty bare.  Yesterday I taped a weekly schedule to the wall above the big worktable, for Oscar to see.  Later Mark plans to screw to the wall there a thumbtack-board made from a spare half-sheet of drywall, wrapped in colorful fabric.  I still haven't gone to get the fabric. 

Yes, we have an IKEA around here.  How can you tell?

The room is a little disproportionately narrow, so I took over some of the adjacent "foyer" space.  A small shelf is meant to hold work for the now-three-year-old to use at the little table.  As soon as I figure out what that will be.

Here's another view.  The cabinets hold supplies.   The base cabinet is recycled from our old house, and the tall cabinets are just ordinary steel locking cabinets.  We added combination padlocks because I kept losing my keys.  See the clothespin bag hanging on the left wall?  There's a clothesline running across the top, just out of the frame, but you can see some paintings that are hanging from it in front of the curtain valance.  Red, blue, green.  I'd say they are hanging "to dry" except that Milo probably painted them weeks ago and are just hanging around.

Let's look inside the tall cabinets.  First, the one that I open every day because it contains each day's work:

Ahh, I'm so proud of this nice, neat cabinet.  The white dishtubs are labeled "Math," "Reading," etc.  There's a lot of odds and ends, manipulatives and flashcards and stuff; the dishtub is easy to retrieve.

Paint and glue are in secondary containment, always an important consideration when working with hazardous materials.  The little file thingy holds upcoming math masters and the files for the reading program I devised (with help).  Subjects that require only a couple of workbooks or so live in magazine files.  The tubs on the bottom hold manipulatives.

Less tidy:  The Cabinet I Hold Extra Stuff In!

Just don't ask.

The underside of the base cabinet isn't locked and contains things I want the children to have ready access to.  For example, certain craft supplies (certain = "the ones that do not spill") and a box of folders with Oscar's more independent work.  Theoretically, I can say "Go get your red folder and do the worksheets in it" now. 

Last but not least, the window through which we can wat ch the yellow school buses speed by:

Comments

[Kelly]

Are those wooden wedgits in the less tidy cabinet?

Last year we devised a scheme whereby we worked for two hours each Saturday during cold weather on home projects. We cycled our way though cleaning out all of the closets, the basement, did some home repairs, etc. All those things that you never get around to. By the end of the winter, we'd crossed just about everything off the list. As it is all messy again, we're getting ready to institute the routine again this year. I figure, it will keep things from getting too out of hand.

[bearing]

What's a wedgit?

I like your Saturday scheme. We are going to try shifting some of the weekly chores from me doing them by myself on Tuesday, to everyone working together Sunday night. Maybe the Monday fresh start will be nice.

[Kelly]

Wedgits are little stacking things. I've only found them in plastic, but you had something that looked like wooden ones.

http://www.timberdoodle.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=582

It's nice that the children are starting to be old enough to assign tasks, isn't it? Now Mary Evelyn vacuums the stairs, and Max cleans the windows and mirrors. They've been picking up toys and things all along, but now we have actually moved up to chores.

[Ray from MN]

School sure has changed.

Back in 49-50, Sisters Jean Patrick and Claudia would have needed heckuva lot bigger desks to store all that kind of stuff for the First and Second graders.

[Valerie]

thanks for setting a fire under my butt...I got my pics up. I'm glad you found the Real Learning thread w/all those school rooms. I thought of you when I stumbled across it and was happy to see that you had found it too.

[Valerie]

oh, I forgot to say...I love your locking cabinets!