Check Out Our Homeschool Room

 But first, let me tell you about the couches we were given :)  It's actually a couch and loveseat (the color matches on both, but the flash on my camera made the loveseat look brighter. They're both a reddish brown.)

 We put the loveseat in our master bedroom.  I know - the blankets don't match, but I figured a good cover would take care of that.  Unfortunately, the cover I found was WAY too big, so I'll have to look for something else.

The larger couch went into our school room, under the timeline. The boards behind it are the leaves for our table.  There are some sharp metal pieces on the back of the couch that I didn't want to rub the wall, and I needed an out-of-the-way place for the leaves.  It doesn't look amazing, but it is very functional.  

The cover I found for the couch fits well enough.  It is jersey material with an elastic band around the bottom.  They were out of these in the loveseat size or I would have bought that.  I'll have to look again.  Anyway, the original fabric wasn't bad - I just think this will be cleaner .... and a little less orange.  The couch has recliners on each end, but we're not using them. We would have had to move them out farther from the wall and not have the cover over the footrests, but that wasn't what I wanted.  I just needed a place where all the boys and I can snuggle up and read together.

 So here's what you've been waiting for - the actual school room.  This picture is taken from the door. The room is actually our third bedroom, and is a great size for school.  I bought a small television to fit on one of the bookshelves because we have several videos to watch for school.  The writing class we do with a couple other families (Institute for Excellence in Writing) is on DVD's.  Our math program (Math-U-See) has videos too, so this will make it easy to watch them away from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the house. I've also ordered an art program that is DVD based (Feed My Sheep by Barry Stebbing).

 I have 13 matching bookshelves in this room, including a bump-out in the center.  I simply scooted the front bookshelf out from the row on the wall, far enough to allow two sets of bookshelves (four total) to fit back-to-back behind it.  It makes a sort of island (more accurately, a peninsula, since we're talking about the school room here - hehe) that sticks out from the wall.  It might seem a little crazy, but it's allowed us to fit four more shelves in the room than we otherwise would have had.

This table was given to us by my sister-in-law.  It has two extra leaves so it can seat about 8-10 people if needed.  With the couch in the room we really only have room to use one leaf.  We took the leaves completely out and tried that for our homeschool writing class today and it was tight so I'm trying to decide if I should put another leaf back in.  I think I'll try turning the table the other direction so we can seat two people on each longer side and still be able to see the television.  It makes it a little tight in the room with the leaf in, and we only have writing class one day every other week.  I'm still trying to figure out that one.  I much prefer the smaller table for our every-day needs.
 

 My nine year old wanted to be sure we pointed out his favorite shelf.  It has some of his favorite book series including his current favorite - The A to Z Mysteries.

The opposite side of the bump-out shelves creates a hallway to the enormous closet.  I haven't put everything away back there, so it's still a little messy.  It's on my to-do list (along with about a hundred other things).

 The closet is really deep.  On the left side, I have two large cabinets I keep sewing supplies in.  That is what I still need to put away, which is why the hallway and parts of this closet are still a mess.

 There is also a long low dresser and a taller one on the opposite wall, under the clothes bar.  This is all designated for sewing supplies and projects.  I was originally planning to use the school room also as a sewing room, but decided it would be better to just have school stuff in here.  So the sewing machines moved out to the main room in the basement, right outside this room - but the storage stuff will stay here.

Most of our games and puzzles are stored on the top shelf of the closet area.  A few of our most often used games are on top of the long dresser so kids don't have to climb to get the favorites.

Here's a better look at the large sewing cabinets.  There are more puzzles and games on top of these, and the green crates are kids clothes, sorted by size.  We have three boys (still at home) from 9 years old down to 2, so I store some of the best things to pass down to the next kid in line.

 Behind the main door to the school room is a dry erase poster where I list the nine year old's daily school assignments.

 We're lucky to have this room in the walk out basement.  It stays warm down here because it doesn't catch any wind.  It has a sliding glass door so we can easily get a little fresh air, or take our messy projects outside.

And the view from the door isn't too shabby either, which is a nice bonus for mom ;)