Wednesday, July 25, 2007

The classroom



This is the before, when it was Steve's office. His desk was to the left of this photo, he was sitting there, alas not in the pic. The dog's cage resided in that room and now has been worked into my scrapbook room. I had to completely refigure the scrapbook room to fit it in, but it all works well together now.



This is the desk area. I took an temporary door we used during our build and painted it out and it's now the desk, I attached it to the wall in the back and on the right with pieces of wood screwed into studs and then I attached the door to the wood with screws going through it. Yes, I did all this by myself while Steve was downstairs working!! I get so motivated from all the design shows!! I used a storage shelving unit that we already had, to be the third leg, I put baskets in the shelves that we had and use those for my own stuff. The three clear drawers were in the scrapbook room, I bought the big maps at $5 each, I made their titles using the printer and laminator, I bought the alphabet (there's a regular one on another wall) at Dollar Tree for you guessed it $1, I got lots of the plastic pencil boxes for .50 at Meijer, the white board I got for $6 and it's magnetic which I thought was cool, the chairs were upstairs and we brought down the kids computer. I think it turned out pretty well, each kid has lots of room to work on that big desk!



This is the room from the door. You can see the kids playing v-smile on their new tv/dvd combo. That was the only big purchase for the room. We reused the book case in there, I attached it to the wall though, it wasn't previously. You can see here that the clue was polka dots, I used that as sort of a decorating theme for the room. I painted dots around the room in colors we already had, brown and bright blue from the kids bathroom, navy from the theatre and I kept the orginal green in the room. I used navy curtains that we already had and painted dots on them as well and hung them with Mickey curtain rods that we hadn't used since we lived in Texas. The green ottoman used to be in front of the chair in the room, but I moved it by the window to clear up some floor space. I took one of the back pillows from the chair, rolled it up and pinned it so it became a sort of arm rest/ pillow for the ottoman. Beside it is another set of clear plastic drawers that were in the scrapbook room and an old globe we got at Steve's Mom's house.



This is our KONOS timeline wall over the reading chair. We will get to put all different characters in history on the timeline so we can visually see where they relate to each other. The center is the cross representing Christ's Birth. After I took this pic, I put pictures of the kids up Noah right at 2000 and Abby just a smidgen beside it! Then I showed them where people they knew would fall on the timeline and already they are enjoying it. To the left of the chair is an Ohio map that I got free from ODOT. I took star stickers and put on all three maps where we are located, the kids liked seeing that too and how close or far away certain things are.




This is just a close up of the desk area and you can see my exstensive collection of flash cards. I got those at Target in the dollar bins (thanks for the tip Crystal!!) They had them for not only Math and Phonics things, but presidents, insects, animals, states, etc...I thought they would be fun activities to do while I needed to work one on one with the kids.




This is what will be music corner, it's not complete yet. One of the drawers will be filled with all kinds of little instruments and I plan to have the radio/cd player there with headphones, so the kids can listen to music or books on cd, plus we'll sing and dance and play instruments together. That should be fun!





These are my three flags, that I rested in sand up on top of the bookshelf. I didn't think any class was complete without them!


So, that's pretty much it. I still have a few small things to do, but the hard part is done. I have found some really cool things like Math, Colors, Letters, Shapes Bingo for a dollar each, I had tons of supplies like glue sticks, markers, crayons, paper, pencils, etc..that I bought previous years during the big back to school sales, so that was fun to unpack and put away. I also got some cool math things, like clocks, play money, counting animals, calculators, etc..in the dollar bins, they have been great this year! So other than the t.v. I spent very minimally and think I achieved a pretty fun room. The kids love it and have been in there every day since it was finished! Hope you like it!!

7 comments:

SamandSawyersMom said...

I think you did a great job. I love that it is very informational without being over done and making the children feel overwhelmed. I think the dots are very cute.

I think the desk was a great idea and it looks like they have plenty of space. Do you have any end tables or anything? I thought you could add your little game boards to one like you did upstairs...like a checkerboard or something? I am sure you could make up tons of learning games with a checkerboard...just a thought.

I think it is great!!! very nice job

Amanda said...

Super! I love the curtains! You would never guess they were not fancy store bought polka dots.. Well done!
The classroom looks great. I love how the kids have their own space. I bet they will have lots of fun and learning in their!
Very Impressive.

Crystal said...

WOW!!! I LOVE IT!!! Great Job Jamers!!! GREAT JOB!!! I am so happy for you to get all that done! I know you are excited and it sounds like the kiddies are too! You guys will do great! I love how creative you are........way to go! I absolutely love the flags in the sand.......that gave me goosebumps! Are you gonna have them say the pledge of Allegiance every morning???

Dawson's school would listen to announcements over the intercom, say the Pledge of Allegiance and then they would do 10 mins of exercises to wake up their brains.......it was cool to see!

I love what you've done and I wish you the very best with homeschooling!!!

Lura said...

I'm so excited for you! It looks great. I have tons of great homeschool links (so does Charity), if you are interested. I can't wait to have my room. Tim is going to build one out in the shop. I love how you built stuff yourself. I think Tim keeps his tools locked up from me!

SamandSawyersMom said...

yeah she always builds stuff herself..it is inspiring

Char said...

Your room looks fantastic!! I love it! I'm sure it'll be a wonderful, successful year for all of you. The curtains are great with the dots! I love all the storage and the little "centers". Very nice!

Carrie said...

That is so great! You were so creative ad thrifty! The room looks fabulous!