Our Learning Room

After creating that ever-so-convenient yet perfectly hidden away crafting area for myself in our guest bedroom, the incessant organizer/room changer/teacher wannabe in me came up with this additional use for our space....Welcome to Our Learning Room! 

As you can probably tell, it is still housing a full sized double bed off to the side, but until Elyse is ready for it to be moved up to her room and we get a sectional + fold-out bed for our downstairs family room, it's staying put. Around that time is also when we should be ready to transfer our old dining set down here in the bed's place, so then we'll really have adequate table space and seating to provide all 3 children with a quiet and distraction-free study area in addition to my crafting space.

Pretty much everything in this space we already had...Pottery Barn Kids table and chairs came down from our dining room, desk and desk chair came down from Benjamin's bedroom (Walmart special!), and the easel, wicker rolling cart, and nightstand were already in here just not being used, or used for other things.

Once I saw the space forming into a mini school, I knew we just HAD to have a wipe board. I picked this up at Walmart...I think it was only $20-25. The lesson I was working on when I took the above photo was about shapes. Did you know you can just type in pretty much whatever subject your kids are interested in with the word WORKSHEET after it, and ta da free and printable worksheets appear? I just love the Internet. ;) Another popular lesson/theme for us was the Solar System (I just stuck the above shown planets on with some really awesome stick-on Scotch products...they work so well and worth the extra $!).

Other activities we do in here are learning to tell time, flashcards of the alphabet, shapes, and numbers, phonograms, rhyming, and Brain Teasers. We also have a lot of those wipe down work books, coloring books, learn-to-read books, and various kid friendly craft supplies (thanks to my adjoining craft closet!) at the ready. 

To help teach geography, I found these cool giant sticker posters of the world and the U.S. from Amazon (they truly are amazing, no residue left on walls, peel on and peel off easy to readjust if you don't get it straight the first time, or if your child decides to roll themselves up in it....no joke). One of my favorite additions was these hooks shown above for the kids backpacks! We don't have any space upstairs to serve as a mud room/dump zone, so I'm hoping having this room designated for their school stuff helps detour a lot of the clutter that always seemed to build up upstairs.

Here's a view of the last wall. Benjamin made these alphabet letters last year at his preschool and I just love 'em! They are the perfect size and with their bright colors and creative visuals (each letter has something on it that starts with the letter it's representing), making them a fun way to remember the ABC's and refer to when writing. The Book Table (our local teacher supply store) is where I picked up the number line (adding or subtracting into negative numbers never made sense to me without a number line), days of the week, and months in the year posters.

So glad my children have been enjoying this space as much as I have and HALLELUJAH to keeping the rest of our house less cluttered from all the random crayons, colored pencils, glue sticks, art projects...you name it! I'm all about establishing proper designated zones within a home so that it serves the people who live in it in the most functional and efficient way.