I truly believe that life is learning. We should never cease to have the desire to learn and discover. Thus, our homeschool is a reflection of that belief. Life is learning, and learning is all around us. Life in our house is not segmented into convenient compartments of "life" and "school." Life and school are a messy conglomeration that surround us. Literally.

 

 

 

 

Two weeks ago, the Not Back-to-School Blog Hop started. The first week was Curriculum Week, but I haven’t even begun to think curriculum yet. Sad, I know.

 

This past week has been School Room Week. I have struggled all week with how to approach this post. I shared last year about schooling with no school room. I shared about how we manage space for learning and space for materials in our very small home. Not much has changed since then. I could share all the same information all over again, but that’s boring and not very helpful to others. So I have pondered, and I have muddled.

It all brought me to one point. School Room Week really is all about our philosophy of education. (I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.) It really all comes down to what you envision your life of learning with your children to be. I live in a small house with lots of children; however, if I had an extra room I don’t think I would make it a school room. You see, I really believe that life should be a messy conglomeration full of curiosity and learning. If I had a bigger house, I would have a room full of books and cozy chairs for reading. School supplies and books would still be spread through the house. I don’t want my children to learn that learning is just a part of school. I want my children to learn that learning is a wonderful part of life.

 

Hubby built floor to ceiling bookshelves on one entire wall. This has so saved my life! About half of the wall is grown-up books, and the other half are children's books and school books. (Is there really a difference?)

 

This is most of the children's side of the bookshelf. There are so many books that it can get really hard to find the book you need.

 

See those brightly colored spots? Sonlight Curriculum had the brilliant idea to organize all your Sonlight books by Core. Each core was assigned a color. When you buy the Instructor's Guide, they give you a full sheet of sticker paper in that color so that you can put a spot of that color on the spine of every book that belongs in that particular core. The years when I buy a used IG, I just tape on squares from a colored piece of paper onto each book spine. I didn't start out labeling my books this way. I finally saw the need when I had about three or four cores on my shelves. Love my book labels!

 

This is one of two three foot square book shelf units that are in the living room. This one holds three Sonlight Cores, one section of Bibles, and the computer with Homeschool Tracker. Record keeping with Homeschool Tracker has been wonderful! My three oldest children do most of their work independently. I put their assignments into the lesson plan feature of Homeschool Tracker. It was a lot of work on the front end, but now I can re-use the lessons for the next child. This way, they always know what assignment to do next. It makes my life so much easier!

 

The second bookshelf unit holds two Sonlight Cores, math for upper grades, and some miscellaneous items.

 

Hubby built an L-shaped desk into the dining room. It was my other life saver. We added Sterlite medium-sized drawers under the desk on both ends. It's amazing how many items get tucked away into such a small space! This end of the desk holds the drawers for each child's school items. They keep their notebooks, spiral bound notebooks, folders, pencil bags, crayons, etc. in their own drawer. As you can see (above), Teeny doesn't keep it contained in her drawer! And she thinks everything needs to go in her drawer!

There are two letter trays on top of the drawers that hold drawing paper and construction paper. The three-hole punch lives between the trays. On the desk above the drawers are two crates that hold all the timeline notebooks (each child has his own.)

 

The other end of the desk is home to the computer and printer. It also houses Hubby's stack of bills and any miscellaneous notebooks that I may be working from that day. The drawers under this end of the desk are filled with school supplies waiting to be used. They are filled with markers, glue, glue sticks, stapler, math games, writing paper, extra folders, index cards, construction paper scraps, phonics games, and letter tiles.

 

The shelves above the desk hold the printer, card stock and colored paper for notebooking, handwriting books, math for lower grades, language arts curriculum (what little I have), and any other curriculum that is not in use. Most of the shelf space is taken up by my Sonlight Instructor Guides.