{Not} Back to School in our School Room

So, this past week I was inspired to start re-vamping our school room. And because I'm a consummate nerd...I love that kind of thing. School/office supplies are some of my favorite things! But, it's been such a hot, lazy summer that I have just left the school room to grow mold or whatever it grows when we're not using it. So, over the past few days, after being inspired by looking at tons of great school rooms over at

I've been working on ours. Getting it ready for September 14. That is our official back to school date for this year. I am pretty proud of what I did in our little room. I think it's looking pretty nice.
To give you some perspective, this used to be almost 1/2 of our 2 car garage. We closed it in, leaving only a small space between the wall and the garage door so that bikes and toys could be stored there rather than the half of garage we had left. My dad is our contractor (thank God!) and did all this because he loves us. :) He built almost an entire wall of bookshelves (floor to ceiling). The dimensions of our learning space are: 11 feet x 8 feet,
but it feels more open because of the half walls/open door way to the laundry area. The kids have a long countertop that is installed in the doorway for their workspace. We found that desks didn't really appeal to them. I have a rocking chair right now, only because I needed that last year while hugely pregnant and unable to sit anywhere else comfortably. Okay, truly? I couldn't sit even there comfortably. I plan to replace it with a barstool and my dad is going to install a pullout that will attach to a shelf that I can work on-kind of like a computer desk has for your keyboard!? That way I won't take up any space! Brilliant if I do say so myself-I'm humble too.
Oh, and I plan to cover the floor with a rug to make it less noisy. Other than that? We LOVE our school room. We didn't always have one. We did the dining room table thing for about 5 years. And it was okay. Except when you have to clear off the table to eat lunch and get everything out again. Or if you miss a spot of jelly or syrup from breakfast and an expensive school book sticks in it. Oh, and the fact that several of my kitchen cabinets were housing school supplies/books! So, I'm very thankful for dedicated space! :)
The Student Work Area (a countertop installed on the wall at desk level!) to the left of our Armor of God poster is Lindsay's spot and Jared's is on the right. Linds likes her bulletin board messy and her desk neat. Jared likes his bulletin board sparse and his desk a mess!:


Awesome Book Shelves (Curriculum as well as non-Curriculum-fun, learning, reference.....)


White Board, World Map and Letters for my Little Ones (ie: print)


This is actually the back of our built-in entertainment center (living room) and it creates a little shelf/ledge that we can keep things like the globe and butterfly habitat on. I'm thinking the blank space next to Lindsay's chair will be the spot for our timeline for History. Either that or on the half wall behind my rocking chair.


P.S. to the above picture: I think you can see where the lower ceiling is above the kids' workspace (actually that is a "pocket" of sorts for the garage door to come open all the way for our bike/toy space). I think that will be THE perfect spot for Jared to put his planets! We are doing Apologia's Astronomy book! We'll hang it right there!


Haley's Space: