First School Day

I'm so excited to say that we finally had our first day in the new school room!  After looking through all the pictures I want to talk about, I've decided to split this into two posts.  First, a look at the room.  When we bought the house we had the basement finished and had a space made specifically for school.  Unfortunately, no matter how hard we tried, we could not get windows in the room because of the slope of the land.  It is small and won't work forever, but it is a dedicated space and will work for now.

We turned this....

.... into this.

  

I bought the shelves from Ikea and compared to most other shelves, they are a steal.  They all cost somewhere around $150-$200.  They are untreated pine, with no back and no sides.  But, they are very versatile.

I mentioned most of the activities in my last post, but I've got pictures this time.  First we have the few practical life works. On top I put a few shirts and hangers, in the middle is a basket of towels for folding and some pom poms for sweeping, and on the bottom is a box with two belts for buckling. Then we have pattern cards and work mats. Then Air, Land, and Water sorting cards on the top shelf and tweezers with pom poms and shapes on the bottom.

 

On the next set of shelves I have some paper, colored pencils and a circle stencil on the top.  Next is a bucket with clothes pins and color box 1.  Second to the bottom is the Association of Objects cards and on the bottom I have tongs with pom poms for transferring.

While Link was very excited about starting school, I think he was most excited to know that he was going to get to paint again.  So I have some of his art supplies on a top shelf.  This way he can see them and ask for them, but he cannot reach them himself.

Just to give a better view of the room, here it is from both sides.  We did end up putting a computer in here, but it doesn't seem to be too intrusive.  If we expand and need the space, it can be moved out.

I plan to cut some of these shelves in half and use them in the boys' closets for toys.  I don't really need the vertical space and I think it will make the room seem larger if the shelves are lower.  I can only really use one wall because the room is so small.  The double doors at the end have shelves where I keep my supplies out of sight (and store tons of things I don't have any other place for right now).