The School/Craft Room: A Work in Progress

As I have mentioned before, our house has four bedrooms. One girls bedroom, one boys bedroom, the master bedroom, and the school/craft room. We usually refer to it as the school room, because that's what it started out as... a place to keep school supplies & "do school." But things evolve and change and we are pretty flexible. Since we moved into our house, we have been slowly adding and removing things from this room. It now houses my office desk, sewing table, a good portion of the school supplies, most of our books, as well as puzzles, games & art supplies.

So, here it is... the school room:

The entrance to our school room. You can see that it is situated next to the boys' bedroom. My white office/teacher's desk and chair are along the first wall.

Another view of my desk area. The white things stuck on the wall are white board posters that work like a giant white board... in theory. I'm not particularly happy with these and will be finding something else in the future... it's just not high on the priority list at the moment.

The green pocket chart holds cards that show our school routine, though we haven't used it in a while. We also have a flag, of course.

The printer sits in the corner, on top of my filing drawers. I have four large drawers here. One of them contains general files, one Instructions & Warranties, one financial & other important documents, and the fourth contains extra office supplies like empty binders & sheet protectors.

Under the window is the kids' school table. Since our kids are so tiny now, they are fine with a tiny table. :) On the table, and on the wall to the right of the window are several paintings that have not yet found a final home.

The column of bookshelves on the far left contain paints (on the top shelf), and kids books. The board books are on the bottom, with short picture books on the next shelf and tall picture books on the shelf above that. The next shelf contains longer chapter books good for read alouds, and the remaining shelf contains a set of old classic books from my husband's childhood, and some children's level research materials.

The center column contains more extra school supplies on the top shelf including a stack of spiral notebooks, then adult chapter books, and finally drawing books and "for fun" workbooks, with a stack of drawers  containing spare batteries because that's where they are for now. :)

The final column of shelves contains my card making supplies on the top shelf, several bins of sewing projects I'm working on on the middle shelf, and the bottom shelf contains a set of tiny drawers with random office supplies like paper clips, and several plastic paint cans containing larger office supplies like erasers, scissors & glue, pencils, pens, chalk, white board markers, etc.

Under the shelves are the kids' cubbies for personal items, and my sewing desk.

My sewing desk, and the closet.

The top shelf in the closet contains puzzles & games, the next shelf down contains plastic tubs with Legos. The art easel sits in the closet when we are not using it.

Behind the art easel there is another shelf with a few electronic educational "toys" we were gifted, and our globe.

We keep a sheet under the easel so we can spread it out to catch paint drips & such when it's pulled out.

This room has a keyed lock on the doorknob and we usually keep it locked. With so many "fun" and messy items (crayons, markers, paint, pens, etc), it's best to keep the little ones out of here unless they are supervised.

We are still working on organizing and purging a lot of things in this room. A couple months ago we packed up 10 file boxes of "stuff" from this room, and I'm planning to go through those boxes and do a big purge in the next couple weeks. Of course, I'll share what I get rid of and why. :)