Redoing the Classroom

I have been working at rearranging the playroom/schoolroom the past few weeks. It's been a gradual process but I think I am nearly done.

Last week Paul and I built this shelf. I needed more shelf space to organize our school stuff and one large enough to split the room a bit. On one side is the table where the boys do a lot of their work and on the other side is a corner boxed in with this shelf and another toy/bin shelf. All of the toys are in this corner. The rest of the room is the schoolroom. So all the cars, smaller blocks, tinker toys, etc are in the corner and the more educational items fill the remaining shelves. The new shelf is home to most of our math, language, science and geography items. I didn't get a picutre of the top- but our language shelf is mostly up there. A large 39-drawer [tool] box houses all our phonogram and word study cards. They aren't full yet, but I'm getting there. So far it has been the boys' favorite item to choose from. So far I've got short vowels and phonogram word/picture cards, contractions, abbreviations, compound words, plurals, syllabication, homophones and sight words. I am still working on my parts of speech/grammar and prefix/suffix/root words, and antonym/synonyms. Working with these has really helped my 5 year olds with his reading . He is really picking up speed and moving on from just short vowel words.

My next order of business is our art shelf. I've got all sorts of supplies on the wall but we also have a shelf that has a lot of free space since I moved the school books and writing items. I loved art as a kid. Drawing, painting, creating. My boys like to draw and paint, but I think they may need a little push to be more creative. I really would like a set up similar to the one on this site. Next week is an off week for us, so I hope to be able to finish my reorganizing.