MFW Adventures Classroom

This year is the first time we will have an actual, designated classroom for our studies. In the past we haven't the space and because we made a last minute decision to move into a rental house (which is a long story for another day!) we didn't plan to have a classroom this year either. But we are excited to have a place to "do school" and make this all feel like we actually know what we are doing.

So step inside and see where we spend our mornings learning, reading, crafting and enjoying school together.

This is an overview of the room. We have an old activity table that we use for group work or crafts, a cheap TMNT table we use for school work and a Spiderman desk if anyone chooses to sit there for worksheets. The American flag is hanging on one side, but since I took the picture we have moved it and added the Christian flag to the wall on the right.

We used the My First Calendar last year and loved it so I added it to the classroom, as well as added white boards. Since Kellan is still working on learning to write his letters, I used velcro to stick the letter chart from Spelling You See on the wall that he can pull off and put bag as needed. We also have pencils, erasers, math blocks, calculators etc. at the end of the table and leave our wipe-clean lined paper boards out so they are accessible for copywork, handwriting, etc.

In this corner is the television that we use to watch our MathUSee videos and any other dvds as needed. The bookshelf is actually a set of drawers that have been broken over time from being in the kids' bedroom so I flipped it over and decided to make good use of it. On the side is a stick on chalk board and a basket for bookbags.

In the opposite corner is a large set of plastic drawers for miscellaneous supplies and the printer. Most of the space is my storage, but there are some crafts and various supplies that belong to the children but are kept "safe" in this area, too.

You can't have a classroom without the alphabet on the wall - am I right? I wanted to find something that goes along with our US History theme this year and that had cursive letters since Brooklee is learning cursive. I found a design on TeachersPayTeachers that I was really excited about, but once I purchased and downloaded it, I really wasn't pleased with some of the words that she used for each letter so I kept the background the same, found my own words and images and used a free font that I downloaded to update the words and letters. I LOVE the way these turned out and most all of the words are vocabulary words or people/places/events that we'll be learning about this year.

Here is the book corner with all of our reading level books on the top shelf and Sadie Quinn's books on the bottom shelf. I also put a basket on the bottom shelf with coloring books. The top of the shelf seems to change weekly. At first I had a box for the kids to turn in their worksheets every day. Then I had the hole puncher, pencil sharpener, etc. on top. I added the book display so we could have a visual of our weekly theme and the books we are reading. At the moment it is a little bit of all of those things, but primarily a display shelf for our artwork.

So there you have it. We love our little classroom and it is just perfect for us right now. Eventually I'd love to replace the activity table and TMNT table with a real table or a set of desks for the kids but for now we are just happy to have a classroom.