The School Room

(Blogger has given me serious issues with posting this School Room post. I don't even want to admit how long I have spent monkeying around with it, but a good clue is that it SHOULD have posted yesterday morning. This is my last ditch attempt to make it understandable. Wish me luck...)

Re-doing the school room was the Monthly House Project (one of them, anyway) for September. The goal was to have it done and in order before school started...and we succeeded by the skin of our teeth. Remember I told you that the one wall was so awful that it couldn't be painted? Remember I told you I was worried we would have to spend money on paneling (which I don't love and CERTAINLY don't want to spend money on) just to cover up the nastiness and then I had a (questionably) brilliant idea to cover it in maps? Well, I have been dying to show you the map wall ever since I put it up. One of the lovely days the free route WORKED.
And then, the OTHER wall, that had water stains and actual, bonafide HOLES? Again- the options were pretty limiting (and of course, required money) until we decided that a perfectly good fix was NOT sheet rocking-but just bringing fallen down barn boards in to cover it all up. After all, we have plenty of them lying around. That too, worked like a charm. With those free fixes and a can of happy-colored paint, the school room looks awfully spiffy, evenifIdosaysomyself. Wanna see?
Well- let's put things in perspective first, shall we?
Here are the before pictures:

Yuck. Need I say more? But here is the new room~

See my map wall? Do you love it or hate it? I love it, primarily for its price tag, but also because it is one-of-a-kind. I love the colors too.

See that little rug by the Dry Erase Board? My Opa made that for my Oma as a present! (That is, my GRANDFATHER made it for my GRANDMOTHER!) Neat.

Clearly, we like books. The small book shelf is full of stories for the youngers. The bookshelf on the right is full of school books/supplies/papers/puzzles and everything else school related. Matt originally built it to house our main LIBRARY, but since I have a new one of those....

School happens pretty much everywhere around here...but it sure is wonderful to have a centralized location to house all the STUFF that goes with home educating.

An ugly brass lamp fits right in after a spray paint bath.

Here is the other side of the room:

The bulletin board is awaiting a whole new year of beautiful school art. ;-)

This little table and chairs were in the barn. Perfect for two littles who love to be doing exactly what the biggles are doing.

This is our Art and Nature corner. The table holds all the childrens' treasures and the bulletin boards holds all the treasures of others. (More on the bulletin board later.)

Are we the only family who collects dead things?

Most of the glass was found in the barns too.

I really love this. I laminated a bunch of pictures and put magnets on the back so that our filing cabinet could serve as a sort of "International" center. It widens a small childs' world and gives the children a good glimpse of peoples who live differently than we do. It also serves as a wonderful prayer board, so that we can pray for different lands and peoples.

So that's it. Our new and improved homeschool room, ready for a good year of home learning.