Reorganizing the Homeschool Area

The last couple of weeks there have been lots of school-year preparations going on! I've been making plans, ordering supplies and books, figuring out schedules and getting our homeschool cabinet all cleaned up and reorganized for a new year of learning.

With another homeschooler on board this year, we're doing a lot of shifting things around. To organize the cabinet and make everything we need to have in there fit, we needed to pretty much do a complete revamp. I pulled everything out of the cabinet, eliminated things we no longer needed, then put back all the things we still need, along with our new supplies for this year. It feels good to have a fresh, clean start!

Here's what our homeschool cabinet looks like this year:

Our Homeschool Cabinet, in the corner of our kitchen.
The cabinets themselves are from Ikea's "Billy" bookcase collection.
To the left of this is our Command Center Wall, which is
also a pretty important part of our homeschool area.  

The top two shelves in the far left cabinet are for my "teaching"
supplies... books, my binder, paper clips, tacks, stickers, sharpies,
highlighter, etc. And a little crocheted rag doll my darling daughter
 made for me, which I love. The next shelf has pens, pencils, rulers,
protractors, erasers and a pencil sharpener. The closed storage beneath
holds science stuff: books, microscope, various lab stuff. 

The next section... we have a 3D cricket puzzle, a box of math
manipulatives and a bunch of assorted math books tucked into
magazine files. Below the math stuff, we have our Nature Shelf.

A closer look at our nature shelf, still filled with Summer Treasures... black-eyed
susans and mint from the garden, a chunk of wasp nest, a cool stick, a hawk feather,
some beach rocks and some sea shells from our visits to the beach. Soon we'll be
replacing the summer stuff with things we find out and about on our fall adventures.

The cabinet beneath the Nature Shelf contains the kids'
laptop and computer accessories, and space for each child's
individual books, notebooks and daily work. The two younger
boys have their daily work in tote bags... the two older kids
mostly do outside classes, so they just have their stuff on the shelf,
and take whatever they need with them for their classes. 

The tower in the corner has assorted reference books, and
some boxes containing word games and maps. In the jars, we
have some writing prompts, in case anyone needs inspiration.

In the next cabinet, we have back-up supplies (extra paper, notebooks, pens, etc)
 in the boxes on the top shelf, and other small supplies in the baskets below.
Under that we have a map and a globe, and assorted paper. 

I'm planning to put cute little tags on the baskets to label them, but at the
moment they are labeled with post-its stuck to the back of the shelf. My youngest
says he actually likes them labeled this way, so maybe it will stay like this.
In the closed storage below, we have Noodle's extensive collection of car magazines
(which aren't really school-related, but it's the only place in the
house where I can keep them tidied up, out of sight!)

So that's it! Our homeschool corner for the 2015-2016 school year! Our official "first day of (not)school" is this coming Wednesday! We're looking forward to another year of living and learning together, and sharing many grand adventures. 

PS... If you're interested in seeing previous posts about our homeschool area, you can find them below:

2013 homeschool area post
2014 homeschool area post