Pope Academy - School Room Tour

Welcome to Pope Academy!

We do school all over the place, but have a bonus room above the garage that serves as our home base.  This room got a fairly big makeover since last Fall.  It took some time, but it's my favorite room in the house.  Which is good, cause we spend a lot of time in there.

Other than adding things in for Gabe, the biggest change is the wall color.  Ditching the bright orange for this $5 oops paint in a more muted green totally changed the feel of the room.  It made it seem bigger and brighter and calmer.  I love it.

When you walk in, our art wall is the first thing you see.  

We do a lot of crafts around here, so I just pick a few of my favorites and put them in some frames I grabbed at Ikea for cheap.

The sign in the middle is our school motto.

"I am.  I can.  I ought.  I will"

It's a quote from Charlotte Mason and it perfectly captured what I want our focus to be in school.  I am enough, I can do it, I should do it, I will do it.

From the door looking in:

* disclaimer: it's NEVER this picked up.  Ever.

Bright name banner on each side of the window curtesy of my Aunt Suzy:

This is my corner:

The file cabinet stores all print outs, extra papers, theme ideas, and a ton of random games.  The bookshelf houses all our current curriculum and any reading books we are using.

We are using workboxes again this year.

They have made our days so smooth, I couldn't imagine schooling any other way.  At night, I go in and fill the boxes with whatever we need for the next school day.  Last year I let Josie pick what order she went in, but this year I am going to make her go from top to bottom.  Like any normal kid, she was picking the crafty, fun stuff first and was tired and cranky by the time we got to reading and math.  I'm flipping it this year and think it will help us a lot.

Her workboxes are the tall ones on the left, Gabe's are the bigger ones to the right.

Supplies on the table.  

This is another duh moment that has made our days smoother.  Most the tools we need for normal days are right here when we need them.  It also makes it easy for the kids to craft on their own (aka: cut 800 sheets of paper into tiny pieces and use entire bottles of glue).

Each of the kids has their own bulletin board.  

I love the dry erase board.  I use this all the time.

We also love All About Spelling.  Josie is starting level 2 this Fall and I'm using their All About Reading Pre-Reader for Gabe too.  It's an awesome company.

I used the bookshelf below and the kid's workboxes to try to divide the room into a school area and a play area.  It's worked out great.  Not that toys don't venture into the school area or vice versa, but it does give a pretty good separation between the two.

And this is the other side of the room.

Still hoping to find reasonably priced piano lessons for Josie this year.  Until then, the keyboard is used to play Twinkle, Twinkle on repeat.

The other big change from last year is that I seriously paired down our toys.

I watched what they played with the most for a few weeks and then donated everything else.  It was just too much stuff.  This made me the bad guy for a few days, but since then they haven't minded.  Now what's in here fits nicely in the baskets and clean up is way easier.

And that's our school room!