Our Learning Room

When we moved into our house two years ago, I was excited because it had a dining room as well as an eat in kitchen. I thought it would be great to have a dining room to have the extra space to have people over for dinner. We do have friends over occasionally, a few times a month. It has taken us two months to figure out that the dining room is wasted space in our home. This summer my husband and I were talking and he said, " I think we should use the dining room for school." I was totally thinking, "why didn't I ever think of that." Up until this year, we have been using the kitchen table. This means that we have to cart all of our books from the cupboard in the family room to the table each day and return them all when we are done. We also have to clear off the table for lunch even if the kids aren't finished with their work. It took me a couple days to wrap my head around the idea of using the dining room as a "learning room" (as we are calling it). I just had to process and put some plans together on how it would work. Then I got to work getting it all sorted out. I even cleaned out a couple of the drawers so we could use them for paper, markers and such. I am so glad we realized we had a wasted space in our home and that we did something about it. It would have been sad to have wasted it for the whole time we are in this house. Here are some pictures of our learning room.

This is the learning room neatly set up.

I bought the magazine boxes at a stationary store. I love them because they are bigger than most magazine boxes. They are also paper boxes, so the kids had fun putting their name on, coloring and decorating their box. Each of the boys have their own for their books. I also have one for my teacher manuals and books I use for all of them.

This is the way it looks most days and for most of the week. I try to pick it up at least twice a week and for the weekend. It is so nice to have our own space where we can leave things out if needed.