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Our Classroom

I have been excited to share with you our classroom space since we moved into our new home. Having a space for our children to learn and grow is awesome. We have moved around so much over the course of our children’s lives that our classroom has morphed often. At first it was just a couple baskets on the floor. Now we purposefully bought this house, for this room, just so our children could have a designated classroom. We want learning to be apart of life and this classroom adds to our goal to create life long learners!

Child Led Life Our Classroom

So step right in and let’s look around.

Practical Life Shelf

We have a set of beautiful glass french doors that opens up to our classroom. The first shelf in our classroom is a practical life shelf. Both Samuel (4) and Avalyn (2) work with all the activities on this shelf, but I do have a couple specific works for each child.

Top left is a DIY dressing frame with small buttons. Samuel has easily mastered the larger buttons after I created a button snake for him during his potty training days. This dressing frame helps him with the trickier buttons found on dress shirts. (Check Mamaโ€™s Happy Hive for DIY dressing frame ideas.)

Top middle is a Melissa and Doug set of large lacing beads with shoestrings. Both of my children use this often. Avalyn likes to stack the beads and uses them for color recognition. Samuel will thread the beads and work on patterns.

Top right is a dust pan and brush. I found this at the Target dollar spot. Always helpful for any messes that may arise.

Middle left is a folding activity for Samuel. Here is practices folding our cloth napkins. He also practices this practical life activity during our laundry folding time.

Middle right is a fine motor skill work for Avalyn. This is a dollar store shaker bottle and a bowl of toothpicks. She loves this activity and will work with it often. Samuel is also very fond of it.

The bottom left is a transfer work for Avalyn. I found a mini muffin tin at a yard sale and use it often for different works. In this activity, Avalyn uses ice tongs to move small gems from a bowl to the muffin tin. The gems are specifically three of each of the four color gems to make twelve total. I did this for Samuel to help with patterns and counting by threes.

Bottom middle work is a set of nesting cups. We have used these for many years! There are four of each color and they are numbered from one to twelve. They stack well within each other and can be used for color recognition, counting, and to build towers.

Bottom right is a set of color tiles from For Small Hands. They are transparent and are a lot of fun. Along with color recognition, the kids like to look through the tiles to notice how things change colors.ย We have beautiful sun that shines in right on this shelf in the morning. The transparent color tiles create beautiful rainbows on our floor while the kids work with them. We all need a little Reggio in our life.

Child Led Life Our Classroom Art

Behind our practical life shelf, I set up a small art station for the kids. We have an easelย from Ikea, the portfolio books the kids started to compile their art projects, and one of our favorite art books, Math-terpieces: The Art of Problem-Solving by Greg Tang.

This little space produces a lot of creativity. Currently, the kids are working with the chalk board, but we can turn the easel around and have a white board or add a roll of art paper and paint and color. Such an amazing use of a small little corner!

Mirror Watermarked

In this corner we added a mirror at child height. This mirror is a regular mirror we bought from Lowes Home Improvement. A lot of people ask about child safe mirrors. There are lot out there, but we never had a problem with this mirror. Our children have banged on this with spoons and hands and it has had plenty of loving kisses without issue. We have always made sure to have a good set of mirror anchors for this mirror to be sure it doesn’t slide.

I added a basket of pretend play clothes. Our children love to dress the part when we are reading stories or listening to children’s music so we keep different items in this basket as the need arises.

Beside the mirror is metal drip pan. Yep, just like one you put under your car. We found this at an auto parts store, but it was NEVER used for our cars. This is for any magnets we have to study letters or numbers.

Work Shelf Watermarked

Beside our metal drip pan is a set of shelves I saved from the dumpster. I love FREE! I love the way I can stack them in different formations as we add different projects to our classroom. This set of shelves is where I like to keep our math, language, and a little geography.

Work Shelf Right Watermarked

On the right side of the shelf is the math work for the children. On the top, is a basket with a set of large dice. It’s a little game Samuel likes to play to add number together. To the right of that is a tray with a set of Melissa and Doug magnetic numbers, and a set of DIY Colored Beadsย I madeย from Montessori Mischief tutorialย . Samuel uses the magnetic numbers on the metal tray to create easy addition problems and use the colored beads to solve his problems. (The things kids come up with on their own is just AMAZING!)

The other works both kids use: a Melissa and Doug cube puzzle I found at a second hand store, a Melissa and Doug numbers puzzle, a sensorial work I found long ago with graduated stacking shapes, Ikeas stacking rings, a set of shape domino cards, and the orange box is our Imaginets.

 

Work Shelf Left Watermaked

On the left side of the shelf is more language work and ย couple left over math works. Top left is the CD player and the current book on CD from the library. We typically turn this on while we are working in our classroom, but not during lessons times. To the right of that is a box of beginning word sounds with the miniature objects. If you would like to set up your own set inexpensively, here is a good place to start. Then we have our DIY spindles.

Middle shelf: Melissa and Doug See & Spell word puzzle, Find it! USA geography puzzle, and a set of plain wooden blocks.

Bottom shelf: alphabet puzzle from Costco, Alphabooks, and then you see our Imaginets again.

This is a much loved section in our shelves. Most of the time we work the USA puzzle together and talk through the names of the states.

Cursive Poster

This little poster is a bulletin board boarder set I taped together to create a ย cursive poster. It’s ย nice to have this where the kids can trace the letters.

Windows Watermarked

I love natural light. This rooms has amazing windows and we love to let the light come while we work in our classroom.

Pink Tower Brown Stairs

Trillium Montessori is a local Montessori school here. While I was visiting there ย one day, Seemi gave me a couple boxes of unused Montessori items. The pink ย tower and brown stairs were headed to Goodwill before I snatched them! Make ย sure to check with your local Montessori school for any items they are phasing ย out of their classrooms.

Table Watermarked

Our much loved table is from Ikea. This is actually a drawing table with extendable legs. Right now it is lowered so the kids can use it easily, but as they grow it will grow with us. I’m in love with it! Easy to clean and plenty of wonderful place. The white stools are also Ikea. The end chairs are from my mother-in-laws stash of goodies. They are very sturdy and usually where I perch since they are a bit lower.

Bookshelf Watermarked

This is our reading corner. The shelf is our old TV stand. It is nice to have the doors that slide back and forth. I store unused teaching books and some of the kids books that are not being used there. I ask the kids to leave those two section of the stand closed so we don’t have an unnecessary amount of books out at one time. The top left of this shelf stores our bible study books. The right is a bamboo plant that has been around way to long for my black thumb. I’m sure it will croak any time now, but until then it is nice to have a station where the kids practice caring for plants. We have a small rag and a bottle of water to water the plant and dust the leaves. To the left of the shelf is a basket with our work mats. Our mats are Ikea bathmats.

I’m so excited to show you around. I hope you find some inspiration and maybe a little motivation for your own classroom space.

Need Organizing Ideas?

Check out one of my top posts: 7 Ways to Organize Montessori Materials

7 Ways to Organize

 

Great Ideas for Back to School

Help your kiddos stay on track this year with these helpful Student Planner Printablesย on Scattered Squirrel. They can keep track of homework and test dates so they’re prepared.

This Not Back to School Tech Gear Guide for Homeschool Boys will get your boys excited about the new school year. If you grab a few things off THIS list from Brain Power Boy your boys will be learning a ton and having a blast at the same time. Most certainly not your typical back to school list.

Does the thought of packing school lunches for your kids fill you with dread? Donโ€™t worry because the Super Mommy Club has an awesome collection of ideas for you, in fact one whole monthโ€™s worth of school lunch ideasโ€ฆ with no repeats!

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