Our School Areas (2014-2015)

While we have a dedicated school area that is regularly utilized, school lessons happen all around our house depending on the subject and how Amber feels.

The main school area is still the same location as last few years; in the room labeled "homework center" by the original builder.  We really like how it gives Amber a space that can be completely devoted to school, yet as the short leg of an "L" shaped loft room it is open to the rest of the upstairs and receives lots of natural light from large windows in the loft.

Our main school area

We've had our dry erase wall for a year now and still love it as much as ever. It has been a wonderful tool for math, grammar, and fun!  You can read about how we created the dry erase wall here.

We still have the wonderful cubes under one portion of the desk to organize all of Amber's textbooks, binders, and stacks of pencil boxes full of school supplies.  I couldn't be more pleased with how those cubes have worked for us. This summer we cleaned out the walk-in closet of the guest room and moved the art drawers from under the desk. In that newly emptied space we added more cubes to be used by the child we will be hopefully adopting.

We still love to draw on our wall!

Amber's custom daddy-made bookshelf remains under another portion of the desk.  While some beloved books will never leave, we had a major cleanout of Amber's various bookshelves over the summer again.

Amber's computer still resides at her own computer desk in the main loft room.  She has been upgraded in the last year to a new tower and monitor.  She also uses it for more school than before which includes report typing, video watching, educational games, and foreign language tools.

Amber's computer desk, our lovely built-in school shelves, and the newly arranged cubes

New this year, we added a PB Teen desk with vanity to Amber's room when we redecorated in there. She prefers some private space occasionally for her studies and it is a more comfortable and cheery location when she is having a low energy day.

That's the tour of our main schooling areas.  Of course, there is always the kitchen, yard and driveway for experiments and the "music room", which the adults call the living room, for all musical practice. Despite having the whole house at our disposal, it works for us to have spaces set aside to store our school supplies and where quite learning can occur.

Amber's new desk / vanity in her room.  A little comfy, private learning space.