Our Homeschooling Space

Firstly, THE COMPUTER WORKS AGAIN!!! Meaning I can post pictures and whatnot, and much as I love my Gig, the desktop makes it far easier to accomplish a lot at once.
Here is the promised picture of Kittyboy on his first day of school, flipping through icon cards at his little yellow activity desk, listening to the daily readings.


I like this little desk, and it can be found at most crafting stores for around $8. You can't see in the picture, but the shelves the desk is in front of hold all his school stuff, and so it was all in one place and it was School. We have this ongoing conflict in our house, however, over vertical versus horizontal storage. My theory, only a theory, is that if we had more open space in general, the place would feel more open in general and be easier to keep clean - fewer things filling open space would make it easier to notice as clutter builds. Problem with his desk where it is, is that it's yet another thing on the floor.
Yesterday, we took advantage of Husband's day off to move furniture in the living room, and by accident discovered an actual homeschool space. I have this antique washstand, used formerly as a changing table, then as a collect-everything-next-to-the-door table, and I moved it from next to the door to in a corner by the dinner table. I was envisioning storing silverware and whatnot in it as a sideboard sort of thing. Then I realized that where it was, I could just turn his chair around to it from the table, and presto! A school desk!

We did colors this morning - he has flashcards with blocks of colors, flashcards with the name of the color written IN the color (so he can match the word Red, written in red, with the card that's red), his Colors Book, and fabric swatches. Red, blue and green are still problematic, but now it's more blue and green than anything else. He gets red sometimes. Orange, purple, yellow, pink, and brown, he's pretty good with. He has until he's five, Ginny says, and if he's still shaky on red-blue-green or blue-green, that's when we ask the doctor about color blindness. Last week he was calling all three blue, this week blue and green are both green. Ginny left her beading activity bag at our house last week, and I had it set up to return when we see her next, and guess who found it! So we named the colors of the beads, too. The trick will be hiding it somewhere he can't get it, but where I will remember it!


I love that little "I did it!" grin!


And this is his colors drawer! "The Colors Book" is one of the Britannica Discovery Library series. I was freecycled a big bag of upholstery fabric samples months and months ago, and went through just this morning pulling out different colored swatches for his drawer.
I think I will move the drawers and stack them in the corner on the washstand, because if they're stored across the room instead of right there, it will increase the likelihood of stuff not being put away promptly. I wouldn't have that kind of freedom of reorganizing if I'd gone with my original idea of a basket for each subject - my mom got me the drawers. I'm now seeing that they'll be much more versatile and take up less space in the long run. You can't stack baskets, and it would have contributed to the general appearance of clutter that I'm trying to avoid. Thank you, Mommy!