Our Learning Space

I thought I'd do a post about what our learning space looks like, since I love looking at other people's space. :)

Our living room is long and narrow so we've always had the couch moved up a bit from the window.  When the littles came along, it became a great place to put their toys.  Our DVD storage case became a toy storage, thanks to three canvas boxes from JCPenney and reused baby puff, diaper wipes, nut and cottage cheese containers (I'm still trying to figure out a way to make the cottage cheese containers prettier--spray paint wasn't great and paper would get tore off within seconds of hitting the shelf).  They are especially great for storing all of the wonderful math manipulatives we receive every month from Mother Goose Time.  I would dearly love cutesy, matching organizational bins and containers but right now I'd rather save the money so we can build our home (complete with an actual school room!) sooner rather than later.

We keep a selection of books and our newly acquired BOB books (thank you, Costco) on the top shelf along with a few other toys.

This little play area is a great place for me to sit with the girls and interact as they play in the kitchen or with the dolls.  A lot of language learning goes on here as I name the toy foods and comment on what they are doing at the moment.  We also do lots of imagining, which is so essential for children.  The kitchen, drawer unit and table/chair set are all from the glorious world of IKEA.

We do our "structured" preschool time in the living room and kitchen, for the most part.  I am really happy with our new circle time display.  I ordered a 36" x 48" science board, laminated everything and put it all together in an evening while watching "NCIS" on Netflix.  I used hot glue to attach the clothespins, Velcro dots for the months, calendar, day of the week and weather icons and removable glue dots for the clouds and other items.  We've used it a couple times already and it's holding up to Littlest quite well.

The back of my board is printed with manufacturer information and not pretty so I decided to use my wall for a few of the items that wouldn't fit on the front, such as the new world map and the beehive.  I also laminated an extra copy of the weather icons for Littlest to play with now that she's pretty gotten over putting the sticky tack in her mouth.  I keep the calendar numbers and current lesson materials in the glass compartment of my entertainment center so they're close at hand.

For art and science, we move to the kitchen (I bring in the second IKEA table when we have friends over).   I keep those supplies in our understairs closet, which would take more hours than I currently have free to make photo-worthy.



That's it.  It's not super Pinterest-y but it works for us.