Room set up

When I worked in the schools as a speech-language pathologist, I got moved around to different schools almost yearly.  While getting to know new students and staff was a little intimidating to introverted little old me, I always got more than a little excited about organizing and preparing a new therapy space and I kind of miss it.

Our space hasn't really changed in the last few months, although I have streamlined some things that have made it easier.  However, we are going to be building a new house with a dedicated school space (hallelujah!) and I am busily poring over Pinterest and sketching out ideas for when we finally get to move in.  In the meantime, I thought I'd show you our current space and go over a few of the things I've done to help organize our materials.

When I first started with Mother Goose Time, I bought fancy bankers boxes and hanging files to store each day's curriculum pack.  These didn't work perfectly, though, since the lids wouldn't fit flush over the hanging files which made it difficult to stack them.  I finally realized that the adorable school bus box that the the curriculum ships in is actually the perfect place to store them.  I do take them out of their shrink wrapped bags and put them in tabbed manila folders, which fit perfectly in the boxes.  Large, bulky supplies are labeled with the day of use and placed in a large freezer bag and kept in front of the folders.  I also put the contents of the teacher material bag in freezer bags.  Manipulatives are kept in the box for the month and then transferred to our toy shelf for use in other activities.

I've shown you the recycled containers I use to store our manipulatives before.  I love these tall, clearcontainers that were full of mixed nuts from Costco at one point.  However, we don't go through mixed nuts very quickly so I have a very limited number of these.  I had been using Costco size cottage cheese containers since Littlest could eat it for every meal and we go through one every 10 days but they were hard for the girls to open on their own and they'd have to go through lots of them to figure out what was in each one.  My mom was cleaning out her supplies and gave me a stack of these clear Betty Crocker containers.  They are perfect for our smaller items, like foam shapes and the counting manipulatives.  The girls can see what they want and they are easier to open without my help.

We do Circle Time in the corner of the living room.  I put together a portable Circle Time display last fall using a science fair board.  It works pretty well and I store it in our catchall-understairs storage area when we aren't using it, along with a few boxes of curriculum (we have a storage unit nearby where older boxes get moved so we don't fill up this space entirely).  I also have an Algot rolling shelf from IKEA in there that I use for storing art supplies and my Scotch laminator.  This area is not photo-ready at the moment but you can imagine.  I use cottage cheese containers to store my glue, scissors, crayons, stickers and other large supplies.  Little things like extra googly eyes, glitter and sparkly things are placed in glass baby food containers and then kept in diaper wipes containers to keep things semi-organized.

I've commandeered the back wall of the living room for our preschool alphabet, song and shape displays.  I've had to move everything up kind of high lately because Littlest has become obsessed with taking the things down and peeling off the sticky tack.

I love the I Can Read books that come every month.  I keep them all in a big bowl, easily accessible on the lower shelf of one of our side tables so Miss M and Littlest can pull one out and either read it on their own or bring it to me.  Miss M's reading skills have really blossomed lately and she feels so proud of herself when she's able to read a book all by herself.

That's our space for now.  I imagine a more typical preschool set up with stations in our new space, along with a large, dedicated store room for curriculum and materials when we move into our new home.  It's still several months away but a girl can dream...

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.

Making It Through

This has been a bit of a rough week. Miss M has not been her normal self for no reason I can come up with yet (other than she's 2 1/2 and maybe mood swings are normal for this age) and Littlest is cutting five teeth all at the same time. Naps have been off, the weather has been gloomy and I can't seem to get enough sleep to feel like I'm ever truly awake. Thank goodness for preschool and some fun activities to distract from our Eeyore moods.

 On Wednesday we had class with friends and learned about rabbits and bees. The kids had fun hopping around the letter R on the floor, which evolved into Ring Around the Rosie (I pointed out the sounds in Ring and Rosie so it was still "on topic" :). We pretended to be bees and they pollinated the flowers on my rug with the pattern blocks. We also practiced counting with the rabbit counters. We used the word problems provided and then worked on dividing them into groups by size and/or color and counting how many members in each of those.

 I loved the poppy art project, I think it turned out really cute. It was also interesting to note that Miss M doesn't really know how to tear on purpose so that's a fine motor skill we need to work on. She was able to do it if I started the tear for her. Thinner paper would probably have been easier for her, too. We finished up outside on the one really nice morning we've had this week.

 The kids buzzed around the yard looking for bees and then we had snack before the rain clouds rolled back in. Miss M had a few meltdowns and needed to take some time away from the group but I think it is important for her to recognize when she is feeling kind of cloudy and that it is okay to be by yourself for a bit.

 This morning we tried to have school with just Littlest, Miss M and Mommy. It didn't go super well but I did find a few activities that got through her tantrumming. Dance N Beats was a great way to distract her from being upset about something I couldn't quite decipher and gave me time to assemble my materials. She melted down again during calendar but Littlest had a great time adding our numbers (and then tearing the calendar and everything else off the wall).

 She calmed down again when I sang the song of the day, "Do You Know a Bumpy Toad", set to the tune of "Do You Know the Muffin Man?" I write numbers on a slip of paper and she and Littlest took turns choosing a number to use in the last of line of the song "Who eats __ garden peas?" It was a good way to review our numbers and music always seems to help with her mood.


I thought for sure she'd be super into the toad craft but it took her a while (and seeing her sister playing with the craft materials) to get into it. Once she got past the frustration of the googly eyes falling off (because she kept pulling them off so the sticky pads lost their stick), she had a great time painting it with the paint/glue/split pea mixture. I'm pretty sure that's it for today, though, and that's ok.

 I thought I'd say a few words about how I organize my craft materials. Since we only do school two days a week with friends but will often do activities on our own on other days, I end up with lots of left of craft materials to use later. Storage is not something our home has in abundance so I needed to get a little creative. I also didn't want to buy a bunch of new organizing bins (because I can go overboard so it's better not to even go close to the railing). I found a large plastic suitcase style bin that I bought years ago for my speech materials and decided to use it instead of the empty cardboard Amazon box I started with. Since we are still in the baby stage of life, I also have lots (and lots and lots) of glass and plastic baby food containers that are great sizes for leftover glitter, googly eyes and pompoms. The plastic ones are nice for putting paint in (I also use them as snack containers in the diaper bag). I'm an Amazon Mom and get a monthly shipment of wipes that always includes a new container (why, I'm not sure); needless to say we've got about 20 floating around the house. For craft materials, they're great for holding my crayons, markers, scissors, glue, etc...I also use them for storing some of the manipulative we've gotten (like the seashells) and other other toys in the toy area. They all fit nicely in my large plastic bin that I can slide into the pit closet we had created under the stairs just before Miss M was born. And that's how I do that.