Our School Room

Our game room is now our classroom. I am so thankful that we have the space available for CC & RJ to have their own school room. I know we could have managed to hold class time in another area if we didn’t have the space. However, CC has visited a few preschools and was of course drawn to the bright colors, small furniture and toys in the classrooms. She is also very aware that most kids she knows go to daycare or school while their parents are at work. And I don’t want her to think that she is missing out on anything by staying home and not attending “school” like her friends do. She now enjoys telling her friends and family that we have our own classroom at home.

Here are before and after pictures of our classroom. The pool table has been moved to a corner of the room. When we have parties at our home I temporarily store the school furniture in the garage and it becomes a game room again.

Here you can see that our bar now serves as additional storage space in the classroom and placemats have replaced wine bottles.

In our classroom CC & RJ each have their own shelf and work on either the table or on the colored mat (depending on the size of the activity). The Montessori method encourages the use of mats or rugs to give children a physical boundary for their activity. We don’t yet have large rugs to identify their work area when working on the floor, so I have temporarily placed a blue tape boundary line. For the most part they are pretty good about staying on one side of the line and not scattering materials too much. The brown and tan rug is where we have “circle time” at the beginning of each class session. I will go into detail of what our circle time consists of on a future post.

We all enjoy our class time. CC and RJ are doing great and have adapted well to our new routine. Although, it can sometimes be challenging to have a 3-year old and a 22-month old in the same classroom. CC has enjoyed all the different activities and it has been a joy to watch her progress. RJ is doing as well as can be expected from an impatient toddler. He often wants to do what his sister is doing and I find myself constantly redirecting him on some days. He has also enjoyed most of the activities but seems to distract easily as you can see by this picture…