So now that you know the beginning of our story, here’s what our life has quickly become through pictures of our “school room,” aka the living room/dinning area. It’s a crazy life, but it’s really wonderful!

Then (actually these are from December 2011)…

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Here are the NOW photos of our little school house…I took these while we were on break and I was preparing our house for starting Kindergarten. Our school has grown a lot from the beginning in September!

The dinning area on one side.

The other side of the dinning area and part of the living area.

I made “stations” with mini pocket charts for more movement. Thing Two like to play in all of them with his matching games. Then there are our “workboxes” of a sort. The boys like the structure of boxes and it is a fun way to move from thing to thing. Did this Nifty DIY Shelf Organizational System with Jars and Bins from the Dollar Tree, a camera, MS Word (for Mac), and contact paper. Makes me feel happy to see this all in its place and so clean looking! Our Weather Station and Virtues, also the “entry” to “Mommy’s Area.” Using the many shelves and file cabinets for school storage and an Ikea shelf we sectioned of the corner of the living room into a space for me to work on school and store books and supplies.

The view from “inside” “Mommy’s Area”. You can see our school wall through the middle of the “wall” I tried to create with shelves and file cabinets.

The Ikea shelf is my best friend. It USED to be filled with my crafting supplies, but now it mostly houses school books and resources. Looks messy? Yes, because I face the book and binder spines out to the rest of the house. So, it looks much better to people coming into the house from the front door. Well, that and  my area was messy when I took these pictures, but there’s no sense in falsifying the usual state of things for the blog, right?! No one really lives in the pristine state they post in pictures – it is impossible!

That’s a picture of what our homeschool is like living in an apartment. It is possible! But you do have to give up your house…especially if your doing elementary ages. I want school to be visual and fun. I don’t want the boys to “miss” any of the fun they might have at “regular” school – so I brought the classroom experience into the house: complete with posters, bulletin boards, centers, and pocket charts. We’re blessed to have a good space even without a devoted school room.

Simply said: they love it!

…and I do too!