I thought I'd post a few pictures of our "school room" (also known as our family room),  even though it's still very much a work in progress! The room contains a couch, a coffee table, our flat screen TV, two recliners, a rocker, a small bookshelf, our geography cabinet and two sets of Ikea Trofast workboxes. What it does not include is a work table, which was initially part of the room, but later removed.

Last year the kids did at least half of their work at the couch, so I figured we really didn't need to have a big table in the room. The school room is connected to the dining room, so there's always the option of using the dining room table when needed.

Every year, there seems to be one subject that I lose my head over. This year it was geography and I spent a good portion of the summer collecting vintage geography games and resources (some of these can also be found on my Pinterest geography board). Ironically, geography was the one subject that I didn't need to plan this year since we'll be using the Geography and Culture Task Cards from Creek Edge Press.


This is probably the ugliest couch ever, but the kids are rather hard on furniture, so I wanted something super inexpensive and durable. It was only $24.99 and looks brand new, though obviously vintage, so it seemed the perfect solution for now.

Behind the couch, to the right of the workboxes, is a huge closet with shelves to the ceiling (there is a staircase on the other side of the wall, so this is the under stair storage area). It looks a mess in the photo below, but is actually fairly well-organized - the left side is mostly games (new and vintage) and the right side contains shelves full of my favorite clear plastic shoeboxes from The Container Store. All of our arts and crafts supplies are stored in these boxes. I have two additional cabinets in the garage which contain extra school supplies, science items, and general overflow.


We two have boring blue recliners, flanking either side of a little table and small bookshelf (see below). The line in the paneling, toward the top of the first picture, is actually a ledge that runs halfway around the room - quite useful for displaying things!


One of the nicest parts of the room is that nearly an entire wall is a sliding glass door. Since wood paneling tends to be dark, I appreciate having such a wonderful source of light in the room! Below is the view onto our patio - and a table so that we can do lessons outdoors when the weather is nice.