Our Home Classroom Part 1: The Art Area
As many of you know, this past fall my husband and our two children and I moved to a new house. We had lived in our previous house for 10 years, and while it was a lovely house, we felt that with homeschooling and a home-based business, we needed more room.
One thing we were looking for was a basement that could be a combination classroom/playroom for the children. The house we chose not only had a spacious basement, but it was a walkout with sliding glass doors leading to our backyard and a large picture window (lots of natural light!)
In our last house, our learning area was in our family room, and it was a bit cramped; here’s a picture as a refresher:
At the time that picture was taken, my son was 7 and my daughter was 4, so much of her work was in our kitchen (pouring and other practical life activities). Since I couldn’t be in two places at the same time, it was hard to work with both of them or even be in a place where I could observe both at the same time.
Our new basement was unfinished when we moved in (which basically means cement walls and floor) so we’ve spent the past three months waiting and watching as construction crews put in walls, lights, outlets, carpeting, and all the other things that go into finishing a basement. They finished right before Christmas and we were thrilled with the result!
I’m going to be blogging about each area of our classroom, although I’m still working on it (arranging shelves, cutting out materials), but here’s a picture of our main work area to hold you until I can do more with it:
The sliding doors at the end are a storage closet for me, giving me plenty of room to store the materials we’re not using (something I never had before!) I’ll be blogging more about that too in the near future.
In the meantime, I wanted to talk about our art area. I’ve blogged about art areas before, specifically on setting up your primary art area and bringing art to the elementary classroom. In the past, I usually put out trays of art activities already put together (as shown in the two art posts).
This time, however, I decided to do things a little differently. Now that my children are older (9 and 6), I decided to simply put out lots of different art materials and let them create their own art projects.
When we designed our basement, we put in a tiled area, some cabinets, a counter top, and a sink. This seemed like a natural place to put our art supplies:
From time to time, I will still give them specific projects (for instance, we painted a Styrofoam set of planets last week to make a Solar System model) but mostly they are on their own. We do have at least one time period set aside each week for art, but they choose their own projects and complete them with minimal help from me.
I am using Jennifer Mackintosh’s unbelievably beautiful art area (scroll down a bit to see her Art Center) as an inspiration, but at this point I’ve only put out a few art supplies and some paper:
We have some additional supplies on a shelf nearby:
…including things like stamps and stamp pads, beads, craft paper, origami paper, and collage materials like craft sticks and pompoms.
So far, our art area has been a huge hit, especially with my daughter, who often goes down there first thing in the morning after waking up and has completed a few projects by the time I make my way downstairs!
I’m loving your environment – way to go. I’m also planning to open up my own environment but I don’t know where to start from. Please I need help from scratch!
I’ll be blogging about each area of the classroom in the coming weeks, so stay tuned! In the meantime, I have a lot of posts about organization and about essentials for each age group so those should be helpful.
Hi Lori, i am trying to separate de “playarea” and “study area”, did you put both areas in your basemente together or completelly separated. My kids only wants to play with “toys” and not the material. I try to let them play first then “study” or vice versa, but is very hard for me. Any sugestions? Thanks,
Oh this looks FANTASTIC! Well done! I’m sure your kids love their new classroom! I recently posted about our new classroom, too. Take a peek if you’re interested.
http://countingcoconuts.blogspot.com/2010/01/james-world-redux.html
Lori,
What beautiful pictures! I’m so happy for you! Great job!!!!! Your space looks so inviting and light!
Hi, Leilane! I definitely have the play area separate, although they are both in the basement. During school time they can only use the school area, and it works out very well. They don’t go near the toys. They have workplans, etc. that make it very clear what their choices are for work time.
Hi, Mari-Ann! Glad you like it! Thanks for linking to your classroom – it looks great!
Andrea, one of the things I like the most is the natural light that comes in, and the yellow paint I chose is called “Winter Sunlight”. No dark basements for us!
I’m always happy to see other home based classroom settings. I feel the smaller group and home / classroom environment is a wonderful first school experience and a great transition to the more usual larger, community based classroom settings, (esp. for preschoolers). I am in my 17th year as a home based school here in Colorado and I’ve always been ‘full’ with my 7 or 8 students.
Gorgeous! Love that you have a warm carpeted area, but then also the practical tiled area for the messier projects. Wish we had the foresight to think of this before we had finished our basement – but we did it long before our lovely daughters were even thought of, so we certainly weren’t thinking of homeschooling and Montessori! Your home could be the very definition of what Maria Montessori talks about having a BEAUTIFUL prepared environment.
Thank you all, we are really happy with the way it turned out! We are down there all the time, and funny enough, our cats really love it too
How beautiful Lori! This post has inspired me t relook our homeschooling materials arrangement.
I wish I could arrange my homeschool materials as nicely and have an art corner…but space is a real constraint!
I’m finally getting a chance to sit down and spend some time really looking at your pictures, Lori! They’re just fabulous! You chose well on the paint color – your room is inviting and warm all at the same time!!! And what an extraordinary space!! I’m thrilled for you…if not a smidge jealous to be working with and organizing such a delicious blank canvas! I’m so glad you derive inspiration from the art center!! How fabulous that I could pay you back in some way for the many times you inspired and taught me something!
I can’t wait to see more pics of your learning spaces!
Hello Lori, I was wondering where you bought your shelves. This room looks great!
Hi, Khalida! Every light-wood shelf you can see in our classroom was purchased at Target except for the map cabinet, which is from Alison’s Montessori. The darker wood cabinet pictured above was bought for me by my mom a long time ago, probably at Bombay Company.
I love the space! Ohh, how I wish I had more room
So bright & so many possibilities for your children. Hard work has paid off 
Hi Lori,
I like coming back to your pics for more inspiration!
I hope you don’t mind telling me…what is
…in the little cubby holes with the coloured inserts?
…in the little set of small white drawers on your geography maps shelf?
Hi, Gwynne! I’ve actually blogged about both of those things before: the cubby post is here, and the multi-drawer cabinet post is here. Hope that helps!
What a BEAUTIFUL classroom! Everything is so nice – shelves, material… I can’t wait your next post about your prepaired environment
Hugs from Croatia
Thanks Lori! I am so excited to get our Montessori workspace reorganised!