Its finally here! The crazy moment I look forward to each year when I prepare our home for the school year. We homeschool. Now, I know that not everyone homeschools but there are a few things that we all can do to place learning at each child’s fingertips right at home, all year round. After years of teaching in the private, public, charter and now in our homeschool classroom, people ask me for ideas all the time. So, I’m going to keep the next few posts short and sweet and share ideas for organizing your kid’s areas, bringing the learning fun home, with actual cool and not to costly organizing and lesson ideas you can do with kids during homeschooling or on weekends, holidays, or summer break!
Today I’m sharing a few of my tips for organizing your home classroom. Seriously…there are some many little things to organize that it could be overwhelming so here are some tips:
- Find the right bins, jars, or buckets to fit your particular needs. I reuse a LOT and find things that are not super costly. Below you will see a variety of buckets from IKEA and Home Depot (paint area), plastic shoe bins I painted and labeled to go with our overall look, and some really cool metal bins my hubby and I bought when a mall clothing store was going out of business (Yes! Look for these opportunities…we took them all and scored BIG! I use them in my pantry as well.) I also use jars from various food items we buy for craft supplies (I’ll show those in a separate post).
- Divide and Conquer! I’m a big fan of separating materials as much as possible. It helps the kiddos and mommy know where to find and put everything away quickly.
- Label EVERYTHING. I just re-sorted and relabeled mine recently. It changes over time according what we have and need. I have used sticker paper in the past but for these I used double sided tape and will soon cover with a wide clear tape to make them longer lasting. You will also see decal stickers on some of our buckets made by my husband who designs and has some online decal stores… yes it is a definite plus but you can get creative (or email me and I’ll see how I can help).
- Organize your classroom library according to general interest themes or genre. I’m working on redoing mine now but the pictures still show some progress. This helps you, the teacher, and the students find books fairly quickly even in an ocean of books. I also have a counter area I use to feature books from themes we are currently studying so they can explore them in between classes when done with their activity or work or when I set a special time aside for that. Our current themed area is on Rocks and Minerals (a BIG hit with the kids…more on that to come soon).

Classroom Materials Buckets

Classroom Materials and Manipulatives Buckets
I hope this short post has been helpful! If you have any questions, comments, or want to share your own ideas on organizing your home classroom, please feel free to comment below or email me at bernice@diapursity.com. I can’t wait to hear from you!
Blessings,
Bernice