A new school year is usually a hectic time in my house as we get ready to jump into a new year of homeschool. But as the school year draws near this year, I find myself in a new and unique position. You see, for the past several years we have used our dining room as a school room. We moved our dining table to the eat-in kitchen and used the dining space to store and display our homeschool items. It has worked well, but it did have its downsides. Things were always in view and available to the younger kiddos to mess with, so keeping things organized was almost impossible. I was always running out of storage and the clutter and chaos was starting to drive me crazy.
This year, we were able to move our homeschool room into a bedroom that my nephew had used (he has moved out), so the past few weeks have been busy with painting, buying new furniture and organizing for our new school year. Not only are we starting off the school year in a new school room, but thanks to some pretty good prices on Amazon (my favorite place to shop lately), we were able to get new desks and decor for the room.
With my five-year-old, who is on the autism spectrum, starting kindergarten we had to have this Edupress Pete The Cat Calendar Kit. He will love using it this year and it is adorable. Then, when it came to desks, I knew we needed something different this year. We have been using an old kitchen table to work at, but it was no longer working well and the kids all wanted their own space, so I set out searching for an affordable desk that would work in our space. I knew I would be getting two different styles, one for my five-year-old and the one for the older kids. The desk for the older kids ended up being the one I had the most trouble choosing. After looking at what seemed to be hundreds of desks, we finally decided on this JOISCOPE Home Office Computer Desk. We love having the storage and the simple design. To go with the desk we had to find chairs, which ended up being even harder to find than the desks. We wanted a simple, DURABLE and affordable chair that didn’t have wheels (otherwise it would be turned into a race car with the kids). This Legare Bent Plywood Chair comes in a few different colors and the kids loved them. We were surprised with how sturdy they were and loved the design! Lastly, we bought a smaller desk and chair set that is more appropriate for a kindergartner; we found this Forfar Kids Desk and Chair Set. We knew it was perfect.
The next big change for our school year was going from a whiteboard to digital! I thought my husband had lost his mind when he mentioned going digital for the whiteboard. I thought we would have to put too much money into it and I knew we had other areas we could use that money, so I was against it. Then I found out that it wasn’t going to cost us much at all. We had a TV we weren’t using, so all we had to purchase was Chromecast and then we paid for a year subscription to the app Replica. Now I can use a whiteboard app on my tablet which shows on the screen for the kids to see. I think it is now my favorite change to our setup. The room is still a work in progress but by the end of the week it will be perfect!
