The disappearing classroom....

This summer we relocated our classroom from an upstairs spare room back down to the dining room. For years and years, we had school in the dining room and I used to say that our home was decorated in "Early American Homeschool". We were used to the homeschool clutter......bookshelves with crates and papers, stacks of books on the dining room table, maps and posters on the wall.

No more! I really liked having my dining room look like a dining room, and I have no real desire to return to "Early American Homeschool" decorating style.

So what to do? School must be relocated because the "spare" room is becoming a boys bedroom. So I converted an adjacent coat closet into a school closet and created the disappearing classroom.

Here is how it works. I pull out the supplies for the day. I have an organizer for all our pencils, pens, crayons, scissors, etc. I have a magazine holder to keep paper sized posters handy and visible. I put all the supplies needed for the day in a crate so it is all readily accessible. I place our AAS spelling board on the side table. All in all, takes me less than a minute.

After we are done with school, I do a quick view of the next days schedule. I place all books needed for the next day into the crates. Then I place everything back into the closet.

I still have our workboxes but I am using them differently. Each drawer has all the books for a specific subject on our MFW grid. There is a drawer for all the books used in the Bible grid, another for all the geography books, and another for each and every section. This makes it easy for me to get each specific book for each subject.

Here is our disappearing classroom....