My new home education station.

This year I added my fourth and final boy to our day of home education. This final edition, exhausted my limited "school shelf" storage.

Never fear....I have an Ikea near.

So off I went to the Ikea store. It didn't take me long at all to find the perfect new book case. (In fact it took me longer to make it downstairs to actually purchase the bookcase than it did for me to pick a bookcase. Ikea is a huge place.) After much scheming and sliding and pushing and very poor steering of the shopping cart/flat bed thing... I brought home the crazy big bookshelf. We're talking really big....so big that there was concern that it might not fit in my van, even with all the seats folded down.
The thing is seven and a half feet tall. I'm sure glad I ignore ZD's advice to buy two of these buggers. I t really didn't look this big in the store.

I'm not quite finished "cutesy-ing" it up. I have ribbon and gingham and some really cool fabric that I have big plans for. But it looks ok for now. Plus it's not my only storage area for school stuff. I have another small bookcase, a pantry type cabinet, a high boy with lots of drawers, and.....um....a little closet under the stairs that's overfilled at the moment. (and a couple of bookcases upstairs...and another cabinet in the kitchen. This is kind of embarrassing.)

So here's my lovely new bookcase all filled with home learning goodies.

The very top shelf holds two closet drawer organizers with office supplies, CD roms, music CD's, manipulative's, and even my 3-hole punch.

Shelf two holds a basket of higher math supplies: calculators, protractors, rulers, compasses, right angle rulers. It also holds two black totes of books to be read. One is mine and the other is Cobb's.

Below that are two more reading totes for Matty and Anders, my King Frog who's acting as a book end and a clay mug from Germany that houses paperclips.

The fifth shelf has picture books for Sammy and Anders, Art supplies in a little wicker basket, and a black tote with my teacher guides.

You can't see the sixth shelf which is very narrow and holds buckets of crayons and markers, a jar full of counters, and several jars with pencils, pens, and highlighers.

The bottom two shelves hold the totes for each boys' school work. Their textbooks and workbooks all fit neatly inside a tote. Each tote has a ribbon with the boy's name embroidered on it. When they start work, they can easily grab their tote and take it anywhere in the house to work. (Cobb's is actually on the table in the first picture.) I also have magazine holders to house my Progeny Press Guides and all our out Latin course work. And also a place to store the cat.

What? You mean you don't have cat storage in your homeschool space?