Our Tot School Zone

I hesitated about posting this since we just started doing tot school and preschool but I think the more pictures and ideas you can get the better.

We live in a small house with 2 bedrooms and a tiny but open living, dining, and kitchen area. We don't have an extra room to dedicate to play or school. But this house does have a large laundry room and lots of closets so my school stuff is spread throughout our house.

The majority of our books are on this bookcase in the girls bedroom. I recently narrowed them down to fit on the shelf. It is hard for me to get rid of books, but I am trying to learn to live within our current space :) Their toys are also in their bedroom closet.

This is our coat closet in our hallway, although it isn't really a hallway. Its a weird space with all the doors to the bathroom, bedrooms, and closets. I put all our school stuff that we won't be using very often. On the top shelf is a bin for all their art and the stacked bins have toys, seasonal books (Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc), and all of my theme materials. I was a speech pathologist at a preschool so I have a lot of books and language materials. I also use this closet for odd objects that don't have a place.

The majority of the school stuff is in our big laundry room. This small bookcase is for our tot trays. I have a dry erase board over it to keep me organized. The red baskets are to keep the materials I will use for the week. Like I said, I am new, and this may change, but last week I got so tired of digging through boxes every night for materials so I got all my stuff ready for the week and put it in the red boxes. Each night I take the stuff out and put it on the trays. Working good so far.

This shelving unit holds things I use more often. On the top shelf are my supplies (file folders, pockets, scissors, etc.) and the other two boxes are found items (containers, bottle tops, funnels, ice cube trays, etc.). The stacked up pink boxes are for very small items like beads, feathers, googly eyes, etc. Next shelf, red boxes. These house ribbon, tissue paper, paints, fabric, etc. Next shelf, more boxes. These house alphabet, number, color, rhyming, manipulatives, etc. Play Doh is in the smaller boxes. Next shelf, more boxes which house puzzles, card games, construction paper, and workbooks. I have art boxes for the girls on this shelf as well. The bottom shelf is non school items.

The girls don't come in the laundry room much. Our computer and office stuff is in there as well. I don't let them get the tot trays themselves. I put them on the kitchen counter in the morning and we sit on the living room floor or dining table to do our work. Then it all goes back to the laundry room.

I don't have a big collection of tot toys so there are only a few toys that are off limits. As I acquire more learning toys I will probably keep them out of reach.

I dislike how spread out everything is. I wish I had a dedicated school room but I do feel lucky to have such a big laundry room in such a small house.

That's our space!