12.10.2013

tot school: new and improved

When we bought our house in 2008, a big part of the appeal was the huge home office right off of the living room. The previous owners had removed the closets for ample space, and my husband and I had all of these big plans for our home office. These plans remained just that -- plans -- and the reality was it was 2013 already and the office was simply a storage space where we hid our laundry. And "hid" is relative, of course, since the room is right off of the main living room so everyone can see inside whenever they come over. When we began tot school when Ethan was just over a year old, I set up space in a small spare bedroom. It was the perfect size. The older he got, and with us having a tot school co-op here once a week, the room began to close in on us. It was too distracting having everything on top of everything else. After our unintentional tot school break recently, I made it my own personal goal to transform the unused home office into our new tot school classroom where it can remain for the duration of us ever having children and being a tot school family.

The space is perfect. There's plenty of space. Enough for my husband to keep the futon he didn't want to get rid of if he we didn't have to. And, of course, it's a huge perk sitting on the couch and staring not at boxes, computers and laundry but at a beautifully set up classroom and Ethan's hanging artwork.

See?


(The futon, which is my husband's, is filled with binders of Important Accountant Stuff. He hasn't figured out what to do with them yet, but it's his futon and the room is so awesome I hardly care at this point.)

Not much has changed in terms of what is in the room. Everything went with us except our wall shelf, which is still hanging in the spare bedroom. I did pick up a cheap and surprisingly nice bookshelf at Goodwill for Ethan's art supplies now that he likes to come up with art ideas on his own and he is loving having everything more at his level so he can figure out what catches his eye that day.

I made this entire back wall a hanging art gallery. I found these StikkiClips at an educational store and am in l-o-v-e. They are absolutely the most amazing wall-hanging product we've tried (and we've tried a lot). Perfect for Ethan's always-changing art gallery that we'll swap out as he fills it up!


They're like paper clips! For your wall! So cool, right?

And there you have it, our new tot school space! Since I managed to throw together all of our tot trays minus the sensory bin, today was our first day back and it was awesome and like we never paused at all. Ethan is adjusting to a new room and having a hard time remembering tot school moved down the hall, but he's loving it.

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