Learning Room

What children need is not new and better curricula but access to
more and more of the real world; plenty of time and space to think
over their experiences, and to use fantasy and play to make meaning
out of them; and advice, road maps, guidebooks, to make it easier for
them to get where they want to go (not where we think they ought to
go), and to find out what they want to find out."

~ John Holt, in Teach Your Own


This was a little hard for me to decide which room to showcase. The unschooler inside me wanted to pronounce all rooms as learning rooms, but I settled on the "neater" sunroom.

In this room, I've kept things that requires quiet concentration as the kids tinker with their toys. The materials I've set up in this alcove are guided by a loose definition as quiet play while the rest of house has noisy play. In every house we lived in, I've generally kept this definition.

The coffee table holds B.'s toys. Generally puzzles and stacking toys. The white shelving holds C.'s stuff. They are roughly sorted according to Math, Science, Puzzles, Sensorial & CGS just so that it would be easier for us to find.


On the other side is our library and a bookcase that holds his language manipulatives. Although I don't follow a formal reading program, I'm hoping the Montessori activities might help him discover reading for himself. I've also recently picked up a book that I enjoyed tremendously. The activities they present are fun and although tailored for a classroom, I think C. might enjoyed some of them as he discovers words.

The books are shelved roughly - Fiction, Non-fiction, Spiritual, Chinese. I still need to weed through the library discards. :/





A little about the white boxes you see scattered through the room. They are all cardboard boxes I've accumulated over time and wrapped with white contact paper. I'm hoping to make a few index cards, stamp a pretty border like this and draw a simple symbol of the contents within. If that doesn't attract the kids to open the box, then maybe a photo might. These boxes act as my Montessori trays. I used to have open trays but my little toddler would get into them. So this is a nice compromise. Still self-selecting yet compact. And the box is just enough to deter my toddler and also minimize him scatter its contents to the four winds.

We've had a lot of fun memories here and I imagine the set-up would change as my boys changed.