with our building works coming to an end well sort of it’s time for me to think about a playroom class room thingy.
we have knocked 2 bedrooms into 1 at the front of the house and are intending on this being a room where the kids can play , make and discover. if you have a room like this or can offer any ideas I would be grateful. so far we have corner for imaginary play with kitchen , shop set up with the dressing up clothes and play silks ect.
we need and are as I would like to give the opportunity to the kids to make and invent with bits of cardboard and waste. how to store stuff so keep the room tidy. a Lego area needs to be designed. ect.
any ideas welcomed, about storage, or function or design or decoration.
kids are home educated so will hopefully use the room dailey.
Have you looked on Pinterest? Loads of inspiration on there!! (You don’t need to join to browse, just pop on and use the search function for playspaces, or playroom etc
I’ve just spent the last half hour ignoring the fact that it’s bed time and scouring a Soule Mama’s blog to find a picture of her kids’ art/craft cupboard. I give up, but it’s in the Creative Family if you have/can get hold of a copy.
I don’t have a separate playroom/classroom, although it would be lovely, lol! I store most things in the house in wicker baskets, I have food in them in the pantry, toys in them in various rooms, paints and crafty things in them, clothes in them in the bedroom, hats in them by the front door.
I also have a dh who is good at building shelves for them to sit on, made to measure. My children can pull the baskets off the shelves themselves when they want something, they are masters at emptying them, now I need to find a way of them mastering putting everything back in them!
Last we we were fortunate enough to move to a very large house (having previously been rather huddled together) and was very excited about our new school room and seperate playroom. Whilst these enabled us to keep homeschool/toys contained within their own rooms (as opposed to being sprawled over the house) I do feel we lost the natural *flow* that we had when everything was in one room. It suddenly seemed an effort to go and retrieve a book if the children had a question, whereas before our bookshelves were in the living room and the books were within arms length.
I would recommend a living area/space to be incorporated into your new space, even if it is just one sofa. plenty of shelving, don’t get too caught up on neatness etc as if yours are like mine it’ll all turn higgledy piggledy anyway!
My tip would be to fit in two (or more) table top areas, so that they can move from one activity to another, without taking ages tidying the first one. Eg messy play, quick hands wash and straight onto a snack. Or you can have two different activities like writing and painting going on at the same time without worrying about space invasion.
Washing lines (we have two, diagonally across the room in a criss cross) are great for art work display. A tall bookshelf is ideal - they have access to lower shelves and you can put things to dry on higher shelves (or your hot cup of tea, knitting or whatever) out of reach.
Open baskets or boxes for construction toys to be put back into - I am quite anal about keeping different toys separate when not being played with though….
For cardboard, loo rolls, plastic bottles to make with, I would keep it in a big box with a lid that could be clipped in place, so that it could all be shoved in and tidied away easily. A set of trays that slide easily is great for different kinds of paper.
And pots are best IME for crayons, pencils and felt tips, rather than cases, boxes etc.
Oh, also, make it a room that you can usefully spend time in too - although as you HE you’ll know this, I guess…. I naively thought ours would scuttle off upstairs to the play room quite happily, whilst I was doing boring stuff downstairs, but they don’t. They like to be near us, most of the time…
I love our playroom, but the boys are never in it! It’s the shape of half an octogon and has five huge windows and is always full of sunshine. Helps that I also painted it yellow. We have a sofa in there, and three sets of plain pine bookcases from ikea which Harry has previously painted. Toys in boxes on the lower shelves, art stuff higher up out of reach (in theory) We have a number line that goes aroud the top of the wall, and my mum recently sent me a phonics line in keeping with what he’s doing at school. Posters with shapes, colours, numbers, etc, and lots of works of art both from home and school/playgroup. Floor is laminate so very easily wiped! We have a car mat and did have onje of the foam letter ones where they all slot together, but the boys were continaully pulling them up and I read somewhere, probably on here, that there was harmful stuff in them so have put them away.
We also recently moved in Harry’s old Thomas the tank engine bed Dh and I built him a couple of years ago. It is huge, but due to shifting around and the fact it was a pain to make the bed and get in to cuddle him in the night, we have moved it downstairs and am planning to fill it with cushions as a sort of den/reading corner.
All irrelevant atm cause we’ve had to use it for Dh’s stuff out of the business premises, so its full and the boys can’t use it atm, so we have a few boxes of toys in the living room temporarily.
I love it how forum topics always come up just as we are about to publish our next issue and include lots of things which you are all talking about. In our April/May issue due out in a couple of weeks we have got a great article on how to design a home environment that encourages creativity and learning and a great article by ‘Starchild’ on clearing clutter, also we have an article on unplugging teenagers which was recently discussed on here…. you must be reading our minds Good luck with playroom room jennifer, I love it when a new room is a blank canvass, although that doesn’t happen very often round here
Jez
PS I have just found Pinterest too, it’s very inspirational, have just got my invite to join (need to limit my own computer time!)
On one of the blogs I saw a nifty idea; in fact I think it was slugs and snails blog…... where a large old coffee table was repurposed with a large lego base mat stuck on the top, and the rest was painted with blackboard paint. The table had space underneath for baskets too - so ideally chalk and lego baskets I guess.
Good luck with playroom room jennifer, I love it when a new room is a blank canvass, although that doesn’t happen very often round here 
