Just wanted to share our "school" room - also our kitchen and dining area (not even really a separate dining room). Most of our seat work happens in this space, as well as science projects, art, etc. Everything gets cleared off for lunch and then for dinner.
We keep all our current supplies in half of the pantry. I had to put a lot of my kitchen stuff in the garage to make space, but its worth it to have everything in one place.
I use clip boxes from Target to contain most of the pieces - on the top are markers, crayons, math manipulatives. On the bottom are larger clip boxes that hold "centers" for my smaller kids (here my 16 month old was checking out the lacing cards - he just figured out how to unlatch there, which is why the writing implements are now on the top!). The books here are all of ours for the year, not including some supplements from the library. The plastic bins hold each kids work for the day. The baskets up top hold art supplies and learning puzzles/games/other randomness. On the door I have our calendar and the beginnings of an art gallery. I like everything closing away and instantly feeling uncluttered.
We don't have space for a school room at the moment, but I like this anyway. Having small children (mine are 6.5, 4.5, 3, and 16 months) I like staying central so I can keep and eye on everyone, and even work on stuff in the kitchen while kids work on schoolwork or projects at the table. I would eventually like to find some good stools to have extra working space for kids at the kitchen island, but at the moment even our small dining table is enough space for them all to work at the same time. We also read a lot, and do that on the couch in our living room. I think the key to this is having specific places for everything to live when not in use.
