The cultural shelf

Have a good weekend all!

I am so sorry for the lack of posting this week.
I think at this point, I can honestly say, it has been a hell of a week.  I knew this transition would not be easy, but I didn't think I would be caught in a train wreck.  After a laborious start of the week, I came down on wednesday with a bad flu, that glued me to my bed (or at least hoping for that) most of the days for the rest of the week.  I despise being sick, but being sick as a mother, is 10 000 times worst.

Today I just want to show you a glimpse of a little corner of our living room (that needs to be repainted asap please DH!) that we all adore: the cultural shelf.

 This nook has been creating itself out of the necessities and following the various interest of my children.  It is a spot that I would have created in a homeschooling room in a heartbeat, but I love how it is integrated in our house at a spot where it is very convenient considering what is in there.

The top shelf if dedicated to music.  As you can see, it is not very tall, so yes, even the radio is at E's reach.  He can, already..., turn on the radio, and select a disk in the CD changer.  We usually put the disks always in the same spot, so he knows what he picks (trust me on that!)
But for the benefit of my 2 oldest ones, I have put the CD boxes in a wooden box on the top of the shelf.

This way, they can look at the box (and the paper inside), and know what they are listening to.  The CDs are always in order that they are placed in the CD changer.  As you can see, on top of each CD, I have added an image of the person, or group, performing the music, whether it is Handel or the Dave Burbeck band.

The framed picture is a card from a nomenclature set of composers that I have.  We'll be studying composers this years, and as you can see, we will be starting out with Bach.  The first disk of the CD changer will always be one that either talks of (I have many book with a cd about the composers) or just plays music of the said composer.  Depending on the material I have, there will perhaps be more, but there will always be other genre of music in there, notably jazz, and cuban music (nothing is better for a dancing spree in the living room then some good Buena Vista Social club...)

The bottom shelf is dedicated to music and other arts.

The left side is still about music.  But this time, mostly about the orchestra and the instruments.  There is also a few narrative books on the far left and for E's sakes, a nursery rhymes book (because we don't know all of the english ones!).

The middle basket is dedicated to the visual arts.  It is a collection of books about painting, sculpture and architecture.  Eventually, I want to add the study of a work of art every month, so I'll have to figure out a way of making room for it in this area.

Finally, in the right side, we have the writing and telling art: literature.
Our favorite books and books of the moment are there.  Some rotate often, while others just remain there because they get out to be read ever so often.  Right now we have picture books mostly aimed at many ages (cardboard books, fairytales, fact books...), but once X is more fluent with reading, I'll be adding books to challenge him, and keep him reading.

There is a vase of X made flowers on top on the shelf.  Although we love flowers, we don't always have fresh cut one.  So these are one of the replacement set while the vase is empty.  Nature is art to us. :)