Ok..I havent got a set space to do homeschool, but I know others do...and I just would love to see pictures of your 'schooling' space...how do you organize it all? how do you make it home also? It just interests me to see how people make use of their space....or in my case lack of.......... Thanks in advance!!!
We don't have a specific space, and I'm on my 9th year! Some people do, some don't. I read history in the living room on the couch, do history workbooks at the kitchen table, science at the kitchen table, language sometimes at the table, sometimes on the couch, math on table, couch, or middle of the living room floor, Rachael does her math at the computer or on the kitchen table, Faythe often does her math on her bed (!!!). She also works on Bible on the computer (typing AWANAS verses, mostly!) I do have friends who has a specific place to do school. It works for them just fine, but it's just not me!
We use a "nitch" in our dining room mostly for written work but do lots of our reading in the living room. you can find my pictures if you search under my username. its small but doable.
Here are some pics of our space. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/dectaz/380144/ and here.... http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/dectaz/380138/ We are five in a small two bedroom. We use the dinning area as the livingroom We eat all meals at the coffee table. The living area is the "Classroom" Divided by back to back bookshelves that help create a half wall. The computers are in this area as well as my sewing machine. We have two 3footx3foot low siting tables for school work. We read all over the apartment! hahaha!
Jen, I love your avatar!!! This past year, we were at a Customer Appreciation thing at the farm market, and they had a wall. Phillip made it to the top; he was SO proud of himself!
Wow Jen- Thanks so much for sharing your space....it is amazing!!! I think we will be a dining room homeschool Just seems that is where everything happens...........
We have a 'school room', but we don't do a lot of school work in it. I have a shelving unit I bought at WalMart in there & I keep all of our manipulatives, chemistry sets, microscope, etc. on it. We have a bookcase in the dining room for workbooks, binders, folders, notebooks, etc. The kids each have a desk in the school room. Joslyn uses hers when she's doing independent work. If we're working on something together, it's usually at the dining room table. Reading is usually in the living room. We have bookcases full (actually, overly filled) of books in the living room and the dining room. Finished projects get displayed in any room we can find a place for them. We use our 3-season porch as an arts & crafts room, so that's where all our arts & crafts stuff is stored. We really just don't stick to a specific area for school. It would be too difficult & confining for my kids.
Organize??? Is it supposed to be organized??? No one told me that!:lol: We are a dining room family, too. Well, it is our only eating area, but I call it the dining room because it has a different kind of flooring than the rest of the kitchen and it makes it sound like we have more space. :lol: If ds is doing something written, we usually does it there. Messy stuff is done in the kitchen. Reading, acting, etc. is done everywhere! We have a little cabinet thing in the dining room I have taken over, and then I have piles of stuff stashed around everywhere. We will probably just be in this house 2, maybe 3 more years, and then we hope to build. I am pushing for a schoolroom then--not so much as a place to do stuff, but a place to store stuff. That is my big problem now!
We used to have that problem. Actually we kind of still do, it's just not as bad. We moved into this house last Oct. Before that, we'd been in a two bedroom apartment. There was no room for anything. Here we have more room, but still not enough. All of the rooms are fairly small & I'm always adding to our book collection and picking up more cool stuff for school. We've run out of places for bookcases to go. We would have room for a few more, but I have to save that space for the piano my mom is giving us. Our next house will definitely need to be bigger!
We used to have a space . . .*sigh* Since the move and we are in a cramped apartment, we use the dining table and lots of shelves around it. Such decor!
I feel your pain, my dear. Although I got to keep my DH, I lost my master bedroom classroom! We used to have a HUGE classroom/sewingroom/playroom. But we had to move after his accident. Small two bedroom apartment. Anyway, yes, I would rather have the DH, than some stupid room. Just sayin'. . . . . :roll:
We just had a thread about this... My area used to be the kitchen table, but we have now divided our living room and I use part of it. We have a set of plastic drawers, the computer cabnet, an old one piece school desk and a set of book shelves there. We have posters hanging in the kitchen, and book shelves in the hallway as well. My area is a disaster right now because I'm just now getting everything switched around or I would share a pic. We are in the middle of building a schoolhouse for us. Our home is small, and our school stuff honestly overruns it! Hubby is building us a 12'X16' building to use. It will be wonderful to have room for everything! Sadly it won't be finished until income tax time
You all really do give me reasons to enjoy homeschooling more. And thats a compliment. Every single one of you are great
awwww thanks Laura. This is an awesome group of ladies! It takes all of our different ways and thoughts to make this place work sooooo well!
Jen, I keep meaning to ask how dh is doing these days. Good I hope. Classroom/school/home/whatever SPACE... My best advice to anyone is invest in heavy duty shelves. The neat looking cheap wood ones won't get far with heavy school books. Save yourself some money and just invest in good ones from the start. My BEST shelves are the ones that my dh sort of stuck his nose up at because "they look too industrial/garage for the house" AND????? If you have a Sams Club membership they have some real nice ones for about $70 and each shelf is adjustable and holds something like 500lbs. There are 6 shelves total. The thing with shelves is that you can get some baskets and throw things in them and then pull them off the shelf like you'd pull a drawer completely out. Of course books are a given and with this "unit" I just bought some book ends to keep the books from dumping off the end. The other big plus is that you are using vertical space vs. horizontal I need to start working on my presentation for March on organizing your home. So...if you have some photos that you are willing to share with new homeschoolers I'd love to be able to use them. Several gals emailed me some last year and it was WONDERFUL because 1 idea is not how we all work so...they are able to take ideas from this and that and make it work for them.
We bought an old 2 story brick building about 10 years ago. We have completely remodeled the inside of this building. We have 3 bedrooms upstairs, plus the school room and then the living area downstairs. I love all this space, but it is not in a very good neighborhood. We tried to sell it and after 1 1/2 years of trying to sell, we have decided to buy 3/4 of an acre that butts up against our property and stay here. I love all the room that I have... so back to the questions, where do we homeschool at...
We homeschool all over the house too! Our "formal diningroom" is the computer room and has too tall bookshelves that we have school stuff in. My treadmill (which I need to use more often! And that we got when ds 16 was 3 and ds 14 was a baby!) is in there as well. But we work on English and math and other things on the couch, chairs, or floor somewhere in the house. If it's nice out, we go outside. I'm thinking a dedicated schoolroom would be nice, but I don't think we'd use it that much. We do better with the freedom of "wherever you feel comfortable right now, and can get the work done"! That's just how we work.... Oh yeah gma, weren't you gonna adopt me so we could homeschool in your neat rooms?!
When we get out of this apartment, we plan to get a three bedroom home. Most homes around her come with formals, meaning two rooms NO ONE ever uses... hahaha We plan to use one of those a s a dedicated classroom. Our reasons are clutter and mess. Our children as still early emelentary and all of our school work involved MESSY things! The messier the better! hahaha! It is a chore right now to live in such a tight space and to have to clean up EVERYTHING, when done, becuase of the dual use of the space. Whereas with a single use room, we can leave the artwork and science experiments be, where they are.. and come back to them the next day..\ But I can see how with older children, the need for "Mess space" is really not an issue, for sure! hahaha
we have a study that we do most of our school work in. before we were homeschooling we already had a study though, for the computer and the bookshelves, filing cabinets (when we first moved here I was actually studying at uni) When we started hs we just added a desk for each of the kids. I already had one, and of course the computer and all the books are here. But we are very blessed to have a large house, and we use it all. We have a music room for the instruments, which is great because the kids can practice and it doesn't distube everyone else. The verandah is the art space. The lounge room is the reading space. And the kitchen is regulary covered in science experiments. And walls anywhere are fair game, lol. She do you want a pic of our study? I could take one if you want it.
