Homeschool is the going trend thanks to the Wu-CV-19 and suddenly everyone is converting their homes into HomeEd Spaces. Homeschool Room inspiration is all over Pinterest and every store is selling workspace furniture and accessories.
My good friend, Elsa, has utilized IKEA furniture to pull together a model and productive HomeEd space and I’m so happy to show it off here. She is a veteran homeschool mom of SIX and she is an extremely gifted organizer as well as having a knack for keeping things minimal vs excessive. She promotes the importance of having a designated space for everything to avoid countless moments lost searching for where you last left important resources. I couldn’t agree more. But what if I don’t HAVE a space to donate to the cause? Let me show you how I make my entire home a “school” space without relinquishing my home to it and yet still maintain Elsa’s “A place for everything and everything in its place” motto.
Keep it by the Kitchen
Real estate agents claim the kitchen is the selling point of a home, and it’s definitely the heart of it as well. Since living rooms and dining rooms surround the kitchen your kids will likely accumulate and function there. So I focus on keeping our living and dining spaces education based for this reason. Each room has stock shelves full of reference books and supplies that keep us on track whenever we settle into them and those stock shelves are the backbone of Elsa’s motto.
These two dining bookshelves hold a lot of our homeschool supplies in the bottom halves and easily help turn the dining room into a great work space allowing us to free it up and put everything away locally when the dining room needs to be a dining room again.
I keep a large white board tucked away behind one of my living room couches vs hanging it on the wall so I can easily pull it out for regularly use and then put it away when not needed. Math practice or guided lecture with note taking is what I typically use the big white board for but I also keep little magnetic white boards on my fridge for demos in the dining room which is right across from the kitchen. Super easy when I’m making lunch and kids at the dining table ask a question or need me to demo a math problem. I have even used my white fridge and dry erase markers as a white board when larger space is needed. A Norwex magic eraser cleaning pad easily removes markings.
We still utilize formal desks both in the home office which is also centrally located right off kitchen for supervised screen time and personal desks in the kids bedrooms. Kids generally prefer to be connected to the family and each other as well as the kitchen bath they also need to opportunity to get away into a quiet knock, and the bedroom desks are for those moments. Just be careful not to let electronics eek into the bedrooms or they will withdraw into them and never come out and trust me, ZERO work will be getting done.
MULTI-function Spaces
Large work surfaces are essential but they are also obstructive to traffic in a small house. Another reason why dining tables are so commonly occupied by homeschooling. But it’s not enough when your homeschooling SIX. I like to break up middle school and elementary school into Living Room and Dining Room so I can easily flow from space to space and be present for both at the same time while keeping their needs separate. I have a “tuck away table desk” to help my living room accommodate a second large work space without having to live with it when I need my living room to just be a living room and not school room.
KEEP IT MOBIL
Wether you want to cozy up on the couch or work while riding in the car, clip boards enable writing anywhere and a crate with each of your kids main course texts allow them to spend a week with grandma or do a day at the library and get a change of scenery or even just move around the house as they see fit. Not being confined to a single space is really important for us. I like to think of the kids as free to fly only with a responsibility that must go wherever you go.
I highly recommend these large 3-ring binders with a strap from Staples in lieu of a book bag as its again easy to keep assignment Mobil and organized and doubles as an academic portfolio. All my kids work from the year gets saved in these binders and if your ever asked for an annual portfolio review these will come in handy as well as make for easy reference.
Keep Reading & Reference Abundant
For History and Literature I fancy The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer approach with Great Books Study and I find that the kids read more and dive in more whole-heartedly when they believe they fell upon their reading material by chance or chose it themselves. Because they each have a specific period to study from Ancient, to Medieval, to Modern etc I keep reference books from their lists ALL AROUND THE HOUSE and just designate “reading blocks.” Living room end tables, bedroom nightstand and pockets behind seats in car are excellent places to stash reading material.
Reading Block
I’ve designated 8pm for a reading block which has freed up a good chinch of daytime for fun and work and enabled early bedtimes for all, even teens. My husband gets up at an ungodly hour of the morning, so keeping our small house quiet enough for him to retire early was impossible without early bedtimes for all. But bedtime masquerades at “reading block” in this house. Everyone must be in bed, and quiet and reading but many times they just fall asleep. Win, win! It’s a lot easier to read at a quiet and chill time like 8pm than it is mid-day when you want to feel productive.
LIFE-School vs Home-School
I’ve always wondered why it’s called “homeschool.“ Sounds so “homey” and cozy so I don’t mind it but it’s just not the educating source – the home. Many classes are outsourced and more time is spent outside the home when homeschooled than we ever spent when were nine years in private school. We are always on the go because there is more time to live life when homeschooled. I cringe when I think of all the days we spent inside that same classroom, confined in that same building during our private school days. It’s so freeing to be LIFE-Schooled. And I think not having a Homeschool Room but having educational supports all around the home, even packed up for on the go outside the home truly keeps education moving and a way of LIFE, not just a huge block of time consuming your life.
I hope you enjoyed this post, maybe even be a little inspired by it or at least parts of it. Please don’t be offended if certain parts aren’t agreeable to you, this is what works for me and I hope others as well because it truly widens the walls around you and opens the perimeters that hold you in, so you can spread your wings. I’m pretty sure that’s for all of us. But the most important aspect of homeschool is that it’s centered around YOU and your individual children. It should reflect what works for you and you only. So if nothing else I hope a piece of this helps you find your niche and make your homeschool experience meaningful.
Her House 