I write often of how our family of seven lives and homeschools in a small home.
And because of our small home, we’ve had many different homeschool areas. We always seem to be on a quest to stretch our little home to give us a space that we can call our homeschool “room”. Some of our past homeschool room posts are listed below.
- Our first homeschool room was our dining room.
- The living room corner is transformed into our homeschool area.
- Making a school area in the living room.
- A rearranged living room makes a new homeschool area for the older boys while the younger kids have a school nook.
This year, I decided to simply embrace that we are a family that homeschools throughout our home.
We start our mornings at our large table. This is where we do some of our joint lessons though we sometimes end up in the adjacent living room for our shared readings and music lessons.
After our joint lessons, the older boys head to their bedroom to complete their lessons. I check in on them periodically to make sure that they are working. One time when I checked in, I found our oldest helping his younger brother with a question. That makes me {smile}.
Littlest Man and I head to the living room with some books where we read, sing, and play. Sometimes we head to the little table in the kitchen to have a little craft time.
After a little preschool time, I meet with the girls for their individual teaching times. As I work with the girls, we sometimes find ourselves at the table. And sometimes we find ourselves on the living room floor or couch.
Throughout the day, we will find ourselves rotating amongst all of these spaces as we work together to learn.
Our Homeschool Storage
Our homeschool materials are stored in various places. The most often used books and student & teacher tools are stored in the homeschool area.
A caddy holds my often used teacher tools and sits on the table during school time so that I can easily grab what I need.
Another caddy sits on the table and holds crayons & markers for the kids.
We also use a shoe organizer on the back of a door to hold some of our materials.
The shelves in our hall hold books, paper, and learning activities. In this area, we store school books that we don’t use as often or even books that we will need later in the year. We also have a shelf of books for reading in our “library”. {smile} A small shelf is designated as the preschool shelf and holds activities for our Littlest Man as well as some manipulatives to be used by all.
And this concludes our homeschool room post for the 2012 – 2013 school year! Of course, I’m known for moving things around a bit so please come back to see if I change up the homeschool room as we stretch our little house! (However, this set up is working really well for us so far!)
Thank you for stopping by!
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you're the coolest, adriane, and I mean that. I love it all: the blue frames, the jars of manips on the table, the quilts under the basket, the sweet treasure of a moment you experienced, the way education is beautiful and normal and just a part of the family fabric. You move me to consider in what ways i try to segregate learning to determined-by-me spaces or times. there is this ever-present voice telling me what is "right" and "proper" and "the best way" to do things. Knowing that there is no one "right" way to do this, but the way that God is leading our family to do this thing -- because I truly believe that He cares for all the things that make up our day, even the little seemingly insignificant things, because it is THESE things that *make* our day -- the structure of our time, the manner by which we keep our home, the time that we take to consider placement of items that will mazimize our children's capacity to take in what God deems holy and good and lovely and just and true and right. Yes, I think I just said that God cares about where you put those blue frames. :)
ReplyDeleteVery neat and organized. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Chrissy. It's neat and organized now but after a few months of use, it probably won't look much like this. :)
ReplyDeleteSally, I thank you for your comment and for your kind words. You simply know how to say things that make me smile and put a little kick into my steps. You are blessed with the gift of encouragement, that's for sure!
ReplyDeleteI have noticed this year, our eighth year of homeschooling, that our learning seems to be woven more into our lives and more natural. I think that this is the first time that this has really happened for us, that I can remember anyway. It is a very comfortable place to be. And it has made this second week a great school week for us. I hope we can continue on like this for the rest of our school year...and even our learning careers.
And about those blue frames...I have plans for a way to use those where they are functional as well as decorative. I just have to make sure it won't clutter up the space! :)
Blessings to you!