The {home}school room post {2012}

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.

 reference materials, teaching manuals, student workboxes, and my file box are easily accessible 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.

  Teacher tools:  stapler, paper clips, pens, markers, scissors, eraser, sticky tack, timeline figures, a grading scale, index cards, and a note to jot down things to buy from the store

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!

This post is linked to:

Homeschooling in a small home Q & A

Some of the most visited posts on this blog are the posts about homeschooling in a small home.  There seems to be many who are in a situations similar to ours as we stretch a small space to educate our families.  Recently, a comment was left that asked a question about our home.  I’d like to answer this comment and offer some advice to this mom who is also seeking answers about homeschooling in a small home.  I know that some of my blog friends also deal with small spaces so please feel free to leave more suggestions in the comments!

Recently on this post, Amber left the following comment:

Can I ask how small your small home is? Because even these tips seem to require more space than we have. It's helpful for figuring out what others do and don't do with their square footage. We currently have three adults (my mother lives with us) and three children in 850 sq. ft. and will be starting our home school journey this upcoming year. And this house has no hallway. I am at a complete loss as to where to have a school space. Our dining room barely fits a table we can all eat at, the kitchen is a "one man only" affair, and we even have a bed in the unfinished basement. I've known other who refer to their homes as "tiny" when they have 1200 to 1300 sq. ft., which, quite frankly, sounds like a mansion right about now! I desperately need to eek as much practical usage out of every square inch we have!

Hi Amber!  Thank you for leaving a comment.  Our house is a little over 1100 square feet.  (I believe the actual square footage is 1120.)  We have two adults and five children living in our home.  One of the things that makes our home small is that we don’t have many bedrooms.  However, since we are short on bedrooms, we do have larger than normal rooms.  The living room in this post that you left a comment on is probably about 200 square feet (give or take).  It has a nice little side nook that made a nice homeschooling place.  It worked well when only three children were homeschooling.  Actually, it worked better for only two.  But now that we have 4 – 5 children working at the same time, it is just too hard to work in that space.

Last year, we ended up using our dining room which will be our school area this year too.  I’ll post pictures of that later as we get closer to the start of school.  However, when we began the school year, our dining room was actually being used as a bedroom.  (We were trying to make another bedroom that we desperately needed.)  So we creatively rearranged the living room to make space for desks.  You can read about that here.  It worked well for a while but I prefer my children all in one closer space while teaching them.  So we rearranged the house again and moved the dining room table back into the dining room. 

Basically, it has taken a lot of hits and misses to find out what works for our family when we homeschool.  What sometimes looked like a good idea turned out to not be and sometimes what I thought wouldn’t work was ideal. 

I wanted to offer a few suggestions that may help or may not.  I hope that maybe they will at least offer some starting points that will help you find a way to use the space you have.  Maybe some others will be able to offer some suggestions that have worked for them. 

• Use small foldable trays for desks or sit somewhere other than a dining room table.

I have a few friends who just seat a few children in the living room or other available spaces with foldable trays.  (We always called them TV trays - the kind you eat on.)  One friend seats one child at the dining room table and seats the other two at foldable tray tables.  A good thing about foldable trays is that they will store away easily. 

I’ve even seen plastic lap trays at the craft store that would make a good writing surface for any seating anywhere in the house.  My oldest son (8th grader this past year) liked to work on his bed. 

I’m not sure about the ages of your children but since you are starting they may be young.  This past year for my Kindergartner and Preschooler, we often found ourselves just sitting on the living room floor as we read or played learning games.  If the Kindergartner had any writing, we would move to the dining room table or the coffee table. 

• Use baskets to store children’s textbooks.

Each of my children has a basket that holds all of his or her books for the year.  They remove the baskets or their books when the school day begins.  If your children were at foldable trays, they could place the baskets on the floor at the foot of the tray.  Then when the day was over, the baskets could be placed somewhere out of the way.  We store ours on a shelf in the dining room.  But if I didn’t have that, I would find some area like a corner or under taller furniture to place them.

• Have the materials you  need daily in an easily accessible place.  Store other stuff in any available space.

My goal this past year was to have all of our daily homeschool books and utensils fit on one shelf.  (That is the shelf pictured at the top of this post.)  We do have a few shelves in the hall that hold children’s books and some extra homeschool books.  If I didn’t have that space, I would put the shelves in any available space that I have.  (Homeschoolers are notorious for having many books!)  Our second bathroom has an unusable shower so we have stored arts & crafts as well as manipulatives in that space.  These things are a little harder to access but since we don’t use them everyday, it’s not such a bother.  Books we don’t use often are stored in large tubs in the master bedroom closet. 

• Think outside of the box.

With a small house, you really do have to think a little differently to stretch the space.  Some of our out the box ideas:

• a shoe holder on a door to hold markers, pencils, scissors, heavily used manipulatives
• using office folders to hold visual aids instead of posters on the wall
•  using available space at the bottom of the dining room hutch to hold other needed materials

 

I hope some of this has helped.  I also hope that any other blog readers who also deal with small homes might be able to leave a comment or two with some ideas that they have used.  We’d love to hear them! 

Amber, I hope that you’ll come back too and let me know if you’ve figured out something that will work for your family.  I’m praying for you as you work on this challenge!  Best wishes and God bless you!

Tips for living in a little house ~

We live in a little house.  Our house is almost 1200 square feet…and that’s for 7 people.  This week I’ve been doing some organizing and de-cluttering.  I thought that I would share some of the things we do to make this small space work for our larger than normal family. 

• Get rid of clutter. 

This is probably my number one tip for living in a little house.  The clutter needs to be controlled.  In a small house, clutter can take over quickly.  For me, if my home is cluttered I become very irritable and stressed out.  That’s not fun for anyone. 

However in a home with seven people, stuff starts to build up.  Usually about twice a year, I clean out clutter from all rooms.  ( I do this during the summer and right before Christmas.)  We throw away anything that can not be repaired.  We also donate items that are gently used to various charities or we have a garage sale. 

These are not the only times we de-clutter.  On occasion, I will give the kids bags and tell them to put 10 items into it that they don’t really play with anymore/can’t wear anymore or to put ten pieces of trash/broken toys into it.  This helps control the clutter on a smaller scale in between our big de-cluttering celebrations.  {smile}

• Have a place for everything.

There a very few items in our home that were not purposefully put there.  (Unless we’re talking about the floor when the kids have been playing.)  Knowing where things go makes it easier to put it back when you are done with it.

• Keep the house tidy.

We try to keep our home tidy… especially the main living spaces.  In our small house there is not much floor space, so if the floor is messy it is hard to walk.  Our house is not tidy all of the time due to the kids playing or a project we are working on.  So twice a day we all pitch in and tidy the main living spaces. 

• Find creative spaces to house items.

Living in a small house has really made us put our creative energy to use.  For instance, our kitchen is very limited on cabinet & drawer space so we use baskets on top of the refrigerator to hold plastic container lids, kitchen towels, mixing bowls, and a few small appliances.  The key is to be creative with storage but to not let it looked cluttered and we do that by…

• Use baskets and other containers for storage.

We use a lot of baskets.  ( I love Target’s basket and have found many on sale.  The thrift store is a good place to find baskets too.)  Canning jars are also good for holding smaller items. 

Here are some other posts that I’ve written on living large in a small home. 

 

Do you have any tips for organizing/living in a small home? 

 

This post is linked to:

Living large in a small house ~ Organizing sewing materials

I love to sew.  However, I live in a small house so I do not have a place to designate as my “sewing room”.   Since I have to put my sewing stuff completely away after every use, I am less likely to sew because it can be a bit overwhelming to pull it all out again and put it all back again.  Plus, it was in a closet in the boys’ room where we keep all of the school crafting materials.  It’s probably not a good idea to wake your sons just so you can sew at night. ; ) So, I set out to find another place to store my sewing items.

I looked for a space that I could sacrifice to my sewing hobby.  Then I notice that the top shelf of my china cabinet was holding knick knacks.  I’m not a big knick knack person so I was ok with moving them out of that space.  But did I really want my sewing notions, thread, etc. out in the middle of my house?

Here’s a shot of my china cabinet with my dishes on the bottom two shelves and my sewing materials on the top.

I like things to be contained in baskets or containers so I searched out the house for such things.   Then I organized my materials into the baskets and boxes that I had found.

 From the top, clockwise:(1) Embroidery items and cutting utensils; (2) cords, manuals, & applique needs;(3) thread; (4)most used items such as pins, scissors, needles, etc.  My craft closet holds items that I might not use as readily.

Now that everything had its place, I put the containers into the cabinet on the top shelf.  I love the way that it looks but I find functional items pretty.  I don’t know…it just thrills me when something is pretty and functional. 

 

I also make sure that I have a basket containing my current projects and patterns close at hand.  I keep it out close to my sewing machine.  My fabric and pattern stashes are kept in the craft closet.

That is  my current project basket on the end of the dresser.

I also look for little used spaces to hold items such as my cardboard cutting board and my ironing board.

 My large cardboard cutting board hides between the china hutch and the wall.  It is not even noticeable since it is the same color as the cabinet.

 Do you see my ironing board?

 It hides behind this door!

In summary, here is what I do when looking for space in a small house:

1.  Think outside of the box.  A china hutch doesn’t have to just hold china & dishes.  The same could be said of many items.

2.  Look for hidden, unused spaces.  I like my house to be as clutter free as possible.  So that means I want items put away but when you are limited in the space department, that can be tough.  Look behind doors, under furniture…anywhere that is a space that is not being used.

3.  Decorate with functional items.  Kind of a two-for-one deal.  I rarely decorate with items that are just pretty to look at.  I like most of my decorations to be pretty and serve a purpose as well.  Notice I didn’t say always. ;0) Everyone needs a little beauty in their lives!

 4.  Use what you have.  I try to use containers and shelves, etc that I all ready have on hand.  Every once in a while, I have to buy more but more often than not, I have what I need. 

 

Homeschooling in a small house ~ Look up

We like to do art projects and paintings.  We have to do them in our small kitchen (mommy says ;0).  And you know what small kitchens have…

no counter space!

You can imagine what happens next.  Just imagine a mom standing in a small kitchen and trying to find space to put the artwork of five children who are now starting on their next projects.  Yes, it is a bit crazy…and crowded.

One day while holding wet painted papers in my hands and mumbling under my breath explaining that we just had no more room for more paintings, I noticed that we had a bare wall.  This wall once held some of  my Blue Willow plates but a nice slam of the door which is on the same wall caused them to crash to the floor.  Since this wall can not support anything heavy, it remains bare.  And then I started thinking:

But paper is not heavy…

So I found some upholstery tacks that I had gotten for another project.  (The upholstery tacks were bought at Wal-Mart.)  I also got out some of my gardening and craft twine.  (I love twine!) I hammered the tacks into the wall and since they are decorative, they look quite lovely.  I tied the twine to the tacks and ~voila~ I have a new place for wet art projects.  Now, you could make this a lot fancier than what I have here but I really like the rustic, country look so it works for me.

After we finish a project, we simply attach it to the twine using clothespins.  By the end of the week, it is usually quite full.  And it is a nice dinner conversational piece.

Here’s our wall a few weeks ago:

Also, even though book shelves are expensive, we buy one every so often especially if we find shelves on sale.  I always keep my eyes open for book shelves being given away or sold in garage sales.  You can never have enough shelves, I think.  :0)

Our hall of shelves aka the library & home school supply closet.  It seems to be in definite need of some TLC!

So my advice for homeschooling in a small house is to think vertically.     Look for unused walls and see if you can make it a space where you can put a bookcase or shelves or maybe even a nice little drying line. 

Homeschooling in a small house ~ part 4 ~ Organizing daily work

Chances are if you are a homeschooler, you have heard of the workbox system.  Oh, the workbox system makes my organization loving heart go pitter patter.  However, since it uses stacked organization drawers (12 for each child),  it is really not a good fit for our family. 

Since we have four children doing school and a small house, I needed our work system to be space efficient.  My first thought was to use manilla folders because I was trying to use what I had in my home.  However, 12 folders (Sue Patrick, originator of the workbox system, uses 12 boxes per student)…well, 12 folders were a bit cumbersome for my children.  Not to mention, they could not finish all 12 folders everyday.  (Some folders contain learning activities/games and not just seat work.)

So I made the switch to pocket folders.  I used 3 folders for a total of six pockets.  I filled the pockets with work and the children would complete them.  The kids could much more easily finish the work but they still had trouble with the folders.  I needed something that was easy for all of us!

Now, before I explain what we do, let me say that I have five children & a busy life and I need this system to be easy and quick.  So my system is not pretty & cutesy.  It is practical and usable.  That’s pretty much how I evaluate everything I do and/or buy:  is it practical and usable?  (Though don’t get me wrong…I definitely like pretty & cute.  ;0)

I decided to use two pocket folders and I labeled them.  One is labeled: Morning Work and the other is labeled: Afternoon Work.   Morning work is work that can be done independently or with as little help as possible from Mom.  During the morning time, I am working with the little ones, teaching phonics & reading, and doing easy household chores in between that ie changing over laundry, cooking lunch, etc.  I need my older children to be able to work independently during this time.  Also, one of my goals for my children is for them to be self learners.  But that’s another blog post.

The above picture shows the morning work for my 6th grade son.  He had handwriting, Dailygrams, reading vocabulary, and a self teaching writing/English assignment.  Not pictured is his math.  We use Teaching Textbooks and it is written as an interactive computer program that teaches math.  I use this program once my children understand the basics of math.  I also sometimes include a math drill practice page and Bible verses to be looked up for his Bible Drill class.  

Another difference I have for the original system is that my children do not remove tags and place them on a chart to show that they have completed their work.  Honestly, that is one more thing I have to do and keep up with so I don’t do it.  However, I do want them to “do” something to receive that sense of accomplishment from finishing their work.  So I simply have them place their completed work into a basket that I have sitting on a shelf.  I know that the work has been done when I check the folder.  And I don’t have to replace anything or keep up with anything extra.  :0)

The above picture shows the afternoon folder.  These are learning activities that require more input from mom.  They also coincide with naptime for the little ones.  We usually begin this folder after lunch and after the reading of our literature selection.  In my 6th grader’s folder above, you can see part of his history lesson.  On the other side is his spelling. 

Most weeks, my older children are also working on a lapbook.  They do most of this work independently if they finish early or in the afternoons. This particular week, they were working on a lapbook about the Olympics (pictured on the left).  Also pictured is the text for our Math program.

At the completion of all work, they place their work into our completed work box.  Empty folders are place in his or her work basket in the hall. 

 Empty folders go into the child’s basket.  Blue for the boys and pink for the girls.  Also, each child has his or her own color for the folders so we don’t get mixed up with our sibling.

At the end of the day, I refill the folders with work for the next day.  I place them on our school table for the beginning of our new school day. 

So there’s our work folder system.  It is really plain jane but it honestly has been the best organizational tool for us this school year! 

~To read my other Homeschooling in a small house posts, please visit these links. ~

Part 1 – Finding the space & how to use it

Part 2  - Updated pictures of part 1

Part 3 – Using and storing visual aids

Homeschooling in a small house ~ part 3 ~ Using & storing visual aids

I love visual aids – maps, posters, charts – you name it, I love it.  I believe most children need them too.  They need concrete pictures to attach their thoughts to especially if they are not at the abstract level of thinking. 

But as much as I love them, I do not want them cluttering my home.  If I had a school room, there would be no need to write this post.  I would gladly stick every aid to the walls and maybe even to the ceiling. ;0)  But since that’s not an option right now, I’ve had to find other ways to achieve the same results. 

I searched my house for wall space that was available but not in everyday plain view.  And I came up with the hall.  The hall all ready serves as our library and homeschool storage so why not be our bulletin board too!

As we need the posters, I will take the poster down (I use sticky tack so that it will easily go off & on) and take it to our school area.  An added bonus is that the kids have to walk through the hall everyday on their ways to their rooms & the restroom.  It is not unusual for someone to stop and sing the ABC’s or read the maps.  How I love that!

Sunshine Girl’s ABC wall is also in the hall.  Every week we add her completed letter to the wall as we sing the ABC’s.  She loves to see her progress as the wall fills up with letters. 

My hall will not hold all of the visual aids that the children need so each child also has an office folder.  It is just a binder that contains various learning helps and a calendar.  At the beginning of each month, we print out a blank calendar from Donna Young and fill it in.  We place it in our folders to refer to as needed.  I also have a large school calendar behind a door but we don’t keep up with it as well.

One day, I’ll do a post on our office folders with links to some of the places where I’ve gotten the charts.  If you’re interested in them, just google “office folders” and you should come up with some links to get you started.

Actually, here is a link to get you started.  Lots of information there. 

I also keep a dry erase board on the wall in the living room.  It is in a very awkward place for me to write on it but I haven’t found a better place.  I keep a smaller board tucked away by our homeschool shelves and pull it out to use when working with someone.  I made sure that I could easily take this board down if someone was coming over.  But sometimes I just leave it up and write a nice little message on it. 

So there’s how we use visual aids in a small space.  It just takes a little thinking outside of the box.  I’m not sure what my next post in this series will be.  I may talk about our storage or I may talk about our adaptation of the workbox organization approach. 

Part 1 here

Part 2 here

Homeschooling in a small house – part 2 ~ Updated pictures

Before I left for my blog break, I started posting about our homeschooling in our small house.  In the original post, I stated that I would post updated pictures because I had actually changed it up again.  After schooling in our new setup for a few weeks, it seems to really be working for us and our situation.

I turned the coat rack against the smaller wall and since it is a bench, it also doubles as a seat.  The two smaller children will sit there to do “school” with us.  We pull two chairs from the kitchen and one chair is always in this corner to be used as needed. 

I usually stand or sit here at the end of the table.  (That depends on if the baby is asleep or awake. ;0)  Since my daughter is a first grader and needs more help, this place is good for me to be close to teach her.  

We have a computer on the opposite corner of the room for my older sons’ math programs which are computerized. 

I still fold the table up at the end of most days just so the room returns to a living room. (And some days, I just leave it there.)  After the kids have gone to bed, I pull the table out so that I can load their work folders for the next day of school. 

You may notice that there are different maps on the wall in the pictures and you may also wonder about our use of visual aids.  I am a very visual person and definitely have children who need visual aids so I make them a part of our school.  I do not want my living room to be full of posters though.  My next post will share with you how I manage our visual aids in our home school.

Homeschooling in a small house – part 1

Our family lives in a small house.  For the past four years, we have used our dining room for our homeschool.  (How I would love a schoolroom!) However, this year, we had to get a little creative and have now changed the dining room into a bedroom!  (You do what you have to do, you know ;0)

For our family, it is best to have a space set aside for homeschooling.  My children and I all do better when we are at a table instead of around the coffee table or sitting on the couch.    And my kitchen is too small for 6 people to sit in and do school for hours everyday.  So for us, I had to figure out how to set up a school area.

This is where it got tricky and took a lot of trial and error.  We have found a solution to our problem and I thought that I would share it in case someone else out there shares a similar situation.  This also helps answer the question that I’m  always asked - where  do you do your homeschooling?

1.  We had to look at our house and find a usable space.

We needed our space to be large enough for all 5 children to be in it at the same time.  I needed everyone in one space so I could monitor learning and help as needed.  Also, it helps cut down on mishaps with the toddler and preschooler.  The space also needed to be open enough for the children to move about in without disturbing others. 

We determined that the corner that holds our coat rack would be a good space to try.

2.  We had to purchase a few additional items such as a foldable table.

We purchased this foldable 6 foot table from Target when it was on sale around Thanksgiving.  We pull up chairs as needed and the small ones can sit on the bench on the coat rack. 

Actually, I have recently turned the coat rack up against the short wall and the table is coming off of the wall where the coat rack is pictured above.  This enables the four older children to sit on both sides and the baby or me at the end.  I just haven’t taken a picture of it and I’m too tired to do it right now!   ~ Updated pictures will be added later.~

3.  We needed to be able to put the school room away at the end of the day.

Since this is our primary living space, we fold the table and put it away after we are done.  The chairs are carried back to their spaces.  The table is also very easily stored in another place if we need to get it out of the living room.  Another added plus is that we can use this table for many things too – parties, having other families over, etc.  It was well worth the money we spent.

But what about posters and visual helps?  What about supplies and books?  More about that in post 2…