Where you homeschool doesn’t have to be complicated. Helping your child with handwriting at the dining room table, coffee in hand, baby playing at your feet. A stack of books piled high and your littles snuggled in close on the couch. A science experiment in the backyard or at the park or at Grandma’s house. Learning can be done anywhere. It doesn’t take a perfectly curated space to learn the state capitals or the silent little e’s job at the end of a word. Learning is fluid and can happen anytime, anywhere.
Learning doesn’t require desks or whiteboards or pretty colored posters, but the atmosphere and school spaces in A Simpler Homeschool do matter. You can do school anywhere, but thinking through where that somewhere might be can make the day to day go smoother.
Let’s talk school spaces and where you will meet to read, play, write, and learn this year with your kiddos. Here are some steps to walk you through thinking about your school spaces.
Designated School Room?
Many homeschooling families have a homeschooling room. Many homeschooling families do not. Decide if you want one or not. Do you have the space to edit a room in your home into a school room? What about the energy to do it? Do you have pieces of furniture you could repurpose to use in the school room? Answer these questions to decide if you will have a designated school room.
If you decide you will have a Designated School Room, keep reading. If you will not have a Designated School Room, skip down to Using the Home for a School Space.
Designated School Room
1)Designate what you will do in the school room.
If you decide you do want a designated school room, think through what you will do in the space. Will you read, write, and play in the room? Will you complete your full day in the room or will you move about the house for the school day? Using your Simpler Daily Rhythm, look at what you will be doing during the day and decide which items you will do in the school room.
If there is one thing I learned while teaching in public school and at home, transitions can make or break school days. If we want our homeschooling days to be less hectic and more calm (especially if schooling multiple kids), I suggest grouping together items that can be done in the same space. For example, we do our devotion, calendar, language arts lesson, and read aloud back to back in our school room. Kids need to move, but the fewer transitions between spaces, the easier your day will flow.
2)Designate other spaces.
What is left in your Daily Rhythm? Think through where you will gather to complete these parts of your day. Maybe you will want to do art and science on the tile floors in the kitchen or the read alouds on the couch. Using your Simpler Daily Rhythm, list where every other part of your day will take place.
3)Designate school storage.
There is just no way around it, you will need a place for school storage. I would argue it doesn’t need to be a big space. A closet or bookshelf will do. While you don’t need to organize or get it ready at this point, simply designate where you will keep curriculum, supplies, and tools. The closer to your school room, the better.
4)Gather furniture.
Because you have chosen to have a designated school room, think about the furniture you will want to help your kids learn effectively. A few examples:
If you want to do a morning meeting with read alouds and a language arts lesson in the school space, a comfortable rug with a bookshelf might be what you need. If you want kids to be able to listen to an audio book, complete their math workbook, and create art in the school room, a kid sized table and chairs with a rolling cart holding supplies might be what you need. Think through what you want the designated school space to be for and gather furniture.
5)Gather learning tools.
Not supplies. Do not read gather supplies. It’s time to gather learning tools. These might include a map for the wall, a rolling cart for supplies, a whiteboard or chalkboard, a calendar, a globe, a pocket chart or small caddy. Gather tools for your designated school room. Some of these items might come with your curriculum.
6)Set up the school room.
If you like puttering in the home, now is your chance. Take an afternoon or evening to set up the school room. Maybe enlist the help of your spouse. Now is the time to place the map on the wall, put the bookshelf in the corner, lay the rug on the floor, put the alphabet chart up. Set up the school room in a way that will serve you and your kids and enhance the learning experience.
Using the Home for School Spaces
Maybe you don’t have the space to make one part of your home into a school room. That is not a problem. You have plenty of good, usable space all throughout your home.
1)Designate your school spaces.
Retrieve your Simpler Daily Rhythm. Go through each item and decide where you will complete each subject or task. Read alouds on the couch? Art projects at the kitchen counter? Science experiments in the basement? Where does it make sense to gather?
I said it in the Designated School Room section, but I will say it again. If there is one thing I learned while teaching in public school and at home, transitions can make or break school days. If we want our homeschooling days to be less hectic and more calm (especially if schooling multiple kids), I suggest grouping together items that can be done in the same space. For example, we do our devotion, calendar, language arts lesson, and read aloud back to back in our school room. We do all our seat work at the dining room table. Kids need to move, but the fewer transitions between spaces, the easier your day will flow.
2)Designate school storage.
Although you aren’t using a designated school room, you will still need school storage. Curriculum, art supplies, books, and other materials will need a place to live. This can simply be a closet or a bookshelf. Designate it now, organize it later. One tip while choosing where your school storage will be: try to choose a place where it can be out of sight for weekends and days or weeks off. I’ve found having supplies out of sight on non school days really helps us think of it as a family day and not a school day.
3)Gather learning tools.
Since you do not have a designated school room, you won’t need to gather furniture, it is already there for you in your kitchen, dining room, back patio, living room or family room. However, you might want a bookshelf or rolling cart for supplies, a globe for geography, or containers to house curriculum. No need to gather supplies just yet, only learning tools that will help your homeschool day run smoother.
A Simpler Homeschool will look different in every home. What makes it simpler is that it is intentionally thought through and the spaces function well for you and your family.
Tell me: where will your school spaces be this year?