Welcome our homeschool space! You don’t have to have a separate homeschool room to learn well. We certainly don’t; in fact, we homeschool all over the house in little learning corners and spaces.
Let’s take a little tour!
Rearranging our home to accommodate real life learning took a bit of thought, but it was easier than I thought it would be. After reading up on homeschool philosophies, I was able to decide what really mattered to us. I majored on bookshelves and quality art supplies. I didn’t feel like we needed anything more than our dining room table for our main work space.
A big key to making our learning space feel pleasant and homelike was to incorporate as many natural elements as possible. I thrifted some wood containers, clay pots, and market baskets to house our materials. That keeps things feeling home-y and uncluttered.
The corner shelving unit in the family room is our main storage area for learning materials. I really have no magic tricks for organizing! My motto is “keep less, organize less.” Keeping only the essentials also helps resist the urge to over-organize. (An over-organized space is just a pain to maintain!) These days I tend to toss like items into pretty boxes and baskets and leave it at that.
Most of our reading aloud is done in the family room. I usually sit in the recliner with my coffee (you know I do) while the girls color at the coffee table. When we are ready for table work we move into the dining room.
In the dining room I have a chalkboard on the wall and a buffet which I use to store flat items like workbooks, writing pads, slates, and paper. The dining room table is rarely used for eating because we tend to crowd around our kitchen island for meals! The table has become a creative workspace where my girls spend most of their time at home. They use it for building, crafting, and drawing. It is normal for it to be covered with lego instructions, paper scraps, play dough and markers.
Outside we have our garden and a mud kitchen; these were actually the first things we put together for our oldest daughter when she started kindergarten! Outside play and learning in nature is a big part of our homeschool.
Instruments, stacks of books, trays of art supplies and some gardening dirt; these are the best ways to make your homeschool space a rich atmosphere for learning. At times yes, it is messy, but it’s a pleasant kind of messy. And not the kind that can’t be put away in fifteen minutes!
The challenge of styling a pleasing space that accommodates homeschooling and family life has been good for me. It’s shifted my desire for that empty, magazine-perfect home into one that reflects how we live. My goal is that our house would say, “This is our home, and children learn here.”
This is our home in California; we currently live in Kansas City. To see a full tour of our California house, you can go here. Our system for organizing supplies can be found in this post!
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