Home Sweet Homeschool: Setting Up Your Homeschool Space
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Prepare your homeschool classroom for the upcoming year
Setting up your homeschool space is as exciting as it is crucial. In order to provide a productive learning environment, you will want to spend some time considering your homeschool space. With a little pre-planning and effort you can enhance your child’s focus, motivation, and attitude towards their homeschooling experience…all without breaking the bank!
1. Evaluate your space
It is important to create a consistent location for your homeschooling space. Ideally, the area will be brightly lit and distractions will be minimal.
Where most people differ in opinion is whether or not the homeschool space should be shut away in its own room or out in the open.
Look at your wallet
There are going to be a lot of amazing learning materials available for you to buy, let’s see if you can spend money on those, and not putting all of your money into setting up your homeschool space.
This would be my thought pattern:
I like my children to be “away” from distractions, however, I want them to be close to where their normal traffic is.
My children seem to hang out in the kitchen and I know they will be heading to the bathroom. They will also be spending time outside during breaks.
It is going to be a lot easier to get them to “come back” to learning if they never went far to begin with.
I don’t want my younger son, especially, to have a whole lot to distract him between the learning and the bathroom.
For me, this means no closed off room.
Our “extra” room spaces are not conducive to these needs.
I do, however, have a dining room which would be an excellent option because the table is already there or a space between the boys rooms, which we call a “play room.” The playroom is lacking furniture, but has a wraparound “cork board” for displaying work.
An advantage of having a “shut” room for a homeschool space is that you can have all of those materials, charts, maps, wall hangings, etc up and it looks like it belongs. All of those things in my dining room don’t look like they belong.
My dining room not only has the table, but it also has a direct door to outside, so we can have natural light and air flow.
Evaluate your spaces, like I did.
Think about them carefully.
What are the pros and cons.
One of the biggest pros will be which one already has or is prepared for the furniture and supplies?
2. Furniture and Supplies
You have chosen your homeschool space.
Now we get to “fill” it with furniture and supplies to encourage learning.
Your children need a large flat space to create, write, and learn upon.
They also need chairs to sit at while at this space.
I have seen homeschool rooms where people have spent the “big bucks” and bought vintage desks.
I am one of those people who won’t pay for a designer purse because I want the money I would have paid to go into the purse so I can buy something with it.
I feel the same way about the desks.
I have also seen many homeschool classrooms with Costco tables and folding chairs.
The children learn well in both rooms.
Furniture Piece to Hold Supplies
Going back to my dining room, I also have a buffet hutch in there.
I have some china in it, but not a lot.
I can easily re-home that china to somewhere else in the house and use the hutch for learning supplies.
So, $0 spend on the table and chairs and $0 spent on the furniture to hold supplies! Win!
Bookshelf
You will need a book shelf.
Not a large one, probably just a two shelf one.
The problem I see with many of the smaller ones is that they are not deep enough.
A fabulous “cheat” is to get those “cube” storage containers that you can put cloth drawers into?
Those make great bookshelves, are low to the ground, and are really deep; you can store curriculum binders in them.
I happen to have one in the “playroom” that I store my recipe books in, so I can repurpose this one and again $0 spent.
Although, that means I have to find a home for my recipe books.
An “In/Out” Basket
I love this! I never intended to get this.
I just wanted a bench to put in our mud room to put my shoes on and off.
I found one at Big Lots that happened to have two baskets under it.
I could have cared less, I just thought the bench was cute.
It turns out the baskets are great for organizing!
I put books I have borrowed from friends or the library, outgoing mail, honey containers (we get our honey and need to take back the containers), and various odds and ends that need to leave the house in the “out” basket.
The “in” basket is trickier.
I forget the mail if I put it in there.
I have another basket right by the stairs for what needs to go upstairs.
So, this is a great space if you have a need. For me, it usually gets more “out” stuff! 🙂
3. Create a daily schedule
This step gets a lot of mixed reviews.
Many people think, “The whole reason I am homeschooling is for the flexibility.”
Yeah. I get it.
The thing is…children thrive on consistency.
How many homeschool conventions have you been to?
If you haven’t been, go, they are fabulous!
They all have guest speakers.
One of the most common topics I see is:
“Classroom Management in Your Homeschool Classroom”.
When your child knows how things “work” and what to expect they are less likely to resist.
It only makes sense.
Let’s just say you have a meeting at work and you hate meetings.
How excited would yo use to go to the meeting if you had no idea how long it lasted?
Usually you have a beginning and end time, right?
And when you get there or even before you are given an agenda.
No surprises.
We all want “an end in site” when we have to learn or do something we don’t particularly want to do.
*Note to every single mom out there: hello-we made it through child birth and often signed up to do it again, because we knew it was temporary and the results were worth the pain.
A daily schedule does not necessarily mean M-F from 8-9 is Language Arts and 9:15-10:00 is Math and 10:30-11:15 is Social Studies, etc.
You could have a different schedule each day. Just always have Mondays be…Monday schedule and Tuesdays always look like Tuesdays.
I love flexibility, I would probably do what I call “core” classes in blocks, earlier in the days and leave two hours in the afternoons as creation time.
What the child will be creating will differ, but they know that this is time they may be writing poems, or creating an Egyptian sculpture, or making mathematical spreadsheets.
In “Chaos to Curriculum: A Step by Step Guide with a Practical Planner” I have an example daily and yearly schedule.
Even better, I show you how to customize it and make it work just for you!
Homeschool Yearly Plan
Fun Activities and Trips that Coordinate with Your Curriculum!
When you have a yearly plan, you can see way ahead to prepare.
- Two views, two calendars, to match your style
- Watch video to see how I us each one
- September-June 23/24
- Goal: coordinate family schedule, holidays, & curriculum
- Plan fun outings, mini trips, and vacations that support your curriculum
Plan your year.
Supplement academics with fun trips that support the curriculum!
4. Technology
I don’t want it to seem like I am forgetting the computer station.
Technology is integrated into our education.
Ideally, I would keep the computers integrated into our work study.
I would not have a separate “station” for computers.
This is not going to work if you have a desktop in an office area that the children need to use.
However, if you have tablets or laptops, clear the space at the table, teach them to make sure it is clean, they don’t want any glue and glitter on them, and type where they learn.
5. Learning Materials
We have covered the basic needs: your homeschool space, furniture and supplies, and schedule.
Now we get to the exciting part: the learning materials.
This is why you need to be prepared before you go to a homeschool convention; everything looks like so much fun, you buy too much!
What do you absolutely need?
A whiteboard.
I love magnetic whiteboards, simply because you will need to “hang stuff” and if you are putting the whiteboard up anyway, it may as well serve a dual purpose.
However, you will not save any money putting up magnetic whiteboards; they are expensive. Plus, you always want the bigger one.
How can you DIY this?
Go to your home supply store and get whiteboard material.
Usually they will cut it down to your size specifications for you.
*Warning, this material is cheap, but it often leaves “ghost” writings if the ink is left on the board for more than 3 days.
How do I DIY the magnetic part of the whiteboard?
I put up a board that can have push pins and tacks all around the circumference of the room.
I painted it the color of the walls so you can’t tell it is there.
It lasted (and held artwork and pins) for 15 years until I took it down.
I got this material at my local home supply store.
6. Embellish
Make it your own.
Your homeschool space will affect everyone, so everyone should have input in how it is decorated and “flows.”
A family project can get everyone off screens, encourage family good times and bonding, and create a sense of ownership for your children over their homeschool classroom.
Some people get “caught up” in what a traditional classroom has and what they feel they should have.
For example, I have seen many homeschool rooms have alphabets.
We started home learning when my youngest was in 3rd grade.
He already knew his alphabet and he was still enrolled in public school, I was simply augmenting his learning.
So, I was not planning on teaching cursive letters.
No alphabet needed.
What did my son need. Those dreaded multiplication tables.
I also bought a game for learning them.
My older son was learning Spanish.
For “fun” and reference, I bought a “flat world map” and colored all of the countries that speak Spanish.
I wanted him to see the benefit of learning another language in another way; look at how many more people around the world you can communicate with?!
When you decorate your homeschool space, think of what your children need, what your goals are, and what will work in your classroom.
Creating a homeschool space may seem overwhelming at first. Take it step-by-step and have fun with it. You can create a comfortable and functional learning environment for your child, in the end, quite easily.
Home sweet homeschool is all about creating a space that works for your family’s unique needs and learning styles.