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Sas6709
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| Posted: June 26 2013 at 9:53am | IP Logged
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Hello! I am new here. :) I have two young children ages 3 and almost 2 years old. I am planning to start pre-school with my 3 year old girl in August.
Currently I have a kitchen table and a small hall closet to work with. I think that the closet is plenty of space for now, but I am not sure how to work out having the dining area set up for school. I wanted to hang things on the walls like letter and number charts, but I don't want an eyesore for those who visit our home. We live in a small apartment, so this is really my only place to do school. For those of you who use your kitchen table, how do you have everything set up?
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myheaven1967
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| Posted: June 26 2013 at 11:14am | IP Logged
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I too only have a kitchen table to work with. Sadly my table never looks very nice. It has what ever I am using with my boys piled onto it, and then when we are done I store all books etc on the shelf. Say we are hungry for lunch. I then need to put everything either to the side or away to eat then pull things back out for the next set of lessons. I try to have everything sorted and ready to go the night before so it is not time consuming. Sorry I am not much help. I have been muddling through this for quite some time too.
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Jill: Wife to Kurt, mother to 1 dd and 4 ds
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DominaCaeli
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| Posted: June 26 2013 at 11:21am | IP Logged
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We school in the dining room. A few ideas:
:: I use a binder for the children where I keep those sorts of refrences: each has a number line and alphabet card (for penmanship) in their binder, as well as various binder-sized laminated maps. They can get it out and put it away easily on their own. You could also do the same thing with those laminated placemats.
:: I do have two maps hanging up on the walls (a world map and a US map), but I chose ones that I thought would go with the color scheme of the room so that they wouldn't look like eyesores...although maybe my guests wouldn't agree? LOL I *think* they look fine, at least. ;) I would eventually like to have them framed--I think having framed art/maps makes the pieces look less like they're from a schoolroom and more like they're part of a regular living space.
:: Another idea would be to hang little number or letter cards in the children's bedroom. There are some really pretty options that would look nice in a nursery. And that would clear those kinds of things from the living space.
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Blessings,
Celeste
Joyous Lessons
Mommy to six: three boys (8, 4, newborn) and four girls (7, 5, 2, and 1)
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JennGM
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| Posted: June 26 2013 at 1:05pm | IP Logged
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We do our work on the kitchen table, which has tons of windows and no walls to hang things. I keep most of our books in a bag, so we can grab and go for daily use. Then I have a library cart in our dining room and use the table and such there for other things. But we don't usually use that table for learning.
So ideas about decorating the learning room doesn't happen here. 
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Jennifer G. Miller
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: June 26 2013 at 2:15pm | IP Logged
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If you used file boxes to store the school stuff you could decorate the outsides of the boxes with schooly stuff and they'd sit out while you have school and go in the closet between times.
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Jodie, wife to Dave
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All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
-Sir Walter Scott
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: June 26 2013 at 2:54pm | IP Logged
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Maybe not exactly what you meant, but I recall a friend sharing this transformation of her dining room/schoolroom on her blog at Christmas. It may give you some ideas, like having alternative prints for switching in frames where you might want to display something particularly schooly.
We don't really have a formal space, but we do a lot of school in the dining room (no table in the kitchen, and our kitchen now opens to the dining room). I have a large map there and a secretary. I have put out our picture studies in the past, which can be displayed more formally. We want to frame some natural history prints and possibly botanicals at some point, for instance, a poster for common feeder birds since our dining room windows are where we do our family bird watching.
I have found it easier to put things I might want to display in the places where they make sense and fit in our home without being intrusive. So, there is a shelf that fits behind the door in our foyer where I've put nature guides or displayed picture books. In our old home, these shelves were in a hallway. I've not found the need for letter charts and displays of that nature, but I have had eeboo cards displayed in the children's bedrooms, and they now have a place to display their artwork in their toy room.
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Lindsay
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[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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herdingkittens
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| Posted: June 26 2013 at 9:59pm | IP Logged
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In our old house we worked in the dining room for seat work, too. I did have a buffet that I did not use for china/etc. but for supplies. It was fairly compact and hid everything neatly. My husband was not a fan of things on the walls at that time  , so we did not have charts/maps up. I love Celeste's idea of having references like that in binders - wish I had thought of that!
You could hang art work up on the wall and keep a rotating display. I pinned up some twine and used clothespins to hold the art up. Not fancy, but it looked sweet and made it easy to switch things up.
Maybe you could put some efficient shelving up in the closet to maximize space and store and display books, have a space for drying projects, etc. We took doors off a closet and filled it with a very inexpensive IKEA shelving system for our books and it works great and keeps things tidy.
Another idea for charts is to display the underneath a clear heavy duty table cloth on the table. You could throw a cloth overtop when you want to be fancy (dinner guests, etc.). Plus, you can swap out what is underneath when you need to.
Also, if you can install a few small wall shelves, that might be a good place to display any found nature objects.
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kristacecilia
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| Posted: June 27 2013 at 6:29am | IP Logged
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We only have a kitchen table, too. I cleaned out one of my kitchen cupboards (the one closest to the dining area) and store all my supplies in there. We have an IKEA bookshelf in our living room (which adjoins our dining area) where we keep all our books.
The only things I hang on the walls are works of art for picture study and maybe a letter and number card or a seasonal display. Either way, they cover only a small section of wall between our living area and dining area.
It's worked so far, but I am anxious to get our actual learning space finished some day. Until then, we keep using the kitchen table.
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God bless,
Krista
Wife to a great guy, mom to two boys ('04, '06) and three girls ('08, '10, '12!)
I blog at http://kristacecilia.wordpress.com/
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stacykay
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| Posted: June 28 2013 at 9:44pm | IP Logged
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We school at our dining room table, too. I have plastic bins that sit in the corner, and we keep the boys books stored there. They are easy to move, so we can take them to a bedroom or elsewhere, in case we have company coming for dinner.
We did what Celeste mentioned, we hung up the number and letter charts in the boys' rooms when they were little. The abc one was almost a complete "border" around the room. The boys loved reading Dr. Seuss' ABC's, and then they'd point out the letters on the wall, before bed.
Also, in addition to what Krista suggested, with hanging up works of art, I have a framed world map that is on our dining room wall. It actually looks nice, and even guests have used it! 
In Christ,
Stacy in MI
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4Real Forums : Planning and Ordering our Days
Topic: All I have is a kitchen table...
