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TryingMyBest
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| Posted: Nov 21 2013 at 9:58pm | IP Logged
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We now live in a small condo. There is no extra room to turn into a school room. DD's only 4 but we're likely to be here for about 5 years unless the real estate market takes off again which is pretty unlikely so we have to make the best of our small space.
I know most of you have more kids than I do (we have 1 and it's very unlikely there will be another) but is there anyone here who doesn't have a homeschool room? If so, how do you manage it? How do you keep things from getting cluttered?
Jenn
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: Nov 21 2013 at 11:53pm | IP Logged
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Life is cluttered 
Dedicate certain shelves in whatever room (usually near the dining room since the table is the main work space). That will give you somewhere to put books.
Dedicate some room in a closet for boxes or totes of manipulatives and crafts and that sort of stuff.
A backpack or a box for a child to keep their stuff in is also helpful since they can just grab that and take it to whereever you're working that day.. the table or the couch or the yard or the car. A backpack could hang on a hook in the bedroom and a box could be in a cupboard or closet or shelf somewhere.
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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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CatholicMommy
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| Posted: Nov 22 2013 at 7:21am | IP Logged
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I have one child; Montessori-homeschooling (materials!) in a very small apartment. I ended up setting up a co-op in the local parish school building, so was able to move many things there. Now we have to bring it all back home though and I am doing that in shifts while I re-incorporate everything.
Jodie has most of my ideas - maximize space.
Depending on your curriculum, you may not need so much. I know of a family that uses a program where they use one end (YES - one END) of their kitchen counter for ALL their supplies - 2 children. That is all textbooks/workbooks for each subject, their science supplies in a box, microscope; then their pencils, etc. are in the drawer directly below it. (books they read for fun and games are stored elsewhere - but this is a truly minimalist family).
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SallyT
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| Posted: Nov 22 2013 at 10:16am | IP Logged
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We didn't have a homeschool room in our old house. Our one central living area (kitchen/greatroom) + our dining room doubled as homeschool space. I tucked bookshelves everywhere I possibly could, and at one point I even used one kitchen cabinet for school storage. I moved a child-sized dresser into the common/great room as an end table and used its drawers for school storage. I used cute baskets of various sizes for storage. I even had bookshelves under most of the kitchen bar, and kids often sat on stools in the space left over to do their work.
"Learning" was our basic decorating theme. It was actually a very cute, cozy, homey family house, and I still miss it.
Here are some pictures of our bookshelves at the height of their glory -- we later had to clear a lot of them out to stage the house to sell.
I had preschoolers in that house, and at one point I turned our little eat-in nook in the kitchen (which I realize may be more than you might have in a condo -- I have done my time in small apartments with family!) into a school corner, shown here, moving the table that had been there out into the great room. That was kind of crowded -- it was not a large room -- but it did give me that kitchen corner as a nice little place for littler children. I was really proud of that kitchen, by the way -- it had been pretty dark and grungy, and I had just finished painting it all by myself when I wrote that post.
I moved furniture around a LOT in that house, as our needs changed or I came up with what I thought were better solutions. I'm not one of those people who can just look at a room and see how it should be -- I have to experiment. You may find that that's what you do periodically as well, as you realize the need for this or that kind of storage, arrangement, etc.
Good luck -- small spaces present challenges, but I also think there's a lot of grace to be had in living with them.
Sally
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JennGM
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| Posted: Nov 22 2013 at 3:28pm | IP Logged
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I do not have a dedicated homeschool space. I've got a big house, but we prefer to do our work on the table, either dining room or kitchen table. If we had to dedicate the space it would be the dining room, but dh is just not comfortable converting it to a school room.
So I have shelves and places for the books, and we pull out when needed. It works for me right now, anyway, because I'm doing a lot of couch schooling since last January.
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SallyT
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| Posted: Nov 22 2013 at 4:02pm | IP Logged
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I should add that even in my now-larger house, "designated school space" doesn't mean "designated place where we always do school." It's not a schoolroom, just a back den that functions as our school library/resource room. We do do some school in there, especially now that it's chilly and we like to sit by the fire, which is in that room, but we're just as likely to work in the kitchen, or spread out through the house for individual work/reading.
Our microscope lives on a bookshelf in the kitchen. I have a contemporary-poetry shelf in the front sunroom that gets raided from time to time by older readers. But most of the things the younger kids use are concentrated in that one smaller den space, and it's to that space that I expect them to return! For me the issue has always been having books on shelves and supplies in containers where I can find them easily and not forget that I have them, and that's why the designated shelves in one room. But it really worked just as well when that room was the living room.
Sally
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DominaCaeli
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| Posted: Nov 22 2013 at 4:57pm | IP Logged
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We don't have a schoolroom either. We have a table in the kitchen nook and our dining table--our work happens either there or on the sofa. I have art supplies in the kitchen cabinets and the rest of our books and materials in a big bookshelf in the dining room and a set of shelves in the large hall/entry. I prefer it this way. We have plenty of space in our home for a schoolroom (we even have an office downstairs that gets very little use), but it just makes more sense to have my learners near where I am working in the kitchen or taking care of littles in the family room. If they need some quiet to get reading done, they can take their book into another room.
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stacykay
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| Posted: Nov 22 2013 at 9:16pm | IP Logged
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We don't have a schoolroom. We work at the dining room table, which is also where we eat all of our meals. I keep each boys' books in totes. If we are having company, or some other event, they are easily taken to my closet. I don't like to put them in the boys' room, as things seem to disappear then.
I've thought of making a space in the basement, but we really enjoy being able to look out the dining room window and watch the antics of the squirrels and birds. Besides, when my oldest graduated from college and moved back home, my basement became the depository for all of his apartment belongings.
In Christ,
Stacy in MI
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herdingkittens
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| Posted: Nov 23 2013 at 12:31pm | IP Logged
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We just moved this summer from a house where we used finished basement space to a house with an unfinished basement. So, essentially, we went from school room to no school room. It was a mental adjustment for me (the children love the new set up!), but now I am starting to like it better.
We do lessons in the dining room for family work, so I convinced my husband  to let me make it into a multifunction room. I put up whiteboard from the hardware store on some of the walls to write our memory work, etc. and display artwork from a line of twine and clothespins, and I am planning on framing more of our nature posters to put up in there so it looks a little classier that pinned in the wall  . I also have some small bookshelves that house our current family work books and a few other things.
The rest of the stuff is in our sunroom, which is a converted porch (it is not huge, but holds a long table installed in the wall, computer and toy shelf). That is where the kids to their independent work and computer work. They also sneak off to other areas of the house to do their work - bed, couch, or these fold down little desk tops that my husband put in upstairs.
For me, the downside of schooling without a separate room is not being able to put up posters all over the place or having loads of room to display stuff or have projects out. The upside, however, is that we are more together and it is easier for me to do household stuff while they are working and I am still available and close by. Honestly, I desire a huge open space, but as my husband reminds me, it is more stuff and space to have to manage and keep clean....  he does have a point. Our school room WAS often messy and now we have to stay on top of things to keep them from taking over. Plus it is kind of a fun challenge to make things work in a small space. Breeds creativity, I think.
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juliana147
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I've never had a dedicated school room. We've always used bookshelves for the books, and done the work at the kitchen table. Everything gets put away by dinnertime.
I did put timelines up on the walls in our kitchen. I still keep a world map in the hallway, not just for them, but for me, too. I enjoy using it!
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JennGM
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| Posted: Nov 23 2013 at 3:41pm | IP Logged
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In some of this discussion I'm realizing that even if we had a dedicated room, I still wouldn't have wall space. I don't have a wall for a timeline (unless I hang it around 8 feet high), nor a place for a white board or bulletin board. I have a small white board we use for math.
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Jennifer G. Miller
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juliana147
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| Posted: Nov 23 2013 at 8:39pm | IP Logged
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Jenn, my timeline ran along near the ceiling... I guess it was 8 ft. high!
If it was just text, it wouldn't have worked. It was the large pictures that helped them remember the lessons. And the dates were bold enough for them to make the associations.
I would love to have more wall space. I have additional maps I'd love to display! Maybe I should rotate them.
And I agree, a small whiteboard is a good investment. We've used ours for a long time.
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: Nov 27 2013 at 2:22am | IP Logged
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I've always thought that the bottom walls in a hallway or stairwell would be a great place to put maps or time lines.. with a plexi glas cover over them. So that kids could look at their levels and touch and even draw on the plexi glas with grease pencils or dry erase markers.
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Jodie, wife to Dave
G-18, B-17, G-15, G-14, B-13, B-11, G-9, B-7, B-5, B-4
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
-Sir Walter Scott
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4Real Forums : Planning and Ordering our Days
Topic: Homeschool W/Out Dedicated Space?
