Whether you are a veteran homeschooler or a newbie, you’ve probably spent a little time admiring the many beautiful homeschool rooms posted on Pinterest and Instagram. It’s easy to get great ideas and inspiration from these posts, but it’s also easy to get discouraged, especially if your home doesn’t accommodate a separate room for homeschooling.
The good news is, while a dedicated homeschooling space can be beneficial, it’s certainly not a prerequisite to success. Let's take a look at some ways parents can provide their children with an enriching and fulfilling homeschool experience without a dedicated homeschool room.
Identify Your Home’s Best Work Spaces
Embrace the flexibility of homeschooling and consider all the options your home offers. The dining room table, family room couch, desks and beds in children’s bedrooms, back yard, and patio can become fantastic learning spaces.
All of these spaces can be useful for learning! The couch or yard are great for times when you are reading aloud or having a discussion. Appropriately sized seated chairs and tables are best for written work. Cozy spots can be lovely for independent reading.
You may find it helpful to avoid setting up projects or lessons with lots of supplies at the kitchen table. They can create a hassle when you’re ready to use that table for a meal, but you can't until some major clean-up happens!
With some thought and planning, you’ll be able to make good use of what you have. The most likely addition you’ll need to make if you have younger children is to carve out space for a child-sized table and chairs that allow for good posture and feet on the floor while writing.
Choose a Morning Meeting Spot
Whether you start the day all together or not, it's great if each child has a place to be at a certain time when the homeschool day starts. Help your children learn to complete their morning routine and be on time to the morning meeting spot to start the day.
This provides a good opportunity to start your day off with some structure that can help set you all up for success. It’s also a great way to train your child to manage his time and respect others by being prompt and reliable.
Plan for Sound
If you are homeschooling multiple children, you have probably observed that they each have unique needs and best practices. It’s good to be aware of whether each of your children prefers silence or background sound while working and plan to accommodate that.
For a child that struggles with sound distraction, adding a desk to his bedroom might be helpful. Others might benefit from the din created as you teach another child. Some may like to do independent work with music in the background, while another can be more efficient without it. Understanding these preferences can help you plan for each child effectively.
Have a Centralized Place for Supplies
Kids will need easy access to paper, pencils, pens, crayons, markers, other craft supplies, hole punches, safe scissors, glue sticks, and whatever else you find helpful on homeschool days. There are so many options for storing these things, and you’ll likely find some helpful inspiration online for organizing your supplies.
You may be able to carve out some space in an accessible cabinet, where you can fill bins or an organizer with homeschool supplies. Storing it all behind closed doors can have its advantages. However, pretty baskets on a family-room shelf can work well too! Or you may find a mobile supply station works best. A rolling cart that holds everything and then lives in the laundry room when you’re not homeschooling could serve you beautifully!
It’s most important that your children can access the materials they need and also easily put things away when it’s time to clean up.
Space to Decompress
It might be helpful to have a break space available for when things get tense or frustration mounts. Breaking a pattern of mounting frustration with a brief mental respite and a change of some kind can make a big difference. This could be as simple as a cozy bean bag in the corner of a room. Five minutes there with a picture book (or outside running around, at the table having a snack, or on your lap getting some cuddles) can provide just the refreshment needed to jump back in and finish a challenging exercise.
Time for Cleaning
It’s helpful to do some quick straightening up a few times throughout the day to avoid snowballing chaos that leaves you with a huge mess at the end of the day. When your main living area or whole house becomes the homeschool space, it’s easy for this to happen! But a couple of strategic five-minute clean-up times during the day can keep it all in check.
Allow Your Children Some Input
Your children might love to be included in the planning of your homeschool space! Including them could contribute to their ownership and enjoyment of the homeschooling days, and they may also have some great ideas you wouldn’t have thought of!
Have a Consistent Schedule
It may take a few weeks of adjustment, but aim to find a schedule that works for you all and keep to it regularly. Of course you’ll want to maintain some flexibility, but having the structure of a schedule, a routine, or a daily rhythm helps everyone start the day with some healthy expectations. This can ease your burden as a homeschooling parent. Your children can learn to move through the day a little more independtly as they learn the flow. Also, you can head off some unhelpful whining and negotiating when you establish the plan and train your children to follow it.
This recommendation really applies whether you do have a dedicated homeschool room or not. But the structure of a schedule might be even more helpful when your homeschooling is a little more physically spread out.
Establish a Growth Mindset
Remind yourself and your children that learning is not confined to physical spaces! Cultivate a growth mindset for all of you, embracing challenges, celebrating successes, solving problems together, and viewing mistakes as opportunities for growth. With such an approach, you’ll find creative solutions to adapt and thrive in any learning environment.
No matter the size and configuration of your home, you can provide a nurturing educational experience that fosters curiosity, creativity, and a love for learning that extends beyond a traditional classroom. Happy homeschooling!
Xo,
Christie
Comments