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The following is a post from contributing writer Melissa Corkum.
We have 6 kids and a pretty traditional three-bedroom house. There is no family room, den, or great room. Therefore, there is also no schoolroom. While I love to ogle over others’ schoolroom blog posts and Pinterest boards, the separate schoolroom thing just isn’t going to happen in my house. So what do you do if you are schooling 6 kids without a schoolroom?
1. Think outside the box for storage. Last year, I turned our front hallway coat closet into a homeschool and toy storage closet. Coats, shoes, and backpacks moved to a better-for-traffic-flow place in our living room. I use part of our dining room buffet-hutch along with a small storage tower tucked away in the corner to store miscellaneous supplies. Organization and having a “home” for everything will keep homeschool clutter from taking over your house.
2. Be flexible with workspace. Unless a child requires my help, he is allowed to do work wherever he’s comfortable. Both the boys’ and girls’ rooms in our home have a foldout desk. I was even able to fit the boys’ desk in a closet so it can really hideaway. Our kids school at the dining room table if they need my help. Otherwise you can find them on the sofa, at the coffee table, laid out on the floor, at the kitchen island, outside at our picnic table, and sometimes even at a desk. We also use field trips liberally. Who says homeschool needs to even happen at home?
3. Choose curriculum wisely. We do not have room to store workbooks and a lot of consumables for 6 kids. Fortunately, our curriculum does not require a lot of consumables or paper. It also allows me to use the same materials to teach across multiple age ranges.
4. Use your library. Why store oodles of books in space you don’t really have when the library will do it for free and keep them all meticulously organized? While our public library does not always have every book I wish we could use, it has enough for all the topics we tackle. Additionally, libraries often offer study space which is a great option when you can’t find your dining room table or need to get out of your house.
If you’re schooling without a schoolroom, what has worked for you?
Melissa is a photography-dabbling, veggie-loving, housework-hating, triathlon-trying, homeschooling, black belt-seeking, grace-needing mom to 6 kids ages 6 to 15. She blogs about adoption, homeschooling, and life at The Cork Board. You can find Melissa on Facebook, Pinterest, Flickr and Twitter.
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I have never had a dedicated schoolroom. We are/were a military family and many times had little to no choice about what we lived in so we made do, There was the first year of homeschooling (in IL) that my dd did schoolwork in a large closet. We put up a babygate to keep the others out of her stuff. AL was at the kitchen table as was VA. Germany was split between kitchen table and a basement room. Korea was a mix of kitchen and dining room (that we made an office/library). FL was in the dining room – wasn’t about to let kids eat in there since it was carpeted. second time in Germany was at kitchen table and in bedrooms. Now settled in AL – we have an office/library that stores our books but the kids mostly work at the DR and kitchen tables
Wow! That’s a lot of places. Thanks for sharing your journey.
For years we didn’t have an extra room devoted to homeschooling and had to be creative. I like your ideas about thinking outside of the box for storage.
Demetria,
I’d love to hear more about your “creative!”
We never schooled in a special room, still do not. Homeschooled for a year in a 1100 sq foot house w 3 bedrooms, LR, DR, Kit. Converted the DR to a home office with 3 computer workstations. Put books for that year and reference in there. Used a DR hutch for art supplies & storage bins for HS materials using right now. Baskets of books in LR. Kids had bookcase in bedrooms for fiction & fun reading. It was hard living in a place with zero storage (no basement, no attic).
Our house now and before was larger but no schoolroom. We read where comfortable. Writing and math on kitchen table mostly. Sometimes they wanted to sit on the wooden floor and do math on the floor. Sat on couches.
Many I know use their formal DR for a makeshift schoolroom.
My DR table is overflow for crafts, experiments in progress, and general HS clutter.
Store office supplies at the family computer desk area.
I love your idea about repurposing the hallway closet. We are in the process of finishing our basement so we can have a dedicated school room, but at the present time, all of our “current” school stuff is sitting in a laundry basket in the corner of our dining room and our “future” school stuff is in the bottom of my cabinet in our living room. My kids love doing schoolwork where they are most comfortable, so that might not change even when we do have a “designated” room for school. In the meantime, I may have to try the closet organizer just so we can reclaim our dining room!
We also don’t have space exclusively for homeschooling our 3 children. I have an inventory of all homeschool related things–books, CDs, etc.–and nearly everything we are not currently using stays in storage boxes. Grade-level items are stored together in the same box (with a few exceptions due to overflow) and the inventory sheet tells which box each item is stored (attic, garage, a particular bookcase, china cabinet storage area…or “in use”). It was a lot less work to create the inventory than I thought it would be and prevents me from overbuying–I know what I have, I can easily put my hands on it, and I know what I need to buy for upcoming years. For anyone interested in taking a peek, I have a photo of one inventory sheet in this post: http://cheekycocoabean.blogspot.com/2010/10/works-for-me-wednesday-organization.html
My husband is a pastor AND currently taking seminary classes, so we also have a bunch of other books boxed up and inventoried. I keep this separate from the homeschool inventory since it’s a different system using index cards that I started years before the homeschool inventory–each index card is labeled with a number that matches the corresponding box, and every book stored in that box is listed on the index card as well as the box’s location.
Each child has a locker-size crate for all school books, notebooks, etc. These, along with a couple of crates for my school-related things, are kept along part of the wall in our living room when not in use. If we have company, we can move the crates out of sight as needed.
We frequently borrow lots of books from the library. All library books are supposed to be kept underneath a piece of long-legged furniture (it was a liquor cabinet before it became ours) in the living room–it acts as a bookshelf of sorts with the furniture legs keeping the books upright. We keep children’s books *inside* the (former) liquor cabinet as well, so it is by far the fanciest bookcase we have. 😉
Amy,
You are super-organized! Way to go!
Melissa
Ha! More like selectively organized…but getting this bit of my life (and home) under control has helped a great deal! 🙂
I really appreciated this post as we don’t have a schoolroom. We use the dining room table and mama’s lounge chair. Our books are stored in a couple of boxes. Sometimes we go to the library or park for a change of scenery. It’s tight, crowded but it’s home 🙂
“It’s tight, crowded but it’s home.”
I love that!
We are a family of 11 and live in a 750sq ft house with a small upstairs. We school in the dinning room and living room. The big kids in one room and the littles in the other and I just go between the two rooms helping them as needed. We have a food pantry in the dinning room that holds all our books and a bookshelf in the living room but that’s it. No fancy toys or gagits, just the basics. It’s not ideal but it’s what we have to work with right now and we make the best of it.
What a great testimony of simplicity!
Thank you so much for your picture that you posted. I have been looking through so many OVERWHELMING ideas on how to organize my stuff. I am working with an online homeschool, and also I am homeschooling my kids for the first time. I have a designated study room in the main floor but seldom used… so ill take it from you and make it as you did…. now i am excited to start!