Do you school in the kitchen?

[ChristusG]

We used to have a school room....but really, we never used it. We much prefer to school at the kitchen table or in our sunroom. Plus, with the new baby coming in October, we needed the space. So now we are kitchen schooling.

 

The decor in my home is pretty contemporary....not cluttered, etc. How in the world do I incorporate that into my kitchen? We have a small kitchen, but I do have some bookshelves in there that I've put our school supplies on. It doesn't look too horrible. But what about stuff on the walls? I'm not sure how to do that without it looking cluttered.

 

Does anyone else school from their kitchen?

[UmMusa]

Nope, not really. Every once in a while someone will finish up a worksheet at the table while I cook, but not often.

[Mom in Michigan]

We have a school room but barely use it!

 

:lurk5:We're moving to Michigan and I'm debating if we need a school room or not, especially sense were doing Sonlight and we'll be mostly reading.

[NanceXToo]

We do most work at the kitchen table but that hasn't necessitated us putting anything on the walls or bringing a book case in- we carry books and supplies in as needed.

[6packofun]

Sometimes we do school in the kitchen or dining room, but I hadn't considered calling it "dining room schooling"... LOL! We have bookshelves all over and we learn all over. It's a messy business. ;)

 

The one year I made a rec room into our school room, we bemoaned the space for just lounging around and I never went back to having an official school space of any kind. :tongue_smilie:

[MinivanMom]

We work at the kitchen table. Fortunately, I have a huge 2nd pantry that I use to store my filing cabinet, curriculum, and school supplies. The only things I keep out in the kitchen are an organizer with drawers (that act as the kids' cubbies) and a children's bookshelf (the kind where the books face out). I have them side-by-side and anything I want to hang goes directly above them. Somehow, limiting the homeschooling to a single wall keeps the kitchen from feeling completely cluttered. All the "real" books that we aren't currently using stay on bookshelves in the kids' bedrooms.

[Cassy]

We school all over the house, including a lot in the kitchen. The reality, I'm sad to say, is that the kitchen ends up messy and chaotic.

 

We have a pretty big kitchen with a huge pine table in the middle (seats 10) which is about a third covered in school books, paper, pencils, crayons, pens, etc - usually piled neatly, but not always. I have a unit with six large drawers in it pushed under a work top in a space in which the previous owners had a fridge (we have a tall fridge in another corner of the kitchen). In four of these drawers I keep each boy's own stuff (books, papers, equipment and things), in the other two (they are huge) I keep art supplies.

 

The computer and fiction books are in the sitting room; history and science books are in the dining room, along with everything we need for math - we also have a huge table in the dining room that we use, which is also half covered in books.

 

Gosh it sounds terrible now I've typed it all out, but it does work. Quite often I'll have DS10 doing work in the kitchen while I do math with DS6 in the dining room and DS4 plays in the sitting room. Nobody really minds the chaos, the house just looks really schooly, and since we don't entertain so much any more (we're always doing school :D) it doesn't matter.

 

Don't know if that helps at all, I realise your situation might be very different.

 

Best wishes

 

Cassy

[Aspasia]

Here is my blog entry about how we homeschool in the kitchen, store our supplies, etc.

[JudoMom]

At our old house we schooled in the kitchen.

 

I had a storage cabinet (it was sold as a pantry) tucked away in a nearby hall, and it held all of our supplies. I liked it better than bookshelves because I could use a lock on the doors to keep babies/toddlers out.

 

I had a whiteboard that I hung on a nail on the wall, and in theory I could replace it with the picture that formally hung there. Eventually I did end up stapling a few posters to the wall.

 

Could you frame the posters in poster frames and swap them out so you don't have a ton on the walls?

[ilovemy6kids]

We have always schooled in our kitchen. I will confess I have always coveted those with school rooms. We have tried several methods of storage. First I bought some rolling carts and got them out when we schooled and put them away when we were done. This got harder with more kids in school. Right now I have the stuff I use every day in my kitchen cupboards. I had to seriously declutter to do this. I also have the littles markers, scissors, and paper in drawers in the kitchen too. If you were to look in the bathroom cupboards in the bathroom by the kitchen you would find playdough and some other manipulatives. My dh put some shelves with coat hangers in the garage. We cleaned out our coat closet and put all of the shoes, boots and coats in the garage and put school stuff in there. My kids each have a labeled bin that they get out and put on the kitchen counter and when they are done they put it away. I also lost my little laundry room closet this year. My dd is in high school and needed much more space. She kept her videotext, microscope, dissection stuff and other textbooks in there. Her stuff is so spendy that I needed to keep the littles away from it. I do have 8 kids so we do have alot of stuff. I did not want my kitchen to look cluttered and messy so losing closets was our solution. You could get some rolling carts, shelves or bins or even a nice cabinet that closes and would match your decor.

I still would love a school room. My kids would too, they HATE keeping coats and boots in the garage. We live in MN.

Sheri

[kewb]

We school in the dining room. There is a bookcase in the kitchen which holds current curriculum/reference books, an the globe.

One cabinet in the credenza holds pens, pencils, scissors, glue, rulers, etc. Part of the breakfront houses notebooks, paper, the atlas, and the dictionary.

The walls are decorated in what I call "early middle school" There is a map of the USA on one wall and a World Map on another. They share the walls with my pretty mirror some decorative plates.

 

This is what works for us. I always dream about a dedicated school room. One of my friends has one and it is dreamy. I fear that if we had one I would come to hate the feeling that we had to do school in there every day.

[Mommy22alyns]

We do science in the kitchen! We also have some educational things on the wall in there and a rolling cart of supplies.

[athena1277]

When we started homeschooling I so wanted to have a schoolroom. We have now homeschooled for 3 years (K-2) and now I don't think I would actually like that schoolroom. We keep our schoolbooks in a cabinet about 3 feet tall with doors (cheap from Target). When the work is done it is put away out so sight. Except all the art/SOTW/science projects. They still need a home.:glare:

[AK_Mom4]

Yes we do. We have an open kitchen/dining room (one big room with the kitchen in one half and the dining room in the other half with an island in between). DD works at the table or the island. My work desk is in the dining room as well.

 

School supplies go in a small cabinet in the corner of the dining room.

[TheAutumnOak]

No, we don't...Our kitchen is small and we have more space in our schoolroom...All of our school things are in the schoolroom and it is easier for me to school there rather than carry things around the house...I could also leave something out, which I can't do if I am using our dining table because we eat every meal on it...

[SWinner]

Our living/dining/kitchen area is an open plan. The table seats 8 & allows much spreading of books & paper & now laptops. Also requires things to be put away before dinner - good for us as it would just turn into bigger & bigger piles. Science/chemistry labs require the kitchen. Bookcases are near enough & I have enough cabinet space that they each have their own shelf (they loved this when they were young). Kids have nice desks in their rooms & occasionally use them - more as they age. We also go outside on nice days.

 

We don't have a room to convert to a class, and our style is loose so it works. I generally let them work where they want & that will vary.

[Pretty in Pink]

I, too, prefer open spaces and clean, uncluttered lines and such. I have never, ever been one for maps and posters and such on my walls. Never. Not even when we had a school room (we had one large world map, matted and framed, and several of the children's paintings hanging in that room).

[chickenpatty]

We do most of our school in the kitchen, but our books are in another room.

[*Inna*]

We school in the kitchen and keep all our school supplies in a large built-in cabinet that takes the whole wall. We don't hang posters/maps not only because we don't have enough wall space, but also because I don't like cluttered look.

 

Works for us. :001_smile:

[Maus]

We school where we're at. Reading of any kind often gets done in the bedroom; anything messy gets done in the kitchen; most things requiring writing gets done in the living room, where we have some good sized personal tables and an easel/whiteboard.

 

Sometimes we even go out in the RV, which local ordinance allows us to park in our own driveway. There are less distractions out there, somehow. (We have a second easel/whiteboard out there.)

 

We've also done school at picnic tables in RV campgrounds when we have the chance to travel.

 

Anything on CD tends to get done in the car. (Foreign language, music appreciation, SOTW w/ Jim Weiss, etc.)

[Impish]

Well, its better than the bathroom :D

[Starr]

We have one smaller wall area in the kitchen for kids art work and a small bookcase. We eventually moved two small stacking drawers on wheels in. They are used for supplies and/or workboxes as needed. Mostly everything gets moved on the table to study and off the table to eat and on the table to study and off the table to eat. :D

[Starr]

Well, its better than the bathroom :D

 

Don't let them in the bathroom. That's where you go to scream! :lol:

[Margo out of lurking]

Does anyone else school from their kitchen?

 

We've always chosen to school from the kitchen table. In the first house, we had a bookshelf that fit along the stairs to the basement. The basement door was adjacent to the kitchen, so it was very convenient. We never put schoolwork on the walls (or the refrigerator!), but dh agreed to small bulletin board where I could post recent papers.

 

In this house, our current books are stored in a large, buffet style cabinet that I bought specifically to store (hide) schoolbooks. Our family room and kitchen are one open area. In the past, the cabinet has been behind the couch, facing the kitchen table. Currently, the cabinet is against a wall with the tv on top.

 

We've always been in agreement that our house not look like a classroom. Any evidence of hsing has always been removed by the end of the day, lol.

[Joyoflearning]

Don't let them in the bathroom. That's where you go to scream! :lol:

I wish I could go in there without a kid trying to follow me! :lol:

 

We school at the kitchen table. We have a built-in cabinet to store/hide books and school supplies. However, I wish we had a place to put up maps and a whiteboard and another bookshelf. We do have a room we could use as a schoolroom and I have been debating it, but I don't think it would work. It is a converted room which was a third car garage. It's currently my craft/storage room. I never go in there because it is so separated from the rest of the house. It has bookshelves that need to be gone through and organized but right now I don't want to take on the project. Schooling at the kitchen table does force me to clean up every day. Otherwise we would have lots of piles. :tongue_smilie:

[chepyl]

We used the kitchen last year. Half way through the year I brought in a little school desk for Aidan to use. He sat at his desk and me at the table. This kept a little of the mess down, but mainly it meant we could start school before I cleared the breakfast dishes (sometimes dinner from the night before) and while Lilly was still eating.

 

For next year, I moved my desk to the front room and put his desk next to mine. I have a book shelf and a dresser in the room in which to store supplies. I also have little baskets that I picked up at Wal-Mart that perfectly hold all of the curriculum for the year. I can take the basket from the dresser to the desk, do our school work and put it back. We shall see how this set up works for us!