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School room, or not?


School room, or not?  

  1. 1. School room, or not?

    • I have a school room, and we use it regularly.
      86
    • I have a school room, and we rarely use it.
      11
    • I used to have one, and got rid of it because we didnĂ¢??t use it.
      28
    • I used to have one, and want it back!
      4
    • IĂ¢??ve never had one, and don't want one.
      39
    • IĂ¢??ve never had one, but would like one.
      51
    • Other
      13


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I just don't know if I should bother! I do need a spot for a whiteboard, and storage for all our stuff, but I'm thinking if I had an actual schoolroom away from where our kitchen is, I just might not end up using it. On the other hand, if we were downstairs in a room specially set up for it, maybe there would be less distractions for the kids. I don't want to put time and money to set up a school room that the kids won't use. So, share your school-room history with me!

 

Please, if you have had a school room and have gotten rid of it voluntarily, or just don't use it, could you enlighten me as to why it wasn't working for your family?

 

Poll to follow!

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I really like having one. ours is off the living room (its really a dinning room) but I like being able to have a central location for everything and if I am having a light day where they are just doing busy work I can see them from the couch :lol: we used to do it in the other dinningroom that is off the kitchen but I didn't have as much wall space and mine work better at their own desks

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If I had a huge new house, then maybe a schoolroom would be nice. But I don't. So I'm happy to let the dining room double as our homeschool space. If I made a space elsewhere, it would be forced and not as central to the rest of the house, so I seriously doubt we would use it.

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Please, if you have had a school room and have gotten rid of it voluntarily, or just don't use it, could you enlighten me as to why it wasn't working for your family?

 

We were using the spare bedroom as a school room, but it is small, and rather dark, so dd always preferred taking her work to the dining room table. I gave up on it.

 

If we had a big formal dining room or office or den or something of that nature, I could see devoting it to a school room. But a spare bedroom just isn't quite the same.

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We also turned our formal dining/living area into a schoolroom. It's nice to have a central location away from all of the other areas for school books and other "stuff." My younger children actually do their school in the school room but my oldest 3 have desks in their bedrooms where they do their independent work. But any work that needs my direction, attention, input, etc. happens in the schoolroom. We did not have one in our old house. We worked at the kitchen table or on the couch. It was the best we had and we made it work. But I'm totally spoiled with this school room set-up. I would hate to have to do school or store school in rooms designed for other purposes. My kitchen is a kitchen. Our den is a den. It's quite lovely.

 

ETA: I think it really does depend on how well you *like* spending time in the part of the house designated for school room. When we first moved to this house I had thought we would make the finished basement our schoolroom. It was just too far away from the action of the house and too dark. I always gravitated upstairs until I realized I needed to abandon that plan altogether. Although this past school year we spent quite a lot of time in the laundry room. That worked for a while but again, being so far from the center of things ended up being a problem.

Edited by silliness7
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Our school room/office is on the second floor. We used it for a few weeks, then slowly started working at the kitchen table again. We finally stopped using the scoop room because it is just too difficult to keep going up and down the stairs, plays it just felt weird to stay in a bedroom all day, even though the room is not being used as a bedroom.

 

We have been starting to use the dining room, which is off of the kitchen, and I am switching the books we have down stairs, to the upstairs, and bringing the school books down.

 

We plan on moving in the next year, and we will be getting a ranch. I'm hoping to get something with a great room and use a part of that for the school stuff.

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I have a school room and always use it...I like that all of my school stuff I need is in that one place - no dragging stuff around the house...I can easily put stuff away or leave it out for the next day if I want to because the space isn't needed for anything else...

 

At our old house we did school on the dining room table...I did not like bringing everything to the table and having to clear it before meals...

 

I prefer a school room...

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We have a "schoolroom" but it is not technically a room. At the top of our stairs is a space (like a landing) tucked into the eves of the house. It's about 6ft by 6 ft. There's enough space for a 2ftx2ft table and three chairs and a neat storage unit that holds our books and materials (we just had this made).

On the wall we have a map and a times table chart and a hundreds chart.

 

It's not fancy, but it works perfectly for us.

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I rarely do school work in the school room though. It is a great place for everything to be - book shelves loaded with books, sewing machine, art supplies, crafts, globes, timelines, geography posters, science kits, etc. But, we tend to take our actitivities and migrate out into other areas of the house. And that is fine.....

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We used to school at the kitchen table, but then got school desks and put them in the living room. I also have an easel for my white board, though I'd prefer a bigger white board on a wall.

 

In another year, I plan to move my youngest to his brothers' room, and turn his old room into a school room. I can fit a BIG white board on that wall. :D

 

I much prefer having a dedicated school space. I'm also glad I got the school desks. They have been sooooo nice.

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Right now, we don't have room for one, and I'm not sure how practical it would be. DS is the only one homeschooling, and come the fall I'll have a newborn and a 1yo as well, so homeschooling in the main living area makes the most sense. DD can play with her toys or watch DVDs, and the baby will be in easy reach. So at this point I'd doubt we'd use a schoolroom, if we had room for one.

 

But, if I was homeschooling all the kids, and we had room, I would love a dedicated school room.

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We have a very large house, and I could easily designate a room as a school room, but I don't want one. I think it would drive all of us crazy to be confined to a room doing school all day. It reminds me too much of a traditional school. ;) We prefer to move around and school in various places.

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We have a "school room" but its not really like one.

 

It's a "den" and theres a couch, and 4 bookshelfs (with the books for science & social studies with a homemade curriculum), everyone also has a desk for their independent work.

 

We will be moving into a HUGE house, and changing curriculum to Sonlight, So i think we'll have a "Sonlight" room and a room with all the desks, only because i have rooms to fill :D

 

I did "School" with Ella this year on the Kitchen table, because it required me being right there & lots of arts & crafts :D

Edited by Mom in Michigan
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Please, if you have had a school room and have gotten rid of it voluntarily, or just don't use it, could you enlighten me as to why it wasn't working for your family?

 

We have a huge bonus room upstairs over a double garage that we used part of as a school room. The problem was I couldn't multi-task my household chores while they were doing school. If I would run downstairs to do something then they didn't work as diligently.

 

If I only had small children I would totally consider keeping the room as school doesn't take as long, etc. We would just dedicated time for school....get it done and then move on to other things. But the ages of my dc are spread out and doing school in our home is more like a clown juggling act. If I spent all the time I needed to just doing school with my children then other chores I needed to do would not get done or I would be doing them far into the evening.

 

So I bought large cabinets that are about 72" high and about 18" wide (so they can handle the heavy load of books - smaller shelves won't buckle) and have them in my laundry room which is right off the kitchen. My laundry room is on the larger side (10x10) so there is plenty of room for this...I store as much as possible in those shelves and then there are other things stored in random areas as they fit, are used, etc. We get out what we need and use it in different areas of our home and then it is put away. We rarely have to clean school off the table to eat as I have made a rule that you are not done with a subject until all materials have been put away....this helps tremendously with the kitchen table use.

 

My white board I bought at Sam's years ago...I bought an easel that has extended legs but I don't extend them...I sit this on the bar area of my kitchen (easily seen from the table) and we store the easel in the laundry room and the white board slides behind my roll-top desk. My home does not look like a school house and I like it that way.

 

There are several areas for my children to work on their school all over the house....LARGE desk upstairs still (my dh's - so they had BETTER not leave their school work on it, LOL) a small antique student desk in the living room, the kitchen table, my computer/roll-top desk and areas in their bedrooms for reading. We also have several small personal collapsible tables that we move all over the house as we need them.

 

This works for us much better.

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I voted other because we have a "school" room and use it regularly, but not really for school. We have two computers in there and several bookcases. So that's where all the school stuff is maintained. Ds1 holes up in there to do his schoolwork. Ds2 usually does his work at the dining table or on the couch. Dd and I also do most of her work at the dining table. Our school room is just too small to do any actual schooling in.

 

I knew someone with a great school room. It was originally designed as the dining room and was quite large. She had her desk w/computer, a second computer desk for the kids, an 8x4 white board, one wall of bookcases (I think there were 4 bookcases) and two work tables for her 4 kids. Made me so jealous! :D

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We have a school room, and I really like it. I find that the act of going into the school room for the day helps get us in the "school" mindset. The days that we try to do it more casually on the couch and in the kitchen are the days that school is not as successful.

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I have a school/office room...but it is soley for storing our stuff and our computers. It's the dining room, right off the kitchen. I'm in there a lot, but the kids do their school work all over the house. I teach math in the sunroom because it's cheery and has a table.

 

I feel like I NEED a landing space for the bulk of our school stuff. It would drive me crazy to have it scattered through the house.

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We converted our bonus room upstairs into my office/lesson room. The room has a couple of book cases and a large white board. I give the kids their lessons in this room, and we use the whiteboard multiple times a day.

 

We also converted one of the bedrooms into the kids' classroom. This room contains their desks and a computer workstation. I also purchased some cheap wire racks so my kids could store their school supplies in this room. The kids use this room every day, but they usually gravitate down stairs to a couch when they want to read.

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Our bonus room in this house is our school room. We got desks and everything. Unfortunately, we do so much reading aloud together that it was not terribly useful. I did just have dh move the couch from h*ll up there, so we at least have a place to sit, and I hope to use it more once we start our new school year. Dh got a little annoyed with school books all over the house when we are supposed to have a school room.

 

Ideally, I would change the dining room into our school room, so that we would be close to the kitchen. I think that's the best plan, but we do use our DR table sometimes and the china cabinet is huge, and full, so I'm not sure what we would do with all that stuff. We're going to try very hard to make the school room work this next year.

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We had a schoolroom but never used it. I just didn't like being in there. I also didn't like stepping away to do anything else while dd was working. Now our dining room is set up for school, and I love it. There are 2 bookcases and a whiteboard on the wall. I like that we also eat dinner on this table because it makes me put school stuff away securely and not just scattered around. The biggest benefit is that I can watch from the kitchen while the dc are working.

 

I still don't go into the old school room, even as a den :tongue_smilie:.

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I think placement is key in utilizing a hs room. If you're stuck in a dark area or a back room, it's not quite as nice. It's nice to be able to have things in one spot or where they are used.

 

I couldn't for the life of me stop and walk to another room to sit on a couch to read a story. It needs to be where my things are at. I don't like schlupping. Otherwise I end up with hs things all over the house. When I'm done, I want to be done. There is such a thing has having a break. Just like not having your work stuff all over the house, I don't want my TM's or school books all over the house. HS is every day, but it doesn't mean I want to stare at it 24/7.

 

Set it up nicely and make it inviting and not too small. But most importantly set it up so it's useful!

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Please, if you have had a school room and have gotten rid of it voluntarily, or just don't use it, could you enlighten me as to why it wasn't working for your family?

 

Location, Location, Location

 

It was in the finished walk-out basement. Our kitchen, dining, and laundry room are upstairs though. We were constantly up and down the stairs. It also seems to stay cooler down there than in the rest of the house. I was always cranking up the heat to get it to a temperature I liked.

Edited by Swirl
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Other: we currently have half a room designated for school. My oldest's bedroom is half bedroom, half school room. It's a large room with high ceilings and lots of light so we enjoy being in there. The storage is absolutely essential to our homeschool. We frequently, but not always, work in there too. The only possibility in our house for a dedicated school room is finishing the basement. I do not want to do school in the basement so that won't be happening.

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I think placement is key in utilizing a hs room. If you're stuck in a dark area or a back room, it's not quite as nice. It's nice to be able to have things in one spot or where they are used.

 

 

 

:iagree: We've homeschooled in 3 different homes, 4 different dedicated rooms. The one room I didn't like was the small bedroom furthest away from the living room and kitchen (when you have a teen boy being near the kitchen is vital).

 

Ironically our new classroom is about the same size as the room I hated, but it's a smaller house, and I love our new room.

 

I wouldn't want to school in a basement, unless it was totally finished and had a living room and/or kitchen area.

 

I like having a dedicated space as we are kind of neat freaks. I don't like school stuff spread all over the house. Here I can confine it and close the door.

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I NEED to know where the stuff is, in general, since the homeschooled teen will leave things everywhere. I encourage him to do his work all over the house, outdoors, wherever he feels like it, and he does somewhat....but he got the largest bedroom, so half is dedicated to shelving, computer table, and all things educational. Not great, if your bedroom is supposed to be a safe haven of comfort, peace and rest, but his fun stuff and Scout gear and all are stored in there, too, so he likes that ALL of his stuff is at hand. I keep a couple files, and answer books in my bedroom, only. We had no spare room, and not enough room in living room, TV room or dining areas.

 

If he's playing too much and not getting word done, I turn off his Internet access first, then pull his power supply cord on his computer (dire measures.) Time management is a huge goal, that we are plodding along on, right now.

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We never had one. I would've liked one, but only if it were right off the kitchen, somewhere that didn't feel as if it were totally removed from the rest of the house. Maybe what I needed was not a separate school room but just a big pantry-like room to keep all our stuff. :001_smile:

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We've had the school room that doubled as a dining room. That was not ideal. We've had a room, in the basement, away from everything else...that didn't work. So we crammed as much stuff upstairs into our small space as possible, again sharing with dining duty. Not great.

 

We then migrated to kids doing work in the living room if they desired with materials pretty well consolidated to one area near kitchen. That worked well enough. Then we moved.

 

We had another large nice space, but it was away from the hub of the house so I abandoned that idea and we brought supplies downstairs and kids worked in the living room.

 

We moved again and the living room schooling wasn't going great. I decided to try a room again, in spite of small space. Turns out, the space is just too small, we can't do it. And..it's at one end of the house. Once our school room strays away from the hub, we're done for.

 

But now I have a couple older ones. This year we are going to try letting them have desks in our previous school room to work independently. The youngers will have spaces in here. The middle two of which will have desk spaces built in at the bookshelves that are going up as I type.

 

We keep the school room for maps, the elder two's desks, computer and a work table (as well as a small book case and gutter shelf of books). But I guess it's primarily a project space. All school books will be in the living room.

 

In order for the school room idea to work for us...we need a big space right off the kitchen and laundry areas. And we've not had that. Well, I'm not guaranteeing that would work :p I'm just saying that's what I see, at this point, as being the only way it *might* work for us.

 

Or we might just really be more living room schoolers. I'm ok with that. I just get so swayed by the pretty school rooms. *dreamy eyes*

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We just work around the kitchen table. We have a big "great room" where the kitchen, dining, and living areas are all together, so I can work with the big kids at the table and watch the little ones playing in the living room at the same time. We have a huge second pantry that I use to store school stuff, so it doesn't ever feel like the room is cluttery.

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We too have made our living room/dining room into the school room- it is a great place to keep all of our things we need for school and the kids also have a place to read and hang out when school is complete. They draw in there, play board games in there and just hang out in there. It is the kid hangout/school room area of the house!

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I used to have a room dedicated to school, but we moved and set things up differently.

 

We do have a library (den) where we keep most of our books. Written work that requires me to be near is done at the kitchen table, otherwise, my children find a comfortable spot elsewhere. We don't much use the dining room table except to set the laptop on.

 

Read-alouds are read on the living room floor, on the master bed (king) or library floor. I don't know why we like the floor so much!

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I think it can really work for some folks! It depends on your house layout & needs. We had a house with a playroom. It was wonderful!! It was located in a way the made sense for us. I wouldn't do anything (for us) that was on a different level, for instance.

 

We currently work in the kitchen for work not done on the computer, but I loved that playroom!!

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I'm kind of undecided as to whether to put "I don't have one and don't want one" or "I don't have one but would like one."

 

The truth is, I don't have one and don't need one... would I like one? I don't know. Really, I just think it would be fun to set one up and decorate it and so on. After that, I think the novelty would wear off pretty quickly haha.

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I haven't read the other responses yet, but wanted to say we love, love, love our school room! It is in a central part of our house, but easy to close off. I sometimes send the oldest to work on his math in another room b/c he is so highly distracted when I teach the youngers, but having a dedicated space has been wonderful!

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I would LOVE ONE.

 

I have a hard time functioning without one as it's hard to keep all of the stuff in one place. I also would love one great place to go over things with DD.

 

We live in a small house though and there is just not enough room for anything.

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But a spare bedroom just isn't quite the same.

 

Our spare bedroom has 10 feet of windows on one whole side, and makes a nice atmosphere away from the grind of the DW and W and D, away from hubby's TV, and away from toys. Kiddo needs the lack of distraction. So do I.:)

 

The room has my desk and computer in it, and we have a roll out bean bag chair for watching videos, but the major focus of the whole thing is desk, books, art and science storage.

 

It is a lovely atmosphere, and is one of my favorite room in my entire life.

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I voted other.

 

I have a gameroom that has a large closet. We use the gameroom closet to house most of our homeschool stuff. My gameroom also has a couple of bookshelves, lots of plastic storage drawers, and my desk.

 

However, I call it the gameroom, because it has my middle ds's keyboard, a futon, a TV, and all our video gaming stuff. It functions primarily as a gameroom.

 

As far as school work, we really do it all over the house and in the car and at the library and at the Kumon center and anywhere else we happen to be. I love looking at school furniture, but, if we actually had it and had it organized into a school room, I don't know that we would use it.

 

HTH-

Mandy

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