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Anyone else sharing toys and school stuff?


TriciaS
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I see a lot of posts talking about "school rooms", but it doesn't seem like these rooms are used for anything but school. And then there are people who don't have school rooms, but use their dining room/kitchen table instead.

 

A couple months ago, we moved our daughters into the same room to give them a playroom and give me a school space. It's not a big room (maybe 11x10), but there is room for a table on one side, a skinny and tall bookshelf, a bunch of posters hanging up.... But I am about to just start throwing toys away so I can have more room!!! :D I really need a bigger house!

 

Anyone else use their school room as a playroom also? I'm a little worried it's going to be a distraction, but then I think it may work to keep my 4 year old busy when she's sick of "school" (her five minutes she'll do with me, anyway!).

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I try to keep the school room as just a school room and all toys in the living room instead, but there is a bit of overlap. Less on the toys, really, and more on the incessant use of paper and pencil and tape... lots and lots of tape... generally in creations done in the school room and then transported around the house.

 

It would drive me crazy to have toys all over the place in the school room - every evening we do a quick purge of toys in the area as part of clean-up. If there ARE toys left, my highly distractible boys will definitely find them & fiddle with them while I am in the middle of teaching & I will get irate. :D

 

Of course, I also don't have any younger kids hanging out trying to play either - mine are 6 & 8 - so that would make a difference. I'd try to keep thing for her to play quietly on the side in a box, maybe?

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We're kitchen, sunroom, toy room, tv room ....whatever works kinda people. We do go into the toy room when I'm trying to work one on one with an older child and one of the littles needs to be playing with toys, puzzles, etc... I have found that for the 4-6 year old set, they are very distracted in there. We go to the living room where there's fewer distractions to do work with them. You'll find out pretty quickly if it'll work for you.

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I'm planning the same thing, with a little over half the room for school and the rest for toys, divided by bookcases. Don't know that it will work. I just need the white board space, and that's the one place I can put it. It will probably work better when all the kids are schooling a decent amount of time. Right now, the oldest has twice as much â€school time†as DS2, and I kind of feel bad, but they're 3rd grade and K, so a big difference in expectations.

 

Right now, we're doing work with mom time at the kitchen table, and I have DS1 do independent work at the dining room table, where I can still see him, to correct issues with gravity and what not. ;)

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We have a playroom/school room combo! Although my older kids do thier individualized sear work in their rooms or at the kitchen table, we have the room designed to be the formal living/dining room set up as the learning and play area.* It has served us well over the past few years and has helped in the integration of school and regular life. Younger children can be a part of school time while playing, older children who need to keep their hands busy can play quietly while I read aloud, and the books and educational materials are used outside of our structured learning time.

 

I think you just have to look at your life and your space and do what works. If our school room was far from the kitchen it would not work for us. It also helps to be open to re-thinking the space as your children grow older. But that is my favorite thing about homeschooling anyway, the freedom to really operate outside societal/educational paradigms.

 

 

*Disclaimer- I do allow some toys in the bedrooms, and I have a terrific office set up that allows me to rotate toys and educational materials in and out of the school room. Storing them away allows me to have a less cluttered learning space and keeps them fresh for the kids.

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All our room seem to be intermingled with schooling things LOL.

 

My den (which contains my computer and futon) is used for piano and for "snuggle" reading. Since I didn't really "use" all the areas in that room, I added a shag rug to the floor (the shag rug ontop of carpet is nice, keeps them warm when playing, even in winter) used a blank wall to hang up the AAR Pre-Level Posters, added dress up tubs beneath that, and used the left hand side of the sliding wardrobe to put their toys on the bottom two shelves, and the Movies, Educational CDs, AAR Tiles etc on another shelf. The younger ones can happily play whilst I read out SOTW or do LA with DD, and the mess stays contained.

 

I didn't think about it before because its "my" space, adding in childrens stuff (books, toys, school stuff) seemed odd. But I figured it made sense. My door locks from up high, so is locked when we're not using it, thus eliminating the chance toys will be carried other places, and they are only in their when I'm supervising.

 

If we had a "toy room" I probably would of put the toys into the bedroom and changed it into a schoolroom LOL. I don't think I could ever have a "schoolroom" unless it was BIG and was separated into 2 parts - carpeted and un-carpeted, with the uncarpeted area having a sink. We do way too many messy crafts when schooling, and also like a place to snuggle/keep warm when reading and doing non-messy stuff

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We have a separate school room, but we used to have a combined school and play room. It didn't work for us because DD would see DS playing and want to join in, but I had specific tasks I wanted her to complete first. Now school is upstairs and DS, sleeps with us still, but has a bedroom across the hall from the school room. His "new" room currently has most of his favorite toys in it so if he needs to go play, DD does not see it and completes her schoolwork relatively complaint-free. We still do a lot of schoolwork downstairs in the kitchen or living room, but I like having one place to store everything related to school.

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My kids are too old for a playroom, but we do school in the downstairs family room. That is as much of a playroom as we have since the TV and wii are there :).

 

I don't think I would like being shut into a smaller room all day. None of the stuff in the room has ever distracted my kids, but they were ten and eleven when they started homeschooling.

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The sad thing is, the girls' room has toys in it, too, there just isn't enough room for all the barbies, ponies, squinkies, little people, puzzles, games, dress-up clothes...

 

I figure, we have the table and a white board in the school/play room so I can work there with my 7 y/o while the 4 y/o plays. We will do crafts downstairs in the kitchen, and probably sit on the couch in the living room or outside on the swing for read alouds. I really don't want to be in that little room all day, I'll lose my mind! It just gives me a place to put things away, you know?

 

I wish the closets were bigger in both rooms - each girl's clothes take up one closet to themselves, they are such tiny, tiny closets!

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I don't have a designated schoolroom any longer. We now have a schoolroom/dining room and a living room. All the toys live in the kids bedrooms but frequently come down for extended visits in the living room.

 

In our last house we did have a schoolroom/playroom and a separate living/dining room. It worked great especially because the littles were younger and I could keep them close while they played and I worked with the older ones. I would love to go back to that setup, but the layout of this house doesn't allow it.

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We're coming to the end of an extensive renovation on our home, and when it's finished one of those new rooms will be combined school and "kid's living area" (which means toys at their current ages). I'll let you know how it works out in a month or two.

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