Does anyone not have and not want a dedicated schoolroom?

[dragons in the flower bed]

We read together on the couch in the living room. The children play with Legos in their room while listening to audiobooks. They do messy projects in the kitchen. They sit to write or sketch at the bistro table in our library. They do joint projects and play board games at the coffee table in our library. When I have to supervise them both at separate tasks, they work on either side of me at the dining room table.

 

It is true that at first I envisioned the library as our schoolroom, but the map ended up in the living room because over an armchair was the only spot we didn't have bookshelves. I realized there's no place to snuggle up altogether in there, and if I added a place for that we'd have less room for books . . . so we school all over.

 

I realized I'm glad it worked out that way, because I don't want the children to think of learning time as separate from living time. I don't plan to ever have a dedicated school room.

 

Am I the only one?

[Jackie in AR]

Our bookshelves are in our dining room, and we use our dining room table as our school table when we want a table to sit at.

 

Normally, you'll find us scattered about the living room: in chairs, on the couch, sitting in the floor using the coffee table, or lying on the carpet.

 

When we first began hsing, my parents bought each of the dc a school desk. They have been sitting back in our playroom for a couple of years now. After Christmas, my dds decided it was time to use them again, and dragged them to the living room where they've now taken up residence in a corner and are used by dds almost daily.

 

I don't envision us ever having a room that is used exclusively for school.

[FloridaLisa]

We don't have one. We have bookcases in every bedroom as well as the sunroom. We regularly work at the dining room table, sunroom, front porch, my room and the kids' bedrooms. Since starting homeschooling 9 years ago, I've been careful not to bring over institutional-like habits into our home. School isn't over at a certain time (though we do have a start time to our day of studies), we work through the summer on various projects, we take breaks when we need it, not as the school is off. When my kids were younger, I did declare a few teacher holidays.:) There are times I wished for a wall with a big white board; but most days we do fine without.

 

Lisa

[Ellie]

but then I came to my senses :-)

 

It would be nice to have a small room, right off the kitchen or family room, where the messy projects could be done so that we could actually eat at the kitchen table, and where books and supplies and whatnot could be kept when not in use. There was never a time in our hsing experience, though, where the dc sat in desks and Did School Work.

[KristineIN]

Well for us, we live in a bi-level house and our school room is in the basement area and there's also a big screen tv. & sitting area, so it's not just for school. I'm not sure what I'd use the space for if we didn't have school down here. When we looked at the house, I knew that's where we wanted the schooling to be done.

 

Kristine

[K&Rs Mom]

We don't. The kids sit at their table in the dining room for school, and it works pretty well. They do each have a desk in their bedrooms (gifts from grandparents), but R's is mostly a storage dump and K uses hers for drawing during quiet time sometimes. I use the guest bedroom as my "staging area" - pile up library books, leave my planning binder open, workbooks, etc, in a bin. I have a basket that I bring out each day with that day's books & papers & project supplies.

[KIN]

We have a school room in the basement where I keep TM's and where we do math, spelling, grammar, etc - the skill subjects. Then we come upstairs and do our history, science, memory, any projects in the living room or at the dining room table. I love having a place to put our school stuff, I wouldn't enjoy having it all over our living areas. :)

[Snickerdoodle]

We live in a shoe box and I'm ready for a separate space for lessons.

[Kelli in TN]

I have had it both ways and I greatly enjoy having a room dedicated to all things learning. I like having a room where it is okay if a learning game is spread out all over the place for the whole day, where it is okay if there are crayons everywhere. I like being able to close the door after a day of hard work and change directions in my mind.

 

Having a classroom does not change my educational approach or put an end to snuggly reading on the couch. Far from it, in fact my youngest is going through a phase where he is too shy to read aloud in front of his siblings, so he and I have a daily date on the couch so he can read to only me.

 

I thoroughly enjoy my classroom and put as much time, money and attention into making it beautiful and welcoming as I do any other room.

 

But lots of people prefer your way and that is good too. It's all good!

[Michelle T]

We do all reading on the couch, and anything that requires writing at the kitchen table. Our house is too small for a designated school room, but I don't think I'd want one anyway.

 

However, I really am happy now having a large cabinet for our books and supplies. I just open up the doors at the beginning of school and get out what we will be using. Put books away at the end of our day, and it is all out of sight.

 

We don't do any large craft projects, so I don't have to worry about that. If we did, they would also be on our kitchen table.

Michelle T

[Pam in MA]

It happens to be the other half of our long living room. It's such a bright, pleasant place to hang out that everyone is drawn to it all the time for any sort of activity. I like having all our resources at our fingertips. It's really the hub of the house now, even more than the kitchen. It certainly doesn't have any negative connotations for anyone and it's nice that anyone who comes in sees all their maps and projects (and origami and glass birds hanging in the windows, and the hyacinths on the window sill and the model of the solar system hanging from the ceiling. . . )

[dirty ethel rackham]

My kids distract eachother, so each does school in a different part of the house. My oldest has a compulsion to be my assistant teacher and tell everyone what to do, so we can't do anything verbal in front of him. My middle son has auditory and sensory issues so he is easily annoyed by noise. Dd can school anywhere in the house, but she needs plenty of direction since she is only seven.

 

We almost bought a house with a beautiful sunroom that would have made a great homeschool room. But our same issues would have applied.

[Daisy]

We are all over the place for school. I think it would be nice to just have an extra room in my house. But it would probably be the office, guest room, school storage area. LOL. We'd still do school all over. It bugs me though that I have a big white cabinet in my kitchen with all the school stuff in it and schoolish posters and a white board on my kitchen walls. Oh, well, I don't care until the guests show up.

[mo2]

Nah. That would kind of take the home out of homeschool. :)

 

Besides, I don't want my kids to get the idea that learning only takes place in a certain setting. (Like ps, where learning stops when the bell rings....)

[DianeJM]

I liked having a dedicated space in the basement for school. We have a nice basement, finished and all, comfortable, but it's dark. I decided to come up to the south-facing dining room where I can get all the light I can handle. I find I'm not organized enough, though, now, with materials all over the place, but I'm happier. The light really does affect me positively. We read on the sofa together, or outside on a park bench in the yard when it's nice out.

[prairiegirl]

Well, I do have a shool room but we don't use it. Right now it is just storage for our books and craft supplies. We use our living room for most of our subjects. We even use the coffe table for our seat work. It is just cozier for us to do school like this. When we were doing it in our school room, it lent to the ps mindset and I am trying to get away from that.

 

Julia

mom of 3 (8,7,5)

[cricket1178]

We do not have a school room. Our school sounds a lot like yours. I wouldn't have any other way, either.

[two2homeschool]

We don't have a schoolroom either. We use our livingroom, which has lots of windows and a beautiful view. We have an old antique table that we do our written work on and comfy couches for reading. However, we have a lot of company and I don't really like our school stuff out in the open. Not that I want to hide it, just that I don't always have time to put things away neaty. Also, hanging posters, number lines, alphabet strips and the like don't really go with the rest of the livingroom! I have been thinking of buying cork tiles and putting them up in a way that looks nice, like Pottery Barn has in their catalogue but we will see (I must say, I'm not the greatest home decorator!:)). So all in all, I am happy-it's not perfect but it works well.

[RoughCollie]

I turned our play room into a school room. The school stuff is stored in there, but we never used it for actual schooling, even though I bought the adjustable height tables, chairs, and etc.

 

We have always homeschooled all over the house, despite my intentions.

[Narrow Gate Academy]

We do have an unfinished basement that we could make into a school room, but I prefer to keep it unfinished and open for now so the kids can ride bikes, rollerskate, etc. during the winter months.

 

To keep our supplies together, we have one kitchen cabinet dedicated to school books, manipulatives, and other items that the kids use daily at the dining room table. I have one desk drawer dedicated to teacher materials and homeschooling catalogs. When I find a basket the size I want we'll put that in the living room for library books that we read for school.

 

Occasionaly, I think it would be nice to have a large dry erase board on the wall or some posters. Instead we try to make the best with what we have which I think is a good lesson for the kids to learn in and of itself.

[CactusPair]

We have bookshelves in every room, too. We do a lot of work in the dining room, have 2 wall maps in the living room, and we recently set up work tables in the living room. Very Eclectic! We do reading on the couch and math on the floor, usually. Art and crafts are spontaneous and occur wherever. My husband is a good sport and likes it (which makes me like him!)

 

Sometimes the clutter gets on my nerves! Sometimes I have to follow my dear mother-in-law's cherished advice: "Just don't look at it."

 

Overall I'm glad that our home feels like a home and not an academy.

[Tonia]

I'm sure if I had more children I would want a separate room for everything - but we've only got one dd. I just wish we had an extra room for a library! I don't have room for more bookshelves. :0)

[DawnUK]

My husband is in the military, so we move fairly often. I used to designate a school room in each new house, but I've since decided that it's better to have a room where my older kids can work quietly without the chaos that is my younger two children. They work on things that they can do by themselves in there in the morning, and then when the choas is sleeping, we work together on things-- generally in the living room. I prefer it that way. WHo knows maybe when the choas grows older, I'll want a school room again. It needs to be near the center of the house, though, so dishes and laundry can also be happening.

 

--Dawn

[SnowWhite]

It's funny, I've been thinking about this very topic. As much as I'd like a nice big space to spread out all our school things, I am positive it would not get used as a place to study. I have a school/playroom now, and if I were a meany I could have commandeered dh's music/workout room for a school room, but the fact is, we do school at the kitchen table and on the couch and outside... just where we live. We sprawl. So it's highly unlikely a dedicated school room would change that.

[Jenny in Atl]

We only recently moved to a house big enough for a "school room". That said, it's really more like the "study" than the only room where learning happens. We have books all over the house, and more often then not, we read in other rooms, do math at the kitchen table while eating lunch, etc. My oldest likes to do a good bit of her work in her room, as her computer is up there. I'm just not a formal living room kind of gal, so what would be our living room is a room filled with bks, creatures, computers, and a good bit of our school bks. I'm also lucky enough to have an extra bedroom, which we use as a studio. But I've also done the same in a 1200 sf cabin like home in the woods (which I miss some days), so it's not the space but what happens in it that matters right?

[PinkInTheBlue]

I've had one and not had one. Right now I'm in the not-having-one stage. Since the boys are older, I really want one again. I liked having it but shortly after we made our school room, we found out we were expecting and it had to become a office since the baby took the old office. Time for a new house and a school room. I like having a designated place for everything not in the middle of it all.

[sassenach]

I wouldn't want a "school room," but I'd really like a big, walk-in school closet. We're living out of laundry baskets at the moment. When we get into our new home, we'll have a laundry room that has a lot of storage, so that will have to do : )

 

We'll school at the dining room table, as we always have. That works for me!

[Lori C- Texas]

We don't have a "school room". Right now everything is in our living room. Which I really don't mind. We have a very small house and we don't entertain very often so it has never been an issue. The kids each have a desk in our living room to do their work seat work. We do all of our reading on the couch. I wouldn't mind having a room just for school but it would have to have a comfy couch to read on. Some day we will have a grown up house and have something like that but not anytime soon!:)

[Lux Et Veritas Academy]

I built one and never moved in when we finished our basement. I just loved the sunlight- and learning all over the place. Now if I were to do it again, it would be 4 seasons room off my kitchen with plenty of cabinet space:confused:

[Rhesa]

space is at a premium!

 

We do seat work at the dining room table, science projects in our closet-sized kitchen, and read snuggled up on the couch.

 

I have young ones, so it is working so far!

[Vida Winter]

and it's just as well. I like to be in or just next to the kitchen for all our school activities, so I can cook or clean when I get short breaks. It also forces me to clean it all up each evening.

 

Dana

[CalicoKat]

but I DO want one.

 

We do school at the only table we have in the house. So it's a constant pickup and put away all day long so we can also eat there, do crafts there, and the older kids can play with their toys with little parts there.

 

We have lots of littles so the older kids get frustrated if they're playing on the floor and the littles walk up and swipe at what they're working on. . . they've figured out that higher up is a safer place to play.

 

Also, since my surgery the need to have a specific place for "school" stuff is become painfully noticeable. All my littles "school stuff" is spread to kingdom come and I can't find anything. Sitters, dh, and the kids took full advantage of "not knowing what was being kept special for school time" to use it all. I can't find it, I can't find all of it, I am still hunting down pieces of puzzles that no one wants to play with unless their whole again. :(

 

I want a school closet for my files, kids curriculum, and specific school toy boxes. It wouldn't hurt too if this room had a table that could be used to park paintings, pottery, etc. my oldest dd is working on to dry. Or if my ds wants to put his newest lego creation on the shelf for a while where baby brother won't destroy it.

 

Sorry, I do want a room to do school in. That's not to say that we won't still read on the couch, enjoy the living room, do math at the kitchen counter, or do school all over the house at given times.

[Zelda]

We have a room (that used to be a dining room) where I do the lessons and where the school materials live. Its centrally located so its not separate from the rest of the house. We read together on the couch sometimes but sometimes we stay in the schoolroom and they color when I read. My dd does her independent work at her desk in her room. When lessons are over they play games and do projects and play computer in the schoolroom.

 

You could no more prevent children from learning by having a schoolroom in your home than you could prevent them from growing taller by putting a brick on their head. Even at schools, outside of the classroom kids are learning whether they think they are or not.

[Cindyg]

First of all, because that is where the entertainment center is, and we use the big screen t.v., the DVD player, the CD player, Windows Media player, and the internet continuously. I can't see having all that equipment in another room dedicated just to school.

 

Secondly, our living room is in the center of the house. I can easily supervise from my bedroom or the kitchen.

 

DS has a beautiful, large, child-height desk and chair from Ikea, and I have my big comfy recliner right next to it. But most of the time, he is in the floor with Legos or Magnetix.

 

I will confess, my dh wants the school stuff out of the living room. (We only have one living room. No additional den or whatever.) But ds and I like it this way.

 

Now if I were building a home from scratch and could design a centrally-located, open, roomy, properly-wired room with lots of book cases and storage space -- I would prefer that. But not a back bedroom, and not the basement.

[Beth in TN]

We live in a 2 story house with a living room downstairs and family room upstairs. Our living room is strictly for entertaining company so there is no TV, but it is a nice place to read. Our "school room" is part of our family room. This is the room where we watch TV, play games, use the computers, do crafts or sewing, scrapbook, and do school. It's a nice size room so it does serve all our purposes well.

[King Alfred Academy]

We live in a shoe box and I'm ready for a separate space for lessons.

 

You and me both! Or at least a place to keep all of our books and supplies. It would be nice to have the option.

[Jennifer in NH]

We do school all over the house too. DH made the formal living room into a library for me a few years ago and that is where I keep most of the books, and most of our school supplies. In theory, everything gets put away sometime before dinner!

We read aloud in the Sunroom, do math on the dining room table. That is also where crafts and science projects are done. Computer work in the home office.

Our basement is unfinished and sometimes REALLY wet! My kids ride bikes down there in the winter too!

What I would really like, is an eat-in kitchen or at least a pennisula or kitchen island where the kids could do their math or writing while I prepare lunch or at least wash dishes! I have threatened to get a chainsaw and saw down the dining room wall, but it is a load bearing wall, so that isn't going to happen (yet)!

[Karen in CO]

We don't need one. I need a good place to organize and store all my stuff and all my stuff that I am passing from one child down to the next. that would be wonderful. I have baskets under the kitchen table for the current work. A bookshelf for the current books and a cabinet for the art supplies. I try to keep the hs books we are suing right now separate from the rest of the books so that it doesn't take me so long to find them.

 

We do read alouds at the kitchen table and the dining room table and the couch. When the weather is nice, we have been known to read in the swing or at the park. We do seat work at the dining room table or the kitchen floor. Crafts are in the kitchen and so are the craft supplies. Everything gets put away out of sight at the end of the day so we can know that we are done with that part of the day and so I can start fresh in the morning.

 

I think the kids would feel isolated if they were in a school room while I was in the kitchen cooking. I like having us all close together.

[Luanne]

and it seems like the only time we go in there is to bring something out to use ... like a book to read or a project to work on or whatever. It has just become the room the houses the books and other school stuff. Oh well, at least I tried. :rolleyes:

[Lisawa]

We do have an office, but I like it as an office. We school in the dinning room, kitchen and living room.

 

I store current things in use next to the dinner table and in the mud room right off the dining room. So it’s nice to have things close by. I tried to have a school room once in our old house, but I like school to be part of the living area. I don’t want it separate.

[WTMCassandra]

I used to be exactly this way, and I understand what you mean. What changed it for me was the right layout of a house. I would never use a schoolroom in a back bedroom or basement.

 

If we were in almost any other house that I've seen, I would think exactly like you. But I am grateful for this schoolroom for as long as the Lord has us stay here.

[Mrs Mungo]

We have a "schoolroom" but only in the sense that is where I keep all of our stuff :D

 

My hubby can't stand for stuff to be scattered everywhere or left strewn about. He also doesn't want every room to look like a school room. Which, I understand. So, when we're done with studies for the day everything goes back to the "schoolroom" which doubles as my scrapbook studio/craft room.

[Mom2boys]

but we don't use it. It is in the basement - far from the kitchen and laundry room - which doesn't work for me. Plus it only has one tiny window - which doesn't work for any of us. So, our formal living room has morphed into our school room/library. We also work at the dining room table, and in the family room. I can easily keep an eye on both boys while I work on dishes or the laundry.

[Rhonda in WA]

We do all of our schooling in the upstairs bonus room. We have turned it into the school room/playroom. We have and 8yr old and 3 yr old. So the 3 yr old plays while we do school. I went to the government surplus store and got a table and chairs and we do it all in that room. Then we read down stairs on the coach and do projects where ever we can.

[Anne/Ankara]

Well, we've set up the finished basement as our schoolroom, but frankly, we are all over the house doing our work. Also, this time of year, the basement gets cold, so we migrate upstairs. And, somehow, there are also a lot of toys, foosball table etc down there in the basement, so it isn't truly "dedicated" to schoolwork. But I do like the fact that there is one place in the house to stack school books and supplies.

[nmoira]

I'd like a library/reading room more than a school room. We do most of our work on the couch, using a lapboard for writing and drawing. There is a dedicated homeschool bookcase, but it doesn't hold everything.

[MelissaMinNC]

I think mostly I just need more space, not a dedicated school room. We have a really small house and there isn't enough space for books, and I can't keep all my lesson planning/teaching stuff in one centralized location, and I don't have a good place for all the crafty stuff...it's all just split up into a million little places and it makes me nuts. But I think if we just had a little more room, with more space for bookshelves and a good place to keep all our craft supplies, I'd be happy with that.

 

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind hanging up some schoolish sorts of posters occasionally, and I don't especially want them all over the house. But that's not a deal-breaker for me.

 

There, that was clear as mud, wasn't it???

 

:)

Melissa

[Excelsior! Academy]

Our schoolroom is in two of the girls' bedroom. Does that count?

 

The first year we homeschooled we tried the dining table. It did not work for us. Now we do some school in the living room floor, the kitchen table for things like science or art, and we always do read alouds on the couch, but we use desks for things like handwriting where posture matters. It works best for us. I think it depends on how many children you have and the space you have. Please, don't think that just because some of us have a dedicated school room that we don't snuggle on the couch or enjoy school work sprawled out on the floor. We utilize both methods, but I very much like the fact that we have desks available, too.