Separate HS room, or combo with dining room?

[Laura Corin]

Our new house doesn't currently have space for a homeschool room. When we move in we will be schooling in the kitchen, with storage units in the entry hall. We plan to build an extension next year, but I'm torn over what it should be.

 

Currently, the only sensible eating area is in the (spacious) kitchen. I have no problem with kitchen/diners, but the kitchen table is currently completely surrounded by work surfaces, so there's no escape from the kitchen mess when eating. I'd like to extend the kitchen so that there is a dining area with a notional divide from the kitchen (a peninsular work surface probably). The dining extension would have big windows looking over grass and trees (north facing) with a glass roof for extra light.

 

So should I also homeschool in the dining extension? We could make space to put in lots of cabinets/shelves with doors, but sofa and computer work would have to be elsewhere. Up to now though, I've had a separate (tiny) HS room, on which I could just shut the door. I like that, but I'm not sure if it makes sense (financially and for resale value) to make another room. Currently the house has four bedrooms, an entry hall/library, sitting room, three bathrooms, kitchen and utility room. We'd be extending the kitchen, as well as putting a family room in the loft and building a small sun room off the sitting room. I don't want to HS in the loft, because I find that I teach whilst working in the kitchen a lot of the time...

 

If we needed to build a HS room into the extension, I suspect that the dining room part would have to be a lot less spacious and it all might feel a bit cut up.

 

Any thoughts? How have you made it work to double-use a dining room?

 

Thanks

 

Laura

[mommaduck]

We have done both. Key thing is to be a minimalist.

[Miss Sherry]

Right now we have an extra bedroom that I have set up as a library/schoolroom. But one of our children has gotten married and moved out and we moved after that.

 

When we first started homeschooling we had a bookshelf set up in the dining room, and some in the garage and did a lot of our school work at the dining room table.

 

Both ways have worked for us.

[hsmamainva]

We homeschool in our dining room!!

 

I have a big china cabinet that's perfect for storing my homeschool stuff and, if company's coming over, I can throw a tablecloth over the table.

 

I prefer this to schooling in the kitchen, because I can just leave the books there when it's time for lunch without feeling like I have to finish school so the table is empty for eating.

 

Also...we rarely use the dining room at all, other than for school. At least I'm making use of the room! :)

 

We also have our computer desk in the dining room, too, to make it easy for the kids to access it.

 

For reading, they go to one of the couches, either in the living room or the family room.

[cin]

We have a finished room in the basement dedicated to school. We each have our own desk and our own stack of books, well, ok, I have several stacks :D But I like being able to walk away from it and I think they will too, at a later date. I also like having room for all my stuff, because I am NOT a minimalist. But I have the space to buy things on sale before we actually need them. And to buy some fun stuff.

 

Piper (7) really likes to just go do her work, so having a separate desk facilitates that. On occasion, I've brought up their daily work to do at the kitchent able while I do something that is, oh so important, and she has a hard time getting her work done with Z sitting right there. She wants to watch, help and TELL her how to do it.

 

Another thing I like is that I don't have to put it all away if I'm in the middle of working on something. And I like being able to 'go away' to do my planning. If I'm in the basement on the weekends, EVERYONE knows to NOT disturb me. I wouldn't be able to do that if I was planning at the kitchen table.

 

jmho ;)

[Ailaena]

At this house we have are using the formal dining room as a school area/office area and eating in the kitchen.

 

However, at our last house, we double-used the dining room. I do not entertain often, and usually only have family when I do, so it was OK to have bookshelves and world maps in my dining room. Even when it was other people coming over I didn't make an effort to remove schooling items (plus, it was good evidence of schoolwork being done :tongue_smilie:) We just had to make sure that the table was (relatively) clean when we were eating. Sofa work was done in the living room and the computer was in my bedroom, but it all seemed to work out very well for us.

 

If I had to choose, I would rather have a nice, spacious dining room with visible schoolwork than a dedicated school room and a slightly unsatisfied feeling.

[Emmy]

I live in a really small house but we actually have a living room and a family room. So we school primarily in the family room. I have a kids craft table and some bookshelves in there and a couch of course. My oldest will often do his school at the kitchen table instead but that has more to do with his own desire to be alone than it does with the space available in the family room.

[Sasharowan]

We school in the dining room. We are in the process of building floor to ceiling shelves on all available wall space. Some of them have buit in desks with the desk surface closing against the shelf out of the way. The plan is one for each kid when we are done, but only the oldest two have desks so far. We have a lot of fiction books in addition to homeschooling books that are stashed in various corners of the house so far. We have the table to spread out or the desk to work without much visual distraction (audio is constant with 4 kids) as needed, the desks allow them to put away their school books out of reach of the 2yo artist. Most of them go to bedrooms or the couch for reading time.

[Rosy]

My hope for our next house is to have a formal dining room that we could use as a school room and an eat-in kitchen where we would actually eat. Ideally, we'd have cabinets in the formal dining room so if we're having people over everything could be put away, but we wouldn't have to have it spotless on a daily basis.

 

I don't think I could do a separate schoolroom unless it was really big and/or had french doors to the outside or something. I think I would feel trapped.

[M&M]

Our house is very small and the formal diningroom is the largest room on the first floor. This summer we have turned it into our dining/library room where we have school.

 

We lined one wall with bookshelves, put a computer stations in two corners and I have a smaller table smooshed in between for the littles (that was not part of the plan but the littles balked at not having a workspace their size). I have a cabinet in the den that holds school supplies, teacher's manuals, binders, math manipulatives, etc.

 

There is not a lot of room to move around, but it is working better than when we used the small den to have school.