Homeschool Room table ideas

[mommyx4]

Let me first say, I've changed my homeschool room several times and can never seem to get it just right.  I am lucky in that we do have a dedicated room for homeschooling, I just can't seem to get it to work.  Right now, we have a large table in the center, a wall of bookshelves and another with posters and white board.  I do have a large age span in my children (ages 14-2).  With the current set up, the older kids have online classes.  So, the cord from the laptop goes across the room so they can have power.  We are always tripping over them and it looks messy.  Another concern is the height of the table.  My little ones will be starting penmanship and writing and the table is too high.  I thought about making a wall of desks, but the walls aren't super long.  I also thought about putting desks in the big boys rooms for privacy and quiet during classes, but I think that is opening the door to potential trouble.

 

Any setups or links to rooms you like that work well for a larger family?

 

 

[Chris in VA]

Here's a whole bunch. Maybe something here would work.

 

How many kiddos?

 

I would put big kids' desks on the wall--make a narrow counter and put shelves above. Esp if you have cords, keeping the desk area on the wall would be good.

 

A low table along another wall (maybe under the white board?) or squeezed in beside the desks would work for those who need to have feet on the floor for penmanship. I used an Ikea table for K-1, when we did penmanship. I switched to a farmhouse table with a stool under dd's feet after that. I think you probably could get away with one or two spots at a low table if you rotated who was using it, and if you gave the kids clipboards and let them work on the floor when penmanship wasn't so important (or for those who have mastered it).

Edited March 26, 2016 by Chris in VA

[EmilyGF]

Our house basically has no wall space (my dad is a custom furniture designer and has been in a huge number of houses, and when he saw ours for the first time, he said, "I've never seen a house with so few usable walls) so we have a corner desk for ds11, a protruding table from Wayfair for dd9 that has adjustable legs, and a short table for dd7 that is the right size for K-3. The tables each measure 24inx48in.

 

DH mentioned that he never had enough space at school desks, so those were out. Also, I often work with the kids so then we have enough space for both of our books on the table. When the kids were younger, one kid sat at one 24" end of the table, the other at the other end, I was was in the middle. 

 

DD9's table is against a fold-down bed. DD7's table is against a bookshelf. We only store rarely used books on the book shelf. When we have guests, we move the tables to the living room behind a large couch.

Emily

[Arcadia]

I have study desks for my two kids against the wall for their online classes so no laptop cables to trip over. Then I had the dining table off centered for doing school work. My dining room is rectangular with window on one side only.

[73349]

Is it possible to have an additional laptop (or even just a battery) around so that a student can switch if battery power is low, and keep them unplugged during the classes? That would solve your cord problem.

 

Do you have a local source for elementary-sized school tables? My district is huge, so they have regular surplus sales; we got a table and a couple of chairs for just $5 an item. Try asking around on local parent forums or fb pages.

[JanetC]

Two smaller tables, each with adjustable legs. One for the big kids, one for the littles.
 

Run the laptops off the batteries and recharge during lunch, at night, or when otherwise not in use. Install a charging area on one of the bookshelves.

 

 

[Bambam]

We have a dedicated school room/library, but the kids take their laptops elsewhere then they are working on them - their rooms, the living room or outside if the weather is nice. I only have two, but they want/need the relative peace of another location - free from noise (sorta) and visual distractions of people walking around. Do they have to stay in the schoolroom or could they just move elsewhere but where you could still keep an eye on them and what they are doing?

 

Maybe two tables? We had a small table with chairs from IKEA when the kids were younger. As they grew, we switched to regular desks but they also use the kitchen table sometimes.  Could have have a drop-leaf table for the older kids that you put up a leaf (or both) as needed while the youngers are at their smaller table? 

[happypamama]

We have a variety of things.

 

First, multiple places to work.  Kids who need quiet or who want to sprawl out on the floor can take their work to their rooms, our upstairs office (which has a computer; we have monitoring software to help me out), or the kitchen, if they don't want to stay in the schoolroom.

 

Second, I do have tables with adjustable legs in the center of the schoolroom, but we haven't actually used the shorter settings.  It really hasn't seemed to have been an issue for my little ones to have feet dangling; actually, they rest them on the bar across the front of the chair or they tuck them up underneath themselves.  

 

Third, I have a desk in the schoolroom that is against a wall, so that's where the laptop sits.  Sometimes I teach one-on-one at my desk, which means my back and my current teachee's back are to the other students, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  If I'm instructing the whole group and need the laptop, I just keep it off-cord for a bit.

[Storygirl]

For a long time I had two tables abutting each other. One was standard height, and the other was an adjustable height table that I bought at Sam's Club. I kept it low and had child-sized chairs with it. I sat at the tall table, and my kids sat at the lower one. In your case, your tall kids could sit at the standard sized table, and the little ones could be at the lower one, but you could all still be together in one group.

 

When my kids got a little older, I got rid of the small table and used an old dining table for everyone to sit around. We also had room for individual desks placed against the walls, so that we could do group work together or individual work separately. I got their individual tables fairly inexpensively at Target.

 

If you don't have wall space but have floor space, you could think about putting the individual desks together in pairs or groups (think of how desks are arranged in a school room -- they don't usually touch the wall).