Talk to me if you have a school room

[mommyoffive]

I just rearranged the house and I if everything works out I could use a loft as a school room.  I am thinking it would be nice to have a place where we could leave things out.  Currently we do it in the kitchen table which kind of stinks because we constantly have to clean things up to eat.

 

 

 

So do you have a school room?  

Do you use it?

What do you like or dislike about it? 

 

Oh and anyone want to show pics of their school room?

[Code Lyoko]

I don't have pics but I do have a school room.  We used to use it all the time and loved it.  So much easier than cleaning off the kitchen table every time we have to eat.  :)

 

Now that the kids are older they do a lot of work on a laptop and DD has gravitated back to the kitchen table for most table work.  

 

 

What we liked while we used it and things that helped make it better:

 

1.  Solid table for writing/coloring/sketching/etc.  One that doesn't shake, doesn't have annoying grooves or other surface stuff that makes it hard to write on.  The table in the education room was very sturdy.  Our kitchen table is not that sturdy.  If one person is writing on one side and someone else is trying to write on the other side the table shakes and makes both parties unhappy.

 

2.  Each child had their own shelf/shelf space for whatever they might need.  They liked having their own space to put stuff.

 

3.  Really good lighting.  The kitchen used to have a lot of shadows.  The education room had better lighting.

 

4.  Consistency on where to put things when not in use and a training program to reinforce the organizational skills.  Just telling them clean up was not helpful.  They needed to be trained, including structure and consistency and regular, positive reminders so that the cleaning up eventually became automatic.  It was really helpful that the education room was specifically for that, so the stuff in there had a specific purpose for that room and had a specific place to be put when not needed.  The kids felt more organized in there.

 

5.  When in the middle of a project we could just leave it for the next day.

 

6.  Less likely to try snacking or suddenly feel hungry just because we were in the kitchen.  Being away from the kitchen saved a lot of calories and arguments.  :)

 

7.  Fewer distractions in general, not just for the kids but for me, too.  I was less likely to suddenly leap up and try to take care of other chores, which meant we moved more smoothly through the material and school stuff didn't take as long.  The kids were able to stay more focused because I was more focused.

 

8.  Helped the kids and I mentally switch from play mode to academics (not that we didn't play but they were more ready to focus on math/reading/spelling more quickly when we would enter that room).

 

9.  Kids enjoyed helping decorate and organize and also plan their own specific space within the room.  They felt more invested in being in that room because they had helped design it.

[Sneezyone]

I just rearranged the house and I if everything works out I could use a loft as a school room. I am thinking it would be nice to have a place where we could leave things out. Currently we do it in the kitchen table which kind of stinks because we constantly have to clean things up to eat.

 

 

 

So do you have a school room?

Do you use it?

What do you like or dislike about it?

 

Oh and anyone want to show pics of their school room?

We have one and I love it. We use it almost everyday. I love that there's a repository for all things school/home office. Clutter bothers me.

Edited November 17, 2016 by Sneezyone

[Ethel Mertz]

Every year there is a school room blog hop. Scroll down for pictures.

[MrsRobinson]

We have a school room. We love it. We did Kindy and 1st grade in an 800 sq foot house before moving, so we are really grateful for the space in this new to us house.

 

We use it every day. We do have to come upstairs to the kitchen or back deck for messy science and art. The past few weeks, dd has been following me around the whole house to get her school work done because I've been caring for sick boys. But otherwise, we do the vast majority of our school work in there.

 

What do I like about it? I agree with the pp, it helps me focus just on school and we get through it faster. It gets really great morning sunshine (especially for a basement room) which is very motivating for me. I like that we can have lots of fun schooly things on the walls and the whole house doesn't look like a classroom.

 

What do I dislike about it? I'm having a hard time coming up with anything. I guess it's another room to dust and vacuum but I don't really mind because I really love having that space. I don't get cell reception in the basement but that's probably a good thing too, so I stay focused on the kids. The lighting (needed in the afternoons and on cloudy days) is terrible but I added a floor lamp, a desk lamp and paper lantern string lights so its nice and bright and cheerful now.

[happypamama]

I have a schoolroom. We do use it a lot, more as a home base than anything. Sometimes we do schoolwork in other rooms in the house. My sixth grader likes to get up early and take his work into the kitchen to do while he eats a first breakfast with DH, and when I come down later, my second grader often bring reading or math to do at the kitchen table while I eat my breakfast. And big kids, especially my ninth grader, like to take their work up to a quiet room.

 

But. Home base. Everything has a spot in the schoolroom, all the books. I have a couple of tables along the walls for book bins, a box for hanging files for their portfolio work, and books we will be using soon. There are shelves and drawers for manipulatives, science materials, and extra notebooks/paper/etc., and a cabinet for art supplies. I have a big old office desk to hold my laptop and printer, and I often use that space for one on one work with a child. The walls (three cream with light dusty blue trim and one light dusty blue with cream trim) have maps and art prints and the occasional science or history poster, plus a whiteboard, and Veritas Press timeline cards around the top edge.

 

(I keep baby/toddler toys in there too, plus board books, and currently, because our playroom is holding construction materials for a bedroom remodel, the schoolroom also has the train table and play kitchen.)

 

The middle of the room has a couple of 2' x 4' plastic folding tables, zip tied together and covered with a tablecloth. The kids can work there when they want, but they aren't required to do so. I usually swivel my chair from my desk to there when I do group subjects with them. The floor is laminate, and it's next to the kitchen, so we can take off the tablecloth and have a good place for art projects.

 

Lighting -- it has two southern windows and two eastern ones, with three wall sconces on the eastern wall, so it's pretty decently lit. We did put in a couple of LED ceiling lights with a dimmer switch, which means that I can really customize how much light I need. (Dimmers are such a great invention! As we remodel, we keep putting them in everywhere.). Our ceilings are a little on the lower side, and we have some trees next to the windows, so extra lights prevent shadows, but overall it's pretty good. It can be a little drafty in the winter (old house), but it's not bad. It's a very pleasant room. I spent years figuring out just what I wanted, and now it's a great room that has plenty of space for our family to grow.

[MyLife]

We have a school room. I like having everything (curriculum, manipulitives, games, children's books, arts and crafts) together. It makes our day run more smoothly when I don't have to hunt down supplies and books from all over the house. I purchased an actual school table with adjustable legs from School Outfitters. I wanted a table with a smooth top and something that could grow with my children. I also have a large whiteboard (love!), three bookshelves, one of those cubby-style shelves, and a computer desk.

 

We complete about 75 percent of our school work in our school room each day. The rest is completed in the living room because we need to TV or at the kitchen table during lunch.

[mykidsrmyjoy]

I don't know what I would do without our school room! It's really an extra living area off our kitchen/dining room, but we didn't need 2 living rooms, so I turned it into a class room. Some of my favorite features are:

 

The large, solid 6.5' table my husband built out of old barnwood. Love that thing! I have a USA map spread over the top and then a clear tablecloth over that.

 

My teacher's desk. Although I don't use it every day, it's nice to have a bit of personal space in this room where most of the items belong to the kiddos.

 

Two tall bookcases with cabinets on the bottom, and then another wider bookcase. You can't have too many bookshelves. :)

 

A bulletin board, white board, world map, ABC and number charts on the walls.

 

A smaller child's table in the corner, with a basket of paper/notebooks next to it and buckets of crayons and colored pencils hanging on the wall above it.

 

Lots and lots of bins to keep everything organized.

[CadenceSophia]

We used to have a school room but we didn't use it to do school in, just to store school materials. It was an extra room off the living room separated by french doors..two walls were book shelves and the other was the piano and a desk. We did kindergarten and first grade with this setup and at that time almost everything was done on the couch. The sturdy table was also an issue. We couldn't sit side by side at the desk.

 

We moved and have been working at the kitchen table for a little over a year. I put a tall, skinny cabinet by the table to hold the day to day things and it works really well. I don't see us moving away from the kitchen for morning school work any time soon. I actually really like the discipline of having to clean up meals for school and school for meals.

 

We are re-doing our basement apartment right now and while we probably won't do much day to day school down there, I will have good bookshelves again and a kitchen for materials storage and permanent science lab. Super excited.

[Insertcreativenamehere]

We have a schoolroom. We love it! My husband also works from home, using our bedroom as his office, and when we did school in the kitchen, it was much too distracting to all of us to be in such close proximity all day long. 

 

We have desks for each of the kids, but they rarely use them. I'm thinking of getting rid of them but the kids like them for storage. We also have an old kitchen table that I use as a desk and it's also where I work on-on-one with kids. We also have a few sets of bookcases. 

 

Because we have a 4 yo, we do have toys in the room to keep him busy. I hide them in a Rubbermaid container under the table. 

 

We have a beanbag chair for seating but the room is also next to our family room on the lower level, so we use that room quite a bit for reading and watching documentaries. 

 

 

[lexi]

We have a school room. I love it! I love being able to leave stuff out. I also love that when we're in that room we're in "school mode." I like that I can leave that room and all the stuff in it and escape from school.

 

It's important for me to have good lighting and natural light, lots of bookshelves, and a large work table. I also like that we have banks of drawers at each corner of our table. I keep curriculum in those.

 

Here's a link: http://lextinacademy.blogspot.com/2015/08/tour-our-homeschool-room-2015-2016.html?m=1

[Dmmetler]

We have a school room. It basically gets used as storage for all the school stuff, since DD tends to school all over the house, but it's great getting to have that place for everything. DD also adores getting to decorate, having a place to hang up stuff, and having a big whiteboard to use as needed (math, especially). DD used to have a school desk, but now uses my grandmother's roll top writing desk.

Edited November 18, 2016 by dmmetler

[Meadowlark]

I would just seriously consider your kids and where they enjoy doing their work. My kids have randomly chosen very strange places to do their work. My oldest prefers his sister's room ( I just threw a desk in there) and the next prefers an empty bedroom which also has a desk. I'm also inclined to let them do their work outside, on the deck, in their bed...whatever. I feel like that's the beauty of homeschooling. If you went through all of that trouble to make a school room and then they didn't want to be in there,well that would be a bummer. Having a place to store all the stuff-would be nice though (and we do have a room like that, where we do our morning meeting). 

 

[EmilyGF]

We have a school room (after many people advised me against it). During a really cold winter, we couldn't do school in our dining room because it was too cold so we moved up to the guest bedroom and realized it was warm, cozy, and bright. We've done school in there ever since. We have a big computer desk (for ds11 usually) and 2'x4' tables for each of our two school-aged daughters. We have drawers for each child's school work.

 

We do readings in the living room sometimes and narrations out of the school room. We also have sound muffling headphones. The kids do 90% of their work in their. I like that I'm not sitting in my kitchen all day like I was when we were int he dining room. DS4 has a designated play area. 

 

I think you should consider the space. I would not have a school room in a place I didn't want to be like an attic or basement, or a place that didn't have a lot of natural light. It just turned out that the best room in our house was the least used, so it made sense to make it the most used. Also, it connects to the living room so that gives the littler ones a big play space that I can keep watch over when needed.

We still do clean up mostly each day. We vacuum twice a week. Right now the tables are covered in craft papers since the kids treat the room as school during day and craft room at night. Sigh. But better here than on the living room floor!

 

Emily

[Jess4879]

This is the first house we've had a school room in and I love it!  We still complete school work all over the house, but we have one main room that everything is kept in and it works so well for us. 

[prairiewindmomma]

We have a school room. Two walls are wrapped with bookcases. One wall holds computer stations. I built a half wall out of three filing cabinets which are topped with our printer, photocopier, and scanner.

 

We have a desk bank made of two 6' folding tables placed back to back with our chairs seated around it. I have two Raskog rolling carts, an easel, a minitrampoline and other tidbits in the room.

[mommyoffive]

We have a school room. I love it! I love being able to leave stuff out. I also love that when we're in that room we're in "school mode." I like that I can leave that room and all the stuff in it and escape from school.

 

It's important for me to have good lighting and natural light, lots of bookshelves, and a large work table. I also like that we have banks of drawers at each corner of our table. I keep curriculum in those.

 

Here's a link: http://lextinacademy.blogspot.com/2015/08/tour-our-homeschool-room-2015-2016.html?m=1

 

So pretty!  I love it.

 

Are the desks and bookshelves from ikea?

 

 

 

Yeah I don't know for sure what we would use it.  Right now we school around the house.  But I think it would be nice to have everything in one place so I don't feel like I live in a school.  

Also a place where we could spread out and do projects and not have to have them done before lunch.    I also think I would focus better in a room like that.  Less distractions of me trying to get other things done.  Like come on here!  :)

 

I think we will give it a try.  If we end up not using it then we can change it up.

[KSinNS]

We had a school room, but don't in our new house. I don't miss it all that much, partly because it ended up cluttered much of the time. We do have lots of storage in the dining room for books, and I need the routine of having to clean up before meals. The kids always schooled all over the place anyway. We will be turning a basement room into an office, so that will likely function more like our old school room. But try it. See what works for you.

[Insertcreativenamehere]

Here are some pics of our room:

 

 

[MotherGoose]

We have one. We do school in there although oldest has to go to her room to do most independent work. I keep most supplies in there, and we have 4 office quality metal bookcases to hold the library.

 

ETA I specified office quality because after wood ones fell off the wall and particle board ones finally got me some real bookshelves :)

Edited November 18, 2016 by MotherGoose

[Targhee]

I HAD a school room.  We recently moved, and are living in smaller quarters.  We did have one for 5 years, and we were hot and cold about it's merits.  It was nice to have a defined space that was for school work.  I even had a small room off it (under the knee wall) with bookshelves and seats to read in.  It hardly got used, as people chose to read in more sunny spaces.  We were able to keep some things set-up in the school room (microscope, craft project, snap circuits, etc).  However, I got soooo much more done around the house when school was in the kitchen or on the couch, or on the laundry room floor.  So we swung back and forth.  Currently we are planning to build a custom house and I am NOT planning a school room.  I am still deciding how much school-specific details I am putting in the house.  For example, I am thinking of built-in desks/counter spaces, considering a reading nook, and built-in shelves for books.  This better reflects how we usually schooled - in the most comfortable spot.  I guess the best thing about the school room was storage - didn't have to stash things in closets and cupboards.

[Another Lynn]

Our school room has one wall full of bookshelves. It also has 3 desks with drawer caddies and s chaise lounge. We rarely do school in there. I love it anyway. The kids share bedrooms, so having their "own" desk for stuff is nice. It does get cluttered a bit. Someday it will be my library room instead.

[lexi]

Yes my stuff is from IKEA. The table is two table tops bolted together and placed on top of four banks of drawers- one at each corner. It's a nice large workspace so we all have room and can spread out.

[MaryMak07]

We are hoping to build a house soon on my in laws 220 acre farm!! The plan right now is to have 3 bedrooms upstairs (one being a master) and a modest master suite downstairs too. The idea is aging in place - when we are old everything on one level. But it will be a school room for many years and we will use the master upstairs. Then when kids and grands come to visit they can take the upstairs rooms :)

[mommyoffive]

Here are some pics of our room:

 

 

 

 

Oh I love this too.

 

Pretty

 

Love the artwork on the wall.  What do the quotes say?

[mommyoffive]

Yes my stuff is from IKEA. The table is two table tops bolted together and placed on top of four banks of drawers- one at each corner. It's a nice large workspace so we all have room and can spread out.

 

Thanks. 

 

I love Ikea stuff.  So functional and pretty.

 

We live so far from one.

hmmm

Thanks for the ideas for the desks.  And I thought it was just desks. 

 

Where is everyone finding the old school desks?

Edited November 19, 2016 by mommyoffive

[ThatReadAloudLife]

Yes, we have a school room. Of course, after our written work, we prefer to use the regular living room to just veg out on the couch doing reading and read-alouds, but, I can't imagine not having a school room! Just the storage and organization make it so worth it. [emoji106]

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Insertcreativenamehere]

Thanks. 

 

I love Ikea stuff.  So functional and pretty.

 

We live so far from one.

hmmm

Thanks for the ideas for the desks.  And I thought it was just desks. 

 

Where is everyone finding the old school desks?

 We got old school desks from a small private school that was shutting down. In all honesty, the writing surface is too small to be practical and my kids rarely use them. They'd rather use our communal table or spread out on the floor.