We haven’t always had a homeschool room. And, please, don’t think that school rooms are a mandate for a successful homeschool. It really is dependent on what works best for your family dynamics; even those fluctuate based on various needs and seasons.
My dream has always been to create a living homeschool room; an engaging room within our home in which our learning can naturally flourish.
Our Homeschool Room Metamorphosis
The Early Years
During our first few years of homeschooling Jadin had a large table that was only about 2-ft off the ground. He’d sit on his little knees while snipping and gluing to his heart’s content. This low table (a trash find) was in the corner of our small apartment dining room. This area was alive and active. He had buckets of supplies, and an imagination that still hasn’t quit to this day. His preschool assignments were to create, and he thrived at his little table!
The Dead Schoolroom
After we bought our farmette in the country we found ourselves with only 3-children and 5-bedrooms. We felt like we had miles of open area. One of our upstairs bedrooms had a newly polished hardwood floor, with floor to ceiling windows. I wanted this room to be our schoolroom. My husband found fabulous shelving in the trash, along with several traditional school desks.  We painted the walls in chalk board paint and added a large fish tank. I had big dreams for this room.
I knew that I didn’t want a traditional classroom; I also wanted to work creatively with what the Lord provided.
 But, things didn’t go by my perfect plan. (Grins.) Our family life developed downstairs in the heart of our home, and outside by our shady trees and pond. It became a chore to haul 3 children away from life to a room upstairs and ‘do school.’ Within a short time it become apparent that we weren’t going to use this space the way I’d hoped.
Creating Our Living Homeschool Room
Then, we added two more sweet little boys in two years. Our big old farm-house began to shrink. I felt guilty about the dead school room upstairs that housed our books and supplies, yet we never utilized the space beyond lazy convenient storage. Armed with my Momma Lion hormones we tackled the daunting task of switching our upstairs homeschool room with our downstairs master bedroom.
I didn’t want to lose our sweet combination of kitchen-table-learning and one-room-schoolhouse atmosphere that permeated downstairs. My goal was to simply overflow our daily discoveries into this new living homeschool room that was located directly off the kitchen. This was the ideal location to harmoniously extend learning and maximize our family living space.
We’ve now had our living homeschool room functioning for a little over a year. I’m happy to report that we daily use this room; it’s a joyous addition to our home – as if we built on an addition.  Even when it’s not table-work time, our children congregate at the large table for games, science projects, and creative outbursts. Just this week there was a revival of cardboard creations and origami challenges. None of it planned by me, all delight-directed learning, and all in this beloved usable space. Beyond this special room our learning continues to spill throughout the house with our read aloud time, frugal learning ideas, and general lifestyle of learning flow.
 We consider our living homeschool room along the same lines as an artist studio or writer’s cabin; it is instinctively an inviting place to let God’s gifts flourish.
What’s your homeschool room story? Did you struggle to find a place that would work well for your family? Do you couch school, or do lessons wherever the mood strikes?  Share your inspiring learning story in the comments below!
Love your learning room and love that table!! Isn’t it funny how our homeschooling philosophy changes over time! It’s pretty typical to go from school at home to some form of unschooling!
I love your school room! The big solid wood table is my dream. Right now we have a small version of it that I have painted a strip down the middle with chalkboard paint. I am also a slight book/curriculum hoarder, so your huge bookshelf filled floor to ceiling just makes me smile!! =)
Emily, you’ve found me out. I can’t say no to books. Especially old classic literature. I am a mad woman at the thrift store on 10-cent book day. The good news is if the public libraries every close, we’ll still have plenty to read. 😉 I love your strip down the middle with chalkboard paint idea. Our table was a gift. My mom was done with her dining room set and I couldn’t say no to a free 9-ft table. It was the inspiration I needed to make this project come to life.
I like to think we’ve been homeschooling since birth. However, we didn’t need a place to do it per se when I only had one toddler. School was walks, and singing songs, and helping in the kitchen, and reading books on the couch. It was swinging and climbing and picking flowers, and lazing in the hammock, and picking berries, and watching the bats and the moon. When we moved out of our apt into a home with an eat in kitchen (and also added a baby to the family), I had a “dining room” that didn’t have a table. I wanted to make it our homeschool room. I have a tiny table and chairs from Ikea that I wanted to make into an art table/play kitchen table. I put our play kitchen and a cradle there to make a “play house” space. There’s a chalkboard on the opposite wall, a low shelf for toys and activities, and a secretary. Right now, the art table is in chaos, the toy shelf is ok, and the secretary is storage of “stuff”. I am thinking about remodeling our kitchen to add a banquette and custom build a table to fit in there, and move the current table to the homeschool room. Larger bookshelves are going to be necessary, and I’d like to add a small book nook/comfort corner in there. TBH, I really need some help making it all it can be. We start first grade in a couple weeks, and I expect to do most of it at the kitchen table and the couch. But I’d love a place to do projects. I guess we’ll just have to evolve the room as we see fit.
It is a developing process. As your family grows, and needs change, your room with change. We are unashamed trash pickers. 😉 We’ve found great shelving, desks, and tables in the trash. Driving through neighborhoods the night before trash day is a great way to find treasures (oh, yes…we’ve done that too).
I Love your table.we want a farm table too 🙂 I hope its ok to share our little story 🙂 That is much like what I am looking for now. We didn’t always home school. My daughter started at the end of her.5th grade year and worked at the kitchen table. Then we moved and had 4 bedrooms and so the same as you did, we had dreams for the (over the garage) upstairs room. It seemed perfect at the time.Little did I know what a headache the stairs would be and my health didn’t allow the trod up and down all day long.plus it was hot, stuffy and just plain troublesome. Lol. So idea number 2.. use one of the small bedrooms. We moved into a small room and worked very close quarters at the deal all day for a while until I got.the bright idea to use our extremely oversized master complete with bed and dresser, it was a huge empty room.. we didnt need that much space. So We made the transition and it was wonderful. We had room for both desks.a work.table.bookshelves. and a sitting area with t.v. for rainy video days.:) we have recently moved and are struggling now doing most work from the dining table but moving around.wherever we are comfortable and enjoying doing so…but still praying.for means to create that perfect for us school.space! You’ve done wonderful with your room.I love it.
We don’t have room in our small home for a dedicated homeschool room, but we do have a generously sized dining room and that’s where we do school. We keep reading books on a shelf in the living room and do literature stuff there. But everything else takes place at the dining room table, where we keep shelves on some nice Closetmaid shelves I found on clearance on Target’s website this summer. The dining room has a window opening into the kitchen so I can step away from the school table but still be near to watch what’s going on with my first grader. Or maybe his almost-4 year old brother! I’m very thankful for experienced, homeschooling bloggers like you who help show us newbies that we don’t have to have the “perfect schoolroom” to make homeschooling work!
When we began homeschooling, we started with one small bookcase and just basically, “couch-schooled,” as you say. Though, we pretty much used whatever room in the house worked best for the project … science and art were often at the kitchen counter, for example.
When we moved from the East Coast to New Mexico we were blessed to find a home with an extra room downstairs that makes for a perfect homeschool room. If it were upstairs, I can’t imagine it getting as much use as it does now. Our family is in there during school times and often during non-school times. It’s just a cool hangout spot in our house! But we do our fair share of schooling out and about (field trips), too. However, I’m glad to have a space to contain all our homeschool books and supplies in one room since we’ve far outgrown a small bookcase and now overflow several large shelving units.
That looks a very happy and busy place!
We currently live in a very small home and don’t have a designated school area. The couch, dining table, and kid’s bedrooms are were most of the work gets done. I also have a bookcases tucked here, there, and everywhere!
Oh, I have one of those dead schoolrooms too! In the beginning (wow, has it been three years already?!) I purchased four school desks, a whiteboard, a teacher desk and rolling carts. I set it all up as a schoolroom at home…ugh! Now we do school all over the house, mostly in the kitchen. We read a lot upstairs. I have the itch to convert my dining room, right off the kitchen. I think this would’ve been the better spot. But for now, we’re all over the place…hopefully a lot of that time will be spent outdoors once the weather cools too 🙂
I so loved your living homeschool room! You will laugh dear cousin. Our homeschool room is a room that is a large landing at the top of our stairs. The first year I tried the dining room table but we live in a drafty old house (1892) and I was literally miserable! So we converted this are at the top of the stairs to our homeschool room and you know what? The number 1 reason I love it is it is the warmest room in the house!!!! Thanks for sharing both on your wonderful website and in person.
We are starting Kindergarten this year with my oldest and our house is full to overflowing as it is. We have a drawer just off the kitchen that holds everyday books and supplies, and a shelf in my bedroom for art supplies and an 18 gallon tub in the closet for the extra books and supplies. And we “do” school at the dining room table. It’s not ideal, but it works for us!
Annie, during one season when we lived with my mom in-between houses, I kept all of our school in a hope chest. Everyday we pulled it out, then tucked it all away when we were done. It’s all about making your space work for you. 🙂 Happy homeschooling!
I loved reading about your journey! It’s funny how the best laid plans aren’t always the best… I have found this to be very true about homeschooling plans 🙂 We have taken this concept into account with our homeschool area, keeping it in the dining room because we are always in the kitchen, living room or front room (or backyard when it’s warm!), and the dining room is somewhat near all of these spaces. Our struggle is that our dining room isn’t really a stand-alone area, but part of the “grand” front room area (which we have no “formal” seating in!) that is the first thing you see and walk into from the front door. Because of that, I’ve been hesitant to create a craft space in there too, although there’s room, because I would feel like it had to be cleaned up after everyday and the kids wouldn’t be able to keep their projects out. Or maybe it’s just me and I worry too much about what people see when they walk into our home! I just wrote about what we’ve come up with for this year on our blog: https://wp.me/p1MH6f-y8
At any rate, we do also have bookshelves in this area (though I didn’t picture them on my blog post) and I am really enjoying having ALMOST everything we need for learning fun central to where we spend our time during the day! I would LOVE to have an area that was “off” to the side of the living area and not right smack in the middle of it, like yours, but I think we’ve come up with the best solution for us with the house we have. Also, my husband decided to put his home office in the basement (instead of us trying to do school down there), and I think that was a good move for him because he’s out of the circus when he needs to be. 🙂
You have no idea how relieved I was to see this post. THANK YOU. When we bought our first house this year, we deliberately sought a place with a separate room designated just for homeschool. Several of my homeschool friends are giving me a bit of a hard time about having a “room”, and insist that I should just take my kids outside. :p THANK YOU for sharing how wonderful we know having a dedicated space can be!
You know we homeschool mommas can be silly like that sometimes. We do plenty outside etc, but we still needed a room – at least for my book rescue program (grin). Our house is an old farm house with several, small, chopped up rooms. If we lived in a house with a great room, I’d love to have all open space, but that’s just not what the Lord gave us. 😉 Enjoy your room, and your quilt outside; really, it all works well. xoxo
so we have a room in our basement, which is ok. But we battle these darn house centipedes( if you don’t know what these are, I dare your to look them up *shudder*), very poor lighting and no heat in the winter(we take down a small heater , blankets and wear our coats!). We started with a central table but everyone was distracted when I had to work with another child and we were all clumped together and also 12 year old son is well, noisy. He tends to burst out in song and is a real comedian. So needless to say he is also distracting. So we went with their own desks and that has seemed to help some. But it was a smaller pop up table not a giant 9 footer like yours. I would really like to find an area on the main level but can’t figure out how to work it with out the space taking over. But my mind is turning now trying to finagle something. We have one big book shelf and a little one that are bursting. I have other books in the attic too. I LOVE books and could spend a gazillion dollars on them. There are few investments better than the gift of knowledge. We have another 6 foot pop up table that’s for crafts but it is currently been taken over by my homeschool binders and such. We have maps on the walls and a cork board to display art. We have some bean bags and we also have 10 drawer workbox carts for each child that separates their desks. Not a bad room for us, just not a great location in the basement.
I love it! It encourages me since I have a small house with NO extra room and three kids. The kitchen table and the living room as where we homeschool. I have dreams of having a dedicated school room someday but that would equal buying a house which is not happening anytime in the near future.