Many parents find themselves trying to set up a classroom at home for their children. This can be a daunting task, but there are some simple tips that can make the process a little easier and learning more comfortable for both the child and the parent.
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Setting Up A Classroom at Home
I use the term classroom loosely. Your classroom doesn’t have to be one room in your house, and you don’t have to turn an area of your home into a classroom. Learn where you are comfortable.
You want to set things up to be comfortable. You want to create a learning environment.
Keep an Open Mind. Your homeschooling room doesn’t need to look like a classroom!
You don’t even need a homeschool room. We have homeschooled for 7 years. One year we had a homeschool room and we didn’t even use it!
Where do you spend the majority of your time within your home?
Find The Right Work Surface
The dining room table is our favorite workspace for group work. The table gives us enough space to spread out, it gives us space to put all our materials out.
If you are looking for a more relaxed space, grab some laptop desks. They allow your kids to sit on the couch or in bed and still have a solid work surface.
Prioritize Comfort
You don’t have to sit on hard chairs do to school work. Did you go to public school? Were the chairs ever comfortable? No. So sit on the couch. Or lay in bed for read-aloud. You do not have to be uncomfortable to learn.
Set Up Your Supplies & Materials Nearby
Don’t keep your supplies in the hall closet upstairs when you are doing your lessons in the kitchen. It makes no sense to spend all that time running back and forth for pencils and erasers.
You don’t have to have them standing out in the middle of the table at all times, it works for us.
We also have a stand in our living room that has just about everything we end in it. From pencils to paper to workbooks. And it just looks like a stand in our living room.
Eliminate Clutter & Distraction
Having clutter around is enough to distract anyone from their work. When you have toys sitting out in your space your kids are not going to want to do work.
Turn the TV off, and clean up the space you are planning to do your lesson in. No toys, nothing your kids are going to want to play with or watch.
Make Clean Up Simple
Don’t drag everything out. If you aren’t going to be reading the language arts novel, why bother getting it out? It’s just going to be something else you need to clean up when the lessons are finished.
If you are doing a science experiment and the clean-up could get messy…
Go Outside!
When you can take a science experiment outside DO IT! The clean-up is none existent, and then you can enjoy it too without worrying about something spraying over the floors and walls.
When the weather is nice take reading time outside. Sit on the trampoline or in the forest to read. You can take other lessons outside too if you’d like. Just think about the wind if you are taking papers outside.
More on Creating a Homeschool Space
Easy Ways to Have an Organized Homeschool Space