A tour of our Homeschool Room

Hope you all are enjoying the summer break, as well as getting ready for the new academic year! I always find it inspirational to look up ideas for homeschool rooms, and organisation. So, in this post, I was going to do a tour of our homeschool room, hoping to provide some inspiration along the way. I was postponing this post for a long time, as I am not a video person😂. I am still not a video person, so I tried to take as much pictures, to show the different areas in our homeschool room😁. Something better than nothing, I guess. 

Our homeschool room is a medium sized room, up on our second floor. We are blessed to have this room completely dedicated for homeschooling. Considering the number of students,  we have outgrown it a bit. So the oldest 2 stay downstairs for school, as they are 90% independent by now. As they are mostly doing dual credit college classes, I don’t have too much of an active role with them daily. I plan their 4 year high school plan, occasionally check in with them to make sure they are on target, and only very occasionally have to correct work for them.  

As far as the rest of them, we all scramble into our beloved homeschool room after breakfast, which can end up making it very noisy; which is also a major reason the oldest 2 decided to stay downstairs for school. Our 3rd and 4th have also started complaining about how noisy it sometimes gets, and they have strategically and self-motivatingly started getting up earlier to have a considerable portion of school done before they even come down to breakfast by 7:45am. (This worked  great for us last year, and I’m hoping they will continue doing this for the upcoming  year too).

Our room used to be carpet, until my husband and kids laminated it few years ago. They also painted the walls green. Laminating the floor has made it so much easier for cleanup, but is probably why it gets so loud too.😌

Every year, I try to perk up the room a little, to create an inviting atmosphere, and rearrange things around a little to accommodate the current needs. I used to keep all the educational toys and puzzles out in bins in the main school room. But it didn’t take long for me to realise that it was a huge mistake! In no time, all the kiddies will get everything out into the floor and make a humungous mess even before 10 minutes into the day. So now, I keep them all inside the closet of the school room, and hand out only 1 item at a time. When they clean up and hand them back, they can have the next item.  I lock the schoolroom after school time, so that little ones won’t sneak in and create a mess of the schoolwork. 

We do not restrict our school to just the schoolroom. We have a huge collection of books- ‘living history’, ‘living science’, literature collections, story books, picture books etc, that I want them to access outside of school time. We have a prayer room/ library where we keep all those books. I have organised the books by subject and put them on dedicated shelves. I recently color coded all the books that belong to this room, with coloured duct tape so that they know where to keep them back after reading. We also have few bookshelves in the game room for purely fun reading, that I don’t really care where they put them back, as long as they put them back on the shelves, and not leave them out as car tracks forever, lol! (We are great fans of IKEA, especially their KALLAX model bookshelves. We have a large number of such bookshelves all around the house for storing books, clothes, toys, craft items etc. They are very versatile!)

We also have a science experiment supply cabinet downstairs in the formal dining room, near the kitchen, which houses all our experiment supplies; which can be kept closed when not in use. It has 2 pull-out tables, and so works perfectly well for the microscope! I had something like this in mind for a long time, and we very providentially got this from one of our homeschool group friend’s garage sale few months back! It is very handy to have all the supplies downstairs near the kitchen, as we end up doing most experiments on the kitchen counter. And hence I also keep all the experiment books downstairs in a bin. 

We also have another desk with hutch and pull out table in the living room, where I keep most of the stuff I need for ‘Family learning time’. 

We also have a small ‘liturgical table’ downstairs where I keep most kids spiritual books including saint story books. More recently, we have been trying to be more intentional in liturgical living, with having  ‘tea parties’ of chosen saint feast days.  I have a small bulletin board that I write in the liturgical season, what the month is dedicated to in the Catholic Church, bible verse of the week, and the date of our next liturgical tea party. I put out some relevant books based on the saints that celebrate feast days that month and what the month is dedicated to, in a small basket, that I intend for the kids to read that month.  I keep other spiritual books, kids Bibles and devotionals, under the tabletop. 😇

I also have a small corner bookshelf near the breakfast table, where I put some moral storybooks, nature books, field guides, spiritual books, etc which I hope the kids will pick up and read while having snacks or breakfast. 

We also have a room dedicated to arts/crafts downstairs which I try to restrict to that room, so that the clutter of paper cuttings etc won’t mix in with the main areas(one can only hope, in a house with infants and toddlers!😌). I keep all the ‘how to draw’ books, craft books, coloring and activity books, and arts/crafts supplies in this room. 

I also keep bins of books downstairs in the main bookshelves, mostly ones I like to read to the younger ones, including Dr Suess, I-Spy, character based short stories, etc. I also keep a bin downstairs with science experiment books that I encourage them to pick up and do when they are bored. 

As you can see, our school is not just restricted to one area of the house. We have several focal points throughout the house, to encourage learning throughout different times of the day, that fits in with a practical workflow. Creating a whole atmosphere conducive to learning, is good for kids to be naturally inclined to learning;  as learning should not be just confined to a certain time or space. Learning should potentially happen anytime, and anywhere!

I hope you enjoy the pics of our homeschool room and other learning spaces! God Bless!