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Charlotte Mason Schoolroom
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I would like to pick up this topic again. We have a room that is right now a clutter/office room (originally ment to be dining room) that I want to redecorate/organize so it will be functional home school room for 2 children. The space is about 12’x13′. Right now it has 2 high bookshelves, huge desk, filing cabinet, low book case, a 2 seat sofa(falling appart) and 2 low cabinets, a book display and an easle in there , everything completly missmatched in style in color! The room looks and feels very cluttered, not a good learning environment. Our new school room still needs to function as an office at non-school hours, since my DH is working on his Master at nights/weekends, I have part time jobs that requires work out of my home. I am so untalented when it comes to home decorating
and hoping for some help. Maybe some of you have a home school room and would share pictures of it? Or do yo know a good source were to get ideas?(would love pictures!)On my wishlist for the room is lots of desk/working space, lplenty of storgae for office supplies, carft supplies, and tons of books,comfy seating for reading and I would love to keep the easle in there.
The walls are currently yellow and we have a espresso brown wood floor.
I hope for some talented home decorators here
Hi Christine,
We just recently redid our really gross 13*13 study that holds our homeschool ‘books & things’ as well as my office (I run a book business from home). Like you, I didn’t feel I have that decorative touch but wanted it to reflect us. We painted the panelling white (Distant Star for the romantics) and hauled the tall bookcases upstairs, scoured Craigslist, went borrowing from other rooms and hit IKEA to redo this room on a tight budget. We use IKEA drawer units for craft supplies and an Expedit bookshelf for the homeschool items.
Here are some pics from the main home school part and a picture of my workspace. I hope it helps. Oh, I also packed up books that I’ve collected for future years and put them in the closet. Everyone is happy with the space.
All my best,
Richele
wow wish I had a spare room that size
. Thank you there are some good inspirations, like the Psalm “wall tattoo”I didn’t have time to read everyone’s response, so forgive me if I am repeating something.
I would be sure to have a space somewhere to display the kids work. It could be a nice piece of copywork, a math test, a decorated memory verse, a piece of art work, anything. Just somewhere where they could see their things and when “Dad” or whoever comes in, can get a quick look at what they are doing and they can feel good about their accomplishments.
I have a friend who hung a string across the wall and then hooked her kids work to it with clothes pins. She had 3 kids, so she hung 3 strings, one on top of the other with about 1.5 feet in between, one fore each kids work.
I liked the idea and would love to have a house big enough for that. Right now it is the fridge and I make sure my husband notices new tests and such that are up.
Richele,
thank you for the link to your blog
I Thought about buying the same open shelves from IKEA. Looks awesome how you arranged the books and other things on there, my shelves somehow always look messy:(. What do you use for workspace for the children? I saw IKEA has the shelve units with an attached table wonder if that might be a good option. Other option would be a small table in the middle of the room. Hmmm…I think I will just buy piece by piece and see what makes sense after adding on each piece…*lol*Love what you have done Richelle. We have a spare room that I used as a school room when the girls were younger – now they do their work in their own rooms independently at their desks, but I still keep a lot of the books in the old room. Little by little I am turning the old school room into a craft/sewing room and I am excited about that. Before we lived in this house, the couch and kitchen table were always our places to do work – it is nice to have space, but if the soul of the school is right, then it does not matter where you do it…..Linda
pangit
yes I would love to have a place to display the kids work , too:). I just saw on one of the images Lindsay posted a room where they used the ideas with the strings. Seems to be a good low cost option.:) I was thinking about putting up a metal track but that would be more permanent, the strings are more flexible:).
A schoolroom would be soooo nice:)
Currently our schoolroom is the kitchen counter, couch, recliner, kitchen table, van, backyard….
We have tried to use our attached garage as a ‘schoolroom,’ but it has turned more into a storage room for our supplies. And, unfortunately, if it is too cold/hot I really don’t want to spend any time out there. I have tables/shelves, etc. that I had hoped the boys would use for projects and such, but it’s ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ so we are not using it like I had hoped:( I’d like to have something set up for the boys and their stuff but it looks like it may not happen until my older boy moves out and we get his room:)
I’m a poor decorator anyway so our schoolroom would probably never look like I would want anyway or it may look better than the rest of the house.
Sorry, Christine, I should have mentioned where we do our schoolwork. I have a large basket and pull the books for the day and put them in there. That travels with us wherever we choose to be and we do roam about the house or outdoors when the weather is nice :). In the winter we are pretty much parked in front of the woodstove in the living room. Our home is a 50’s cap cod – considered small by today’s standards (1250 sq ft).
We took one of our old desks from the “before” picture and my husband sawed off the legs to make a large coffee table/worktable that sits in front of the sofa in the living room. Our kids like to work in the kitchen at the island as well. Handicrafts happen at that drawer-unit cabinet in the office (we grab the stools from the kitchen) or in the living room if it is something that doesn’t have sparkles :). The important thing for me was that all could be kept neat and gotten out/put away quickly. You saw those before shelves – manipulatives and paperbacks were flopping around everywhere.
We haven’t really thought about desks yet as this suits our life-style. I keep our schedule/goals/scope & sequence on a clipboard that travels around with me (hung to the right of the desk) and the kids have clipboards that they use for drawing/holding papers. We have a basket of scratch paper under the coffeetable for doodling.
Thanks for your encouraging words, Linda. You are right, the atmosphere of a home is much different than the decor. A craft/sewing room sounds wonderful! We’ve been here for three years and the house was vacant for a number of years so we are slowly getting it fixed up.
Christine, you’ll have to keep us up-to-date on your progress!
Richele
I think I found a layout I like.
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/workspaces/
I would use the same desk on the right (should be enough space for the MAC and printer), a table in the middle of the room for school work/projects(a little smaller then the one shown), 2 TROFAST storage units under the windows.On the wall across from the windows one of the EXPEDIT bookcases, with at least 2 mirror doors to reflect the light from the windows across the room. On the left wall another EXPEDIT. I won’t have a seating area but guess it shouldn’t be to inconvenient to use the couch in the family room for that (family room is next room to the home school room). On the right wall above the desk would be room display kids work.
What do you think?
Richele
Love the idea with the basket for the books in use!
That would work great for us since we are in AZ and I plan to teach outdoors whenever the weather allows (too hot or too windy are our weather restrictions)I didn’t have time to read all responses but had to comment on Lindsey’s school room dream – Oh my goodness, mine exactly – absolutely lovely ;)!
Ah, to dream…. LOL When we first bought this house, we said the downstairs area off the main family room would be the schoolroom (it only needs a wall/door, and it is a completed 4th bedroom). Once we started moving in furniture, hubby decided half of it would be great for the futon and TV…. <sigh> So I have half the space I originally thought I had. We’ve made do, but hubby hears about it pretty regularly how I wish I had the whole room. Hee, hee!
My personal dream schoolroom would have plenty of art space (my kids are artists), a roll-down map thing with multiple maps (like we had in school), space for our pictures for artist study and science posters and what-not, LOTS and LOTS of bookshelves, space to display their creations, and a “museum” like the PR artricle was talking about (wow, that was an awesome article). I also would like space for desks for each child (4 so far). Right now, we have this tiny little kids’ art table with 2 chairs. Not enough space for 2 of them to even work on copywork together. Now, if I could just get rid of that couch & TV…….. 😉
There are so many great ideas here on school rooms! Reading about all the great ideas reminded me of my plan when we moved into our present house almost 3 years ago. We finally had enough room to have a “separate” school room. We put bookshelves (from Ikea matching white ones), a chalkboard, bulletin board, beautiful bible time lines around the room, etc., a table and chairs to do our work…BUT…after all this work we found that we truly enjoyed doing most of our school work/learning in the living room on the couch or at the kitchen table or lying on the floor!! So now my once dreamed about school room still houses our bookcases of books, although I must admit we have moved a smaller one into the living room that holds all the present years books we are currently using. This all made me laugh at myself because as we are getting ready to move next month our new house no longer has room for a separate school room and I was starting to feel sorry for myself after reading about all these great ideas, but then remembered Oh yeah! We would probably be found again in the living room or kitchen anyway:D
and hoping for some help. Maybe some of you have a home school room and would share pictures of it? Or do yo know a good source were to get ideas?(would love pictures!)
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