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