Follow-up on assignments: what works & what doesn't?

Lindsey,
I think your school room is perfect for how you do things. You have your desk right there, a comfy chair in a corner where you can sit and read….all while being right there with your children, monitoring and helping. I love your school room!

Thank you, Mrs. K! I love it too! Unfortunately, but also fortunately, we are selling our home! We have found our dream property (house on 10 acres with greenhouse, barn, chickens and more!) and are already under contract on it! It does not have a schoolroom! 🙁 We are toying with a couple of ideas, because after having this one I honestly don’t know if I can live without one! Either add on to the house on the north side, or buy a cute outdoor building, insulate, heat and cool it and put it right outside the back door.

We have a school room but it is upstairs and WAY to cold to be in there this cold winter. We tried heating it with a heater but it doesn’t hardly get to 50 on the really cold days, so we are at the dining room table and where ever they want down stairs. I have had to stop trying to do things on computer while the kids are doing math. All I do is sit and help whoever needs help and have my Kindergartener do things at this time too. My kids are in 5th, 4th, 3rd and K. I give them a lot of time to do math (over 30min) and then we do other things. We dont always do the same thing every day in same order. After lunch while they clear table and do other chores, I correct their math and look over copywork etc, and I give them about 30 minutes of free time and then they have to do their corrections. Which I usually have to sit right there the whole time for. This takes a LOT of time and I am hoping that as they get older they won’t require my help so much and that will free me up to do other things. But right now I feel this is the important thing to do. It isn’t like this everyday and I did get out of the routine this fall as we had to move but am now back into it and it is going well.

As far as the loose papers, they have folders to keep certain papers in and each have a box but it still is all scattered all over the house until I personally hand it to them and get them to put it away.

And I dream of the day when I can have a school room downstairs and a greenhouse!

How funny that you knew, Amy! It was so sudden for us that we’re still doing a double-take and pinching ourselves to make sure it’s real! We’ve waited a long time for something like this to come along, and we couldn’t be happier. The home on the property needs quite a lot of work, and it’s much smaller than our current home. But I’m looking forward to simplifying even more, getting rid of more stuff, having another garage sale, and living our dream. We are looking at something like this as a school room option: http://www.contemporist.com/2008/06/18/lifespace-contemporary-garden-rooms/ or this: http://www.shedsunlimited.net/store/buy-amish-storage-sheds-in-pa/ Look at the fourth one down to see my favorite. 

This has been a great discussion! I especially loved hearing all of your creative ideas for keeping your little chickadees busy and happily working. 

Thanks for the links, Lindsey.  I’m going to show DH the chicken coop.  We need to have a different set up for ours.  That’s similar to what I had in mind.