Name: Spreading the Feast Gathering
Start: 2025-07-11T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-07-12T23:59:59-05:00
Location: LaGrange, KY

Tagged: schoolroom, work surface

This topic has 20 replies, 15 voices, and was last updated 11 years ago by cherylramirez.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 21 total)

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Author
Posts
May 27, 2014 at 12:47 pm
Sue
Participant
I was reading a few older posts, and I came across a link to someone’s blog post from about 4.5 years ago….and it said this:
I hope you have a little taste of what our school looks like. If I had it my way, we’d have a precious little schoolroom, painted celadon green on top with crisp, white wainscoting on the bottom. It would also include a large bay window complete with window seat for a reading area (the view out said window may or may not include waves crashing onto a white sand beach), tons of shelves with labeled baskets for storage, a Bose CD player (hey, we listen to A LOT of music), Monet’s and Degas’s paintings hung on the walls, and two antique, Old School desks for my ever-attentive learners.
I suppose my pink school cart will just have to do for now.
So….I was going to ask the author (someone from this forum) how close she has gotten to her “if I had my way” description of a precious little schoolroom, but I got a little playful & decided to see if anyone could guess whose blog this came from.
And, of course, if that someone reads this thread, I would love to hear the answer to my question!
May 27, 2014 at 1:17 pm
jeaninpa
Participant
I’m going to guess Lindsey.

May 27, 2014 at 1:19 pm
Sue
Participant
Awww….you got it!
Now I’m hoping Lindsey will tell us how much of her dream schoolroom she has at present. I know she did a video on her blog about her room awhile back, but I’ve forgotten what it looked like! (Except that there was a huge map on the wall, I think.)
May 27, 2014 at 1:23 pm
Kayla
Participant
That was my guess!
May 27, 2014 at 4:52 pm
LindseyD
Participant
Y’all are hilarious! I’m laughing my head off!
I completely forgot about that….geez, how many years ago was that???
So how much of my “dream” schoolroom have I accomplished? From that description–NONE! HA!
My schoolroom walls are painted the perfect shade of grey. My children did have antique school desks for a while, but the tops were too small, and they needed more workspace. So now they have large children’s work tables from Ikea with bright green chairs. We do have the artwork of classic artists hanging on the walls–but it’s not Monet or Degas. Right now it’s Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Michelangelo. And none of them are framed. They’re stuck with sticky tack to the walls, and they are from SCM’s Picture Study Portfolios. The children have white rain gutters hanging above their desks for them to easily access their books, map pencils, and notebooks. We do have shelves and lots of storage, but it’s not quite what I had pictured in my mind back then. And that “Bose CD player”? It’s usually Pandora streaming through the iMac computer. Ha!
My how things have changed! And I’m still holding out for that bay window and white wainscoting…sigh.
In case you missed it, I did post a video of our schoolroom a while back. However, we moved the schoolroom from the attic and into the basement. All the furniture is the same; it’s just arranged differently now. It’s working better for us to use two levels of our home instead of all three. I had a theory that my thighs and rear would be toned in no time from constantly climbing two flights of stairs all day everyday, but I was wrong. So I gave up, and now pretend that the attic doesn’t even exist!
And consequently, we have sold this home and are searching for something else. So…our little space is going to change once again.
Blessings, sweet ladies!
May 27, 2014 at 5:04 pm
andream
Participant
Lindsey, I really like your map with the book titles and string. I’d like to try that.
May 27, 2014 at 7:39 pm
poodlemama
Participant
I had my ideal school room for a while several years ago. It was absolutly beautiful: wood floors; old fashion double school desk (it even had old ink wells), a beautiful old wooden teachers desk for me; oak bookcase–the kind with glass doors, map on the wall and a huge blackboard. Like I said it was beautiful– and completely impractical! The kids work was forever falling off the sloped desks. There was never enough room for large projects, it was always a mess and I loved that room so much I spent way too much time cleaning it. I moved the beautiful desk down to the basement (still need to put it on craiglist) and turned the room back into a dinning room. We now do most of out work in bedrooms, on the couch, on the coffee table, at the kitchen table, in the backyard…. I miss the IDEA of my perfect “One house school room” but the room serves us much better as a dinning room (maybe when the kids are grown I can turn it back into that beautiful antique schoolroom and enjoy the irony of it all!)
May 27, 2014 at 8:30 pm
missceegee
Participant
I LOVE my dedicated schoolroom! We turned our dining room into the schoolroom with built in cabinetry and desks. Most of our reading happens on the couch or other comfy spot, but the rest of our work happens at their desks. I keep all of our current year books in the schoolroom and enjoy having a designated spot did everything that isn’t the kitchen table.
May 27, 2014 at 8:39 pm
Tristan
Participant
I don’t have a schoolroom but would love a library room slash school room. We just don’t have room (10 people in a 3 bedroom house, 1200 sq. ft). So instead we’ve incorporated learning areas all over. The dining room has the majority of the school materials on shelving, but there is a long seminar table along one wall of the living room/piano room. There are book shelves in all bedrooms and living room. There is a school desk tucked in a quiet corner near the bathroom for focused work if needed by a child (to have few distractions). Oldest bought an artist table and it is in her shared bedroom. The kids return things to the dining room shelf when done, but are welcome to do school anywhere.
May 28, 2014 at 12:07 am
Sue
Participant
We have a library….not to make anyone jealous, but we’ve been calling it that since I was a kid….it’s a wonderful, quiet place, until you have to flush.
Sorry, I just couldn’t resist!
May 28, 2014 at 1:00 am
cherylramirez
Participant
LOL!! Good one, Sue!!
May 28, 2014 at 1:38 am
Karen
Participant
I don’t want to high-jack the thread! But, I have a question that came up as I was reading your great responses:
what kinds of work-surfaces work best in your family?
We used to have old-fashioned individual desks for my girls. Those desks are in the attic – they took up too much room. Two of them were a full-sized student desk with the attached chairs. The other two were the “college-sized” – where the table part is connected to the seat by an armrest. I hope you understand the type I mean.
There was never enough room for their binders or even their math books and a ruler, things were falling off all the time.
Now that we’ve no desks, we’re using the kitchen table. But now people are easily distracted, there’s a lot of listening in on other people’s lessons and chiming in.
So – – what works for you in your home?
(PM me if you’d rather not hi-jack the thread! I don’t want to do something that’s taboo!! )
May 28, 2014 at 1:18 pm
retrofam
Participant
I have a small table off to the side in my dining room. I call it my Internet cafe table because the laptop is on it
This table is where the kids go for a work surface. They also sit on the floor and use an end table in the adjoining living room. My younger kids want to be where I am. The older kids vary each day as they like. One sits on the back porch, another on the kitchen floor. My kids are not big table or desk users. I am not either. I keep my end tables empty and use them.
May 28, 2014 at 2:09 pm
Alicia Hart
Participant
I have set up desks many times but they do not get used. We end up doing school at the kitchen table so often.
My perfect “dream” solution would be to buy one of those kitchen tables that has a bench seat so I could sit right next to my kids.
One like this:
http://www.amazon.com/Solid-Pine-Nook-Set-Chelsea/dp/B001EBBD06/ref=pd_sbs-hg_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1SQK3M8J26JZNW38CXX6
Maybe a little bigger table. Maybe some day!

May 28, 2014 at 2:17 pm
retrofam
Participant
My kids reminded me that we used to use tv trays too. Tablemate was my favorite because I could adjust it short and slanted for beginning writers, very versatile. I still use it for my laptop occasionally.