where do you do school?

We have a small house, about 1250 sq. ft, three bedrooms, one bath, unfinished/unusable basement, 2 kids. Our bedroom is downstairs, the other two are upstairs. We have the children sharing the smallest bedroom and then converted the largest one into a playroom/school room. We have one wall dedicated to school with shelving for our supplies, a school table for them, whiteboard on the wall etc…  However, any computer work is done downstairs on the laptops at the kitchen table.

So, this works for now. What the future will bring, I’m not sure. We’re hoping to eventually be able to fix up a small space in the basement, but time will tell.

Small house here, 1200 sq ft for the 11 of us.  We need open floors because Mason (7th child, age 4) uses a wheelchair.  Here is the setup in brief:

Living room and piano room – This is the entire front of the house, open to each other completely.  In the piano room half we have a conference table (8 ft long rectangle that is only 18 inches deep, against one wall) for computers, the printer on a file cabinet, and the spinet piano.  What we do in here: play, do school at the table (1-2 kids at a time, it is a quiet spot so a distracted child gets sent here to focus), practice piano, do large movement games.   In the living room half we have a sectional couch, chair, and small bookshelf (holds scriptures and books) lining the 2 walls.  across from that is the tv up on the wall with a cubicle below holding diaper and medical supplies, hymn books, two bins of toys, with the hermit crab cage on top. What we do in here: morning devotional, reading, play.

Dining room: Has a large round table (seats the 11 of us barely), a large and wide bookshelf full of books, a metal shelving unit with games, manipulatives, art materials, etc, a small bookshelf with more books, a second small bookshelf that holds books facing forward, and on the walls a chalk board and two dry erase boards.  What we do in here: art, seatwork where they want a table, meals, working math problems on the boards, playdoh, puzzles, games.

Freezer alcove with half bath: Has a chest freezer and a bit of floor space the little ones like to play in so they are beside the dining room but not at the table.  And the bathroom of course!

Kitchen: the usual things and lots of cooking and dishes are done in here.  😉

Upstairs has one bathroom.  Then 3 bedrooms.

Bedroom 1: smallest bedroom, has mom and dad’s bed and clothes, baby’s crib and clothes for youngest 3 boys, bookshelf.

Bedroom 2: middle size bedroom, has daughters age 14 and 10 in a bunk bed, toddler age 2 in a toddler bed, dressers, bookshelves, cubicle (toys/storage for their things), and 2 40 gallon reptile tanks on a stand custom made by great grandfather (holds Makayla’s bearded dragons).

Bedroom 3: master bedroom, has 2 bunk beds with boys age 11, 8, 7, 5, and one toddler bed with the 4yo.  One cubicle for toys.  Two dressers for clothes and their one personal treasures drawers.

That’s it.  Attic holds storage (it is a walk up attic from the master bedroom, not finished enough to use for anything beyond storage). Basement is damp and holds food storage shelves, tornado area, hubby’s tool bench.

School happens downstairs for anything together, and for math.  Beyond that kids work where they wish.  The 14 year old often works in her bedroom, some kids prefer doing their reading in beds, others like being down in the living room.

Kayla, do you have a blog?  Please share the address if you do.  I love to see and hear how simply you live.  It is inspiring.

We moved over five years ago and we still move things around as our needs change.  At first, we moved around throughout the day.  We started with family studies at the breakfast bar.  They did seat work at the dinning room table.  They read anywhere, but mostly in the living room.  I read a read aloud there too.  Now they have individual desks and more independent work.

Well I have older kids and we have had all kinds of arrangements, many just like the ones listed above. But, during this season, we are in one room with three desks. My kiddos are older and much of their work in done independently. When I do conference with them, I sit at their desks with each one and go over work with them.
We each have a desk- me and both kids. They do the majority of their work at their desks, which I bought from IKEA. They each have one long drawer, and book cases on the end. Generally, their literature and reading is done on the couch because it is more comfy. Sometimes my son will move the laptop to the kitchen table (we have an eat-in kitchen) and do his math. My daughter does her Bible quiet time in her room, and the majority of science and history projects are done in kitchen. My son does almost all of his work at his desk except for reading on the couch, and the occasional table time for math. I sit at my desk while they are working and work on my own school work, check email, read blogs, write on this forum and browse facebook. When I am not at my desk, I am at my sewing table which is being moved to my bedroom, (thanks to the new guinea pig), or doing Bible study at the kitchen table, or working on housework all over the place.
It’s very different when your kids are older. When they were younger and we sat at the kitchen table for just about everything except for reading because I wanted us together as a family. Now that they are older, the desks are great because we are all still together, but in a separate “school space”, which we all love. We can walk away from it, or go back to it at any time of the day.
it sounds like you have some great ideas listed here in the comments so hopefully you’ll be able to figure out something that works!

Sorry I didn’t share where we actually do school…

Our house has a kitchen connected to what was listed as a “family room” but it was actually just two different floorings and one big room. So we use the “family room” for our kitchen/dining table. The littles, when I can corral them, sit here while I am working with the older kids and do some type of learning activity. I rearranged things enough that we also have a couch along one wall in by the kitchen so I sit there and work with whoever I am working with. It also helps that it is close to the coffee! 😉

Through a doorway off the kitchen is the “dining room” which is completely open to the living room with a step down as the separation. We have a table set up there and the kids school books are in a cube/shelving type system from Walmart. (same type of thing you find at Ikea) They each have a cube and we started with magazine holders for each subject but they didn’t last long. So it is a bit messy but they can get everything into one cube. A side note, we have also used little totes that were long enough for the binders but about half the size high as a bin that would fit in the cubes. These worked well but only when I had an area to line them up. Getting back to the room…Along the window we have one of the cube units on its side (two high, four long) and it has a cd player the kids use and an old computer that they will type on and we have a Little Bear game that the young ones play, oh, and we will use it for Spanish more regularly in the future. So there is enough room to sit at the table and this is where most of the independent work gets done.

In the living room, a step down from the school table area, we have built in bookshelves, which and great and horrible all at the same time. These have lots of books and also toys. When our youngest was just little (10 now), I labeled plastic bins I had with lids for the little toys I was constantly cleaning up after stepping on. 🙂 Ex. cars, farm toys, kitchen, duplo, etc. We have too many toys…but as soon as I get ready to get rid of them someone ends up playing with it. I have found I am ok with the multiple bins when we take time to put them away, it’s the extra stuff that goes in our one toy box that gets given away if it doesn’t fit. Since there are not a lot of walls in the living room I have used one of our two couches to use as a partial wall to the school table area. I also have moved our piano in front of the window which is actually a window seat in between the bookshelves.

We did just move our three oldest boys downstairs and moved our “office” supplies into their old bedroom. (We live in a three bedroom house.) So now the printer, scanner, computer, overflow of school cabinets, and other things are in there. I LOVE having a room that can be closed and have all those paper clips, staples, etc that I had in five locations all in one place.

For our read aloud we do a lot during lunch and I sit one the couch in the kitchen. I have a basket next to it that holds our current books. Everyone has rest time after lunch where they look at books or read. This is mainly on the couches. I have considered for next year I might use some of the unused magazine holders and label them Monday, Tuesday, so that I can have the books we are reading or fine arts we are doing in the correct day. Then if we have history on Mon/Tues, then I will just move the book after reading it to the next day. The reason I am thinking about doing this is so that I don’t have to remember what I want to do each day, hopefully I can just grab the correct days bin. I’m not sure if this would work well but another idea of how to only store a few things and keep the others packed away if you have a smaller space.

If you need help when you get in I LOVE moving furniture and figuring out how things could fit. You could always post pics and get ideas. 🙂

Re. toys- this is what we do. We moved all the toys to an out-of-the-way spot….right now this is a large closet, but before we moved it was a 3rd story attic (basement would work too!!) We have 1 tall round basket for toys that we keep in the living room (fits perfect in a corner!) and once a month or so I go and swap out the toys. We have found that with less toys available, they play much more & more in depth! And usually after a week or 2 of having the same things, they start to play with them in all sorts of imaginary ways! The kids also each have a small basket of toys in their rooms with some of their personal toys in them for individual play-times (the living room basket is usually just stuff meant to be shared with everyone). These get swapped out at intervals too. We love this system!

We also have a buffet-type cabinet in the living room that holds dress-up clothes, puzzles and games. And all of our current school stuff is kept out of sight in a buffet in the dining room. School is done at our eat-in kitchen table, just off the dining room area. Our guest bedroom closet has a bookcase stuck inside to hold not-current school books. Non-school children’s literature is stored on a bookcase in a small hot water heater closet, as well as a little 3-drawer plastic container which holds each of the kids’ coloring books/crayons/junk! etc.

Hope that helps!