Homeschool Home

I was looking for pictures online of other homeschoolers' schooling spaces. I couldn't find much! Lots of people post ideas for homeschool rooms, usually from Pottery Barn Kids catalogs and other such too-perfect-to-be-reality places, but I want to see actual homeschoolers who are making their homes work for them. This might be because most homeschoolers I know don't have a specific room for schooling, but make their spaces work for them in all kinds of ways. We use our living room/dining room area, although school branches out into many other rooms in our house too, ha!

Today, after switching a couple desks around, I decided to take some pics of our multipurpose living and dining room area.

This is my "teacher desk"...

The big metal 60's desk above was a found object (found on a friend's stoop, destined for the dumpster.) I painted it with leftover wall paint (see left wall in photo below). We were using it for a crafting/sewing space for the girls (mainly Natalie), but she really needed some drawers. And, when I plan school and have the laptop and books open, I really needed more surface space. So we traded today. The one front drawer is just fine for me and the smaller desk fits better in her sewing nook anyway:

Here's where some of the schooling action takes place, although we do a lot of reading and Internet exploring cuddled up on the couch.  The huge map is from IKEA. We put "story disks" on the places where our studies lead us. Five in a Row uses these story disks, but we make our own with the blank ones they provide when we divert to other unit studies.

Today we put a story disk on Mexico! We've had some fun studying Mexico; I plan on putting a little post together of the ideas I've used. 

We use the little chalkboard easel a LOT.

I have plans to turn this huge tray into a lazy susan, which will make it even cooler!

 The coffee table sees a lot of schooling action too.

And, without doubt, one of our favorite spots in our entire house--our record table. This has become a beloved hobby for our little family, both collecting and listening to records. I highly recommend you get a record player--it's education, fun, culture and so much more, all in one! :D

 There's a new little thrift store by us that has hundreds of records for 49 cents each!! It's so fun digging through them all, since all five of us look for different kinds of things.

Our home decor has evolved a ton over the last few years as we've delved deeper into homeschooling. It's important to me that these rooms be highly functional, but still pretty to look at at the same time. If I have to have a trash can, why not make it a cute, red, polka-dot one, am I right? ;)