Tips for Setting Up a Homeschooling Area
You don’t need a big budget to set up a functional space for learning. With these tips for setting up a homeschooling area, you’ll learn a few simple steps that you can take to building an efficient space for education in your home on a budget.
Stay Organized
If you’ve been to a traditional school, you know they can quickly become very messy. That’s because education has a knack for creating clutter. Every new project or lesson requires additional materials to deal with. You’ll have more markers, stickers, and old assignments than you’ll be able to handle.
For records, getting a filing cabinet or having a closet reorganized for holding documents and supplies should work. For all the class supplies, get small, color-coded buckets. If possible, color-code and label everything you can. Even if you aren’t a typical organized person, you’ll want to be. Otherwise, there’ll be too much clutter to deal with before long.
Emphasis Comfort
A school day is about eight hours long, for five days a week. Even if you don’t follow a traditional school schedule, your children will spend countless hours studying. The comfier they are, the more time they will want to spend learning. That’s why comfort is so important for student success.
You can make the space more fun by adding unique spots for studying, such as building a book nook where your child can cuddle up with a book. Something as simple as a small rug with a couple of comfy chairs can give them an alternative space to work separate from their desk or the kitchen table.
Utilize Nature
One of the many advantages of homeschooling is you don’t have to stay in a classroom all day. Regardless of if you’re in an apartment or farm, nature is nearby. It’s never a bad idea to take the kids to the park (or just the backyard) for lessons. Especially helpful for science classes, learning in nature gives the students a chance for hands-on interaction. They can learn their biology lessons not just through textbooks, but by making the world around them their lab.
Have a Consistent Space
Your homeschool doesn’t need multiple rooms with Pinterest-ready decorations. If it does, that’s awesome! But the reality is that for many families, homeschool gets done at the kitchen table. Kitchen tables are perfectly suitable learning spaces, but it’s important that wherever the children learn, they understand it is for work. It helps if students work in the same chair every day.
Sitting in the same chair every day might not sound like a big deal, but having a spot where your child can consistently work reinforces that it is learning time when they are in the designated area for homeschool. With so much of the house dedicated to leisure and living, kids need a spot where they can just be students.
Using these tips for setting up a homeschooling area will put you one step closer to making your house a place for learning and education.
