Living Room Homeschool Space
2020 was a crazy year for all of us. Sure even though we were a homeschooling family prior to that crazy year there were still many things that changed for us, primarily the amount of time we spent in our home. Though we homeschool we would often find ourselves on field trips to gain hands on learning experiences or meeting up with friends or even gathering with a local co-op group. But when the whole world changed so did our homeschool routine.
We have now been homeschooling for 5 years and in that time I have learned that, for our family, having a dedicated homeschool space is a necessity. We’re not ones who can work in the “school wherever around the house” environment. Since we have a 4 bedroom home and our two girls were sharing a bedroom that left a small bedroom open as an office/guest room that I had turned into our homeschool room. This was a great blessing and helped our schooling immensely. When you school at home it’s hard to keep kids out of the kitchen and sneaking snacks and drinks all the time which interrupts our school day schedule. Having a school room we had a set time we would all gather there to begin our day, set break times, and it provided more concentration being in a dedicated schooling space.
HOWEVER… when 2020 hit and the whole world changed, the amount of time we were together in our home proved to create a desired change in our daughters in them wanting their own bedrooms, their own space. They each have their own pets and we keep their toys in their room as well so for them to have their own bedrooms they could set up a play space with their toys and decorate and organize it how they want. I get it. Our older daughter is also at the age where she is growing and wanting some private space. So after only having our homeschool room for one year I was changing it back into a bedroom for our youngest daughter.
THE DILEMA…. Now that I had seen how glorious it was to have a dedicated homeschool space and how drastically it changed our school year I was not easily going to give it up. Our home has a main living level (3 bedrooms for the kids, the main bathroom, kitchen, dining and living room). We have a small living space but we also have an upper level addition which boasts a larger family room ( where the tv is) and our master bedroom. With the creative interior design juices flowing, I began brain-storming how and where I could create a dedicated homeschool space while not interfering with the other living spaces. Our dining room is small and schooling at the dining table is never preferred. So I set my sights on the smaller living room space.
We love to entertain and our home is where Christmas dinner for everyone is held. I knew I couldn’t take over the space completely for homeschool but I needed to incorporate our schooling into this space while still maintaining enough seating and space to host company, get togethers, dinner parties, and game nights.
THE BEFORE…
When we moved everything out of the homeschool room into the living room it was clear I would have to come up with a clever design.
Now we could no longer fit around our round table, everything was cluttered and it was not a calm and learning conducive environment.
So after much brain-storming and re-arranging furniture and trying to visualize it all I jotted down a design.
Thankfully we live in a heavily Amish/Mennonite area and have a wonderful Amish carpenter near us who came ( in his horse and buggy) to listen to my design ideas and get exact measurements. The idea is having two desk spaces for the girls and the table that could be used for my desk as well as fit more people. This table will also serve as the kids table during our Christmas dinner and other dinner gatherings. But I still need to maintain the space of the living room floor so the idea was to create a ‘murphy’ table. One that could be put up and away when we need the floor space and then easily put down for the school week.
To try to get an idea of the best measurements I marked it out on the wall with tape and even had my two little school students see what it would be like to sit at their new schooling space.
We tried to get it all in by the start of the next school year but just missed it. Thankfully by October the unit was in and ready for use!
This is our second homeschool year with this built in unit and it gets used everyday. We have done games, crafts, kids table for Christmas and many hours of schooling here. It’s lovely when you need a large table that can get spread over with office work, school work or crafts that doesn’t need to be cleaned up to eat dinner! The table goes up and down with ease and there is plenty of seating and floor space when we need.
