As with most things in life, some people excel in areas that I am just not gifted in.
Over the past few months, I’ve seen a growing amount of homeschool/school setups that are INCREDIBLE. AMAZING. It is clear that a parent in that home really knows what they are doing and has a gift for bringing a space together for one purpose. I’m super happy and thrilled that so many out there are able to put their gifts and joy into home decor and making those spaces.
But…that is not my gifting. I think the Lord has given me a special gift of the ability to keep things simple. So today I just thought I would share our super simple homeschool corner in our dining room. This is for you if you need the reminder that kids can learn just as well when things are sweet and simple!
We live in a relatively small home (1100 sq ft). It is large enough for our family, but not large enough for a designated schooling space. Our homeschool days happen at the dining room table. But we do also use the dining room table for breakfast, lunch and dinner. This means I need the space to be clearable, functional and it doesn’t hurt if it also looks nice, too.
Our school schedule even pre-pandemic was a hybrid school model, which means that we are in school two days a week and home for the remaining days. On home days, we focus on school and catching up on household chores. Since Theo also works a wonky schedule, we use Saturday as a school day and since we all have the day off on Monday, we treat that as our family day.
Lets take a look! On the right, I have our scratch off world map. The two envelopes hanging above the map are for Tera and Kiah’s allowance and any money they make from doing extra chores. In the middle, I have our whiteboard calendar, which is where I keep track of places that we need to be throughout the month (dr appointments, Theo’s work schedule, court days, parties or planned events that we attend). Under the whiteboard calendar I have the kids calendar that we interact with on an almost daily basis. This is where we get in some counting practice, learn the date, and of course Ezra loves pulling all of the numbers down off the calendar (cause and effect, right? He’s learning, too!). On either side of the interactive calendar I have schedules that come home from school. The September one is Tera’s reading calendar, which she marks off every day after she has done 20 mins of reading. The other calendar is Kiah’s preschool topic schedule. Every time I glance at it, I wish I was in preschool!
Up against the wall, I have our daily schedule on home days. Now, I purposely chose to not pencil in a time constraint on any of these things. Instead, we follow a daily flow- we rise and shine, then do breakfast and family devotions, then go for a walk, then work on our schoolwork. Some days the first three things take two hours, and some days they only take 30 minutes. I chose not to write times on my daily schedule because I would feel frantic and like a failure if our family wasn’t flowing with the time schedule. Instead, we just flow through the rhythm of the day. First, this. Then, that.
Under the daily schedule is my homeschool cart. On this cart is almost everything I need to get through a homeschool morning. On it, I keep all of our family devotions supplies, planners, workbooks and writing utensils (pencils, crayons, markers). The messy box next to the cart is our play dough. I started out keeping the play dough in a designated closet, but my kids play with it almost every day, so I opted to leave it out where they can easily access it. It doesn’t look the greatest, but I’m happy to have functional over perfect aesthetics!
For those of you wondering how I keep Ezra away from the cart– I don’t! The first day he was very interested and would unpack everything and throw it across the floor. He still occasionally gets into it, especially while we are all gathered at the table to do school. But for the most part, he just ignores it. It’s kinda like all his toys– I let him play with it once or twice and he got bored of it awfully fast. I guess if it’s not forbidden, it’s not too enticing. HAHA!
On the top shelf of my rolling cart, I have all of our family devotional books and our read aloud book.
I love to hear what other families do for family devotions, so I will share real quickly what we are doing:
- Memorize a portion of Scripture together — we are currently working our way through 1st John. The kids have the entire first chapter memorized!
- Pray for a country listed in Operation World and scratch it off on the world scratch off map. If you don’t have your hands on this book, it is an incredible book! It lists every country of the world, some statistical facts about each one, and then gives several prayer requests for each country. Its a fascinating book, and one that is engaging for all levels of learning.
- Read a portion of a small devotional— right now we are working our way through The Ology.
- Sing our Hymn of the Week — each week, I pick a hymn and we sing it every morning. The repetition is wonderful because even if the kids didn’t know the hymn on Monday, they usually can at least hum along by Saturday! Also, no one in our family is musically talented. But singing our hymn is one of my favorite parts of the day.
And that is it! I really, really love that I was able to keep it simple while meeting all of our goals. The kids are able to learn in this corner, but we are also able to eat at the table!
Below, I will list links to anything that I purchased for the corner. Let me know if I missed something!
Scratch off world map-
Interactive Child Calendar
Whiteboard Calendar
Rolling Cart
Operation World
The Ology