Tips for Quick Homeschool Room Setup for Your 1st Year

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The good news is that even though there is no specific “perfect” homeschool room setup, I do have some time tested tips for every family. First piece of advice is definitely to plan to step into schooling for a while before you make any major renovations or big purchases. This is a great way to see how you utilize the space you have and then get creative about how you make it your own customized homeschooling space. You don’t need an entire room to create a great work area. The most important thing is providing and organized place for homeschool supplies and comfortable seating for both desk work and reading times.

What is you space like? Big open family room, unused kitchen table? Do you have a spare room or does the oldest child have room for a desk in their bedroom? Taking a closer look at your child’s needs is the key to the right homeschool room setup.

I know many homeschooling parents who set up a reproduction of school in their home only to find the dedicated homeschool room sat unused for years before it became a guest bedroom or a home office. My husband came from a traditional classroom setting. When we talked about our homeschool set up, he was convinced that I would be teaching young children in desks. We did have a few desks, but most of the work got done at our kitchen table.

How will Your Family Want to Learn

How your kids learn will factor into your homeschool room setup.

The best advice I can give you is; take time to get to know your family’s learning style. This will help you understand the learning spaces you want to set up.

Do you all gather together to read aloud in the school day? Maybe a large room like your family room will be a picture-perfect homeschool space or could you really use a separate room for older children to work independently? Giving teens a dedicated space of their own helps them take ownership of their homeschooling journey.

You can take a peek at my school room wish list and others I created to help you get ideas for your personalized homeschool setup.

Do the kids need to move or other special accommodations?

Are you aware of special needs like large whiteboards for vision issues, wiggle chairs for energetic littles or special learning tools and accommodations. Your child’s needs will shape your decision-making process of your homeschool work space as much as the general layout of your home.

I knew I wanted plenty of sunshine in our homeschooling room to help with MY mood! I like to see outside and it reminds me to get the kids out there more often in the school day. Consider natural light in your learning environment, but good lighting in your reading spaces is a great thing to plan for right away!

Movement is a big part of the school day. Make sure you have open space to spread work out or get into a project. You might even consider adding an outdoor area to your diy homeschool room setup ideas. Our kids love reading on the trampoline or in their Huggle Pods hanging in from the tree in our yard.

Homeschool room Set Up can Help Big Kids Work Independently

Homeschooling as a family is a great opportunity to develop independent work skills. Consider adding your child’s current interests to your school day. Are they a LEGO fanatic? Do they build models, whittle wood of craft? Great, make it school and encourage their creativity.

We have used large sheet pans and shoved them under the couch to keep a project intact while we are working in it. A storage box is a good idea that can help keep little ones out of building projects and help give your older kids some independence to work on projects in your sight.

If you haven’t homeschooled before it is going to take some time to do work up to independent learning. Creating a working space in your student’s bedroom is a great way to encourage independence by high school.

You might take a few hints from the goals you would like to set for your family in the next school year. These will help you define your set up.

Goals Define Your Learning Spaces

Do you need to get caught up on workbook skills and hard-copy learning? Are things like getting back to good handwriting skills and organized math papers a part of your plan? Look for a flat surface that is getting little use right now in your home and convert it to a learning space. Many families have a formal dining room that serves a better use as a school space during the day time hours.

Can give up the dining room? Then you might be looking at a dedicated table workspace. This is the best way to work on handwriting skills and give your students plenty of room to lay out books, notebook and materials they need for the day.

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If you are purchasing a table, I like having an office table instead of a standard dining room table, because office furnishings offer adjustable leg heights. I find that the dining table is a bit high for our younger students to sit comfortably at.

Get Furniture That Grows with Your Family

We have countered this in the past by using an adjustable height office chair to bring the student up to where they can have their elbows level with the writing surface. This is the proper height to learn to write without stressing the wrong muscle groups.

Another great idea for your homeschool room setup with younger children, is to purchase a smaller play table. We have found them to be a great investment and the perfect size if you have little ones. We have been using the same one for years, and now the grand babies are using it to play at! It depends on your space available, and how long your child will need the smaller space. It did double as a play table and we sprung for the table that had a paper roll holder at the end for coloring and easy craft clean up times.

Our computer station is set up on two cheap IKEA pine table tops with very basic legs. I got them from a moving sale and the price was right, but I don’t love how much they wobble. Young students love to lean on the table and tend to wiggle a lot. This makes it hard for the students on the other end to concentrate. This large table set up offers plenty of storage space for art supplies, lesson plans and all of the important things we need at hand during the school day.

Be OK with Changing Year-to-year

We have reconfigured the two tables several times and have since moved upstairs. If I were to do it over again I would add an L bracket to help stabilize the table if it is set up against a wall.

Divide and Conquer

When working with multiple students, I also try to place each child at the end of the table and create a supply station in the middle as a buffer zone. you can see that we used magazine holders above. You can get a set of five colored ones so each child can grab theirs quickly, (you can see who has forgotten theirs as quickly) for under twenty dollars. We have also used bathroom caddies to hold supplies that move with the kids as they work. Get the ones with NO holes, so that the crayons and pencils don’t fall out the holes.

Whatever you choose, add a buffer between students when possible. It helps minimize, well… everything they do when they can touch each other!

Homeschool Room Setup with Comfy Reading Spaces

We are couch and cushion homeschool family. By using a literature based curriculum, the majority of our dedicated class time is spent reading to the kids. We pile on the living room couches for our reading time.

Think Comfort in your homeschool room set up

Our homeschool set up includes floor cushions. These are a huge plus if you don’t have a lot of couch space. I like them for myself, so I can move and change position. In our basement (where I thought we would do the majority of our school reading) we have a huge sectional couch. This allows everyone to have their own space to spread out and take notes of work while I read.

In our basement school room we have a huge library. We installed 72 feet of open bookshelves as part of our remodel. You don’t have to commit to that much homeschool real-estate. Book are a passion of mine, as well as a way of coping with a book deprived childhood. Being rural homeschoolers means stocking our library a little better so we have access to great books when we want them.

Smaller Scale Storage of Books

In years past, we have put the years reading books in a crate and moved that to wherever we were doing school at the time. I used this crate method while we were homeschooling away from home over an extended renovation.

This last year, I inherited an armoire from my sister. I wanted a taller furniture piece for my living room so we dropped it in a corner to see if it would work for us. That piece of furniture has earned its keep and then some. Converting a kitchen cabinet or TV cabinet is a great way to house your homeschool items in a small area.

It Doesn’t Have to Be a Book Case

We use an armoire in our homeschool set up to house our current school work for the year. it is the perfect space to house school i a small room. I have two “grades” so we divided them on the right and left side. Current reading books are lined up where they are easy to visually identify, quickly grab and easily put away each day. Checking to see that everything is organized each day is an easy way of keeping kids responsible and sharing the workload of clean up.

The bottom shelf holds personal work totes, a caddy for supplies and some manipulatives we have been using.

There are two lower drawers that are perfect for our Sonlight curriculum. The first drawer holds the reading books for the rest of the school year. We store the books spine up so every book’s title can be read as you open the drawer. The bottom drawer holds our IG binders.

Keep Working with 3-6 Week Bites

We usually pull out a few week of the schedule at a time and keep them in a smaller binder for the sake of transportability. Having the binder within easy reach makes it available when I need to refer to a past lesson, need to pull out a map or reference materials from our binder.

Quick Clean Up

We have used open shelves to store our school in the past. All of the kids still have their own personal totes to hold their workbooks, supplies, and current work. One thing I love about the armoire is that the doors close! This allows us to feel like we are really done for the day because everything from the school day is tucked away, neatly where it belongs.

Want More TIPS Can You Use for Your Homeschool?

Tell Me More…

What is one LARGE item that you can not do without in your homeschool set up space? Let me know in the comments.

You can watch a quick BONUS video of storage ideas for school room set up on my YouTube channel.