Posted in School

The kitchen is my main "classroom."  We cover history, science, and language arts around the kitchen table.  It is very convenient to be able to grab a glass of water or a snack without leaving the room, and we don't need to get another table or desks for them to do their work on in another room.  (Where would we put a schoolroom anyway?  Even our twin babies don't have their own room to share yet, one sleeps in our bedroom, the other in our son's.)  We keep a shoebox of school supplies (scissors, tape, hole punch, stapler, pencils) on our kitchen counter, and the kids grab their own crayons from the bookshelf in the living room when we need them.  Our school books are kept in a box by the computer, and I simply pull out the day's books and notebooks in the morning, then put them away before lunch.

After the other subjects have been covered, one of the kids joins me on the floor of our living room for math.  We use lots of manipulatives, so the extra space is nice to have.  I think the kids also like being able to get away from the table for some of their work. 

Having school in the kitchen forces me to put things away in a timely manner--otherwise I'd be tempted to leave it all lay out in disarray.  The kitchen table works well for us, and we are free to move to the sofa for a read-aloud whenever we want to. 

We do have a secondary teaching area in our house.  My sister-in-law teaches my 2-year-old Chinese and art in the morning, and my 2 older children in the afternoon - for that she uses our basement playroom.  There is a small table there that the kids use to do artwork.  She also teaches them Chinese, though I think they sit on the floor for most of that.

I'm so happy we don't have a "classroom" but can really be free to do school anywhere.