School room, the real life version

I don't know what to write today, so am going to take advantage of a homeschool blog hop and talk about our school room... or lack of one these days. For several years, we actually had a dedicated school room in our home. It was large and held a big table, wall to wall books, a computer, and even natural history items including small mammals. And then our family grew again, and suddenly having another bedroom became much more important than having a school room.

In full disclosure, the last few years of the school room's life were not optimal. Once our kitchen was redone, it was a much more pleasant room to be in and many people opted to be there instead. The school room became a disaster area waiting to happen with the dump-and-run phenomenon happening. You know what that is... instead of actually entering the room and putting something away, the child would enter only as far as necessary and dump whatever item was in hand on whatever surface could be reached first. It became one of those places I spent more time picking up than anything else. I wasn't overly sad to see it go away.

But in order to turn it into a bedroom, something needed to happen with all of those books and school supplies. That was the summer I spent going through them all and purging the collection down by at least half. I then created a 'resource room' on the third floor to hold it all. In theory, I am the only one allowed in there and am the sole curator of it. It works fairly well.

So where do we 'do' school these days? For many people, pretty much where ever they want. The older ones tend to work in their rooms where it is a bit quieter. The younger ones stick with me in the kitchen where I help them at the kitchen table. Sometimes we'll move outside if the weather is nice. It works, but there are some trade-offs. For instance, with many people working at the kitchen table, piles of school work and other projects tend to live there full time and get pushed around when people want to do something else there, say, eat.

This is actually pretty darn pristine in comparison to how it usually looks.

It means that you really want to keep your library books close at hand so they get piles in a convenient corner. And when you check out nearly 100 at a time, it is a substantial pile. 



It means that there are some books I need to keep nearby so they get piles on a nearby surface. The trouble is, once I start piling things, it's as though it is an open invitation for others to pile there stuff there as well.


It means that nearly every available surface has at least one or two books and some papers on it. OK, maybe this is just life when everyone in your family reads a lot and I can't really blame this on homeschooling.


It means that as I'm trying to plan things, I make my own piles near my desk so I can work on it at odd, free moments of the day.


Really, it all boils down to the fact that there just aren't enough bookcases to satisfy our book storing needs. What we need is a house designed on a library plan. Each room would have it's own stacks and there would be comfy reading areas near each of them.

Comments

Stefanie said…
I'd like a house with a library plan too! Your table makes me swoon!

Poppin in from the blog hop.
Unknown said…
I love that I'm not the only one with stacks everywhere!

Michelle said…
I love your table!! And the stacks everywhere!! My pictures showed everything nice and clean because had just cleaned the room for the upcoming school year. I also have stacks of books surrounding my desk. This year I bought a shelf to stack books on next to my desk and now I have stack on the shelf and the floor, oh my!!

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