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Get Started With Homeschooling: The Best Learning Space

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Creating a learning space at home for your distance learners or homeschoolers can be done with items you already have. I’m sharing the best essentials for a learning space that is organized and functional.

The Best Learning Space, homeschool room ideas

This post is part of a series called Get Started With Homeschooling. I’ll be writing about everything you need to know when getting started with homeschooling. Having a vision for your homeschool, curriculum choices, tips and tricks, routines and organization, and thriving in your homeschool. 

Click the links below to read the posts in this series:

Get Started With Homeschooling: Know Your Why
Get Started With Homeschooling: How To Choose Curriculum
10 Top Tips When You Are New To Homeschooling
Get Started With Homeschooling: The Best Learning Space (You Are Here)

Creating A Learning Space At Home

Part of the fun about starting a new homeschool year is rearranging our learning space. I love to switch things up and move my kids desks and bookshelves. This creates an excitement for the beginning of our homeschool year. 

Over the years I have figured out what furniture and supplies are essential for our home learning space and which items can be left out. In this post I’m going to share with you what those essentials are and add in a few tips for keeping your at home learning space organized and functional. 

Have A Learning Hub

I’ve learned that it’s best to keep all our school books and supplies in a central location. It doesn’t help our homeschool day start off well when I am searching for a book or sending the kids to their bedrooms to collect their notebooks and pencil!

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We are blessed to have a dedicated homeschool room to house all our books and supplies. At the end of the school day the kids are to return everything to the school room. 

This keeps us organized and gives us a great start to our homeschool day.

Creating a space to store all your school items is a great idea. You could use a rolling cart or a pretty basket for items if you don’t have a dedicated school room.

Make sure that you teach your kids to return all items to your learning hub after school is done. 😉 

My friend Jaclyn at Coffee Pancakes and Dreams recently shared how she used a small space in her home to create a learning hub. 

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Jaclyn rearranged her home office to make an  inviting and colorful space for her kiddos virtual school year.

Head over to her blog post to get ideas for making a small learning space in your home! 

There may be affiliate links in this post! By clicking on them, or purchasing recommended items I may receive a small compensation, at no cost to you! However, I only recommend products that I absolutely love and use in my own home or would love to use! Thank you for supporting Miss Sue Living when you shop! See my disclosure policy for more info!

Work Surface

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Provide your kiddos with a good work surface. A desk is nice but it doesn’t have to be the main work area.

We do many lessons and activities at our (well loved) kitchen table. Sometimes we end up on the couch or floor for reading.

Once the weather cools off here in Arizona I like to take the kids to the park and do some lessons outdoors in the fresh air. Doing school work at the park is a great incentive to hurry up and finish so they can go play!

Another work surface could be a clipboard or a lapboard. It’s nice to have multiple work surfaces so your kids can get up and move around. 

Use a Straight Back Chair

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Rolling chairs was going to be the death of me- or my child lol. This school year I finally saved my sanity and got rid of the rolling chairs.

I highly recommend you skip buying any kind of chair with wheels for your kids school desk. They can become a big distraction.

Twirling and rolling will become a favorite activity while you are trying to read a lesson to your kiddos. Highly distracting for you and them!

Invest in a straight back chair. Add a cushion for comfort. Now I can’t guarantee they won’t tip back in the chair, but I’ll take that over rolling and twirling! 

Organization & Storage

Keep your homeschool space orderly and organized. Make the end of the day clean-up easy by making a designated place to put supplies in. Here are some ideas for keeping your learning space tidy:

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magazine holders

One of my favorite school organization items are magazine holders. I buy the cheap cardboard 6 pack at IKEA each school year. In our house these magazine holders will make it for 1 whole school year and remain in decent shape.

I use them for holding books, notebooks, worksheets, stickers and magazines. My kids use them at their desks also. 

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rolling cart 

If you have a small learning space consider using a 3-tier rolling cart. One shelf can be for books, one shelf for supplies and one shelf can hold laptops or tablets. 

And when you’re done with school it can easily be rolled into a closet and out of site!

I keep a 3-tier rolling cart in my bedroom closet full of art supplies. That way my toddler can’t get into it. We move it into the kitchen or the homeschool room when needed. 

bin/baskets

If you like to keep items out of site use a pretty basket or bin for school book storage. You could easily hide school supplies in your living room or kitchen with a nice basket. 

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bookshelf

If your kids are older then having an open bookshelf is a great way to store their school books. But beware with littles. They like to pull all the books off the shelves and possibly climb up the shelves too. 😉

desk organizer,

desk organizer

Keep work surfaces tidy by using a desk organizer. Each of my kids have one at their desk to hold notebooks and reading books.

It helps to eliminate the piles of paper on the desks.

At the end of each month I have my kids clean them out and throw away any papers or notebooks they don’t need or want anymore.

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supply caddy

I like to have a supply caddy fully stocked with pencils, glue sticks, scissors, markers, colored pencils and crayons. 

This makes it easy to bring supplies with us if we are doing school work in the kitchen or taking it outside.

It also cuts down on clutter to have one supply caddy and not have the same school supplies at each child’s desk. 

school papers, school memory book

Keri from Intentional Motherhood has 5 ways you can prep your home for school. I really like her idea of making a memory book for the school year. It’s a perfect way to keep and organize your very favorite worksheets and drawings from the kids school year.  

Must Have Supplies

After 9 years of homeschooling I’ve come up with a list of my must-have school supplies. This list is for distance learning and homeschool learning.

leakproof water bottles

water bottle, leak-proof water bottle

If you want a drink in your learning space make sure it’s a leak-proof water bottle!

electric pencil sharpener

electric pencil sharpener

I waited way too long to get this electric pencil sharpener. This is so much easier than trying to teach my first grader how to use a hand held pencil sharpener!

quality pencils

ticonderoga pencils, best pencils

Spend the extra $3 dollars for the best pencil ever!

Laminator

lamination, best laminating pouches

Homeschoolers of early elementary kids must use a laminator. Use it to make worksheets reusable and more durable. 

Great for extending the life of flash cards and manipulatives. 

notebooks/paper 

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Lots and lots of notebooks and printer paper! (I buy mine in bulk on Amazon) 

glue sticks

glue sticks

Skip the liquid glue and just get a box of glue sticks. Less mess!

world map or globe

globe

We use our globe or map daily. It’s an easy way for kids to become familiar with reading a map and locating countries. This globe was from Marshalls. We also have a world map poster (see pictures above).

calendar 

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For elementary grades I like to use a pocket chart calendar. As the kids get older then I just use our dry-erase calendar board. You could also just use a paper calendar and hang it up in your school room. 

clock with hands 

metal clock

Have a clock with hands in your learning space. When my kids ask me what time it is I point to the clock and have them read it. Great practice! 

page protectors/ sleeves

Some worksheets you may want to use on a daily basis. Any easy way to make them reusable and protect them is to slip them into a page protector or dry-erase sleeve! 

letter and number posters

For lower elementary grades it’s good to have an alphabet and numbers poster on display. 

Audible subscription / audio books

Audible has saved my voice! Our homeschool curriculum is literature based which means I’m reading lots of chapter books to my kiddos. 

It’s nice to have the option of pressing the play button. Before I used audible I would try to get audiobooks from our local library.

Daily Routines/Schedules

Kids thrive on routines and structure. They like to know what’s happening each day. Your school day will run more smoothly when you have a plan in place. 

Morning Routine

Start by creating a simple morning routine. Making the bed, brushing teeth, getting dressed and eating breakfast. 

School Routine

Next make your school routine. Pick a start time for your school day and have a loose schedule in place. Use it as a guide but not the law!

back to school routine

Evening Routine

Last implement an evening routine. This can help keep the stress levels down the following morning. By getting some essential preparation done the night before, you are helping yourself and your kiddos feel prepared for the school day ahead of them.

Remove Distractions

Try to keep your learning space free from distractions! We have a no toys policy for our homeschool room.

Phones and screens are put away and on silent while we are doing school. The only screen is our computer monitor.

I hope these ideas will help you in creating the best learning space for your kids school year. Setting up a learning hub and having it stocked with supplies and organized with bins is going to give you a great start for a successful school year! 

Use the Back To School Checklist to help you get ready and organized for distance learning or homeschooling!

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