Our Mobile Schoolroom

The theme this week at the Blog Hop is "The Schoolroom." In case you missed last week's "Curriculum" post, you can catch up here. We have a great schoolroom. One where Noah can hang his gigantic timeline.

And we can store our treasured artwork.

Our schoolroom, which is also the playroom AND the guest bedroom, is upstairs over our garage. It's great for many reasons. It has its own full bathroom, so potty breaks are easy, and we have access to water for painting or washing up after gluing things. And--BONUS--I found this awesome "World Map" shower curtain to hang in there. How apropos!!

It has walk-in access to the attic, so a lot of our supplies can be stored in there. My craft closet is up there, too, so I can be working on something while the children are occupied--but still being supervised. And I feel the freedom to hang all kinds of primary-colored paraphernalia up without worrying about clashing with the "decor," such that it is, in the rest of the house.

The classroom teacher in me adores this room. I really have a longing to stay in there all the time, teaching, playing games, watching creative little minds flourish, making stuff.

So, what's the problem?? Well, the reality IS that homeschool moms have to make meals, do laundry, and scrub toilets just like the rest of the world, only they have to do it while their kids are at home with them! I'd find myself needing to run downstairs to prepare lunch, mop the floor, or put a load of laundry in, and when I'd get back upstairs, all control would be lost. It was truly exhausting. And it got so bad, that after a while it was just easier to NOT do school. You know? I mean. Do the math!

Well that, of course, couldn't last long. So I started toting things up and down the stairs so we could do school at the kitchen table. I'm sure you can imagine how much fun that was. In desperation, I finally cleared out an entire bookshelf which contained books belonging to us A-dults. We got rid of a bunch and put the rest on a shelf in our closet. Then I moved as many school materials as possible downstairs to the now empty bookshelf. We bought a school desk for our little book room under the stairs, pictured below, for those moments when quiet concentration is in order.

And my friend Kelly gave us a couple of school desks with flip tops (great for storing school books...while at the same moment not tempting the toddler(s) to drag them all out). The flip-tops have officially joined our collection of kitchen furniture.

Yeah...it's not ideal, but it's what we have to do for the time being.

When we sell the house and finally build our "homestead" on our piece of dream land out in the country, the layout of our home will better reflect our family's needs. And I. can't. wait. (There is a mudroom in my future. Oh, yes there is!) In the meantime, I guess we're being flexible. Upstairs, downstairs, wherever there are children who need to learn something.