Setting up your home classroom

Schooling from home – ish. Yes, we will be home but the schooling part, well, I am not a teacher. I don’t plan to try to be a teacher with no experience but I will teach my children in all the ways I can, as their parent, while we are home quarantined.

So, here we go, a new thread to my blog – what are the things we can do to keep busy with kids while we are keeping protected from covid-19. First things first, setting up a classroom or work space in your home.

We have just returned from Florida and barely squeezed in our Spring break with many friends and family. Next week will be our first week of quarantining. We are lucky so far. The spread in our state in negligible so far but it is coming fast. So here we are. It is very hard to grasp for our little ones but I am sure they are going to learn fairly quickly. No, we cannot go anywhere.

While in Florida, I would wake up each night in the middle of the night and worry. This is so bad, so much worse than anyone could have possibly imagined. How are we going to stay home for 6 weeks, 3 months, or longer?

I began imagining our space at home and then reimagining it for what could function best for our time at home. Converting our spare bedroom to my new official home office, easy enough. I did that in an hour. Making a classroom for the kids? I had to give it some thought. We normally do everything from homework to art and crafts to Legos at the kitchen table but the constant clean up between meals can be quite difficult.

With that, I decided to convert our formal dining room which is barely used to our new classroom. We discussed it on our 12 hour drive home and as soon as we walked in the door, the boys began helping me set it up. I still have a lot of ideas and even more to think through. But this is how we will tackle 1st grade eLearning days, keeping up with reading and writing, math and doing fun activities.

Our own space will certainly get plenty of use, hopefully help pass the time productively, cause less mess and chaos in the house and also, most importantly, we will learn together as a family.

Here are a few photos of our classroom and activity center. This will evolve for sure, but here are the first steps anyway. This cost me $0 and I am utilizing everything we have on hand- old classroom text books, papers that have been sent home from school recently, young learning books, Highlights magazines, art supplies, notebooks, party supplies and even old shoe boxes. (Our first project will be making diaramas from our recent vacation.)