It is becoming a very common thing for people to decide to start homeschooling their kids. It could be for religious reasons, lack of opportunity locally, or for any other variety of reasons that people would rather keep their kids at home rather than go to school. It isn’t an easy thing to do, however.
There are a lot of tips on how to homeschool out there but one thing that seems to get overlooked is how to set up your house for homeschooling. The environment where the child learns is as important as the curriculum that you are providing.
Schools have this setup and for the most part, it works. You should think about how you sort out the house to make it a more productive learning environment. In this article, we will go over several of the ways you can make your house an ideal learning location when you homeschool.
Get away from distractions
One of the biggest barriers to learning at home is that there are a lot of distractions. There may be other people at home at the same time that are doing things like going in and out of the space. Or, there may be pets around. There are an infinite amount of distractions at home that are not in a school classroom.
This means that you need to set up the location where you plan to do lessons to have as few distractions as possible. Try to find an area of the house where you can be separate from the rest. This could even be a corner of a room where you can then add some classroom wall partitions. This creates a dedicated learning space that blocks out many distractions at home.
Even with a dedicated learning space, you should seek to reduce or eliminate any other distractions. Keep the noise to a minimum so if somebody else is home during school hours, they should avoid the area you’re in and refrain from watching TV, listening to music, or making other types of noise.
Clutter can even be a big distraction so the area where you plan to do lessons should be neat and clean. Have everything in its place and avoid it being untidy.
Homeschooling – Be organized
Setting up a designated area to have lessons means that it should have everything that you need for school right there at hand. You’ll need to be very organized and make sure that everything has its place. Shelves and storage cabinets are essential to be able to keep all the learning materials in one place.
This likely will involve a lot of different organizational systems. You’re likely to also have a bit of a space issue and a lack of it to be specific. This means that shelves will be needed so you can work on the vertical space and take less of a footprint on the floor.
Find a way to have everything ready to go when school starts so you can simply pull materials and objects out and set things up in minutes. It’s also important to be organized so that when lessons are over everything can get put away in minutes and back to looking like a normal house as soon as possible.
Homeschooling – Make it look nice
School classrooms are designed in such a way that it is pleasant to look at and there is a consistent theme of learning in the decorations. This makes it an ideal atmosphere for learning. It’s bright, positive, and effective. It isn’t an accident or random occurrence that many classrooms look very much identical and have many similar elements.
You should be doing the same thing in your lesson area when homeschooling. If you did end up getting those classroom dividers, then make sure to actually decorate them. Many of the kinds available have the ability to be used with thumbtacks. This means that you can and should be putting pictures up on the walls of them. You should also be putting up
the exams that they did well on so they can feel proud of their work.
Try to make sure the area where you will be doing lessons has lots of natural light. You may be tempted to stay away from windows where there could be distractions if there are things going on outside. However, it is a good trade-off since the natural light makes things look nice and creates a positive environment.
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