Our Homeschool Room (Or Not!)

It's that time of year again! The time when everyone (who's anyone!) in the homeschooling arena is posting pictures of mouth-watering, drool-inducing homeschool rooms, set up so as to make Martha Stewart ravenous with helpless envy.

I'd post a picture of our homeschool room, except it would be a bit on the boring side. It's called "our kitchen table."

In all seriousness, I'd love to have a homeschooling room. (Except, of course, for the fact that it would fall under the dread category of one more room to clean.) It would be great to have a centralized location for all of our supplies and materials, and better yet, it could have lock on the door to keep the toddler out of the permanent marker bin. Mmm.

But in this house, it probably isn't going to happen. We have three bedrooms and need them all (or will if this baby is a girl!), and there just isn't space for a homeschooling room.

What do you do when you can't set aside an entire room for your home education program?

Introducing....

Home Education Meets the Extreme Minimalist. Behold - not the homeschool ROOM, but the homeschool SHELF!

Y'all are drooling with envy now, aren't you?

This (half) shelf holds...

• My planning notebook
• Poetry
• Read-alouds
• Character books
• Map books
• Handwriting
• Math manual and workbooks
• Extra paper
• Writing boards

Of course, this doesn't include our craft materials, daily materials (pencils, crayons, etc.), my records, our book collections, or my curriculum collection. However, this is pretty much it for the every-day kind o' stuff. 

In other words, if you have a beautiful, wonderful, drop-dead-gorgeous homeschool room, that's awesome. I bow to you. I may or may not be slightly envious. 

But if you don't, all hope is not lost. Homeschooling doesn't take that much room. (With one child, that is. After that it's pretty hopeless.)

Happy beginning-of-school to those of you who are starting school in the next month!

Love to all!