REAL Homeschool Classroom Ideas

One of the things I love the best about homeschooling is that each homeschool parent can adjust the curriculum and methods she uses to fit her own family.

My second favorite thing is that our homeschool classrooms (or other homeschool spaces and places) are flexible too! We can homeschool in the kitchen, on the sofa, at a desk, or lying on a blanket outdoors. We can homeschool while jumping on the trampoline, riding in the car, or playing educational games. Learning occurs just about everywhere!

We know how much homeschool moms love to get ideas and inspiration from other moms, so we asked our readers to submit their own classroom photos to share. We had an amazing response! In fact, we got so many responses we can’t feature all of them! We’re sharing some of our favorites, though, in hopes they will inspire you to create a unique learning space in your home.

If you’re dreaming of the perfect homeschool classroom or if you just want to see some homeschool classrooms other moms are using, keep reading!

 

Kitchen and Dining Room Homeschool Inspiration

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Our homeschool “classroom” is actually our kitchen (and sometimes our living room, too). This setup works great for us because our daughter (age 9) can do schoolwork at the table while our son (age 2) can engage in pretend play with his “kitchen,” or play with playdough, or eat a snack…it’s nice to have everything all in one place. We made the tree branch mobile last year and we change it with the seasons. Right now we have apples hanging from our “tree” but soon we will have brilliant fall leaves — it brings nature indoors for the kids, and gives us lots of opportunities for seasonal crafts.  Posted by: Kelli

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Where the learning and eating take place! Two kiddos. Sixth grade and fourth grade 🙂  Posted by: Krystal

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We have our lesson times on one side of our dining room, though we also use the dining table and other rooms of the house for learning. We have a school table set up where we have our “Gathering Time” to have prayer and do our opening activities, such as calendar. The easel is stored in the corner and is brought out during our lesson times. The bookshelf stores the books we are using this year and our new “Cereal Box Workbox System.” This is a new arrangement for us to help me stay more organized this year.  Posted by: Karen

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Robert, Carly and Alex love to home school . The table does open out when they need it to.  Posted by: Rachel

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This is our school room for the 13-14 year. It’s adjacent to the kitchen/dining room. I can start dinner or do dishes and still be available to the kids. 🙂  Posted by: Danette


Dedicated rooms used as a homeschool classroom:

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Here is a photo of our cozy homeschool room. Lots of bright colors and posters for learning fun! We have a little reading nook in one corner and a very organized cube storage along another wall, filled with supplies-all labeled, of course so everyone knows where everything goes!  Posted by: Suzy

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This is our formal dining room that has been transformed into our classroom.  Posted by: Donna

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We use our formal dining room as our school room…we aren’t fancy people ;). All our supplies, table, and computer are in there. It is our main area and we love but we are also known to venture to the coach, kitchen table or outside for schooling! It’s much more fun being flexible.  Posted by:  Lisa

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We turned the basement office space into our schoolroom as soon as we moved into the house 🙂 Cheerful yellow walls, a desk space and cubbies for each child, and a computer station. I loved a desk system I saw on Pottery Barn Kids but could not afford. Hubby and I worked on these desks using inexpensive desks from Target and some pine for the tops. On the other side of the room is bookshelves and a comfy futon for cuddling up and reading. We live near DC where the summers are hot so we school year round and love having the cool basement to do school in. 🙂  Posted by:  Julie

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The first photo is a picture of our cubbies. These hold all of the kids school books, library books, and supplies. On top is my version of “junk drawers”. The other picture is of the school room. Posted by: Misty

 

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This is our formal living room that we turned into a homeschool room.  Posted by: Tara

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It’s been a whole year since we turned our one-time garage, turned playroom for our twins, into our beautiful new school/craft room! We love it down here!! My twins are now 10 (almost 11), and just about everything we do happens in this room. Everything in this room was repurposed and made to fit our needs. The only things we added new were the bookcases from Ikea and a few floating shelves above my desk.

We had the school table top custom cut along with the table top that serves as my desk. The base of the work table is two very old cubby units that our old school was throwing away several years ago, so I took them and gave them a fresh coat of paint. They served us well over the years holding toys and books and now we use them for the kids’ school books & supplies (we have even updated the boxes since then and there is one box per subject).

The large base cabinets that flank both sides of my desk hold all of our art supplies, along with another workspace that is located directly behind our large work table. The nine compartment cubby with the pink (for my daughter) and green (for my son) canvas bins hold different things. Two pink and two green hold any and everything my children make (outside of school projects) or just special things that we want to keep, like cards they receive from friends that they really love.

Someday I will do something more permanent with these items so they can have what they want when they are older. Our room has been well lived in for the last year and now reflects more of who we are with artwork on the walls and personalized areas for the kids. We love this room so much and hope you like it too!!  Posted by: Susan

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This is our homeschool room. There is a table area for each of my kiddos (2nd, K, preschool), a keyboard and guitar for music, a couple of cabinets for supplies, shelves for books, beanbags for reading time, and baskets for taekwondo uniforms and other activity-related gear. We have an eat-in kitchen so the never-used formal dining room was perfect for a homeschool room! I have an office with more storage, large whiteboard, love seat, printers, etc on the other side of the front door.  Posted by: Katrina

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These are pictures of our school room. There is a shelving system for puzzles for our almost 2 year old, books and board games for the older girls as well. Their student desks  and chairs (under the window) fit perfectly under the long desk that extends the length of the wall. There are drawers on the outside of the long desk on either side where my 1st and 2nd grader keep their workbooks. The drawers in the center of this desk area is where I keep my K-4 students things. I also keep extra Teacher-Mommy stuff in there.

There is a separate cabinet to the far right of the picture for extra storage —  paints, paint brushes, Teacher Keys, extra curriculum materials and other supplies.  I have a laminating machine and electronic pencil sharpener on the top. This is where I store construction paper, extra workbooks, miscellaneous paper, maps, and Folder games. There are 3 peg boards on each side of the window in front of my 1st & 2nd graders desks.  I have colored pencil, pens, scissors, dry erase markers, and other items we use everyday that can be easily seen and accessed. I keep the scissors and sharpie pens up high. I also use double sided desktop easels that I keep on top of the desk area. I write the days assignments for the girls and display charts.  I also have a dry erase calendar in this corner area. We read and snuggle together on a couch not pictured. Posted by: Cammy

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Posted by: Becky

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Photo 1: This is our classroom as you walk into the door.  Photo 2: We use our desks, table, and dry erase board daily in or out of school 🙂 The tall bookshelf on the left side of photo is where I keep a lot of my resource books/idea books/catalogs/books and curriculum I’ve used in the past.   Posted by: Tracy

Unique homeschool spaces:

We had a very large walk-in pantry that I thought would make a great school room. And in the summer we use it as a art room .  Posted by:  Stacie

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These pictures are of my homeschool room for my 5 children, ages 16, 15, 13, 9 and 8. When we built our home 6 years ago we were blessed to be able to design our ideal room for learning, complete with a dry erase board, desk and work stations for each child, a huge walk in book and storage closet, copy and printer etc. We have computer station hookups at each desk, along with an in class camera mounted so I can monitor the children from any room in the home when I’m not in there. This room has been a blessing to our schooling days, however, every room in our home ends up being used for schooling… Not just this one! Thank you for this fun opportunity to send in pictures! I love gaining more ideas from fellow followers of hip homeschool moms! Posted by: Allyson

Here is our updated comfy reading corner for all to enjoy.  Looking into the room on the left side, our room is actually the sun room so it is surrounded by windows, we enjoy looking out at all of the nature during the day. The 3rd picture is our Nature/science center (right now we are working on the Solar System).  Posted by: kimberly

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Here is a photo of our “school room” – it is actually half of a very small home office, but we love it!  Posted by: Bonnie

Homeschooling Around the World:

Homeschooling in South Africa:
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Our family lives in South Africa. We have a typical three bedroom house. But out in the backyard we have an “outbuilding.” It is a long building that has 4 rooms. One of those rooms is our school room. It is not big, but it is perfect for all our books, curriculum, craft supplies, and sports equipment. I used my daughter’s old beanie baby organizer to house supplies and resources. Of course, I got the idea from Pinterest!  Posted by:  Janna Kay

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9 Comments

  1. Thank you for hosting! I cannot believe how truly amazing and innovative these classrooms are ! wow!

    What an inspiration. I so love looking at these pics and gaining ideas! They’re all beautiful.

    Have a lovely weekend and God bless!

    ~Chris of Campfires and Cleats

  2. Planning on public schooling my 2nd grade daughter via an online school this fall. I have looked all over the internet and haven’t seen very many homeschool rooms with a computer set up. Do traditional homeschools tend to NOT use a computer or maybe not house one in the homeschool area? Wondering why I haven’t seen one…

    1. Hi Cecelia! You probably won’t see information here on our site about public-school-at-home options. We do use computers in our homeschools (many of us do), and we do post from time to time about those topics, but we don’t do or promote public-school-at-home options. I’m glad you mentioned this, though. I’ll try to make sure we include more information about using computers in our homeschools!

    1. Good question, April! The reason I don’t support at home public school is that public schools are run by the government, and I think it’s a very dangerous thing for us to allow the government to control how we educate our children at home. When we open the door just a little to the government’s interference into our homeschools, that is the beginning of the government eventually gaining complete control over what we teach our homeschoolers, what subjects we must teach, what subjects we aren’t allowed to teach, and so on. Once that happens, our homeschools (which are generally very successful) will be no better (educationally or morally, etc.) than public schools. That may sound extreme, but I truly do believe it’s a huge mistake to begin to blend homeschooling with government/public schools.

      1. Totally agree Wendy. I home school my 10 year old granddaughter. I absolutely don’t want the government to have even part of their foot in our door. I home school in Missouri. I have to say so far Missouri has been good to us. The only things we are required to do is our thousand hours with in the allotted time, and teach the core subjects such as math, science, social studies, reading, No testing, no one looking over our shoulders, no papers to turn in. I want to keep it this way. Public schools are so poor for the most part. I feel sorry for the kids who have no other choice. I’m 70 years old and I chose to home school a granddaughter who does not live with me. I love it. More grandparents should give it a try.

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