by Lydia Fuller

Created on: October 27, 2009

So you have decided to homeschool your children and now you need to designate a space to do it in. Any available space will do, but if you are blessed to have an empty room available, here are a few tips for getting it classroom ready.

Tip 1: Go to your local thrift store and see if you can find some old school desks. These will be exactly what you and your student will need from Kindergarten through 12th grade, and are relatively inexpensive. They don't have to match. Arrange them in such a way that everyone can move around easily.

Tip 2: Wal-Mart has some very cheap white boards. White boards will help you in a million different ways every day. I recommend putting white boards across one entire wall. You will need them all if you have more than one student. White boards are better than chalk boards because you do not want all of that chalk dust floating around your kids all day.

Tip 3: A couple of inexpensive bookshelves are a great place to put all of that arts and crafts stuff that you have. Toss everything in shoe boxes or storage containers, label them, stick them on the shelf and they will be at your fingertips when you need them. This is a great place to put the family collection of children books as well.

Tip 4: Some educational posters and some of your child's art. You have to decorate the walls. Go to your local teaching store and pick up a few posters. There are many different kinds to choose from. Also, throughout the year you can rotate your child's artwork, not only making the space more beautiful, but raising your child self-esteem.

Tip 5: Bulletin boards and thumb tacks. You will need these for many different things such as calendars, spelling lists, awards and assignment lists. You will always wish you had more so pick up as many of these as you have room for.

Tip 6: An electric pencil sharpener. This one may sound silly but you will always have someone who needs to sharpen their pencil and this saves loads of time.

You will forever be thinking of other things you want for your classroom, but these are the basic things that you will need. Now all that is required is love, patience and the kids and you are ready to go!

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