It is not difficult to create a homeschooling space for your child or children to work in. All you need is a surface, lighting, and a small patch of wall or place to display posters or a chalkboard. The main objective is to use the space you have to the maximum benefit, not to think that because you don't have a lot of room that you can't create a good place for education.

I have been homeschooling my youngest child for three years now (Kindergarten, first and second grade), and each year we try to do something different with the workspace that he uses for school. Some things remain consistent, like always using the spare dining room table for his working area, but it has been moved to various locations. Currently, it is adjacent to my own work space(what he affectionately calls Mommy's teacher's desk) and it is in front of the sliding door that leads out to our deck, so he gets all that beautiful natural light streaming in.

To minimize wall space being taken up, I invested in a reusable calendar and numbers back when he was in kindergarten, and I have an easel that has a chalkboard and a display rack on either side, and I place the calendar on one, and simply turn the easel when I need to use the chalkboard.

Because we use a dining room table that seats six, all of his supplies are kept to one side, with his folders and notebooks stacked neatly in the order of his classes, his writing utensils and erasers in a small pencil box that fits neatly on top of the box that holds his art supplies, ruler and calculator, and his textbooks are kept on the other upper corner of the table, leaving the entire center of the table for him to do his work. We even have a small flag in a stand on the table, for saying the Pledge of Allegiance. For his reading books, we have a pair of small bookshelves in our hallway off the living room, and three of the shelves are allotted to his books.

Providing a warm and welcoming space your child is comfortable learning in and you find easy to teach in can be that easy. It just takes a little planning, forethought, and creativity to solve the problem of where to homeschool your child so both of you are comfortable and feel good about the learning environment.

Learn more about this author, C. Ann Cunningham.
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