Atmosphere Schmatmosphere...

Schoolroom or no schoolroom. That is the question...

Our school has played out in many rooms of the house over the years. I've never felt the need to set up like they do in schools with actual kids desks and a large desk for the teacher. The closest we came was some posters on the wall in the dining room when it was my art room, and part of the art shelf held our books. The rest of our supplies: school pencils, art supplies, etc.. were in an old wood jelly cabinet in the hall. We used the art table to do our work.

Now the dining room is back to being a dining/computer table room with a nice sideboard that is stuffed to the gills with last year's school books, papers, reports and all my bills stuff. Yes, I have not cleaned up stuff from last year. I'll get to it eventually. 

The room has been recently painted and artwork has been added to the walls. No more homeschooling posters, no more charts. I found that we didn't use them mostly EVER. So what was the point. Just to look like a schoolroom?

This year, seeing as I'm down to one kid and we're trying the new Charlotte Mason method, we have less  items to use. I'm not using textbooks right now, just books from the library, bible, hymnal and some printed sheets. We keep doing school on my big king size bed so today while cleaning up the week's schooling, I gave in and dedicated a drawer in my dresser to the homeschool cause. 

(See the second large drawer? I shared it for storage.)

(Current homeschool 'table', my bed.)

However, lately I've been seeing pictures of all the homeschoolers around who are getting their homeschool years started. Some have posted pics of their school rooms. It makes me think, is atmosphere important for a better learning experience? If things are organized by containers instead of shoved in drawers, will they grow up to be little organized beings? If a child is sitting at a desk surrounded by schooling papers and books does their knowledge grow exponentially? Am I stunting my children's growths by not providing this atmosphere? Just curious...

I've always tried to let the children find the space that was comfortable for them. Beds, couches, tables, floors. There have been a few seasons where I made them both sit at the kitchen table to actually get stuff done because much dilly-dallying was going on and we were behind. But for the most part, any room was game for some schooling. But seeing everyone's pretty rooms, I keep thinking maybe my little one would enjoy having many manipulatives on hand, and being able to find a pencil without having to dig through a drawer. We do have a designated spot for library books, let me tell you, this idea was a lifesaver. I don't know how many times I would get all set to go to the library and we couldn't find half our books because they were stuffed under beds, piles, laying on tables, under pillows, in the bathroom, stuffed among the cookbooks or hiding in drawers. Now, they can be found. This also means I pay less of the librarians' salaries since we're late less. Don't get me wrong, we're still supporting them with regular 'paychecks'.

Here are some examples of wonderful homeschooling rooms:

Pioneer Woman (last year) and this year

New Stamp Room/Homeschool Room

Child Led's Homeschool Room

Molding Minds Room
Heart of Wisdom Dining/Schoolroom (they have my cat!!)

Learn As We Go's Classroom

Our Tidbits of Learning Room
Satori Smiles Homeschool Room Photos
Joyful Chaos Room
My3Boybarians Homeschool Room (I want the built in shelves!!)

A Wise Woman Builds Her Home Classroom

Counting My Pennies Room & Organizing Tips
The Painted House's Before & After (stunning!)
Warm Cup of Coffee's Rooms

KatieScrapbookLady's Pics of her room are great!

Seedpod's room is scrumptious!

Okay, this might come out wrong but should I set up a classroom if I only have one child to teach (the teen is off to college during the day)? I see the benefit of having a room for multiple children since they have different programs, curriculum, supplies, etc... but for one child it seems frivolous. But then am I penalizing her just because she's a classroom of one? Hmmmm, so many things to think on.

I asked this question of my homeschool comrades at the HomeschoolSpot forums and here are some of their responses:

Jenny: Well, we will soon be moving into a new house, & today my husband suggested using one of the basement rooms as our classroom, and it really got me thinking. I was thinking about how dingy & dark the room was, how cramped it felt, how creepy it was... & I decided that I would much rather have school stuff cluttering my dining room then making my kids go down in to the dungeon. lol. I do not think my ds would have done well down there at all. We will have a classroom space set up upstairs, where it's bright & sunny & you just feel like you're living. We also do a lot of reading on the couch, etc. I think comfort, good lighting & a positive feeling in the room are key to having great things happen during at home homeschooling.

Birbitt: Sure atmosphere matters, the more comfortable the child is the easier it is to learn! We often do our reading snuggled on the sofa, or my bed. They write at the dining room table or on clipboards on my bed, or their bed, or the sofa. Many days we have school in our jammies just because we can. They learn better when they are comfy, and what's more comfy than your own home?

What do you think?

I found these interesting articles:

Creating a Homeschool Area

A Homeschool Room
This is NOT a Schoolroom
Homeschool Room Makeover
How to Design a Homeschool Room
A Video on Organization for Parents & Homeschoolers 

Do YOU have pictures of your Homeschool Rooms to share? Feel free to add a link to your blog post and pictures here!

Week 1: Charlotte Mason & the Newbie

Can you say sleep deprivation?! That's what the first week back to homeschool always means to me. We're night owls and its hard to switch your body from staying up til 2 am or whatever all summer and now getting up at 830 for homeschool. I am still going to bed way too late and wanting to take naps after our day is done! Hopefully I work that out soon.

Charlotte Mason method is a new concept to us. This was our first week trying it out. I was thinking it would be more like unschooling but I did a fair amount of prepping for our first week. Although now, I have us all set up for several weeks in advance. Okay, I say that, but don't have any illusions it won't all fall apart next week.

Enthusiasm Level:

Very high right now. We worked well for 4 days and now she has today (Friday) 'off'.' We did make plans: library visit in the morning and all afternoon board game playing but to her, that's 'off'. ' I know I will still be counting this day according to what subjects the games covered.

Week's Questions:

"How do you draw an ankh?"

"How would a mist come up from the ground? Is that like fog?"

"I was practicing J and F in typing and it says I have trouble. (me) What did you miss? (child) J and F."

"What is a wretch?"

"Can I learn Dari language? What about Greek?"

"Can I look up the Egyptian god of death?"

"What does ren-dez-vooz mean?"

What's Working:

Shorter lessons. Genius! My daughter may not like to do cursive (copywork) practice but she knows its only for a 1/4 hour so she is able to handle it. She's really enjoying the learning of new hymns, the foreign language and latin and the history book we're reading: The Door In The Wall. I also ordered some books on monks, nuns and a disc on gregorian chants we are going to listen to.

What's Not:

I find our hardest obstacle to overcome is the get up and go hour. We set a goal of up by 830, school by 900 and be done with everything by 245. That way the little one would have several hours in the afternoon for more reading, playing, inventing, baking, outdoor playing, library visits, etc... We are so not morning people! But we've stuck to the plan almost every day. Except for one day I woke up with a migraine and the little one did 2 hours of reading in the morning before I finally started her on the other schooling. She also did some of the things we have scheduled to do on her own, such as foreign language, typing, grammar and piano. All are on the computer and the piano. I like that there are subjects she knows exactly what to do and doesn't need me. Not that I don't like helping her and working along side her. But she is learning independence.

I'm thinking math time might need to be extended from one 1/2 hour slot in the morning to two 1/2 hour slots, one at the end of our day. I printed out worksheets covering the topics we learned last year. Kind of a review to get us ready for the next learning but at this rate of one sheet per day, we won't start 6th grade math until December! Gotta speed us up a bit.

Being a definite CM newbie, I'm only cautiously optimistic about how this week turned out. I'm praying that next week will hold even more exciting times and discoveries for us. I'll report again after week 2.

Some helpful Charlotte Mason links I've found:

Simple Charlotte Mason

Simply Charlotte Mason forums

Booklists by Grade

Charlotte Mason Education

Into to Charlotte Mason Methods

Charlotte Mason's Methods (add'l site)

The ABC's of Charlotte Mason

Ambleside Online (free curriculum that closely follows CM methods)

Charlotte Mason & Dictation (also list of links)

Charlotte Mason & Classical Education

Narration Ideas

Thrifting With Attitude

Yesterday was a whirlwind day spent with family, lunch and dinner out, running errands, thrifty shopping, grocery shopping, party planning. I'm dead on my feet and we have 40 guests coming in a few hours for a fun birthday party for the 11 yr old. I'll have all afternoon tomorrow to recover I guess and then Monday we start school! Yay! I think I'm excited again! Sorta. I was getting all jazzed about homeschool because now I've got a PLAN and we're trying new things (latin and french being 2 of them) and I think it might all work out.

And then... duh duh duh dun... (insert scary music), the child has had about 4 days of terrible moods. I'm getting scared she is moving into the horrifying stage of hormones! Someone save me! I don't think I can go through puberty with another girl. I'm so not worthy! We've already had to have a talk about attitude. Like when we were in the middle of the thrift store trying on clothes and she really didn't want to do this, especially in the mood she's in, so anything with any pink on it (her favorite color) she announces loudly that she HATES pink and doesn't WANT to try it on. I finally said, 'You're gonna', because me, being the mom, knows she is just in a mood and will love the pink clothes later. So she stomps off into the dressing room where I (and all the patrons around me hear) 'Well, I'm not gonna wear it even if you buy it!' Such sass! What a mood! What a chuckle this got from several moms, who nodded their heads and one said "I know what you're going through" laughing while she said it. URGH!

The thrift store shopping was still successful as evidenced by the pile in the picture above. The clothes episode went okay. We came home with 4 brown shirts, 1 black shirt, 1 khaki skirt, 1 pair jeans and shocker... 1 hot pink shirt. No meltdown when I put it on the counter either. Needless to say, it was a long day.

The books were a great find. Here is what we found:

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (on my reading list)

A Series of Unfortunate Events, Vol. 1 (to replace a ruined copy)

Star Wars Galaxy of Fear, Nightmare Machine (dd loves reading Star Wars)

Star Wars Jedi Apprentice #1 (dd's book)

Angela Carter's Book of Fairytales (to be used for copywork/dictation)
The Fables of Aesop (to be used for copywork/dictation)
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle (on my reading list)

Star Wars Episode 1, The Phantom Menace (dd's book)

Igraine the Brave (Cornelia Funke is a fav author of the teen, this is one of her younger books)

ROAR! A Christian Family Guide to the Chronicles of Narnia (Someone just mentioned this on a forums board I frequent and that its a great supplement to reading the Chronicles of Narnia series. You can get this book at ChristianBook.com right now in clearance for $0.99!)

Learn At Home, Grade 6 (I just bought this as a supplement of occasional workpages for reviewing)

Wish us luck on the party. We invited 6 families over to our house, plus 5 teenagers to keep the teen busy. About 40 people in all, with plans to just plop chairs down in the backyard, play games in the grass and have a good ole' fashioned fun time. DH informs me tonight that the mosquitoes in the woodsy backyard are running rampant and its not wise to be outside. Great. Where am I going to put 40 people in my house?! Help!

P.S. Can you guess the theme of dd's party? I've given you a hint (in a roundabout way. hehe)