Ideally, it would be lovely to have a designated room for all our homeschool activities to happen in. But realistically it is not possible. Especially, when you live in land scarce Singapore.
In the beginning, when we lived in a small 2-room apartment, we used put a child-size table in our 1st child’s room as well as all the “school” parapharnelia in it. Then we had 2 children and it was a tight squeeze. When #3 came along, the table and the homeschool parapharnelia got moved out into the living room. When #4 came along, we really had to get creative.
After much re-arranging and even more de-cluttering, we managed to convert the dining area into a homeschool corner. It was cramped in the living room. Even then, we had to split our schooling into 2 areas. I would “teach” in the homeschool corner and then the older children will proceed to do their seatwork at the dining table.
The littles will continue to do “play” school in the homeschool corner. Read-alouds were done at the couch It was a real tight squeeze, esp when you are heavily pregnant and have to negotiate tight corners to get the book or file you need!
Now that we have been blessed with being able to purchase a 4-bedroom apartment, we have the luxury of one designated room for most of all our homeschool stuff. All the files and supplies go into this room. But it is still not enough to house our ever increasing large collection of books!
So we purchased 4 tall bookshelves from IKEA and placed these in the living room. More books are housed in the boys’ room as well! Yes, we are a family of readers
Some families school around the kitchen table, packing up before every meal and re-laying out there books and supplies after each meal. Others homeschool all over the living room. And yet others encourage individual work so each child retires to his own corner/table to do his work. Flexibility is the key.
Then there are the field trips, a fanciful term for outings Actually, any outing can be a homeschool field trip. When I or dh take the child/ren out to do grocery shopping or banking or post office, it becomes a field trip as the child is then exposed to whole gamut of experiences!
He learns how the supermarket is organised (all veggies in one section, poultry in another, etc), how we can get money from the ATM machine (no, money does not come out from the wall, dear ), how postage is calculated so that your parcel can be sent to the right destination, etc.
Then there are the deliberate learning field trips. Eg would be when we joined the homeschool group to bring the children to tour the bread factory or a visit to a farm to watch how the goats are milked.
Homeschooling can be done anywhere. Learning takes place even as your child watches you prepare to serve the family by cooking and cleaning for them. Our whole life is a learning adventure! While much can be learnt from books, learning should never be confined to the indoors and books only. There’s a whole lot of stuff out there to be observed and learnt.