Last week I answered the question “How do you home school?” and shared with you our typical school day. Today, I thought you might like to see just where we home school. Like many families with limited space, the dining room table is our classroom.

On the opposite wall, we hang artwork, graded papers and study helps like multiplication tables. Because this is our dining room, and because it also happens to flow into our kitchen, there’s a microwave and food cabinet in our “school room!” The top drawer of that little white cabinet holds our small school supplies – pencils, pens, crayons, scissors and glue. I have a little Tupperware container in my bedroom closet that holds other supplies that we don’t use daily.

We only have room for a few bookcases in our home. I wish we had a separate space just for our school books, but we don’t. So last year I bought a plastic crate at Wal-Mart for each child and dropped hanging file folders inside with tabs to mark each subject. Most Seton materials consist of paperback text/workbooks so they drop easily into the slots.

We can fit an entire year’s worth of books into each crate.

When you use the family dining table for school you always run into one potential problem. How do you serve meals and snacks with books and papers all over the place? Well, breakfast comes before school, so that’s not an issue. We are thankful to have a small “bar” in our kitchen, so the children sit there for lunch. By dinnertime, school things are all cleared away. As for snacks, those are a nice little pick-me-up while you’re busy with school.

I know that every mother with a large family dreams of having more space. I would love to have a little schoolroom with a nice big table and benches, lots of shelves and plenty of wall space for decorating and displaying. This might never be a reality with 5 children and 1 on the way, but it’s nice to dream!

Where do your children do their school work? How do you make do when space is limited?