Here is some of the abuse that this room regularly receives. Almost all of my indoor pictures of the kids are taken in this room. Here is some rough housing in the family/school room.

And to really make your home seem normal, you may want to read my live-blogging post of a ‘normal’ school day or the live-blog of Day 1 of potty training.

I wish you an absolutely wonderful school year!

~Lynn

Now we have finally settled down, bought a home, and Lord willing will never move again. Our school area is the family room, which is also the dining room, which is open to the kitchen, out back, and the living room. So, like you, school is where we live. The only drawback is that the laundry closet is further away, but we have plans to build a laundry room off the kitchen some time down the road.

Anyway, thank you for sharing on the NOT Back-to-School blog hop. I found this a fascinating read.

Here are some things I’ve learned that may help you or not. I have dinner in the crock pot and set the table after lunch, so the dinner time crunch is eased. I wear the baby while picking up. (It took me a long time to find a carrier that really allowed me to work and not end up with tired back or shoulders.)

But like I said, I didn’t have it all together when my kids were all little.

I can’t believe how clean and organized it is. My plan was also to have a scheduled clean up time 30 minutes before Daddy came home. But, the problem is that is my littlest one’s fussiest time. (I am also usually trying to get dinner finished.) So I am still trying to find my groove. I usually end up doing the clean up by myself after they go to bed….or leave it for the next day (YIKES!). I know both of those are not good.

Thanks for the post!

Love your layout! Thanks for sharing!

Shannon,
I’ve had a couple questions about year round schooling and am hoping to write a post on this soon.

We take breaks very often, but what I mean by a break may be different than what other people consider a break. Sometimes we have one day off of school during a week and other times we cut back on the subjects that we are covering. (We may only do reading, math, Greek, music and art.)

We read everyday, including Saturday and Sunday and once the children begin math they rarely take breaks. When you look at an average school year for us, you would probably see that we “do school” way more than the required 180 days, but we are always fairly laid back and rotate several of our subjects in and out. The children all enjoy school and are often disappointed when we don’t do everything, so I think year round school works well for us.

Hopefully more later on year round school later.

Mama Bird,
I think that your approach to homeschooling will make or break you. If you are willing to educate at home, rather than try to create “school” at home, if you are willing to allow your child to love learning and not try to force it, it is an amazing a beautiful experience. I’ve never experienced “homeschool burnout” and also not had much frustration with homeschooling. I think a lot of that is because we try to be very consistent in training our children and they are generally reliable with their school assignments. The other thing is that we have never tried to make this school at home. We learn together and I’m very involved in teaching and learning WITH the children, not just handing out and checking assignments.

Left you an award on my blog. Play along if you like.