When I told my friend, a Title I teacher, that Mi'ita and I were going to homeschool this year, she gave me some advice. "Have a schedule and a specific spot, not the kitchen table, to do your work."
She then went into detail about a fourth grade girl she had taught who had been homeschooled up until that point and then enrolled in school because she still didn't know how to read. She blamed it on the mother not actually teaching anything ... because she didn't have a schedule and a spot.
I then dutifully went home and transformed a section of my thankfully large living room into The Schoolroom with a whiteboard, bookshelves, two desks, and a lizard cage. The Schoolroom is now the Keeper of Materials.
Where do we actually work? We do latin in front of the TV and on the coffee table, because it's a DVD program. We do German, Swahili, and Carmen Sandiego Math Detective on the computer. We do history and writing in bed. We do science in workshops, on walks, at the pet store, and at school. We do math at the kitchen table with breakfast. We do art on the dining room table because it is big. We are actually papermacheing Cerberus in The Schoolroom because he is a long term project that needs his own spot.
What is our schedule? We get up and get breakfast and math done. Then we do latin. Then we do whatever it is that we want to do for the rest of the day. We are not often idle, but we definitely meander throughout many things--library, math games, writing, art, history. I let the day play out and only impose an activity if we find ourselves at loose ends, or if a Halloween party is looming and we need to get some stuff done for it!
What have I discovered? You definitely do not need The Schoolroom, but you do need a Keeper of Materials space.
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