Homeschool in a Small Space

My family and I sold our house a few months ago and are currently living in an apartment while we look for a house.  Although it's only temporary, it can be challenging to live in an apartment with three small children.  Combine that with homeschooling, and it can definitely get a little tight.  So, I am trying to make the best use of my small space.  For me, that means easy accessibility: I want easy access to my homeschooling supplies and easy access for it to be put away since we are using our homeschool space for other things as well.

Our homeschool room is also our eating area.  Here is what I have done to try and make it as practical as possible.

Here is a view of the homeschool wall.  When we work together, we usually sit at the dinner table.  But the small table is great for independent work or if younger siblings want to color while we are doing our lesson. 

We have a white, 6 cube book shelf.  I use this for storing supplies such as construction paper, learning station activities, paint, bins with art supplies, etc. On top of the bookshelf is my storage desktop carousel.  It holds pencils, scissors, markers, dry-erase markers, paper clips, tape, etc. It's amazing how much stuff it holds! Look for a coupon to buy one at Michael's.  On top of the book shelf I also display important things relevant to the week's lesson.  This week we are studying the letter S, so that is displayed.  

 This wall contains our weekly calendar, chore chart, a floating shelf that holds the day's books and we store our library books in a box on the floor.  I also hang an art project on the wall and switch it up each week.

This is our prayer and memory verse board.  We clip prayer cards and our memory verse on it each week.  We also have memory verses that go along with our letter of the week (S for this week).   The small book shelf simply holds books and any other homeschool curriculum.

This is our homeschool workbox cart.  I got this idea from here. Basically, each drawer holds a different subject/activity.  Before we start our lesson each day, I put all supplies and work in separate drawers.  For example, drawer one would have our Bible book that we read from, drawer two would have our 100 chart that we fill out, drawer three would have construction paper and paint supplies to paint a sun, etc.  That way, our son knows we will be working through all of the drawers to complete our homeschool day.  You can mix it up by putting a snack in one drawer, a leap pad game in another, etc. I am hoping that this sets the stage for independent work as he learns how we work through the schedule each day.  Then, I can simply ask him to open and work on drawers 3 and 4 while I'm working on something else.  

There you have it…it's definitely nothing fancy, but it works for us right now.