Our home theatre stage, a work in progress, recently made functional with drop cloth curtains. I have lots of plans to beautify this space soon, but I wanted to share the “rough draft” with you! Taking Fr. McTeigue’s advice, we’ve named it “The Flying Inn” (for GK Chesteron's Flying Inn).” If you want to do something like this, I highly recommend getting the seamless drop cloths instead of the seamed ones at hardware stores. A good seamless option is here. 

When parents begin to design a homeschool space, they often think of having a homeschool room, and then they can get caught in the “homeschool room tour” videos. Let’s back up and reassess the whole idea of having a “homeschool room.”

Should you limit your homeschool experience to one room? What impression will that give your children of learning as a priority? If, on the other hand, you design your homeschool to encompass your entire home, using different spaces for different subjects, what impression will that give? How might that change the family’s behaviors and habits?

A “homeschool room” can (I said “can,” not “will”) send a subconscious message that homeschooling is just school-at-home, with the list of to-dos imposed by a dead curricula (dead because it isn’t a lived tradition, but an examined set of impersonal ideas not related to my life), something that we really want to get out of the way so we can start the real stuff of living.

A homeschool room risks missing out on a fabulous family culture of learning and living going seamlessly hand-in-hand.

Let’s look at an example.

In the homeschool in a homeschool room model, you might buy a literature curriculum and have your children follow the lessons to analyze Shakespeare’s plays, followed by a test and a 500 word essay on each play. (Congratulations big box curricula companies: you just killed Shakespeare!) Or, in the learning as living model, which encompasses the entire home, you can set up a small home theatre stage complete with drop-cloth curtains in your recreation room, and assign each family member one of the characters in a Shakespeare play and read it aloud as you act it out together. We both know which of these two models will develop a love for Shakespeare. 

As a second generation homeschooling mom, and I want to encourage you to have play room where toys are contained, and let your homeschool encompass your entire home. I want my children to experience learning as one of the best aspects of living, and a daily part of life. 

A play room/homeschool house sends the message that the toys of childhood are nice during childhood, but there’s a lot more to look forward to — there’s a leisure (in the sense Josef Pieper articulates) made possible only by culture, and a culture made possible only by authentic learning that is integrated with living. A homeschool house sends the message that living and learning are the same thing, and that the best living is often through learning.

Yes, it can be helpful to have a designated desk or table for the children when they need to concentrate. But I caution parents against unintentionally giving their children the impression, through a separate space, that learning is that chore called “school” and when we’re done we get to emerge into fun family life.

Instead, by homeschooling throughout your home and throughout your day you are teaching your children how to live.

Here are some other ideas for using your whole home for your homeschool:

• Theology is lived (imagine that!) not merely studied, by having a home altar and prayer space, perhaps even a pray kneeler, and catechism time is really meditation time
• Art and science happen (quiet obviously) in the kitchen or in a utility room with a sink. 
• Read-aloud time (literature, philosophy, history) is what the living room is for! Forget that “dumb old TV” (as my mother called it when I was growing up)!
• Hallways are ideal for long timeline posters. Have you seen this Map of History? What a fabulous reference!
• Recreation rooms are for acting out fabulous read-alouds and writing and performing family plays

My ultimate aim is to add yet another layer into our homeschool house through the idea of the memory palace, but that will be forthcoming in a future post.

Until then,

Happy homeschooling,

Mary Carmichael