How many of you homeschool parents attended public school? My hand is raised. Some of my best academic memories are from the elementary years. You know, back when kids still got a recess every day, and classrooms were decorated with whatever we were studying: world maps, historical portraits, scientific graphs. Holiday décor always cheered up the classroom experience, too. The excitement of schoolroom décor that rotates with season and subject was one I wanted to share with my homeschooled kiddos.

I know a lot of you are saying incredulously, “school room?” You may have a school couch, a school kitchen table, or a school mat where the one child stands on his head to read (that was my middle son), but no schoolroom. I only had a designated room for school because we crammed all three boys into one bedroom, leaving the other as a school- and play-room. I used to joke that if we had more kids, we could just stack them like firewood. It was great. The bedroom was for sleeping, reading, or personal time, and so it stayed relatively tidy. The other room had a closet full of toys, the musical instruments displayed ready on the walls, and our desks and chalkboard. It had to be straightened every day just to forge a path to the school desks. I decided that was a good thing. It was really just a beautiful chaos.

When the boys were small, we decorated the room for whatever subject we were studying. When they were in first grade we journeyed through the 7 continents, decorating for each as we went, from the Australian outback to the savannas of Africa. We read books, colored coloring book pages of the land’s wildlife, hung up posters and the crafts we made, and pored over the National Geographic maps I had collected for years.

When they were in middle school, we would decorate for a certain theme. One year, we did a unit study on C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series. We made a lamppost and hung cut paper snowflakes to mimic the snows of the White Witch. Then we made collages of the beaver’s lodges, wolf hand puppets, all kind of fun things.

 

The medieval theme lasted for two years because we liked it so much. I found some great fantasy-themed posters illustrating the parts of speech that started us off. Then we made pennants for the windows. Not content to merely hang up projects and art, I actually stamped the walls of the schoolroom into a rock design using a kitchen sponge, and we made inkwells from baby food jars, decorating them with plastic jewels for their desks. They were filled with real liquid ink, and once a week we would practice writing and spelling with the ink and a feather quill, writing letters to mail off. Never has a writing assignment been so anticipated!

To culminate our two years in the knightly realm, we pulled the desks out of the schoolroom and dragged in a grand banquet table for  a feast. We were all in costume, with a grandma and grandpa attending the feast as pirates.

When they were teens, we still had our various maps and posters, but I also got a giant world map that we used to pinpoint all the places we read about in history. A chalkboard displayed the word of the week. But my favorite part was our timeline. Begun when we launched our World History course,  each event we read about went on the wall at the proper date, along with a picture of any books or movies we had enjoyed that went with the time period. Through the years it eventually wrapped around all four walls and overlapped!

There is no reason you have to have a dedicated room to incorporate some of these ideas. Perhaps you all meet in the living room to have a Bible study before going to separate learning areas. You could mount a world map on stiff mat board  and keep it slipped behind the couch. Then pull it out when you want to show the kids where this or that missionary is stationed. As you learn about one of these regions in the world, you could use the back of the mat board, sticking on pictures of the animals and people of that land.

Take advantage of family meal times by utilizing one of the greatest places to stick things up: the fridge. Use it as a rotating bulletin board, featuring art, inspirations, and a word of the day. Or get really creative and mount a roller blind close up to the ceiling wherever you have free wall space. When the roller blind is pulled down, you can use sticky-tack to affix posters and maps. Roll it back up and out of sight when you are through.

Of course, schoolroom (or school area) décor isn’t essential to education. These ideas are just to add a little something extra. I know I will cherish the cut paper snakes from our journey to South America,  our grand World History timeline, and the photos of our medieval feast forever. Sometimes these fun extras are as much for the moms as for the kids. But that’s okay—remember, homeschooling is a group effort between you and your students. Figure out what will keep your kids engaged and motivated to learn.