A Simple Dream

The last time I cleaned the homeschool closet.

Poor Ella was scared I was going to put the next pile on top of her!

If I discovered a genie living in one of our cabinets and if he offered me one wish, I think it would be--and I know this is a little boring--for a homeschool room.  When Chris and I bought Casa Doyle, we were reading a series of books about the "Not So Big House".  They are written by an architect who designs houses for the way we live--with no wasted space.  That idea appealed to me because I am into simplicity and less-is-more anyway.  So we did the unheard of--we bought a house smaller than the one we moved out of.  Then--we had another baby, Chris started working at home and we started homeschooling again.  So these days, we're a little space-challenged and I homeschool out of a not-so-big closet.  Today, I spent half of the day organizing and cleaning it.  I don't really mind schooling in the kitchen and Chris recently moved some things around so that I could have a cabinet there for all of the things we use on a daily basis.  With books filed away and crowded together in a coat closet though, it's easy to forget they're there.  We also have nowhere to hang the girls' work, maps or the things we're studying.

If I had a schoolroom, I would draw a timeline around the whole room.  It would go right in the middle of the wall so we could hang things above and below it.  One section of one wall would be reserved for a world map, photos of Pope Benedict and the patron saints of the Doyle Homeschool along with our mottos.  The rest of the walls would be filled with pictures of the events and people we've studied as well as our ancestors.  If I had a big enough room, I would have a large table where we could all sit for group work as well as individual cubbies that I would make by using bookshelves as partitions.

So--that's my dream for the Doyle Homeschool.  We'll be in the market for a house pretty soon and we'll surely keep that in mind--that and Chris' dream of a home gym!