Our super awesome and Pinterest-able homeschool room

We've been homeschooling for a little more than two years. While I'm a loooooong way from feeling like I have my act together, I have figured some things out.

One of which is to how to fake having my homeschool mom act together.

Bwahahahaha! It's totally true.

But seriously, I actually have figured a few things out. One of which is where to hold our homeschooling sessions.

Answer: anywhere we want.

About six months ago I had two different moms in my neighborhood approach me and ask if they could get some advice. They were planning on starting to homeschool their kids and wanted my highly successful and knowledgeable suggestions (hopefully you read that last sentence knowing that I'm making fun of myself and that I in no way consider myself a homeschool expert). One of the things they both asked was where my kids do their studies. Did we have a cute schoolroom like the gray, white, and natural wood ones shown on Instagram feeds? Did my kids have desks in their room with Pottery Barn chairs? Did I use a label-maker to label all our coordinating, highly organized bins full of craft/science/basket weaving supplies?

I suggested to one mom that she quit following all those over-achiever homeschooling gramming moms and just hold homeschool on her kitchen table. Because, really, you don't need a special room!

For real.

I'm going to skip talking about everything we've tried and instead fast-forward to what's worked best for us.

We homeschool mainly in the kitchen.

Here's how fancy we get.

This is how our kitchen table normally looks when we aren't eating on it. Or my computer isn't on it. Or the stack of mail/groceries/my toddler's toys aren't on it.

So, basically it hardly ever looks like this except when company comes over. But let's pretend it's like this most of the time, mm'kay?

Every school morning, after our devotional (prayer, song, pledge, memorization, and daily current event), we get super fancy and pull off the table runner and put our special school tablecloth on! Bam! The kitchen-to-school-room change is done.

It should be noted here that the super special school tablecloth was purchased at Bed Bath and Beyond in the clearance section. But I love it because it's waterproof and super easy to clean.

Here it is:

I know it's not much. But there's now some kind of psychological switch that turns on in all of our heads when this tablecloth comes out and when it's put away. Green tablecloth on the table means it's school time! Green tablecloth off the table means school is over!

And, because I like to keep things real, here's how our table actually looks during school time. You'll notice none of my coordinating bins from Pottery Barn with cute font labels are showing:

Math books, sippy cup, crayons, glue stick, scissors, and all kinds of school is going on in this photo. I love it. However, I have no idea why there's a cutting board on that chair....

Also, if I owned anything from Pottery Barn I'm pretty sure my four-year-old would take a Sharpie to it.

So that's how we homeschool! No special room required.