Welcome to The Educating Parent Beverley Paine's archive of articles about homeschooling and unschooling written over a period of 30 plus years

Free download a quick guide to getting started with homeschooling and unschooling by Beverley Paine The Educating Parent in this excellent Resource Directory
Introduction to
Home Education

 

Free directory of Australian homeschooling and unschooling support groups organised by national, state and territories National and State
Support Groups

 

Plan, record and report all in the one document! Always Learning Books planners available in each year level to suit your homeschooling needs, includes curriculum checklists
Yearly Planner, Diary & Report

Let Beverley and friends help you design and write your own curriculum to suit your child's individual learning needs, learn how to prepare lessons, unit studies and more, record and evaluate your children's learning in this series of 3 parent workbooks developed on Beverley's popular homeschool manual Getting Started with Home School Practical Considerations

Homeschool Course for Parents

this Always Learning Year 7 Plan is everything you need to get started a comprehensive collection of curriculum aligned resources and links to activities, lesson plans and unit studies for your year 7 homeschooling student
Homeschool Learning Plans
go back to The Educating Parent home page click here to learn more about what The Educating Parent offers to help you start and continue your awesome homeschooling or unschooling adventure click here to subscribe to Beverley's substack blog with new entries added every other day click here to join the largest Australian online homeschool community The Educating Parents Homeschooling and Unschooling Facebook group

Preparing the Physical Learning Space

© Beverley Paine

The following is an exerpt from Getting Started with Homeschooling Practical Considerations for Parents of School Age Children

Children learn wherever they are and at any time of the day. You can't stop them doing it! You can build on this by planning quality learning experiences for them. Quality learning experiences are those where everyone makes the most of the time available, and is happy with what they are doing and resultant outcomes, and where skills and information are retained for future use.

Quality learning experiences don't often happen by accident although many will occur without your intervention or planning. Your children will naturally seek out learning situations to avoid boredom. If your children aware demonstrating the classic symptoms of boredom, or are irritable and fighting among themselves or with you, preferring destructive over constructive behaviours, then it may be time to seriously consider the physical and attitudinal aspects of their environment. There are many factors which can contribute to unhappy home schooling situations and most are easily remedied.

Physical Environment

Spending time preparing your home as a place for learning is essential. You will find you will use the whole home, inside and outside. Outside also extends to the community: see Part 8 for more information. This section deals with the immediate home environment.

There is no need to prepare separate or distinct 'learning' areas. Setting up a 'school room' may seem a nice idea and look good, but such spaces are seldom used after the first few weeks! Organised or structured learning activities, including working from books, usually occur in the family room or living areas. Some existing areas in the home are already ideally set up to locate certain activities, such as kitchen for cooking, science and maths, table or tiled floor for art work, etc.

Schools often go to considerable expense to replicate the many natural learning resource and features of the home. Take advantage of what you already have, thinking creatively about which areas, existing furniture and features you can exploit in your learning program.

The following list of suggestions has proven useful to homeschoolers:

  • A free table (not the dining table) for unfinished, in-progress work/projects is handy, perhaps even essential.
  • Visible storage, at child level, for books, art/'craft materials, toys, games, etc. Using clear containers or trays for consumable items reminds children they are there to be used, and often encourages new activities. Things in cupboards, drawers or opaque containers are quickly forgotten.
  • Places for celebrating learning by displaying finished work; for example - walls, shelves, windows and ledges.
  • Easy access to reference and fiction texts which are at your children's current levels of understanding and beyond will encourage daily use. There is no point having books in the house if they can't be accessed by interested readers!
  • A system of storing and organizing educational materials; for example, bookshelves, filing boxes or cabinet, computer. Encourage the children to share this responsibility. Avoid too much clutter, which can result in mental confusion, disorganization, losing or misplacing things you find you suddenly need, and annoying delays to learning activities in progress.
  • Have places to put, store or display the many collections that will evolve over the years which the children won't allow you to throw out!
  • Locate most of the learning activities in the rooms you tend to use most, usually the family room near the kitchen. Children tend to concentrate their activities around where you are - they like your company and you can easily get on with the chores and see to their needs of questions.
  • Involve the children in planning an arranging the spaces they use for their activities. Organise the physical layout of your home and garden to suit the needs of everyone in your family. You may need to re=define traditional uses for rooms!

Most families homes eventually end up looking a little like junior primary classrooms, taken over by the artifacts of children and parents very busy learning. Try to keep one or two rooms free of learning related objects, to escape to and relax in.

Although the above points are good to consider, maximizing learning potential involves a lot more than providing access to resources in a child centered way.

See also:

Preparing the Learning Environment:

Browse our comprehensive library of articles!

keep up to date with new posts to this website daily by clicking here to subscribe

Support Groups: National SA VICWANSW QLD TAS ACT NT
Registration Guides: VIC NSW QLD SA WA TAS ACT NT

Looking for support, reassurance and information? Join Beverley's
The Educating Parents Homeschooling and Unschooling Facebook

Need a ready made homeschool learning plan in a hurry for your homeschool registration? Try one of ours!

Need a ready made homeschool learning plan in a hurry for your homeschool registration? Try one of our Always Learning Books homeschool year level learning plans, packed with links to FREE lesson plans, unit studies and activities for each curriculum subject area, hundreds of suggestions, use what you want, only $18

Want to learn how to write your own education plans to suit your unique children's individual learning needs?

itap into Beverley's four decades of home educating experience and learn how to write your own homeschool curriculum and learning plans to suit your child's and your family's individual needs, a complete how to homeschool course for parents in 3 self paced workbooks each focusing on a different aspect of home educating, planning, recording, evaluating and creating lesson plans image shows 3 workbooks, plus samples of pages, and 3 children walking in bushland

The Educating Parent acknowledges Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present.

click here to become a Fearless Homeschool member giving you access to all past summit workshops as well as exciting new content and webinars, online discussion platform, and more

Twinkl downloadable Home education resources helping you teach confidently at home

say goodbye to home education registration stress with this ultimate rego bundle from Fearless Homeschool

make homeschooling a lot easier, zero to homeschool's excellent course is here to help

go back to The Educating Parent home page click here to learn more about what The Educating Parent offers to help you start and continue your awesome homeschooling or unschooling adventure click here to subscribe to Beverley's substack blog with new entries added every other day click here to join the largest Australian online homeschool community The Educating Parents Homeschooling and Unschooling Facebook group

The information on this website is of a general nature only and is not intended as personal or professional advice. This site merges and incorporates 'Homeschool Australia' and 'Unschool Australia'.

The opinions and articles included on this website are not necessarily those of Beverley Paine, The Educating Parent and April Jermey Always Learning Books, nor do they endorse or recommend products listed in contributed articles, pages, or advertisements on pages within this website.

Without revenue from advertising by educational suppliers and Google Ads we could not continue to provide information to home educators. Please support us by letting our advertisers know that you found them on The Educating Parent. Thanks!

Affiliate links are used on this site that take you to products or services outside of this site. Beverley Paine The Educating Parent and April Jermey Always Learning Books assume no responsibility for those purchases or returns of products or services as a result of using these affiliate links. Please review products and services completely prior to purchasing through these links. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question before purchasing or signing up.

Text and images on this site © All Rights Reserved 1999-2025