Organize Your Work Area: The Homework Edition

Next up is my kids' homework area. They originally had their desks in their room, but we were having a few issues with that. The biggest ones being that the boys generally do their homework in the family room anyhow, they were hoarding supplies which their sister would end up getting into and they just collected miscellaneous items in and on their desks.

So after moving the deep freeze from one area of the room to another (which you can read about here) we had a sizable open area that I had to fill up that I knew would work perfectly for their desks.

I talked to the boys about it and they agreed that moving the desks to the family room would work the best so that was our next step.

Once the desks were in place, I decided to also organize their workspace. They each have three deeper drawers on the left side of their desks and one long shallow drawer over their lap. The long shallow drawer holds their pencil, eraser, pencil sharpener, ruler, pair of safety scissors, glue stick or bottle, package of crayons and a highlighter. The top drawer on the side holds lined paper, the second drawer holds blank printer paper that they use to color on an the bottom drawer holds their finished art projects. On the wall over their desks is their daily chore list and expectation sheet.

When they come home from school, they are to hang their backpacks on the back of their chairs, take their homework out and begin working on it. When they are done, they are to put their homework in their folders, put it in their bags and check their list for what to do next.

This process allows them the opportunity to take responsibility for their own homework assignments. If they use the process that has been set up, they won't have to scramble looking for lost or forgotten assignments or try to find their backpack at the last moment in the morning, which we have faced in the past. We have even allowed them to go on to school without their backpacks and/or homework and allowed the natural consequence of that to take place (while at the same time, having explained to the teacher what was going on - a lesson in person responsibility).

So anyhow, that is our homework set-up. Hope that it may help someone else or spawn other ideas. Share the set-up you have for your kids below. Remember to link to your individual post and not to the main page of your blog to make it easier to find.