Making Our Homeschool Room Work for a 5 Year Old and a 1 Year Old

Our youngest is now 1 and a half and our eldest is 5 and a half. Luke starts homeschooling formally this year as a kindergartener. And it looks like my little 1 year old toddler does not want to let his older brother have all the fun! 😉

I get asked a lot on my Instagram how we are able to teach Luke when Dylan is around and let me tell you, it’s not easy! BUT I think we’re slowly learning how to make things work.

And one of the ways we’ve adjusted is by making our room friendly for Dylan.

Here’s how our homeschool room looks like right now, with the little adjustments we’ve made. (See our original homeschool room post here!)

Note: Dylan does NOT “homeschool” in the strict sense. He just plays!

Making the Room “Dylan-Friendly”

The goal and challenge was to make the homeschool room more Dylan-friendly. Haha. And by that, I mean we did the following:

• Filled our low open shelf with only his toys and board books: So that it’s easily accessible and inviting for him. More on that below.
• Placed materials that are not appropriate for him, far from his reach: This includes my markers, scissors and small objects (coins, magnets, paperclips).
• Luke gets a pencil case: The challenge was to make Luke’s materials still easily accessible for him but NOT accessible to Dylan. The solution we came up with was to put his writing materials inside a pencil case that Dylan cannot open. Now the challenge for Luke is just to make it a habit to put them back. Hehe.
• Got him his own toddler chair and table: Dylan loves climbing up Luke’s chair but it’s not stable enough and he has fallen multiple times. It’s not meant for toddlers. So we decided to get him his own chair and table set. More below.

Deciding on the Convertible Chair

We were trying to decide if it was worth it to get a toddler chair and was afraid he’d grow out of it fast. But then I discovered the Warble Convertible Chair and how it can be converted into a table too! I’m happy knowing this set will stay with us for a long time! Hehe.

We got the medium and large size and turned the large one into his table. I’m very happy with this because it’s heavy, which means it’s sturdy (Dylan won’t topple over easily!)

Btw, I recommend putting it on top of a playmat (we use our Bonjour Baby XL mats) so that it’s easier to push in and out.

Having Easily Accessible Materials

Our low lying shelf on the room is now filled with Dylan’s toys, books and materials.

This also includes items they can play together. Because they have a wider age gap, it’s been a challenge thinking up of things they can do together (without having anyone crying in the end haha!) Here are some of our favorites though:

• Playdough
• Painting
• Doodling
• Playing with open-ended toys

Some suggestions for open-ended toys that we personally love at home:

• Cobble’s rainbow set
• Magnetic Tiles: We have Magformers and we were gifted with a brandless one that work just as fine!)
• Building Blocks: They work on their Mega Blocks together. Legos only with supervision.

I make sure to have those materials also easily accessible for both of them so that they can just pick them up whenever they want to work on them.

Activities for Dylan

The truth is, Luke can’t focus well when Dylan is in the room. My attention is also split because I need to attend to Dylan and make sure he doesn’t eat things he shouldn’t. Haha.

So we formally homeschool when it’s Dylan’s naptime. But before that, when Dylan is still with us in the room, I assign Luke independent work, such as copywork and handwriting practice for Chinese.

During this time, Dylan will also play on his own. Some of the activities and toys that Dylan currently loves doing on his own:

• Play dough, again!
• Sorting colors using his Janod Sorting Colors Game
• Stacking the shapes and building using his Janod Volumes learning toy*
• Standing on top of our shelf and looking outside the window (haha)

* You might notice that we have a lot of Janod toys. I highly recommend this brand. We love their learning toys a lot. You can find more suggestions on this article that I wrote: 10 Easy and Fun Learning Activities at Home for Little Kids.

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RELATED POSTS:

• Homeschool Room: 2020
• Tips When Setting Up Your Homeschool Room
• How We Homeschool: 5 Years Old
• Daily Schedule at Home: Life as a Homeschooling, Work at Home Mom

FOR MORE HOMESCHOOLING ARTICLES, CHECK THIS OUT!