Creating a School Work Station for Your Child at Home

Stella: [00:00:00] Well, hey everyone it’s Stella with Kentucky SPIN. Happy back to school day, guys. I wanted to take a few minutes and just show you a little something that I’ll put together on a shoestring budget that you can have for your student, your child, as they get ready to go back to school.

You might not have like a dedicated workspace in your home, but you might have just a little bar area or even a table somewhere that you can create a workspace for them. Everything here you’ll see pictured cost me less than $8 with the exception of the calculator right here. I already had the calculator, but everything else I purchased from the Dollar Tree and then put together a little thing. So I’m gonna go through each piece so you can kind of see what I did.

So I bought these little cute little stickers, remember all from the Dollar Tree, so for a dollar and I just wrote on each one of them, just some words of encouragement. Do your best. Down here it says, is your homework finished? Look at schedule. And then right in the middle you’ll see I have a little calendar. It’s in a little plastic sleeve and you can just pull it out and tear off one of the pages when it’s the next month. And then just slide it back in. So it can’t get anything on it. You can write on it and then put it back in. Write their schedule, write their class schedule. However you want to do that.

Then I have a little folder here, that’s just, you just pull it up and you can put your homework assignments in that as they get them done. And then that you can turn them in whenever they need to be turned in, or however they’re done. You can put extra paper in there, whatever you want that little packet for that little pouch for. Then over here, I’ve got just some more words of encouragement. You got this! Believe. And you are amazing. And just so when your kids are sitting there working, they just have some words of encouragement. Then I found these little letters, and I just put my name up there. And I just think that’s really, really cute.

And then I got cute little baskets so that they can keep all of their, you know, I’ve put post-it notes in here. I’ve got some ink pens and pencils, and then we’ve got calculator or whatever you want to put there. This is all though at my kitchen bar, so you’ll see it’s really not its own little desk area. But while the kids are working, it’s just a really good space for them to have that place where they can go sit and work.

So again, everything you see here costs $8 from the Dollar Tree. So it’s very simple to do. And plus it gives kids that little dedicated space for them to do their work. So I hope everyone has a great back to school time. And even though things are different right now, you know, we can make the best of it for our kids. So have a great day and talk to you later. Bye.

Michaela: [00:02:49] Hi, you guys, this is Michaela Evans with Kentucky SPIN. And I just wanted to show you a little bit about the virtual workspace that I have set up for my child and kind of give you some ideas that you can use for your child going back to school virtually.

So of course we’ve got our laptop and our notebooks, composition book, notepad with lined paper. We’ve got a light set up for good lighting for writing. And that also has a wireless charger for phone and devices, if he needs to use that for a calculator, or just to have handy. In this notebook, I have instead of dividers I’ve used plastic sheets, cause this is just what I had at the house. And I think it it’ll keep everything nice and neat, keep it for you to food and drink. So he can stick all his homework in this sleeve. Notes in this one, completed work. And then we’ve got extras here in the back we can add on too.

Now you can use one of these for all subjects. It kind of helps with my son, keeping everything all in one place, or you can even make one for each subject. And if you have a kid like mine, that has some sensory needs and likes to doodle, I’ve got a sketchpad here, if he needs that so that he can pay better attention to the computer. Sometimes, if his hands are busy he can retain more and kind of pay better attention. And of course we’ve got all our pens, pencils, highlighters here in our little pencil pouch.

And then I have also made a sensory bin. My son really likes to chew gum, it helps him focus. So we’ve got him some gum in there. Just some little cloth that you can hold in your hand. I took pipe cleaner out of my crafting box and put it in here because, for kids that like to fidget, they can hold that in their hand. Nobody, in the classroom virtually can even see that they’ve got it, kind of fidgeting or fooling in with it. And then just feathers, my son likes the way things like this feel, kind of silky texture. And then also this is good like calming because it’s squishy. And I actually steal this from my son quite a bit, I love this thing. It’s just something squishy, you could easily put a stress ball or whatever you have at home.

But these are just some little tips and things that we had at home, that I thought I would share with you guys. And I didn’t have to spend a dollar on any of this. It was all stuff I had here at the house. And I hope it helps show have a good day.