Kids at Work: A Kids' Office Space in your Home
Even if your kids aren't interested in business, they do need a place where they can settle down each day to do homework. Creating a small office space for them is a good idea. It is a place that they know is intended for work just like we know that our desks or cubicles or offices are our work space.
Children's "offices" typically are not whole rooms. Usually this is just a desk and work area set aside in the child's bedroom. In some cases this area may be in another part of the home such as the living room or a hallway nook.
Regardless of where it's located, the child's office space should be designed with care. It needs to have enough color and inspiration to keep your child excited about working. And yet, it shouldn't have so many distractions that it takes away from the work time that it's intended for. How have you achieved this balance in your child's work space?
A kids' office can also be combined with a playroom. Again, we want the desk area to be focused towards a wall to keep distractions at bay. It's also important to stay very organized like this. A room like this is great if you have multiple kids that need to work and play in the same place. It's also great if your kids work well with a rewards system; do ten minutes of homework and then we'll take a toy down and play.
Some people choose to incorporate the kids' office space into the rest of the room in a more direct way. This is great for kids who are able to work without getting easily distracted. The child in this room could work at the desk for awhile then move to the bed to read and then sprawl on the floor to work on a project. If your child works well that way then a flowing work space like this is terrific. Keep the colors neutral like we see here to minimize any potential distractions of such an already-busy room.
The most common place to create an "office" for your child is in the child's bedroom. Most people achieve this by creating a separate work area in the space. Turning the desk to face a wall is the easiest way of achieving this. It helps to minimize distractions while the child is working. And yet, this doesn't mean that the room has to be boring in any way as we can see by the fun color scheme and furniture in this room.
Finally, I think it's a great idea to include some inspirational / motivational sayings in your child's "office". This could be a poster, a quote painted on to the wall or a chalkboard where you write new inspiring comments daily for your child to read.
Q