I have the most beautiful, blue-velvet couch. I bought it in Germany. It’s the first sectional we’ve ever owned. But I just banished it to the upstairs. In a bedroom. Where no one can see it. And life is better because of that. Why? Space. Space in a home is important. Not having enough space is often the complaint, but how space is utilized is often the true problem. Every homemaker knows this, but I think we can all take advantage of utilizing space to better promote learning in our homes.
Our family just moved the couch upstairs and traded it for a smaller couch and two armchairs. It’s not nearly enough seats for when visitors drop by or our oldest daughter and her family are in town. But we’ve traded the appearance of convenience for true functionality. As we did so, we went from struggling with family focus during devotional time to effortless, engaged learning.
Consider this passage:
“A flock of flying geese maximizes both individual well-being and overall group performance. In the parlance of industrial engineering, a flock of flying geese represents a dynamic, interactive, and collaborative model of ergonomic design, a scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among actors and other elements of a system in order to optimize the performance of each individual and the overall system. At any given time, each goose has a specified role and responsibility, but across the spread of time, roles and responsibilities, including leadership, are constantly rotating. Effort, participation, and contributions are distributed and balanced across time and distance. There is no wasted effort. All geese are engaged at all times, working in parallel toward a shared purpose. Feedback is plentiful, authentic, immediate, and affirmative. The geese are ever mindful of not just who they are, but whose they are!”
This statement is from Henri Lipmanowicz and Arvind Singhal, a couple of learning experts, who use space in the classroom as one of their most important methods for influencing interaction in learning environments. When our homes are learning environments, we can take note of this same principle. For these professionals, open classrooms act as the essential physical canvas, the main building block they use for switching things up so people communicate in more meaningful ways.
I grew up in a home where we rearranged furniture probably every month. I did the same thing when my children were younger. I still move around furniture often. It mixes things up! My mother has lived for over 40 years in the same home, and I’ve noticed my mother moves her furniture less and less these days, but she still moves things around for showers and family gatherings. It changes how we interact.
We used this concept in our home this week, as we swapped out our comfy sectional for a big empty space in the middle of the room. It’s now where kids sit while we’re studying a painting and lounge while reading. Something I’ve noticed about kids that homeschool (at least my kids!) is that they can often be found reading in the most unusual spots. They might be squatting on a stool or draped across several stairs. Opening up the spaces in our homes can be invaluable for opening up our minds and lives to learning.
I invite you to try this. Move some furniture today, stand back, and observe what happens to your home classroom. It might just be the innovation of change that does the magic, but sometimes that’s all we need to signal who and whose our families are. How are we using space in our home right now to facilitate learning and collaborating?
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