Only five children go to this 12,000-square-foot school in Florida’s Palm Beach County. Here, on any given day, 12-year-old twins Logan and Garrett might solve math problems on their computers while their sisters, Sienna, 5, Reagan, 7, and Ava Rose, 10, have recess on the playground. Other times they all work together to memorize passages of Shakespeare or the names of the bones in the human body. The kids live at the school as well—because it’s also their family’s home. Their mother, Karin Katherine Taylor, is also their teacher. She and her husband, a 59-year-old chief executive of an industrial-distribution firm, built the home six years ago with the intent of home schooling their children there. The family is part of a small subset of affluent homeowners who home-school their kids—but not for typical reasons of wanting to provide religious instruction or because they don’t like the public schools nearby. Instead, they say they can create their own optimal learning environments by buying or building homes in which almost every room is a classroom.
Ms. Taylor says her younger kids work in a large room with educational toys displayed on open shelving; meanwhile, the older boys work independently in their study. Ms. Taylor teaches math on a white board in her office, and, when the weather is nice, the kids do art projects on the outdoor lanai. Piano classes, which each child takes three times a week, are given in a loft. “When you do a house from the ground up, you do it for how your family lives. Home schooling for us is a lifestyle, it’s not just one room,” said Ms. Taylor, who is 44. According to public records, the couple paid $1.84 million for the lot. The couple declined to discuss what it cost to build the home, but if it were go on the market today it would sell for roughly $8.5 million to $9.5 million, estimated Patricia Mahaney, a sales agent at Palm Beach Brokerage Sotheby’s International Realty. Susan Danziger, the founder and CEO of Ziggeo, a video tech startup, and her husband, Albert Wenger, 49, a venture investor, moved from suburban New York to Manhattan four years ago. Today they home-school their three children in their five-story Chelsea townhouse, which they bought for $3.85 million, according to public records. The home, its vibrant surrounding neighborhood, and the city itself are the children’s classroom, Ms. Danziger said. “The way we do home schooling is that they may be going all around town. Things happen in and out of the house,” explained Ms. Danziger, who is 51. For example, her 16-year-old daughter Katie is currently participating in a computer and science program at the American Museum of Natural History. Their 13-year-old son, Peter, loves cooking, so the couple hires professional chefs to tutor him in their kitchen. Last year, Peter competed in—and won an episode of—the Food Network’s “Chopped Teen Tournament” reality show. He also started a “supper club,” in which he charges $125 a head for guests to dine on dishes like wild boar ragu with pappardelle and salmon crudo at his house. Peter creates profit-and-loss statements for each event, hires staff and uses Twitter to market his events, he said. The entire house is his “campus,” Peter said, including the kitchen, dining room, living-room couch and a school room in the basement. “Home schooling is not about secluding yourself in your home, but doing the opposite and releasing yourself from the confines of a small area,” said Peter. Various teachers, tutors and mentors come to work with the three siblings throughout the week, using whatever space best accommodates them. The one part of the house that is not used for educational purposes: the kids’ bedrooms. “The bedroom is the space where you go to relax and chill, and you don’t want that chill attitude when you’re in school,” Peter said. Home schooling is on the rise: In 2012, nearly 1.8 million children in the U.S. were home-schooled, an increase of more than 60% from 2003, according to the U.S. Department of Education. It is also an increasingly popular choice among wealthier families: In 2003, there were so few students from households with over $100,000 in annual income that the Department of Education didn’t track them; in 2012, 1.6% of such students were home-schooled. A cottage industry of tutors of teachers has cropped up to serve home-schooling families. Manisha Snoyer, a former teacher in Brooklyn, launched Cottage Class a few months ago. It’s an online marketplace where teachers, tutors and parents can offer classes, either in their own homes or someone else’s. Iris Even, head of school at the School for Young Performers, creates a customized education and deploys teachers to attend to each of her 10 students, who live in far-flung locations from suburban New York to Beverly Hills, Calif., to Luxembourg, she said. Ms. Even’s first step in working with a new family is to analyze the home environment and recommend design or furnishing changes. “A good classroom depends on the age of the student,” said Ms. Even, whose said annual tuition averages about $50,000 per child, depending on the services used. She recommends families with younger kids provide a room with a desk where teacher and child can face each other, cubbies, a mobile white board, and lots of colorful decorations. Older students can use rooms set up more like an adult’s home office. One of Ms. Even’s clients, a family in Beverly Hills, created a dedicated classroom with built-in cubbies and desks and a backyard educational garden. Another family repurposed a pool house and made it into a mini-schoolhouse for their children. Nicole and Yon Perullo, both 45, bought a farm in Petaluma, Calif., in 2012, and they use the lower floor of the house as a home-school for their three children. The roughly 1,000-square-foot downstairs area was previously used as an in-law suite and has a bathroom and kitchenette, which comes in handy for art projects. Today their 6-year-old daughter, Eily, and 7-year-old twin boys, Wyatt and Nathaniel, are taught by their mother and teachers who come to the home for classes that include science, math, drawing and “mindfulness,” a type of meditation. Ms. Perullo. The 2-acre farm, which the couple bought for $1.7 million, according to public records, also contributes to the kids’ education. They feed their 25 chickens and pets and learn from the family’s 1-acre garden, their mother said. “I think the space is perfect for right now, but we have a barn that we are thinking of turning into a classroom,” said Ms. Perullo. In real estate terms, the designated classroom areas shouldn’t affect resale values because they can easily be converted back into traditional spaces, the families say. Julie Piatt, 53, and Rich Roll, 49, spent nine years home schooling their four children in a 3,400-square-foot, modern home they built in 2003 in Calabasas, Calif., for $1.385 million. The home looks like a series of connected glass boxes from the outside. Its unconventional design supported the couple’s “unschooling” approach to education, where the children’s interests guided the curriculum. For the first time this year, Ms. Piatt, a cookbook author, and Mr. Roll, an endurance athlete and author, are sending their daughters, who are 8 and 12, to a private school outside the home. But the creative home environment continues to inspire, Ms. Piatt said. Her 19- and 20-year old sons are currently recording an album with her at home and are building communal gardens on the property with friends. “Home schooling is about embracing life as a learning experience. You don’t need a chalkboard,” Ms. Piatt said. Write to Katy McLaughlin at katy.mclaughlin@wsj.com This article originally appeared on The Wall Street Journal.