Our Favorite Homeschool Tools 2012

Happy New Year! For my first post of 2012, I want to share with you the items we have discovered (or rediscovered) as homeschool essentials for our family this year.

1. Apps

My oldest son and I both moved into the world of smarter MP3s or cell phones this holiday season. We are already making use of them to look up unknown words with dictionary apps, find places with map apps, and make lists with note apps.

2. Sharpie Liquid Pencil

I do lots of different things to encourage writing in my dysgraphic son. Special writing items really help him to feel excited about writing. We discovered this product (thank you, Santa) is perfect as it allows him to erase as he is working, never breaks (he presses hard) and becomes permanent the next day.

3. Dry Erase Slate

My daughter is on the invisible thresh hold of truly "getting" reading and writing. She enjoys all work encompassing those subjects, but for some reason this tool has been like magic to her. She loves to write and erase, write and erase, write and erase. If I lived in a state with more stringent record keeping requirements, I would take pictures of her work before she erased it. As it is, I just mark her work as done in my lesson plans, and write on her work book "completed on dry erase slate."

4. Dedicated School Storage

You have heard me talk about this before, and I'm sure I will talk about it again - but it still bears repeating. Organize your materials ahead of time. Have a space devoted only to storing school items. In our case, it is an ugly old set of particle-board shelves I bought at a school garage sale. It's indispensable! I have a section for each child to keep their 'everyday' items like pencils, math books and journals. I have a section where I keep items I use every day like my lesson plans, the books we are reading that week, paper and flashcards. I have a section for books we have finished and books we have yet to come to. It saves me so much time and heartache!

5. Binders

How did I ever homeschool without binders?! I don't know either. I have a binder that contains the entire year's lesson plans, a binder containing enrichment materials, a binder for the appendix that came with my curriculum, and my own week-long binder. Each week, I move what I need for the five school days into it. This includes lesson plans for our core (shared) work, lesson plans for each child's language arts and reading, phonics materials for my first grader, and any seasonal coloring pages or enrichment activities. I separate each of these areas with tabbed, pocketed 3-ring dividers. I place uncompleted work (like spelling lists or coloring pages) on one side of the pocket, and completed work in the other. I also keep stickers for the kids' papers, a zippered pencil case for myself, and inspirational items there (this prayer card is my favorite).

What wonderful items have been a boon to your family in homeschooling this year?

Organizing Our Homes

Welcome to our Homeschool Holiday Open House!

This week we are discussing some of the most frequently asked questions of homeschoolers. So far several ladies have shared how they schedule and manage their days. Today, Sam, Ralene, and I are discussing how we organize our homes. And, of course, we'd love for you to join the discussion.

Sam:
I have a separate space for homeschooling-so that helps.  Everything school related lives upstairs and the main living area and my bedroom are on the first floor.  I am pretty organize-driven.  I love to purge and clear out things.  I also love to find new storage solutions for the things I do keep.  We use all the vertical space we can, and purge often.

We have an evening rule that the main downstairs rooms be cleaned up by 8:00 family time in the evening, the last clean of the day, but we try to stay on top of things throughout the day as well. The vacuum is run again at 8:00.  I like waking up to a clean house!

Ralene:

"The biggest thing that changed in our house is that we set aside a large chunk of the office as the homeschool area. We found a neat table that wasn't full size, but not like tiny-tot size either. My husband sanded and refinished it, and that's what we use to work at. I have a shelf that has our daily curriculum and work boxes on it. Then two book cases full of art supplies, books, workbooks, and lots of resources. We don't have a lot of wall space, in that room, so I bought an easel to hold a large white board, and on the back of the white board, I glued a world map. We did have just enough room to put up a calendar on the wall. 

Around the rest of the house, we've made little changes. The kids have a chore chart on the wall in the hallway. In the living room, there's some art supplies and books for them to look at/play with in their free time. In the living room, there's also a computer that we bought mainly just for homeschool and household purposes. It has learning games and internet access. The girls are still at that age, for me, where they don't use it without me, but it's still another tool that we can use.

Cleaning/organization-wise, I know a lot of homeschool moms (including myself) have a hard time keeping the house together. Very rarely will someone show up (especially without notice) and see a tidy home. However, I have developed my own system to keep things from getting too out of hand. It started with Flylady.net, and then I had to make my own tweaks. So, every room gets attention at least once a week (major traffic places like living room get twice a week)."

Dorie
"We have a separate room designated for homeschooling.  However, we didn't start out that way.  When we first started homeschooling, we lived in a tiny house.  Our school books were stored on a shelf and I taught our preschooler at the same table we had meals. 

Later we moved to a larger home.  Once we purposed a room for our homeschooling, we arranged the space and brought in a few organizing tools.  We have multiple shelving units, with a variety of drawer and shelf options.  Learning games, puzzles, globes, maps, reference materials, and books fill our shelves.  We brought in a desk for me and one for the children's computer.  We also set up tables for the children to use.  A free standing chalk board and white board are used daily.  The electric drums and keyboard are in one corner, and art supplies are stored in another area of the room.

Despite a designated room, other rooms in our home are used regularly for school lessons, as well.  With a sink and stove top readily available, the kitchen is our main area for science experiments.  Each of the children's rooms has book shelves, and our living room and family room have baskets of books. 

For the most part, the children are free to move about the house as desired throughout the day.  Sometimes, they bring their bean bag chairs down from their bedrooms, and cozy up with a good book in the living room.  Other times, in warmer weather, they may head outside with a blanket and work under the clear blue sky.

To keep a full house clean is challenging.  Adding homeschooling to the day, and a clean house seems impossible.  For us, we maintain a clean house by following a routine and using a children's chore chart.  Daily, we strive to have all items in the downstairs rooms put away before dinner.  For our homeschool room, we typically clean it on Fridays so it is ready for Monday morning."

How do you organize your home now that you are homeschooling?
Are your rooms allocated differently? 
Are you keeping supplies in one area or all through the house?
Do you have a favorite organizational tool?
{By commenting, you are automatically entered in today's giveaway.}

Today's giveaway:

A Preschool Pack of
Transportation Counting Cards
(numbers 1-10)

~ created by Marla

This giveaway is open to all residents of the USA
and ends Saturday, December 31 at 11:59 PM EST,

To enter, simply leave a comment on this post.

Winner will be announced on Monday, January 2, 2012.

Books,Paper, and Supplies, Oh My!

It's that time of the year again! Back-to-School Savings abound as schools (both public and homeschools) prepare for the new year. Hopefully, you've been out taking advantage of some of the savings. If not (or even if you have), here are a few tips for getting through the hectic time of thrifty organization!

--First things first, you can't bring in the new without getting rid of the old. Go through all your supplies, books, etc to decide what you need to throw away or get rid of. The key to staying organized is to avoid clutter. So, get rid of things first to avoid the "I'll go through it all later" syndrome. Besides you can't know what you need if you don't know what you have.

--Now that you know what you need--make a list. A thorough list. It helps to go over the YEARLY plan for your curriculum. You need to buy supplies now before the prices skyrocket again. For instance: Crayola crayons now: 25 cents/box of 24; same crayons later: $1.49. Yep. That's a huge difference. Crayons alone I bought 20. I know my girls can each go through a box of crayons in 4-6 weeks depending on how much they get used.

--Sign up for the teacher's rewards cards. Places like Staples, Office Max, Office Depot have rewards cards which give you a percentage off of your purchases. Plus they host special teacher appreciation days with extra discounts! In case you are wondering--YES, you are a teacher!

--Hold out for good deals. Most places offer different deals on different weeks. Notebooks might seem like a good deal at 1 dollar this week, but next week they may be 50 cents. Also, some places have extreme deals during certain weeks (used to draw you in and buy THEIR stuff). For instance, at Office Max last week, you could get a 24-pk of the pencil top erasers for ONE CENT; this week you can get rulers and 16-pks of crayons for ONE CENT. If you miss the deals this year, see if you can keep track so you'll know what to be on the look out for for next year.

--Although it can be tempting to buy enough 50 cent notebooks to last until your child graduates from college because they're a good deal--don't. Trust me, the sales will be back next year. If you overload now, you'll only add unnecessary clutter, not to mention they extra money could be used to go toward something else.

--Plan ahead to save for bigger purchases. One of the things we bought this year was a new computer tower. The desktop that we had is like 10 years old (hubby and I have moved on to the more portable laptops now that we have kids and can't "sit in the office"). So, we decided we needed a desktop specifically for homeschool use (well, ok, and my pictures too). We knew there would be some good back-to-school deals, so we started saving a few months ago. Today, we found our treasure!

Most of all, relax and enjoy the experience. I had so much fun the last three times I went out shopping for school supplies. Walmart was a little crazy, but Office Max and Toys-R-Us were a blast for the whole family! The girls were excited to help pick out stuff like what kind of stickers to put at the tops of their papers and their charts. I had to drag hubby out of the science department at Toys-R-us before he decided to buy out the section with experiments/toys that were way above the girls' heads. We even headed to Borders (which is going out of business in case you hadn't heard), and stocked up on some of their workbooks--just for fun, or for days when I'm too sick to teach. Review is always good on days like that.

Enjoy your back-to-school deals!