I taught elementary school for several years before leaving the classroom to stay home with my kids. Now that we have decided to homeschool I’m excited to break out some of my supplies.
Once we move into the new house, there will be a dedicated office/homeschool room, but for now I need to work with a nook in the dining room. That means bare essentials.
These are what I would consider to be the bare essentials for a primary classroom. (We are about to start kindergarten.)
Each child needs a dedicated work space. I also think they need their own supply boxes because it gives them a sense of ownership.
An alphabet chart, number chart (or hundreds chart for older kids) and a calendar. I also need to add a number line under that alphabet chart.
Keeping a portfolio for each child to assess their progress is really important as well.
A word wall is essential. It’s also a good idea to label stuff around the house, the word “door” over the door for example.
I like to color code my word walls by letter for young kids and by subject area for older ones. It’s also really important to provide easy access to tons of books.
If your children are reading and you would like an easy way to teach them how to select an appropriate book for their level, tell them to open to a page in the middle of the book. Hold up five fingers. Read the page. Every time you come to a word you don’t know put down a finger. If all of your fingers are down at the end of the page, the book is too hard. If none are down it might be too easy.
Calendar math is important for early math concepts like number identification and counting as well as learning days and months and concepts of time like yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I also like to add a straw to a basket for each day of school. Once you get past day ten, you can start grouping the straws with a rubber band in groups of ten, then, as the year goes on, by hundreds. It makes a good visual representation of ones, tens, and hundreds for them.
A great tip is to use a cheap clothing rack as a chart hanger. Commercial chart hangers are essentially the same thing, just a little larger and heavier. You can get a clothing rack at Ikea for $10 or maybe even cheaper at a yard sale, but a real chart hanger will set you back at least $50.
This week (mid July) is a great time to stock up on school supplies because Staples is having their 1 cent sale, which is by far my favorite sale of all time. Crayons, pencils, paper, notebooks folders, etc. all on sale for between $0.01 and $1.00.
So far my kids’ favorite thing about homeschool….clothes are optional.
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