With the news of school closures for the remainder of the year here in CA, I know many of you are starting to feel more pressure to get serious about school at home. While most students have access to their classes online, many will still need some extra help. So, I’ll spare you the long introductory paragraph and jump right into the list of my own personal essentials for teaching at home.
Organization
A Daily Rhythm or Routine
Designated Learning Space(s)
Arts + Crafts Supplies
Magnetic Chalkboard or Whiteboard
Pencils, Pencils, Pencils!
Blank Notebooks
Menu Covers
View the full Amazon List Here: 10 Essentials for Teaching at Home
SUPPORT
Essential #1 Homeschooling mamas need support. The Handpicked Education was founded with the goal of supporting our community. It just so happens that now, more than ever parents and children need support navigating this time at home. We know there are a lot of questions with not so many readily available answers, we want to help support your journey and your experience through this time in quarantine.
Through our monthly Handpicked Conversations, we cover topics that help support families on their journey of homeschooling, covering topics like Positive Parenting, PPD, Anxiety + Depression, How to Get Started, Nonviolent parenting, Supporting Your Child, and more… Over the next few months we plan to have more Online Handpicked Conversations and bring support to you through consistent online meetings on Zoom.
Please consider joining our Facebook Community Group for support, resources, advice, and ideas on how to best support your family and teach at home: The Handpicked EducationRESOURCES + CURRICULUM
Essential #2. Resources to support your teaching and give you helpful tips and ideas to improve your child’s learning experience. I have a great folder full of FREE Resources that can be found on our main home page or in our menu that are geared for homeschooling families but for more traditional information your school district website will have resources for you as well. A few of my most used resources are Teachers Pay Teachers, Outschool, Reading Eggs, Vocabulary Spelling City. I find a ton of resources and helpful information online through Facebook Groups, Instagram Accounts, and tons of museums that offer their own online learning resources.
Finding curriculum if you don’t already have one to follow will be a huge help. Please stay tuned for upcoming blog posts that will help you determine what curricula might be best for you and your child. To get some ideas, please join some of the above groups linked!ORGANIZATION
Essential #3. A way to organize your supplies and daily use materials. If you don’t have a filing cabinet to store your children’s work, I use three Portable Filing Cases to organize my kids’ finished and graded work. I have one for each child, organized by subject. I also use a 3 Tier Rolling Utility Cart that sits directly next to the table we end up doing most of our work at. The bottom tier is filled with blank white paper, construction paper and card stock. The second tier is filled with a small tin full of crayons, pencils, stickers, and other art supplies. And the first tier is filled with our daily work workbooks, folders, and books. It helps to have a small hub of our daily use items!
A MORNING AND/OR DAILY ROUTINE
Essential #4. Many families today are seeing that their morning routines are changing. I like to refer to this as a rhythm. We don’t have things completely set in stone as days generally change, one kid sleeps longer than the other or something comes up, so I try to anchor our morning around something I know is going to happen every single morning. For us, this is breakfast when my children are all seated. Now, I’m not going to lie, this quarantine has put me in a weird place so I have not been consistent with what our general mornings might look like. On a good day or week, our morning routine generally looks like this — Breakfast with Reading Aloud (via me, or audiobook or podcast) > Copy Work > One on One time with the kids to do school depending on the subject with each subject being about 15-20-30 minutes per subject. I designate from the time we wake up to about 11am to strictly “School Time.”
Everyone is seated at the table during breakfast while we eat and listen to an audiobook, or while I read to them.
We clean up our plates and our food, and continue listening and/or get out our notebooks for dictation. The kids will draw or write about what they remember from what we read., This helps me know that they are comprehending the reading and following along.
After our morning read aloud I have each of the kids work on their copy work. This helps them remember how to write their letters and numbers correctly. We use Handwriting Without Tears or I will have my kids work on a poem or sight words. During this time, I will usually pull out our Do-A-Dot Markers for my 3year old so she can join the fun with her own worksheets, if that doesn’t work she gets coloring and craft time complete with her construction paper, tape, glue, and coloring utensils. If that doesn’t work she gets her water colors to paint. If THAT doesn’t work she gets kinetic sand, those foam balls, or play dough, and if I don’t feel like a giant mess, well… then that’s when the iPad comes out.
After copy work is completed, I will work with one of my kids one on one while I put one kid on the computer to do some lessons on one of three programs we use: Reading Eggs, SplashLearn, or Vocabulary Spelling City. This is generally when I will set my youngest up with some water colors because she could paint for hours or the iPad to keep her distracted so I can get a few lessons in with the kids. I try to cover 3 subjects a day with Math + Reading + Writing being daily.
DESIGNATED LEARNING SPACES
Essential #5. Homeschooling sometimes requires you to compromise on what certain spaces in your house will look like. Right now, it’s not like ANYONE is seeing the insides of our home anyways, so go on with your bad self and bring that inner teacher in you out. Do up a space or two in your home to create a warm learning environment that encourages exploration, play, focus, and creativity! In our house, we have a school room that houses a family computer, a nature center, a 6 drawer chest full of school materials, bookshelves, and floor space for play and creativity. In our dining room I have a large chalkboard mounted and a utility cart full of our daily use curricula. On some of the walls in the school room, dining area and even in our living room, we have posters of the United States, a World Map, Numbers, letters, a number line, etc… In our living room I have two medium sized magnetic chalkboards that house our magnetic sight words and reading materials. Home is now your Child’s classroom. Get creative!
Having a designated space where learning can take place allows for some grace in other spaces of your home. Although, if your house is anything like mine, there’s very little grace spared for any of the rooms in our home with three children! A designated space can help certain learners who may have sensitivity to distractions. This space can be a specific desk, a particular room, a corner in the house, or if you’re short on space all together, a great hack is using aARTS + CRAFTS SUPPLIES
Essential #6. If you have kids, being able to foster their creativity is a vital part of learning. Construction paper, glue, tape, and scissors are must haves in my home that are in constant supply. We also have a supply of water colors, acrylics, pastels, and a handful of craft supplies. My kids get free rein of these materials in my home and it keeps their creative itch scratched all week long. You will want to have something other than the computer, phone, or iPad readily available for them and this tends to do the trick for us in our home! This particular brand is the one I like for construction paper. Others that I have tried are too thin, colors muted, and don’t hold up very well in making fun projects. I order the 500 pack to last us as long as possible!
A MAGNETIC WHITEBOARD OR CHALKBOARD
Essential #7. Having a whiteboard or chalkboard mounted is a huge help and is one of my personal essentials. Having a chalkboard or magnetic whiteboard helps to collect, record, display and demonstrate important information that you’ll want your children to have daily exposure to.
We have a large chalkboard that we found on craigslist and use this for reminders, poems, copy work, sight words, displaying their work and demonstrating concepts or ideas.We also use a magnetic surface chalkboard that I display their magnetic sight words and other language cards on. You can view the ones we use HERE. I’ll also link those below.
PENCILS, PENCILS, AND MORE PENCILS.
Essential #2. I can’t tell you how many pencils we go through! I like the MY FIRST TICONDEROGA Pencils because they have a larger grip for kids who are still learning how to grasp a pencil correctly or who need the extra width of the pencil for more control. I have three children, so I buy mine packs at a time because we tend to lose ours constantly! If you buy the MY FIRST pencils, you will need to also buy a larger pencil sharpener.
BLANK NOTEBOOKS
Essential #3. I like to buy blank Kraft notebooks in bulk that are unlined for my kids. These are so helpful for multiple subjects and designating one notebook for each topic you are learning or for multiple projects. We have one for our Nature Journal, we have one for the countries we learn about, we have one just for doodling and warming up, one for dictation, and we will be making one for documenting our science experiments. What’s nice about these, is they are a completely blank slate and can be used for cutting/pasting things into, decorating, and recording their thoughts and information inside of.
MENU COVERS
Essential #4. MENU COVERS!! These things are gold! I use these to print and protect little reference sheets so that my kids have it on hand. I have them in a little basket and depending on the subject we are working on, if my kids need extra help or a reminder, I will give them one of their reference sheets to help them with their work. This helps so much in promoting independent work and self-correcting habits. These are also great to use to create dry erase worksheets and activities the littles can work on. These are one of my personal essentials because without them, we’d have to reprint so much! These help designate subject help, keep them protected, and make learning feel a tad more tangible for those who need something to hold in their hand to reference.