Table Of Contents
Do you know which essential supplies you need to get organised for homeschooling?
In these strange times of crisis, many of us find ourselves homeschooling (or rather, crisis schooling) our children. How do we make homeschooling easier? By getting organised with the best essential home school supplies to make the whole experience go smoothly.
As an added bonus, getting your home school shizzle together now will mean that you will be super organised and winning at life when the children go back to school. Nothing will go to waste, as your home school classroom area will instantly convert to the perfect homework station to support your kids. Read on to make sure that you are giving yourself the best chance of surviving home school by being an organisation queen.
This post covers supplies you will need for homeschooling. For teaching resources, schedules and more, visit my home school learning resources page.
Designated Classroom Area
The first thing that I suggest you organise, is where your “designated home school area” will be. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy, it could be the kitchen table or any other surface in your home that you choose as a learning space. Try and avoid areas with lots of distractions wherever possible, such as playrooms or areas near lots of toys. Keep the area as clutter-free as possible for an optimal learning environment.
Choose whichever setup works for your family in your home, but having a go to and designated workspace will help both you and your children be in the right frame of mind for home school.
As I work from home anyway, we have used a corner of my office as our “classroom space”. I have two of the IKEA Mammut tables pushed together between my 3 little ones that I am home schooling, with an IKEA Mammut chair for each of them.
Home School Area Becomes Homework Station
Even after this pandemic ends and my children return to school, I will keep our classroom area for homework as they are so much more productive working this way.
Organise Your Stationery Station
Having all of the stationery that you need organised and easy to access will mean that you will spend less time hunting for supplies and more time learning. All of these supplies will come in handy when the kids go back to school too. Here are the stationery items that I keep stocked in our home learning area.
Stationery Organisation Caddy
This desk organiser is the best buy as it keeps all of our supplies neatly organised and to hand.
Writing pens
I prefer to use erasable pens for my children as it limits upset when they make mistakes
Pencils
Rubbers
Pencil Sharpeners
Colouring Pencils
Felt Tip Pens
Scissors
We have both standard kid-safe scissors & some decorative craft scissors. Learning to use scissors is a lovely creative activity, but also an important skill for kids to master.
Crayons
Rulers
Glue Sticks
Post It Notes
Supplies To Get Ready For Learning
The following supplies cover everything from the types of paper you will need for your children to work on, items for sorting and organising with work that you have prepared and work that your children have completed, plus some home school essentials to keep things moving smoothly too.
Printing Paper
Whether you are printing out worksheets from school, or one of the ones that I suggested in my Home School Learning Resources post, you are going to need a lot of paper so stock up.
Printer & Ink Cartridges
What else will you need for printing out all of these worksheets? You guessed it, printer ink, so make sure you stock you before you run out.
Coloured Paper
Although plain white paper is great for drawing, it’s nice to have some coloured paper for cutting and sticking in basic art activities. My children will spend ages after their focussed learning tasks just cutting shapes out of coloured paper and sticking them to other pieces of paper.
Sketch Books
While you can busy use loose paper for drawing, I bought some sketch books to preserve and keep some fo the children’s art work, especially for when they have taken some online art classes like the one below.
Exercise Books
One option is to buy exercise books for your children to either work in or stick work into. My children were sent home with exercise books on the last day of school before the lockdown and have nearly filled them. Keep reading to learn what we will be using instead when they are full.
A4 Document Folders
Even before I started home schooling I always had these A4 document wallets in stock as they have so many uses, from keeping your kid’s work neat in their school bag, to home filing and more.
Now that we are home schooling, I like to use them for organising worksheets that I have printed out ready for the week. I have one for maths and one for literacy for one for other work for each child. Doing this really helps to keep me organised.
Sticky Labels
These are the labels that I use to label the document wallets so that I can identify which work is to be kept where.
Magazine Racks
Each of the children that I homeschool has one of these magazine holders to store the work that I have prepared for them. In these holders I keep the worksheets that I have printed and stored in the labelled document folders, their sketch and exercise books, plus any workbooks that I have purchased for them. I also keep some age appropriate sticker and colouring books to keep them busy after their focussed learning. This way I can easily find the work and activities that I need for any given child quickly.
Ring Binders
Now that the children have nearly filled their exercise books, I am hole punching their work and storing it in an A4 ring binder like this one.
Hole Punch
Don’t forget the hole punch so that you can slot the work into the binder.
Folder Dividers
Use dividers to organise your children’s work in their binder.
Reward Stickers
There is nothing my children like more or will work harder for than a sticker. Stock up on stickers to keep your mids motivated too.
Magnetic White Board
This is by no means an essential, but a magnetic whiteboard is nice for writing messages and displaying work too.
Water Bottles
Make sure that your kids stay ready to learn by keeping them hydrated, while avoiding spills with some water bottles.
Read it next
Once you have all of your supplies in order, you are one step closer to winning at home schooling. The next step will be to get your learning resources in order. Check out the posts below for more information and inspiration.
Get The Ultimate Mum Bundle Now
Why Not Pin This For Later?
