Everything in My Kids’ Homeschool Baskets
When we decided to homeschool this year (all the details about that here, if you’re interested!), one of the things that was really important to me was that our homeschool supplies were well organized so we didn’t have things everywhere.
I love a clean house and clutter makes me so grumpy, so this was a high priority!
I cleared out two shelves in our dining room sideboard and made space for each of the girls to have a homeschool basket of their own to corral their supplies.
I ordered some baskets online but when they came they just weren’t the right size, so I returned those and picked up these ones at Target instead which I’ve been SO happy with!
Here’s what my kids keep in their homeschool baskets:
- LCD tablet. I bought each of my girls one of these (they’re on sale right now which makes them $3.50 each!) and they’re the best for spelling practice, math scratch paper, Chinese characters, and other things that otherwise generates so much paper (and then those papers get left everywhere).
- Colored Pencils. These tins of soft core pencils are so delightful to color with (WAY better than a Crayola set) and the tin makes them easy to keep organized. They use these for our history coloring and map work. (Right now, the 24 pack is on sale for $3.99 which is a SMOKING deal).
- Story of the World Activity Pages. I ordered one of these for each of the girls to go along with our history reading. I contemplated copying them off myself but I knew it’d be a big bottleneck and it was much cheaper to just order them.
- Notebooks. I got everyone a notebook or two to use for math, language arts, Chinese and more. I just got these inexpensive ones.
- Family reading time book. We end each school day with family reading time – 30 minutes of each of us reading silently our own books. The girls each keep their reading book (which they get to choose) in their homeschool basket.
- Flecks of Gold journal. We start every homeschool morning with a few minutes of journaling during our Morning Meeting and each of my girls has one of these Flecks of Gold journals that they do it in (my affiliate code is EVERYDAYREADING).
- Handwriting or handlettering book. Tally and Star have these handwriting books for cursive and then Ella and Ani have their supplies for hand lettering.
- Math books. This is only for Ella and Ani – Star and Tally do Savvy Math so they don’t have math books. Ella and Ani both have Saxon Math books.
- Language Arts books. Ella, Ani, and Star are all doing language arts curriculum from The Good and the Beautiful so they have their workbooks and reading books in their homeschool baskets too. (Tally does Savvy Reading for language arts, so she doesn’t have books in her basket for this).
- Pencil box. I ordered everyone an inexpensive pencil box and they keep pens, pencils, and erasers in there for use in math, journaling, language arts and more.
I also have a basket of my own that I keep in my office and pull out every day. Mine includes:
- Story of the World book. This is the book we use for history. I read 1 chapter aloud each day that we do history while the girls do their color pages and map work.
- Story of the World activity book. This has all the review questions, activities, and suggested books to go along with each chapter. Each week, I sit down and request as many of the books as possible from the library and my girls read those solo on the off days that I don’t read aloud for history.
- Poet or Artist picture book biographies. During our morning meeting, we switch off weeks focusing on a poet or an artist, so I pick up 1-3 picture book biographies of whomever we’re studying that week.
- Pencil Box. Like the girls, I have a pencil box for my pens, markers, and pencils.
- Notebook. I have a small notebook that I make notes and lists in.
- Fabric map. Bart’s brother and sister-in-law gave us this giant fabric map for Christmas and it’s been so great for homeschool. It folds up small and then I can pull it out for history or geography to point out whatever area we’re talking about (and it’s under $18!).
Any questions about our baskets for organizing homeschool supplies? Happy to help – leave your questions or comments below!
