Where do we store homeschool supplies? And how do homeschoolers turn in work?
It's a Q&A day!
On Instagram, Marie commented,
"Where do you keep your kids' daily homeschool materials? In your pictures of homeschooling them, I never see a bookshelf or a desk or anything containing their supplies. I have 4 kids too and a small house and I am struggling with this."
It's easy to have your house overrun with schooling supplies, especially when you have a bunch of kids in different grades!
Since we don't have a formal school room and since our dining room isn't large enough to house bookshelves and other storage, my kids typically have kept their daily school supplies in their rooms.
Except for Joshua, they don't have rooms large enough for desks, so they do their school at the dining room table or at a desk in the downstairs office.
And let's be honest, also on the living room floor and on the floor in their rooms.
Or out on the trampoline and front sidewalk.
The point is, we don't have dedicated spaces for just school stuff, and I imagine you don't either!
I'll show you what this looks like for Sonia and Zoe.
Their rulers, markers, pencils, flash cards, and other such small supplies go in the bottom of this nightstand and also in the drawer.
Obviously, we are not too pressed about keeping this ultra-tidy. 😉
Their actual schoolbooks go in the bottom shelf of their little bookshelf. I happened to take this photo when the shelf was pretty empty...they do have more books than this!
Each day, they pull out what they need, and then when they're done, it theoretically* gets put back.
*theoretically, because we all know that no kid puts their things away every single day. At least, none that live at my house!
Since we don't have lots of space to dedicate to school storage, it's really important for me not to be a packrat. When we're done with curriculum, out it goes!
Consumables go into the recycling, and non-consumables we've outgrown or didn't like get listed for sale or giveaway.
So, the only things I keep are non-consumables that I'll use with younger siblings, plus teacher's manuals/checking books that I'll need in the future.
For memory purposes, I've kept some of my kids' early journal books and compositions, but for the most part, I get rid of their schoolwork every year. Who wants to read old grammar workbook pages? Or old math lessons?
(I do sometimes photograph funny stuff that my kids do on their school pages, and I instagram those with the hashtag #fgschoolpapers. I enjoy looking back at those every now and then!)
How do your kids turn in their schoolwork for you to check?
-Leah
I suppose this isn't super different than the way it happens at schools, except it's not quite as formal.
Basically, when they're done with their work, they bring it all to me and I check it.
Once I've marked anything wrong, I either help them fix the mistakes, or they do it on their own and bring it back for me to re-check.
Math is the main subject that requires a fair amount of correcting (My kids don't get a lot wrong in subjects like grammar or vocabulary. I think they're word people and not so much number people!) and even though the process of correcting math problems is tedious, I think it's super, super important for the learning process.
So, we slog through that faithfully. 😉
Oh, and some of Sonia and Zoe's subjects don't really need to be corrected because we do them together. For instance, we work on science and history together, so I'm right there when they're doing any writing/question-answering, and I already know it's all a-ok.
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Got a Q&A question for me? Leave a comment here or email me!
Our baby is still little. But I'm planning to get lots of books and school supplies for him soon. I think I'll just get the bins from or plastic drawers from Target. I'll try to take advantage of the space we already have at home without buying anything new.
That's so neat! I went to public school so I've never even thought about homeschooling problems. I really love that the kids can do work/learn wherever they want to work. I think many kids could benefit from that kind of flexibility--but it's not easy on the parent for sure. 😉
I didn't homeschool but my sister homeschooled her child. She had mountains of paperwork from his homeschool days and didn't know what to discard. I helped her by pointing out that only "actual creations" should be kept. So his little self-written and self-illustrated books, his very, very best essays/stories, and very best original artwork was kept, but the piles of fill-in, multiple choice, short essay, and less-than-best work was discarded. She had passed on his school books when he was done with them, but it was his paperwork she had the issue with. While he was being homeschooled, they lived in a very small house, so his books were stored on his little bookshelf in his bedroom, and the supplies kept in a bin under his bed. It worked for them.
My daughters like to write and to draw every day. We have tons of artworks here at home. I want to keep them for "memories" because they're cute and funny, but I'm having a hard time which one to keep and which one not to keep. What's your advice on how I deal with this?
You might consider enlisting a friend. Sort your daughters' work by subject or timeperiod, then ask the friend to help you decide which pieces are really different (you don't need to keep 25 drawings of butterflies) or show significant progress (one butterfly from September and another from the following May).
Another idea that works well for some, is to take a photo instead of keeping the drawing itself.
Good luck!
I bought a large binder and filled it with those document sleeves. Each time my daughter colors a picture, I put it in the binder once it's had its run hanging on the fridge. The binder doesn't take up much space at all and there's room for hundreds of pieces of artwork!
What a great idea! I'm gonna copy you. Thanks so much. 🙂
Thank you, guys! These are great ideas!
Tasks are done, people are finished. You're finished with curriculum, not "done."
I haven't encountered this before - can you explan further or provide a reference?
Actually, from the research I did, most sources (including the one linked below) say that the rule you're referencing is outdated and wasn't even based on any particular logic. The two words are now being seen as interchangeable.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/whats-the-difference-between-done-and-finished
Ah, ok! I was wondering if maybe it was a regional thing to use them interchangeably. I've always heard them used that way.
I think it's neat to go back and reread old essays and fiction I wrote, even as far back as grade school. (I'm still annoyed with my mother for throwing out an essay on Isis, Osiris, and Set that I wrote in 6th grade.) It gives me insight to where my head was back then, and what my capabilities were.
Old math notes? Not so much.
Do you do quizzes or tests? I vaguely remember doing some benchmarking in science and history, and spelling tests. But Mom sent me for standardized testing once per year, so I guess that is how she tracked my progress?
It varies; as my kids get older, we do a little more testing than when they're younger. It's not that I think tests in and of themselves have a ton of value for homeschooled students; it's more that I'm preparing them for the test-heavy environment that awaits them post-homeschooling.
Who took the picture of you? 🙂
That was a self-portrait from Joshua's and my 52 photography project last year!
Wow! Keep up the awesome work. You have wonderful children.
You touched on a topic that is the primary reason that I want to homeschool...your children can do their schoolwork virtually anywhere. My daughter is truly in her zone when she is sitting on a blanket in the yard taking in nature. She loves to read and draw and play out there. I fear that being inside a classroom, in a seat for 8 hours each day will stifle her imagination and passion.
Same here...in our district, even kindergartners have desks! The spirit of each of our children would just shrivel and dry up in any "building school," as we call it--even the good Christian or other private schools in our metro area.
Thank you, Kristen, for providing all this info. I love tips from fellow homeschooling moms who have been doing it longer than we have! 🙂
I feel the need to point out that not everyone homeschools exactly like Kristen, so this will all vary. We didn't use a formal curriculum. Instead we read, played games, went on walks, went to museums, explored the world, and had many, many conversations about it all. I think perhaps you could just think about where you keep the stuff for your 4 year old and do something similar. And for what it's worth, he started community college when he was 17 and is currently in university studying engineering with job offers. There are many ways to parent and to homeschool 🙂
I agree Cyndi!
Yup, that's true. Every homeschool is unique!
That's the beauty of homeschool! Your curriculum and teaching is unique to the child, not uniform and blanketed to fit 30 children.
I had a home daycare for years and I found something that worked really well! I bought large scrapbooks and we'd glue pictures and the like into these. It was amazing what we could all get in and they didn't take up much room to store. When they were full or the children left they would take them home. It was fun to look back on pictures and whatnot they created during the time they were in my care.
Thanks for your input, Kristin! We're kinda busting at the seams here. We do most of our school at the dining room table, too, and I have been trying to keep all of the things easily accessible so as not to have to keep running up and down the stairs. But lately I've been wondering if they should keep their school boxes in their own rooms so as to clear up some of my kitchen clutter!!! As for the grading, I'm a former public school teacher turned sah mom/teacher, and the ONE thing I felt like I was never caught up with was the grading (reading even 1 paragraph from each of my 120+ middle school English kiddos took a ridiculous amount of time!) I want to make sure my own kids can work well by themselves, but I also want them to fix mistakes, too, rather than noticing something was marked wrong and just going on.
I'm late to this one, but I have a related question. Your kids seem to make a lot of stuff, as mine do. What do you (or they) do with the stuff the make?
Like, my kids, outside of school work, create tremendous amounts of stuff: pictures, books, board games, card games, costumes, projects. And it's awesome, and it keeps them busy, but there is a lot of it. I could probably fill a good-size box each week with just the stuff the kids made that week. I find myself covertly shoving papers into the recycle bin when I can, and hoping nobody wants the thing I threw out--or storing the stuff they make in boxes until I get overwhelmed by it and end up just dumping the whole thing in the trash--but that really adds a lot to the paper I have to deal with on top of what they create in homeschool, and I'd like for them to take more responsibility for their own creations.
So, I guess my question is two-fold: How do you store or help your kids store the stuff they create that they want to keep? And, how do you help them decide what to keep and what to let go of?