Homeschooling can be hard. The education thing? Sure. Weโve got that (Kinda. Sorta. Ahem). But people still need to eat. And those practical day-to-day realities? They can drive us bananas!
Donโt worry: these outside-the-box (and outside-the-books) homeschool supplies can help.
Of course, itโs completely true that the only homeschool tool you absolutely need is a library card (or your own overstocked bookshelves), but most of us have lives that are a bit more complicated.
These are a few of my favorite thingsโฆ tools that have made my homeschool life so much simpler.
You may also enjoy:
10 Ways to Organize Your Homeschool Space
Start the Homeschool Year Strong: 9 Strategies for Successful Homeschooling
Five Ways to Love Your Home School in a Small Space
{This post contains paid links. Please seeย disclaimer.}
Printer Ink Delivered to My Door Makes Printing Homeschool Memory Work Easy
Has this ever happened to you? You try to print out a worksheet or planner page… only to realize you’re out of ink!! I never want to run out of printer ink again.
Recently, I was printing out some memory work for morning time, and the pages started coming out blank. But because my HP Instant Ink subscription sends me ink cartridges before I run out (itโs magic, I tell you), I just popped the next cartridge out of the box and was back to business in no time! It’s one of my favorite tools ever!!
The other thing I love about my Instant Ink subscription? I can print high-quality color images of paintings for art study without worrying about the cost of the ink. A page-worth of Van Gogh is no extra charge. ๐
Want a free month of printing for yourself? Try the instant ink program here!
Best Pencil Sharpener Ever for All Ages in Our Homeschool!
This pencil sharpener is one of my all-time favorite homeschool supplies!
No, seriously. I am not even kidding. I was tired of pencils getting mangled. I was tired of having to sharpen the triangle-pencils or over-sized pencils for our preschoolers by hand. It was frustrating that my kids couldnโt sharpen pencils easily on their own without calling for help with a pencil jam!
No more.
This pencil sharpener is fast, efficient, works with multiple sizes, and has made my life so much easier.
Mesh File Sorters for Homeschool Bookshelf Organization
Wire mesh sorters, ostensibly for file storage, have become one of my absolute favorite sneaky homeschool tools!
Who else finds it terribly annoying to keep a row of 3-ring binders on a bookshelf? Because of the angles on a notebook it never really works properly, and it throws the whole shelf off. Things start falling over, falling out…so annoying!
Then there’s the shelf where I keep all my teacher answer keys- some are flimsy, they’re a mix of paperback and hardback, and I’m constantly taking several off the shelf at a time. This means the whole thing is a jumble and the flimsier books are always falling down or getting warped.
Wire mesh sorters to the rescue! I use 2 on a downstairs shelf to provide a perfect place for all 6 of our binders (where we keep our morning time materials, planning pages, and extraneous paperwork). I recently bought another one to use upstairs on my bedroom bookshelf for my teacher books. For the first time, I am not annoyed every single time I pull an answer key off the shelf! Woohoo!
Meal Planning on Autopilot Keeps Hungry Homeschool Hobbits Fed
I donโt know why I had never considered incorporating my love of loop schedules into my meal planning. Well, not that I actually had found a way to meal plan that didnโt annoy me up until now, honestly. Deciding a monthโs worth of meals ahead of time? Uh, no thank you.
Expanding on the practical wisdom Iโve come to expect from my friend Pam’s site, this course led me (and my tween daughter) through the steps necessary to get a loop schedule ready in my homeschool planner for our meal planning.
Our family has customized a weekly loop dinner schedule that takes into account our insane homeschool calendar. Weโve got a hospitality day, crockpot/instant pot day, taco-ish day, weโll-be-home-and-can-use-stove day, snack-dinner day, etc. Minimizing decision fatigue makes me feel like a genius.
So far? Even though this year has been our craziest homeschool schedule yet, our dinners have been surprisingly non-stressful! This is due to meal planning on autopilot as well asโฆ
Grocery Pickup Makes Homeschooling Mama Smile
Yep. Grocery Pickup. That is FREE.
I know. I still canโt believe it.
I kinda want to kiss the grocery delivery person every time they come put the bags in my trunk. Do you think my husband would mind?
I never thought I’d say that Walmart has changed my life, but I think it’s true.
Grocery Pickup is amazing! You order fresh groceries (and diapers, and toilet paper, and shampoo), then you just show up in the parking lot and they load up your trunk.
Be still my heart.
If youโre looking for something you can decide to โnot doโ this year that will increase your joy, Iโd definitely suggest looking into your local online grocery options.
Grocery store runs are never easy, but they can also be a schedule-burden for a homeschool family. Frankly, after educating (and keeping alive) 5 kids, I have no desire to walk thru the local grocery store. I want something nice to drink, a good book, and some time to gaze lovingly into my husbandโs eyes. Or just, you know, to sleep.
Enter grocery pickup. You reserve your pickup time, drive up to a parking space, and your groceries will be carted out and loaded into your trunkโฆwhile the baby/toddler keeps napping in their car seat!
Out of town? Order online or on your phone app and the groceries will be ready for you on the day you return home! Youโre going to have piles of laundry after that road trip, but wouldnโt it be nice to have milk for the fridge without any extra effort?
Have I mentioned that it is magical?
We actually took our love for grocery pickup up a notch and joined Walmart+, which offers the additional benefit of FREE DELIVERY. My milk shows up on my porch… it’s kind of magical.
Better Binders from Staples
Are you tired of buying new 3-ring binders every year? The Better Binders are the first ones that have held up to enthusiastic use from my crazy crew for multiple years! We use these for our daily-use Morning Time notebooks, for example. Weโre several years in and the binders are still going strong!
Bonus: here are a few of my other favorite things
- Poetry Memory Work
- Textbook-Free History
- All About Spelling Letter Tile App (no more annoying magnets, yay!)
- Tension Tamer Tea (It may be psychosomatic, but Iโll take it)
- Automatic renewals from the library โค๐โค
- Audio Books + Echo Dot
- Made2Homeschool online community
- Rakuten automatic cash back
What are some of your favorite (and maybe unusual) homeschool supplies?
For me, it has got to be rechargeable batteries (for games, flashlights, timers, calculators, booklights, and so on!) although we also love Staples Better binders, post it tabs and a lay-flat 3 hole punch.
Oh, yes! Rechargeable batteries are such a good idea!
Love your tip for using a file sorter for books on the bookshelf – especially for the flimsier books.
It has made such a difference in our family for sure!
Our pencil sharpener seems to be on its last legsโฆlove having a recommendation for a new one that will be even more helpful! Thank you ๐
I definitely have fallen in like with Walmart grocery pick up. It has saved so much time and sanity not being in the grocery store with 4 kiddos!
yessss! Plus you see your running total the whole time which helps with the budget.
1. Investing in a good laser printer. It is a big upfront cost but I have saved so much in the long run by not having to send things off to printed. Plus I tend to print in bulk in the summer then mid semester then Xmas, etc and my inkjet ink would dry up in between those breaks.
2. Audible membership. We are in the car a lot and this has allowed us to check the school box on many days when not much else would have been accomplished.
3. Timers. I donโt know why these are amazing but they are. Knowing you only have X minutes of work to do really improves attitudes and motivation! Even for mamas!!
Timers are the BEST! We use our Echo Dots to set timers all the time. ๐
Hey, Amy!
Thanks for the post and your encouragement along the way!
I definitely love to utilize grocery pick up from time to time too! On the topic of meal planning the whisk app has been nice because it creates a grocery list as you add recipes to your meal plan, and it even has a plethora of recipes on it to chose from. If you can’t find what you’re looking for on there you can port recipes in as well. Having everything I need to do in my own planner, plus the kids having their own student planners has been a huge help as well.
Ooh, I have not heard of that app before! That sounds like a game changer!
These ideas sound amazing, especially the grocery pickup for us expecting a baby 2 months into our first homeschool year.
Aw, CONGRATS! And I know homeschooling with babies can be tricky. I have several interviews and posts related to this topic. You may enjoy this one: https://www.humilityanddoxology.com/homeschooling-littles/