My Favorite Homeschool Items

In the 6 years I have been teaching my children at home, I have tried many good and not-so-good products. Of all the many things we have tried, here 10 of my favorites.

1. MasterPak for Ready Writer and Calculadder. Ready Writer is a great program for learning pre-writing skills. Children go through a series of simple and fun pencil exercises to help them develop the skills needed before learning to print. Calculadder is a set of timed math drills to help your children learn their basic math facts quickly and accurately. You can buy these products separately and spiral bound or better yet, you can buy them in PDF form on a CD-ROM Master Pack. The MasterPak includes Reader Writer and Calculadder. Print out as many sheets as you need, including certificates and teacher logs. I’m now using Master Pack with my second child and it won’t be long before I’m digging it out for my next one!

2. Sonlight Science Discover and Do DVDs. Sonlight Curriculum has produced a series of fun DVDs that demonstrate the experiments in the Usborn Book of Science Activies series. If you don’t have the time or desire to conduct the experiments, pop in the matching DVD and watch them instead! Or watch them before or after doing the experiments yourself and compare your results. You’ll appreciate the humor which is neither crude or inappropriate. You do not need to purchase the Sonlight science curriculum if you only want the Discover and Do DVD. Each DVD corresponds to one Usborne book.

3. Homeschool In the Woods Timeline Figures CD and Record of Time book. I love history and I love timelines! Amy Pak has created a great set of time line figures from Creation to modern times and put them all on CD-ROMs. You can print them out in varying sizes, on cardstock or sticker paper, color them in or leave them black and white. I’m also a fan of her Story of Time book for placing the time line figures in. I even bought one for myself.

4. Kitchen timer with count-up feature. I use one from the Pampered Chef. Our timer gets so much use that I think I need to buy a second one to keep near the computer. Timers are great for keeping dawdling students on task, letting them know how long to practice music or typing and for giving toddlers 5 minute warnings before clean up time. With a count-up feature, you’ve also got a stopwatch for timed math drills! With The Pampered Chef timer, you can use the regular timer feature at the same time as it is counting up.

5. Typing Instructor for Kids. I started my then 8 year old son with learning to type last year. He enjoyed the playful nature of Typing Instructor for Kids, which sets the student off on a quest to Typer Island. The parent can set the goal words per minute to increase proficiency and the software can support multiple students.

6. Storage ottoman from IKEA. We do most of our school work sitting on the living room couch. We bought an ottoman from IKEA with a washable slip cover and store all of our currently in use books in the ottoman, ready for daily use. When the school day is done, the books are hidden neatly out of sight. The slip cover cleans up easily, which is “must” for any family.

7. Usborne Books. Is there any topic that Usborne Books hasn’t covered? The books have fun, full-color illustrations or photos and are filled with tons of facts. With their Internet linked books, you can go to their website, find your book, enter in the page number and come up with a list of related links to enhance your knowledge. Sometimes they have the illustrations from their books available for download which is perfect for notebooking or lapbooking projects.

8. Homeschool Support Forums. What kind of homeschooler are you? Do you follow the philosophy of Charlotte Mason? Are you an un-schooler? Eclectic? Clueless? No matter what sort of label you wear, there is a home school support forum for you. Some are curriculum specific, others are not, but they all offer a place for the home school parent to give and receive advice and encouragement on their homeschool journey. It’s like a cyber teachers’ lounge! Get out your timer when reading your favorite forum, though, because it’s easy to whittle away the hours chatting with your fellow home schoolers.

9. Geography Songs. Oh how we love this CD! With the accompanying song book, my children and I are learning all the countries and regions of the world. Listen to it in the car or during snack time or however it fits best with your schedule and before you know it, you, too can name the capitals and countries of Scandinavia (among others). It’s not too early to start preparing for the Parade of Nations at the Winter Olympics!

10. Geography Placemats. OK, we don’t have these…yet. But a few of my friends highly recommend them for the family that loves geography. I think they’d be a great compliment to the Geography Songs CD and I can think of several ways to challenge our children during dinner to figure out which country we’re thinking of. Or the other way around.

So those are my favorite things that make our homeschooling life a little easier. So what about you? What are some of your favorite homeschool products?

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You can find Lorri and her family singing Geography Songs over at The Mac and Cheese Chronicles.

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