Homeschool setup

Hello friends! It's humpday of week 5 of homeschool-how ya feelin?  To be honest, the days might be long, but the weeks are short.  I blink and it's Friday again.  We're so inundated with homeschooling and life that I'm too busy to think of much else and my to-do list is usually full force ahead.  I wanted to hop on here and share my homeschooling set up and share what tips and tricks I use to help my kids be as successful as possible while reducing my own stress and anxiety. 

Let's start with location: our homeschool took over our dining room table.  It happens to be our only table in the house, so there wasn't much of a choice there. Before quarantine went into effect, I was on a facebook group that mentioned the clipboard method.  I saved the pictures and thought how great of an idea it would be for chores and maybe a weekend and summer method. Intuition much?  After struggling the first week and a half, I remembered about the clipboard system and the speech therapist in me was so happy to bring out my laminater, velcro and create all the visual and tactile aids that I could-thankfully I had demanded a color printer long ago.  I also felt comfortable using the wall space because we haven't remodeled this room yet. If we were a few months later, I would probably hesitate to hang things on my freshly painted walls.  Nothing is a coincidence right?

Let me first introduce you to the clipboard method!  When I first saw it, my heart was singing, it's perfect!



It also reminded me of the command station I had for the kids in our previous apartment. 

I ordered clipboards and found command hooks at my local store.  I hopped onto Canva and made a few different types of visual aids.  One type of visual aid I made are routine charts.



While these aren't exactly related to homeschool, the need for routine and structure is extremely important.  Expectations that are clearly discussed, laid out and available for them to reference make it easier for them to follow the rules.  It also helps the parent-I don't need to constantly repeat rules, I can just simply refer to the chart. 

I then made them their daily work check-list. 

As we've gotten in our groove, all the items on the list aren't entirely relevant, and I could have grouped many of them into "school work" and of course, we've had to adapt homeschool to fit into our lives, so some of the tasks aren't even relevant anymore.

I also laminated and taped to the wall (cringe, I know, but like I said, it hasn't been painted yet!) important codes that the school sent out.  This is something that I could now take down because all passwords are saved onto each child's computer.  Here's a look at our system:

Above each clipboard is a grease pencil, which apparently is needed for the diamond art which is all the rage these days! I promise I bought these many years ago.  What's great about them is they function like a dry erase marker.  They won't work on dry erase boards, but they are good for writing on materials such as glass, plastic, wood, ceramic and in this case laminated sheets.  They're also water resistant but they wipe off with a paper towel and some pressure.  In this case, no lost caps, no dried out markers and just easier to handle.  

To recap: each child has their clipboard with a grease pencil held by velcro above it.  

Before I share how this gets used in our daily routine, I want to share one other important homeschool area. The bar cart, formerly known as art on a cart.  

If you follow me on Instagram, you know that several months back I reorganized this area.  I'm so glad I did because this is a staple in our routine.  Until a few weeks ago when I opened a folding table for Hannah to do her crafts, this is where all of our arts and crafts and school supplies were kept.  There are four of these bins from Target. 

Each child has a bin for all of their workbooks, notebooks, and a folder for completed work. There is a forth bin that holds the dry erase boards and erasers, note book paper and some extra clipboards. 

There are some other IKEA bins that I've had for years, you can see them in action HERE. 

Each one holds a different writing tool.  Pencils, pens and erasers.  Highlighters.  Dry erase markers. 

So, how does the system look in use? Let me show you!!!

Each Sunday the school sends out links to the week's assignments.  I print out the document for each child.  I have started numbering the bottom corner of each paper according to the grade so the papers don't get mixed up.  I paperclip it together, cut out each day's assignments, highlight all pertinent directions (less is more) and then gather all necessary papers, clip it on, and hang it up!

Here is an example of a day's assignments.  You can see I cut out the day's assignments, highlighted the directions, and then gathered all the necessary items. Sometimes it's ripping pages out of work books, labeling a piece of notebooks paper, other times it's starting a google doc.  In conjunction with the daily work clipboard, I also open up each child's daily directions on their chrome book and click on all the links so the directions are on their computer, with all websites up.  Personally, I need tactile input, so I work well with lists, crossing things off, making check marks, and I don't have to be frustrated to go back and forth between tabs on a computer.  I know this is more work upfront, but it allows us to function separately from their computer. 

 
Then, at the end of the day, all completed work can hang back on the clipboard and I can then make sure all necessary work was completed.  I know that many people have no desire to stay this on top of their children's school work-but there are many reasons why I choose to. 

Some necessary supplies besides those I already listed:

• stapler 
• paperclips
• small binder clips 
• post-it notes 

That, my friends, is our homeschool set up!  I hope this helps inspire and also gives you some practical guidance to make your everyday life easier!