Our Homeschool Cart & Daily Homeschool Resources // 01
I am starting out already numbering this post (01) because I know I will be updating it over time.
I posted a photo on Instagram a few weeks ago of our homeschool cart and it was a huge hit, everyone wanted to know more, it’s already changed quite a bit since then, plus, every time I post a photo of our day someone asks about some resource so it seems easiest to just write a post and have all the info in here!
And I think it will be fun to look back later and see what was in our cart in the fall of 2017.
As for the cart itself, I got mine from Ikea, but they are also available at Michaels and on Amazon, it seems like everyone is selling them these days!
OUR HOMESCHOOL CART &
DAILY RESOURCES
TOP
spiral sketchbooks – these are the kids’ notebooks for the year, for the most part we are just keeping everything in here; our nature journaling, copywork, science, etc, it all goes in here.
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons – if you have a child that is learning to read you need this book. For about $15 you get a whole reading curriculum that works. I’ve written a post about this book and how I teach my kids to read before, you can read that here.
Maps – seriously the coolest book ever, every homeschool family should own it.
Usborne Spotter’s Guides: The Night Sky & Weather – we are studying both this year and are going to be using these guides lots!
The Usborne Encyclopedia of Plate Earth & The Usborne First Encyclopedia of Our World – can you tell we love Usborne?! We are using these as our spines for our science this year as we learn about the earth.
Nature Anatomy – another must-own book! The illustrations are stunning and they even make a non-artist like me want to draw (hey, I’m working on it!)
The next couple of books we mainly use during our weekly poetry tea time, you can check out a few of our other favorites here.
Poetry for Young People: Lewis Carroll – I love the whole poetry for young people series and Lewis Carroll is awesome, I love reading Jabberwocky. 🙂
A Light in the Attic – if you want you kids to enjoy poetry definitely add in some Shel Silverstein!
A Child’s Garden of Verses – we currently own a mini-version of this book that only has a few of the poems but I love the whole book and it’s near the top of our to-buy list!
Now We are Six – such a fun book of poems by A. A. Milne!
The Red Fairy Book – this is a recent addition, we haven’t used it yet but I am about to look through it and hopefully read a few stories from it.
The Royal Diaries: Victoria – we are currently reading a few books set in England in the 1800’s and this book is helping us learn more English history.
Winnie-the-Pooh – I’ll confess: I have not been a huge Winnie-the-Pooh fan in the past, but I’m trying!
Ten Girls Who Made History – I love these books! They are a great introduction to some wonderful Christian people in history!
George Muller – we are really enjoying this book, and it made me decide that from now on we will always have some kind of Christian/missionary biography going on.
The Book of Virtues – while I’m not a huge fan of the title (it sounds so serious and formal), I appreciate this anthology of short stories that are separated into chapters based on character trait/virtue.
The Ology – a must have for every Christian homeschool! They cover so much theology in an easy to understand way!
The Burgess Animal Book for Children – this has been a fun read! We are slowly learning about the different kinds of rabbits, hares and all sorts of other animals!
Grammar-Land – the parts of speech explained in story form?! This is homeschooling at its finest. We are reading a chapter every two weeks and I know Raeca (grade two) won’t understand it all this year but that’s okay, we are totally going to be using this book again in the future!
Composition Notebook for my bullet journal style homeschool plan – I love composition notebooks and have a number of them going at a time for my various note keeping things. I have been doing my own version of bullet journaling for a number of years and this year I’m writing out our homeschool plan in a similar manner. Right now this is for my purpose only since there isn’t really any independent work going on but it helps me to see if we are on track or what we need to catch up on.
MIDDLE
Number of the Day printable from Playdough to Plato – this is a freebie that I laminated so we could use it each day. It’s a really good way to get a number of different math skills in each day.
Tens & Ones printable from Lucky Little Learners – of course I can’t find the link for this right now, I’ll update it when I do!
You Need a Capital Letter printable from This Reading Mama – I knew we’d be referring to this a lot this year so I laminated this one as well.
P.S. I have this laminator.
Alphabet Stickers – what do you do when you have a 4 year old that is still working on fine motor and a grade two-er who doesn’t like to write? Use alphabet stickers! We mostly use them for titles in our spiral notebooks.
Lined Whiteboards – I like using these when we don’t want to write in our spiral notebooks.
Usborne 50 Secret Codes Cards – I love the Usborne card packs, we have a number of other ones, they are great for sneaking in all kinds of learning without the kids even knowing it. 😉
Preschool Brain Quest Questions & Answers – These are fun for the kids to do every now and then, I don’t have any for Raeca right now but we’ve previously gone through the preschool and grade one pack.
Memory Verse Card Organizer – we keep our current memory verse, previously memorized verses and upcoming ones in this organizer. Our memory verse cards are from here.
Traveler’s Notebook with Prayer Journal & Memory Verse Art Journal – I bought myself a travelers notebook for this purpose earlier this year and decided to get one for Raeca too. You can see some of our memory verse art journaling pages here.
A few other things in our middle shelf: scissors, pens, pencils, erasers, chalk markers, dry erase markers, dominoes, playing cards & index cards.
BOTTOM
Watercolors – the kids use this set, it’s cheap and does the job for them, I personally have this set and love it, it’s higher quality and nice and compact for taking with on adventures, once my kids are older I plan on getting each of them a set.
Sandpaper Upper & Lower Case Letters – this is probably one of the most asked about resources on Instagram. If you follow the link the letters look blue but they come in white, no idea why. We use these a lot, they are really great for my preschooler but my grade two-er loves them as well.
Small Chalkboards – the kids love using these! I couldn’t actually find chalk when I bought the boards so we use chalk markers instead.
Alphabet Stamps – we have a variety of alphabet stamps that I keep organized by letter in ice cube trays (another game changer! I found that idea on Instagram), we use the stamps in our notebooks a fair bit.
Battery Operated Pencil Sharpener – so, we’ve had a plug-in sharpener since my teaching days but it was just so annoying, somehow switching to a battery operated pencil sharpener has been a game changer for us. I know #firstworldproblems but it’s true.
Also in our cart: pencil crayons – and we’ve got a ton of these!
THE SIDE
I’ve got two small magnetic containers on the side of the cart that hold small erasers for my son to use as counters.
Okay, so that’s all for what’s in the cart but there are a few other resources we use often that don’t fit in the cart (maybe I need a second one 😉 . . .)
Melissa & Doug 1-20 Wooden Puzzle – this is great for my preschooler who is working hard on his numbers this year.
Math Linking Cubes – we use these for all kinds of math; patterning, tens and ones, etc, plus my son likes to make them into letters and, in typical boy fashion, all sorts of weapons. 🙂
OKAY! So, I think those are all our resources in our cart and that we have been using daily, or almost daily! I am sure I will do a complete revision and a #02 post down the road but right now this is what we are using, I hope this post helps you out!
