August 2020 Homeschool Favorites

In celebration of our new homeschool year, I decided to share some homeschool favorites with you. Honestly, I haven’t done this in a while, so I have tons of favorites to share with you all. That being said, I’ll share some now and wait to share more in the coming months. The favorites I will share today are ones I use everyday in our homeschool and I’ve found these to be so helpful this year.

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Booster Bricks Club

All of my girls, love playing with Legos. As a result, this past Christmas we joined the Booster Bricks Club. There is a new theme each month and we work together as a family to complete the corresponding challenges. You read through the theme-based storybook, which tells you when to complete the specific challenges. There’s even a Facebook page you can join, which gives you a chance to upload pictures of your completed challenges. It may not be a curriculum. However, during the pandemic it has been a fun thing for all of us to work on while we’re cooped up inside. I can see us being apart of this club for many more year to come!!

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Homeschool Supplies Caddy 

Over the years, I’ve tried lots of things to store my girls school supplies. I’ve tried giving them their own individual pencil boxes, pretty lunch boxes, and individual bags with different supplies, like markers or crayons. Unfortunately, nothing has worked very well, because by the end of the school year my big girls dumped all the crayons and everything they didn’t want into Matilda’s bag. Oh my. 

That being said, I’ve been on the hunt for a better solution for our family. I was so excited when I found this wire caddy at Ikea in Hong Kong. I liked it some much, I even shipped it home. As a result, I’ve been collecting empty jars and containers, which I could use to hold all of the school supplies on a daily basis. This basket lives on my bookshelf and I pull it down whenever we work on school. We use what we need, clean up, and put it away when we’re done. No fighting over markers or who doesn’t want a certain color in their pencil bag. It’s been such a nice addition to our homeschool room this year.

Currently, I have scissors, rulers, sharpened pencils, crayons, colored pencils, glue, and markers in my supplies caddy.

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Musical Multiplication from The Good and the Beautiful 

My family loves music based curriculum! Which is why I’ve wanted to buy “Musical Multiplication” from The Good and the Beautiful for a while. For that reason, I just had to share this curriculum, because it is so much fun for all of my girls. We got it at the end of our previous school year and have been using it ever since. We started with Olivia and let her work through the first book with corresponding songs. It’s become such a favorite, all my girls want to take turns working through the book and singing the multiplication songs. I highly recommend this curriculum for children struggling to nail down their multiplication factors.

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Plum Paper Planner

Two years ago, when we lived in Hong Kong, my friend Shelli gave a Homeschool Planner. Honestly, it was the first time I had ever used a homeschool planner. Normally, I just used a weekly planner, which I designed and printed out at home. Each week, I would fill in what we needed to get done for school. Unfortunately, we have the worst luck with printers, so the pre-printed homeschool planner was the perfect solution when I didn’t have a printer.

All that being said, last year I couldn’t find the same type of planner, my friend had given me. As a result, I scoured the internet for the perfect planner which would work for homeschooling. After watching tons of YouTube videos and reading recommendations, I finally decided to take the plunge and buy my very first Plum Paper Planner. I loved it, because I can customize each section as needed and add homeschool sections to the back. It’s been one of my favorite homeschooling tools, so this year I bought another one. The one I got this year is a little bigger, so I have more room to write in my planner each week.

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Sonlight Reader Boxes 

 Once our girls learn to read, we transition from Sing, Spell, Read, and Write to The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts program. In addition, we pair individual The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts curriculum with Sonlight Grade Level Readers. For example, this year Olivia is using The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts Level 3 and Sonlight Grade 4 Readers. Click the link to read more about our 2020-21 Homeschool Curriculum Choices.

As a result, our girls have had stacks of Sonlight Reader books, which they work through each year. In an effort to free up some extra space off of my books shelves, I created Sonlight Reader Boxes for each of my girls. Additionally, I typed up a checklist, so as they read through their books they put a sticker on the chart. Their boxes stay at their spot on our homeschool table, so they can see the progress they’re making each day as they take time to read books out loud. This has been a huge hit with the girls and they’re excited about this fun change to our homeschool room.

What are some of your homeschool favorites this month!?