There are so many homeschool tools out there. It can be so intimidating and overwhelming to weed through everything. Here I’ve consolidated all my Homeschool Tools posts from the last few months into one, easily accessible, place. Click on the image to be directed directly to that post. It will open in a new tab.
Worksheet wizards are a great online resource for those who want to tailor make the worksheets their children are working on. Here you can find three free sites that I have used a few times over the years.
The Amazing – Incredible Handwriting Worksheet Maker! from Handwriting Worksheets
Make full-page custom handwriting worksheets in seconds!
Writing Wizard from ESL Writing Wizard
Make handwriting practice worksheets for children learning to write the alphabet. Create writing practice sheets in D’Nealian or Zaner-Bloser style, in print or cursive form. All for FREE!
Various Worksheet Wizards (from word searchers to cross words) from Tools for Educators
Free tools for teaching – printable worksheets, classroom printables and on-line worksheet templates with images from Tools for Educators. Use these free worksheets to print, game makers, and programs for teachers to make and print teaching resources with pictures or classroom materials for kids. They are simple, but beautiful, versatile and powerful. I hope your students (and you) enjoy the resources.
Organisation when you homeschool is key. I’ve gone through numerous organisation solutions over the last 12 years to find what works for us. With the children now doing online schooling, our need for elaborate organisation systems is no longer necessary.
I have sorted the kidlets’ books into Tidy Files Plastic Containers. The graded workbooks each have their own box and then each subject, for example History, has its own storage container. This makes it so much easier to find things to pull it out for our offline lessons.
I now have 1 long shelf that is out of the way where I store all my school books. We have 1 additional bookshelf that holds the kidlets’ files, our version of workboxes that work exceptionally well for us, as well as some hands on activities and manipulatives.
I’m a firm believer that you don’t need to spends a lot of money on items to get you started. Start off simple. Your storage solutions and requirements will evolve as your homeschooling journey evolves.
I’d love to hear how you organised your homeschool area and what tips you have for others who are starting out.
Below you will find some great online homeschool room inspirations.
Classroom Reveal 2015-2016 from Core Inspiration
Each drawer on the upper shelf contains items I want to keep handy for current units of study or lessons for next week. This eliminates piles and clutter around the room. When I am lesson planning each week, quickly check my drawers and am reminded of the resources I wanted to use for the coming week.
5 Ways to Redesign Your Classroom from Learning Liftoff
It’s a new year, and it’s a great time to redesign your learning space along with all of the resolutions you have for yourself. It may even be one of your resolutions! Here are Learning Liftoff’s editors’ picks for the top five ways to redesign your learning space this weekend.
New Scraproom! from Scrapbook.com
This particular post isn’t a school room. Its a craft room. I love the storage solutions she uses here.
8 Affordable Homeschool Storage Solutions from Sonlight
Before getting into all the homeschool storage solutions I have for you, let me first say this: Homeschool organization is about practicality and not merely about good looks. A Pinterest perfect homeschool room will do you no good unless it’s functional for your family and your children love learning within those walls.
11 Ways to get your crafts organized from Organizing Made fun
Again, not a school room. These storage solutions are great for stationery and art supplies.
Back to School Classroom Tour from Simply Sweet Teaching
This is almost identical to my book storage organisation. I use narrower file boxes, but they work just as well. I find these wide boxes a little too heavy when full and cumbersome for the children to carry.
22 classroom systems that make my teaching easier from Angela Watson
Organization Tips You Can Use In Your Classroom from Top Notch Teaching
When looking for spaces for homes for all of your bits and bobs, whether it’s the stationery in your class, or reading books or student work books; keep like items together as much as possible.
“What assessments do your children do?” “How do you know that your child is on par with his peers?” These are questions we get a lot as homeschoolers.
We personally use online schooling for our children now. We use CTCMath and Khan Academy for English and Science. These platforms assess the children as they go. The rest of the subjects we follow the children’s interests. There are tons of free resources online to pull worksheets from, thankfully.
Below are some free assessments you can use to track your child’s progress.
Fry Word Tracking for Students from The Curriculum Corner
These free progress monitoring pages for Fry word tracking are designed to help you track student sight word progress in your classroom.
Pre-K Assessment Forms from PreKinders
Alphabet Assessment
You can either mark through the letters the children know with a highlighter or make a checkmark beside the letters with a pen. Use a different color highlighter or different color pen for each semester’s assessment. You can use this one sheet for a child for the whole year, and show a comparison of their progress with the different colors.
Math Assessment
Use the colored highlighters or pens mentioned above on this sheet also. For the color assessment, show children pieces of construction paper. I cut them into squares about 4 inches and staple them into a flip book. For the counting assessment, I have children count Unifix cubes.
Free Printable Preschool Assessment & Goals Workbook!! from One Beautiful Home Blog
What you will get when you download the workbook:
Cover Page
All About Me
Uppercase Letters & Shapes
Lowercase Letters
Number recognition 1-20
Colors
Patterns
Tracing
Matching
Counting 1-10 (3 pages total)
Color-Trace-Connect
Same / Different
Directional
Goals (2 Pages)
7 Free Assessment Resources for Pre-K to 1st Grade from While He Was Napping
I used resources dealing with k-2nd grade and preschool. There were lots. But these are the best ones I found. And they are free. You gotta love free!
1st Grade Common Core Math Assessments- FREEBIE from Tiny Teaching Shack on Teachers Pay Teachers
This is a sample packet of the big bundle of 1st grade common core math assessments. Your feedback will be very appreciated 🙂 Thank you!
It includes one assessment from each 1st grade common core math standard:
1. Operations & Algebraic Thinking (OA)
2. Number & Operations in Base Ten (NBT)
3. Measurement & Data (MD)
4. Geometry (G)
Dolch Sight Word Assessment and Progress Monitoring Materials from Make Take Teach on Teachers Pay Teachers
Assess your student’s knowledge of the Dolch 220 sight words with the Make, Take & Teach sight word assessment. Assessment materials, directions for administration, student recording forms and progress monitoring graphs are included. This assessment correlates with all Make, Take & Teach sight word instructional materials. Knowing which words your student(s) already knows allows you to differentiate your instruction.
FREE Math Problem Solving Assessment Pack from Laura Candler on Teachers Pay Teachers
The free Problem Solving Assessment Pack includes two tests, a pretest and a posttest, which were designed to help you assess your students’ math problem-solving abilities. The pretest data will enable you to determine where to begin with your problem-solving instruction; the posttest data will help you track their progress later. A unique feature of this test is that it requires students to draw pictures to show how they are solving the problems. You’ll be amazed at what you can learn from those pictures! Administering this test will also help you differentiate instruction after you analyze the results.
FREE Progress Monitoring for IEPs and RTI | Data Rings for Special Ed from Mrs Ds Corner on Teachers Pay Teachers
Simplify your data collection and effectively save yourself time with this progress monitoring freebie.
What is included?
• editable 3″x5″ card size
• editable 3″x5″ cover for confidentiality
• editable 4″x6″ card size
• editable 4″x6″ cover for confidentiality
FREE Informational Text Structures Assessment | Google Classroom from Teaching With a Mountain View on Teachers Pay Teachers
Enjoy this FREE 3 page Informational Text Structures Assessment. This assessment was designed to accompany my Informational Text Structure Task Cards and includes examples of each type of non-fiction text structure. They also have accompanying questions that require students to read, comprehend, and provide proof of the correct text structure.
This resource also includes access to a DIGITAL version!
Answer Key Included
Multiple Intelligences Survey for Kids (Free) from Laura Candler on Teachers Pay Teachers
Learning about multiple intelligence theory can be very empowering for students, especially when you administer a survey to help them discover their own strengths and growth areas. Because most online survey tools are too long and complex for kids, I created this quick and easy classroom version for my students. I included an example of a completed survey on page 4 so you can see how it works.
How to Use this Survey to Foster a Growth Mindset
Before you use this survey, please watch my free MI Survey for Kids Video to find out how to administer it and score it. In the video, I also explain how to use the survey to foster a growth mindset in your students.
There are so many homeschool tools our there that it can become intimidating. Here I’ve tried to put together an easy to navigate list of free tools to get you started on your homeschool journey.
Homeschool Planning Pack from Only Passionate Curiosity on Teachers Pay Teachers
These forms are ones I use in my own Homeschool to help me plan, budget for curriculum, and pace our year.
I blogged about my process and how to use these forms in a Homeschooling 101 and Scheduling 101 Series on Only Passionate Curiosity.
Included is:
1. a form to create a general year long pacing guide for all your curriculum, a budgeting form
2. a curriculum shopping list to help you stay on budget
3. a form to help you buy/sell your curriculum used
4. a daily schedule planner
5. a yearly overview planner to help you see the big picture
6. a yearly calender
Guided Reading Lesson Plan Template {EDITABLE} from Teaching With Heart by Gina Peluso on Teachers Pay Teachers
Simplify your guided reading planning and save time with this EDITABLE lesson planning template!
Add your own text boxes and fill out the lesson plan for each of your guided reading emergent readers. Store your lesson plans in a binder. When you are ready to plan your guided reading lessons, pull out the lesson plan that corresponds with your emergent reader, and you’re ready to go. No more handwriting the same lesson plan over and over!
File Folder Games from File Folder Fun
One of my all time favourite homeschool tools. File folder games are an easy go to activity that pack away nice and tidy in little small spaces. Teach a new skill or practice an old one.
Free Lapbooks from Lapbook Lessons
Lapbooks is another one of my favourite goto homeschool tools.
A lapbook is simply a file folder that contains a variety of “mini books,” foldables, and other material that cover detailed information about the lapbook’s central topic. … Lapbooks can focus on a specific topic, such as the rainforest, or serve as a reference tool for various skills, like basic grammar facts. [Source]
Creating Unit Studies {+Printable} from The Canadian Homeschooler
Making your own unit studies can be a lot of fun, and mean that you can tailor fit them to your child’s favourite subjects and interests.
The first step is to pick the subject and then develop a plan around it – using whatever resources you have available to help. If you have a look for books, videos, websites, field trips you can take, resources in the community, people you can have as guests or visitors to teach, crafts and/or hands-on projects to do, etc. etc. The goal is to saturate your child’s learning experience with a fun, creative, and educational focus on the topic of choice.
Free Unit Study Planner – 30 Pages! from Free Homeschool Deals
The new Free Unit Study Planner includes:
30-Page 10-day Unit Study Pages
Unit Study Planning Page
Field Trip Pages
Needed materials pages
Hands-on activity planning pages
Unit Study assignment pages
Extra credit tracking
Unit Study record of completion
Free Homeschool Punch Cards + Free Assignment Reward Chart from Free Homeschool Deals
This is a fun idea to help students track the work that they get done each day. The Free Homeschool Assignment Punch Card set also includes a free reward chart. This might be the perfect idea to implement in your homeschool!
Homeschool Report Cards from 123 Homeschool 4 Me
6 Report Card Backs (so you can choose the one that works best for your particular child/family). There is a specific one for Kindergarten, several options using subjects as the criteria and grading either (Outstanding, Satisfactory, Needs Improvement, Incomplete) OR standard grades (A,B,C,D,F,I), and options for using one based on checking off areas completed.
How do you assess your homeschooled children?
This is one of the questions I am often asked. How do you know your children are up to par with their Public/Private schooled peers. This is honestly one of the harder questions, I have found, to answer. Every family is different. Most homeschooling families I know, don’t believe in standardised testing and couldn’t point me in the right direction.
Upon many late nights staying up and researching how to assess the children’s education, I decided that my best course of action would be to have the kidlets do the Annual National Assessments (ANA), set up by the South African Department of Education.
Last week Koko completed the Grade three assessments and Fifi did the Grade one assessments for English and Mathematics. They did well considering we are following the Cambridge International curriculum.
There are a few things I picked up from the assessments that we need to work on. One aspect of the CAPS mathematics curriculum hasn’t been covered yet in the Cambridge International Grade 3 curriculum and, after going through the books we are currently working on, will be covered over the next few months. Koko also seems to forget how to do his multiplication tables, so we’ll be working harder on those from now on.
Fifi is doing remarkable well and I’m very happy with her progress. She is a perfectionist, so she tends to take longer than necessary on her work for the day. This may become a problem when she is older and her workload increases, but we are working on helping her work through that little issue and she is getting better.
They both seem to rush through reading questions and most of the incorrect answers were purely from not reading the whole question and as a result not understanding what is expected of them.
All in all, I’m very happy with their progress so far and aim to continue doing these assessments with them twice a year for the foreseeable future.
