Things You Don’t Need As A Homeschooler

Let’s chat for a minute about all the things you DON’T need to be a successful homeschooler. I promise, you don’t need nearly as much as you might be thinking! Homeschooling is all about creating an atmosphere of learning, so don’t stress about dumping a bunch of money into creating the perfect homeschool.

Here’s What You DON’T Need To Be A Successful Homeschooler

Some homeschoolers (especially on social media) have **all the things** and make it look really great and totally essential to the education of their children, but that’s not reality! And while there’s nothing wrong with having all the things if that’s what you want, don’t let that shape what you think your homeschool has to look like.

You don’t need a school room.

First off,  I’m sure at some point, you’ve thought that maybe you need to design a beautiful, dedicated homeschooling room in order to have a great homeschool experience. Nope! You don’t. I keep most of our supplies on a bookshelf and some things in the hall closet too.

I even tried to dedicate a room to be our “school” room at one point, but at the end of the day our favorite place to gather together is always the dining room table or the couch in the living room!

You don’t need a wall-sized chalkboard or whiteboard.

Remember, you’re probably not trying to replicate a school. If you want a wall-sized chalkboard or white board, go for it! But it’s not a requirement. Do you have paper and writing utensils? Then you’ve got the essentials. I’ve really enjoyed having a small whiteboard/blackboard easel in our home for use during lessons but also in our art center. Dual purpose supplies are a homeschool mom’s best friend!

You don’t need a degree to teach your kids.

Nothing I learned in college (or even teaching high school, honestly) has made me a better homeschool educator. In fact, I have found that I have had to undo a lot of habits I picked up in the classroom because they actually hinder my kids in their learning processes!

Give your kids a love of learning. Help them to become problem-solvers who don’t give up. You don’t need a degree to teach them – in fact, some of my best teaching moments as a homeschool mom are when I was learning with them.

You don’t need expensive curriculum.

Homeschooling doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. Most of the expensive curriculums include things you could buy second-hand for way less money than what curriculum kits charge. They also often include pieces of curriculum that you may not want or use, but have to pay for because they come in the package.

The big sell for expensive curriculum kits is that they’re open and go and don’t require any planning so it saves time. The problem is that you still spend a lot of time figuring out what works/doesn’t work for your child as you go. And even though it’s “open and go” reading from a script feels awkward and not very natural so you end up doing a lot of pre-reading and rephrasing anyways!

You don’t need lots of manipulatives/learning toys/STUFF.

Remember earlier when we talked about having ALL the things? Truth be told, in our house it seems like the more stuff we have, the less learning we do because we’re spending so much time cleaning up after ourselves!

We had a great big purge one year and it was so freeing! We kept our favorite and most used supplies and everything else was donated.

Focus on quality over quantity. Instead of having tons of art supplies and three different sets of math manipulatives, opt for a quality set of art supplies and one solid set of manipulatives (we have this game and the pieces double as our counters and a base ten set like this). Before we were given those manipulatives, we just used dried beans!

Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking homeschooling needs to be an expensive luxury. You can make it work right where you are, with the resources you already have! The best part of homeschooling is the connection and no amount of fancy supplies or costly curriculums can make that happen – it’s all about simply being together!

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