Do You Need a Homeschooling Briefcase?
Our homeschooling style is a mix of bookwork, exploration, free play, music, media and good old chatting. My kids like structure, but not routine and we often find ourselves out and about during the school day. There are music lessons, chores, excursions and family visits within our week and sometimes the odd appointment (with waiting time) too.
If we schooled only when sitting at the desks we would get very little done, so I decided to make it possible to be productive wherever we find ourselves.
Our homeschool briefcase includes:
- Space for their Maths and English schoolwork books for that day
- Cards and card-games
- small books about their interests at the time (animals, places, science)
- A fidget
- Post-it’s
- Story dice
- A notebook where we can capture ideas, thoughts, questions to look up later.
- Pens , pencils, scissors, ruler, eraser
- travel sewing kit
- pick-up-sticks or another lightweight game
- watercolour paints (just a set of 5 colours) and 2 little brushes
- String bag for nature collections
- a few activity sheets with some educational value (must be fresh and new to them or no point)
- paper for them to write, draw, be mindful
- Small essential sensory tools (e.g. noise-cancelling headphones)
- Random tiny things (stickers, little mirror, step-counter,
- three ping-pong balls – because they weigh nothing and I am sure they will come in handy one day!
This bag is kept in our homeschool space, so it’s easily refreshed or the daily assignment popped in to be completed on the road.
It’s handy to just grab whenever we are off somewhere which might involve waiting time or even if we simply want a change of scenery for a bit (one of the libraries, parks, Grandma’s house, or exploring).
