Check out our (very Hogwarts inspired) homeschool cart! I can’t tell you how much I love this…it is organized, it’s cute, it was cheap, and it allows us to take our Harry Potter obsession just a wee bit too far – which is exactly how we like it.
The cart is from Harbor Freight (with a hefty coupon, of course), and the clear boxes are 12×12 scrapbooking totes from Michaels, which I had the good fortune to find for 60% off this summer, along with the colored picture holder tote. Since we don’t have a 100% dedicated homeschool room, we can wheel our cart wherever we need it, or take individual subjects with us if we leave the house.
Each kid has personal boxes for both language arts and math, and we have shared boxes for history, science, art, writing, typing/handwriting and spelling, plus a few for random stuff. The idea is that we get out the box we need for the task at hand (which has everything needed for that subject), then put it away and move on to the next one. I put chalkboard stickers on the boxes, which we labeled with Harry Potter-style class names on the front and the actual subject names on the back (because I keep forgetting what the HP names mean). For example, the language arts boxes are labeled “DADA” – Defense Against the Dark Arts…because our curriculum is “The Good and the Beautiful”…get it? Yeah, nerds. We know.
Here is a look inside our History box:
And the Spelling Box, which will be used by the first grader (he gets to pick one activity off the list each day to practice his spelling words):
Hanging on the back of the cart is the bulletin board the 6th grader made- Hogwarts-inspired “job” chart for herself and her brothers…I’m not sure what these jobs will entail, but I have a feeling she thinks we need to get some school pets and plants…
We use this photo organizer for our flashcards:
The cart contains everything we need for the structured part of our school day (all morning and about an hour in the afternoon). For the rest of the afternoon, the kids work on independent activities while I work on my own schoolwork. We have three bins (History, Science, and Misc.) to contain all that stuff – library books, art projects, puzzles/games, etc. I will also include a list of a few website links (like Brainpop or Kahn Academy) and the occasional movie that match our current study units. Here is a peek inside the Science bin for the next few weeks as we study the Human Body:
There are a bunch of books, some modeling clay (to make body systems), and a bag containing a Melissa and Doug human body puzzle (I love Melissa and Doug, but their toy containers are awful…no lids!) in there currently.
All our other stuff (books for future units, other games, etc.) goes on a bookshelf out of the way.
And there you have it – homeschool on a cart!
How are you organzing your homeschool stuff this year?
Feeding Giants 