For parents who are new to homeschooling, it can be daunting to try and figure out what materials and items you need to successfully homeschool your child. However, there are really only a few essential homeschool items that you need to get started.
*This post contains affiliate links, see my privacy policy for more information.*
10+ Essential Homeschool Items
After 7 years of homeschooling, I realize that what is essential is different for not only everyone, but every year what you need is different. These are things that have become essential homeschool items for our homeschool, you might not find them essential in yours but maybe they are just what is missing from it.
Start your shopping now, if you use Amazon Prime, you get your things so much faster. I honestly do 90% of my shopping on Amazon. Because it is more convenient than hoping the stores we have local to us will have want I want, or waiting a month for them to order it in.
Let’s be honest, what I think is essential might not be essential for you, and your essential items might not be mine and that is A-OK! But maybe we learn about new items too.
Library Card
The most important, and really only true essential item that you need to homeschool, is a library card. It opens all the doors to learning. You can check out books, movies, and more to teach your children.
100 Reasons to Have A Library Card
Pros & Cons of Homeschooling from the Library
Managing Your Library Books and Fines
More Items for Homeschooling
Laminator
The first thing I ordered and delivered for the coming school year was this thermal laminator. There are so many different uses for one in your homeschool. Perfect for repetitive work, write on, wipe off.
In our kindergartner year, there is a lot of practicing letters and numbers, this is going to be handy. I know that this my favorite homeschool items this year!
Dry Erase Boards
How convenient is this for teaching your children? I happen to love to dry erase boards – even as a child, I had one in my room (public school student).
My kids love writing on them and working out math problems on their individual dry-erase boards.
I do recommend getting a large dry-erase board that is magnetic, a two-for-one kind of deal. I found mine at Costco for a great price, mounts to the wall, and everything can be kept beside it.
Electric Pencil Sharpener
Here is one that is on my wish list: an electric pencil sharpener. How much time is spent sharping pencils in your home? The pencils in our house always seem to be in need of sharpening.
This isn’t very big, it won’t take up much room, and you can hide it away from the kids who are going to love using it as they love manual ones.
Printer
This is the MOST used school/office supply that we own. Everyone in our house uses it for one reason or another. While this is the newer version of our all-in-one printer, I love it. I also love that I can get the cartridges refilled at Costco for a fraction of the price of new ones.
Print off worksheets to laminate for each of your kids, for yourself, etc. This is one of my favorite homeschool items in our house, Gauge loves that he can steal paper out of it to draw on.
Microscope
Adding a microscope to your homeschool adds a whole new element to your science. You can get them for younger children, or more advanced ones for older children.
There are a number of things you can look at, simple everyday things for your kids to explore their world up close. They can learn so much about simple things with a microscope.
We also LOVE this pocket microscope. It is perfect for taking in the backyard, on walks, and most recently for us, to the beach.
3 Hole Punch
We use our hole punch a lot. I had a single-hole punch thinking I could get away with it, but it just wasn’t worth the pain. There was a sigh of relief when I finally got a three-hole punch. This was particularly useful when we were required to keep a portfolio of each year, a hole punch makes it easier.
Maps
We have one of these in our house (the Canadian one of course) and I am always amazed at how much our kids look at it at random times.
This company also offers one for the USA and for the world. These are dry-erase maps, which makes me love them more. You can mark on them as you learn.
The Smaller Items
Those above are just the “big” items that you just have to have. Not including bookshelves and the books to fill them, because you can store books in any number of ways, and get books from the library. then we have the smaller must-have items.
Pencils, erasers
Crayons, markers
Paper-lined, unlined, craft
Binders, dividers
Index cards
Hands-on Learning Items
Also for this coming school year, I have bought:
Wooden Pattern Blocks – We are going to be using a lot, especially for keeping Gauge entertained this year while his sisters do their schoolwork.
Plastic Beakers – These are going to be so much fun to use this year along with the Plastic Test Tubes. My kids love science experiments so these are going to be a blast.
You can check out my Amazon Store for more of what we use in our homeschool.
Similar posts that you may be interested in:
What Does a Typical Homeschool Day Look Like