Manage Your Homeschool Printables

Do you find homeschool printables on the Internet that you just can't resist downloading and saving to your computer? It has become fairly easy to find freebies but you still have to determine the best use for your great finds.

Learn how I manage those downloads and use them as supplements to our homeschool curriculum.

Activities

I enjoy using the printable sheets to create supplemental activities that are fun and educational for my children; something of a balance between entertainment and education.

Some of these activities include home school ideas such as these:

• Laminate and create wipe-off "placemats" such as copies of a blank US map which our children enjoy racing to finish whenever they come to the dining room table

• Make terrific templates for your lap book projects to be done with your children on topics you are studying

Supplies Needed

Start with your resource and decide how durable you want the item to be. I prefer to use card stock paper for many things.

Gather your supplies such as ring binders, presentation folders, clear, protective sleeves or hole puncher to get started.

I have had several things laminated for greater durability. The plastic overlay also creates a reusable surface.

Then, add a dry erase marker and you have a wonderful reusable and portable resource that is great inside and outside the home.

You can choose from a display book or the easel presentation book which gives you hands-free capabilities when displaying a chart.

I make many personalized books with the information I find or create for the children. Be sure to stock up on half-inch and one inch binders during the Back-to-School sales to cut the cost of making these during the year.

Places to Find Printable Materials

In addition to finding some on many of the pages on this site, there other options for locating printable pages such as:

• You can create your own resources using a computer or drawing your material by hand

• Visit www.puzzlemaker.com to create puzzles that your children can enjoy

• Search for free software programs that allow you to create cloze comprehension activities or printable games to use at home

• Go to www.spelling-words-well.com to create spelling lists and activities to quiz your children

• Go to www.homeschoolmath.net to take advantage of her tremendous store of useful math resources

Essentially, you want to become an "expert of sorts" at finding great, free home school worksheets and material that can add to the resources you already own.

A word of caution though, you don't want to become a homeschool printables "junkie" with way more stuff than your children could ever use.

Another thing I have learned is that if you search for a particular item such as the "Dolch Word list" and place the letters ":pdf" in the search box, Google will only return pages in the Adobe format. These will often be lists or charts which are ready-made for printing and displaying.

Begin your search for great homeschool printables to add to the curriculum you're already using. Or, take a leap and find information on new topics and learn something new right along with your child/ren.

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