How to Teach Toddlers (Especially When You Have Older Children)

Head on over to the Old School House Homeschool Review Crew blog and read my guest post on teaching toddlers especially while homeschooling older children! I breakdown how I incorporate Tot School with Zeke by using Tot Trays and offer tips for a smooth and fun Tot Time with your toddler!

Must Have Resources: Blog Hop!

I have been homeschooling for 12 years. Throughout this time I have found supplies and resources that have been invaluable to me. I want to share a few of my "Must Have" resources with you today. These links are not affiliate links; they are just for your convenience!

• A good pencil sharpener! This sort of goes without saying, but having a good pencil sharpener will make your homeschool day go much smoother! There's nothing worse than using a dull or cheap pencil sharpener and having your pencils break or not sharpen.

• Good pencils! Invest in good pencils and they will save your sanity. Ticonderoga have always been good. They sharpen evenly and don't break easily. The cute pencils with the decorative wrapping - skip those. The wrapping will come off, clog your sharpener, and cause you unnecessary grief!

• Sheet protectors! I use sheet protectors in our binders to keep our pages fresh and pretty. I hate when pages get torn out of binders and you have papers sticking out and falling out. Sheet protectors keep binders neat and pages in tact. They can be expensive, but it's worth it to me! 

• Laminator! I use my laminator all the time, especially with my younger kids. I laminate flash cards, games and pieces, resources I want to reuse, and charts. It makes things so durable and almost impossible to destroy. I have had my laminator for years and it still works perfectly!

Those are my top four must have resources for the school year! Tomorrow I'll be sharing about curriculum. 

Back to School Traditions: Blog Hop!

I have been homeschooling for about 12 years. We don't have any fancy back-to-school traditions, but we do have a few things that the kids always look forward to when we are starting a new school year.


NEW SCHOOL SUPPLIES! This is one of my kid's favorite things - picking out new pencils, notebooks, binders, crayons, colored pencils, and markers. They love to go through their new school supplies and organize and re-organize them. When I was a kid in public school, this was always the best part of going back to school for me!

NEW SCHOOL BOOKS! They also love flipping through their new math, language arts, history, and science books. Looking forward to fun experiments and interesting history lessons can make the school year much more exciting!

BALLOONS! I don't know why balloons make things more special, but they do! Last year I hung up balloons that looked like earth to kick off our world geography study! I haven't decided which balloons I'll use this year to mark the first day of school.

SPECIAL BREAKFAST! I usually cook cinnamon rolls for the first day of school. It's not something I make often, so it is a special treat for the kids!

SKATE PARTY! I don't know if we will be able to have it this year, but our homeschool group has a back-to-school skate party each August! Last year was our first year going, but we plan to make it a tradition. 

What are your back-to-school traditions?