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DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

You’ll love this DIY duct tape ideas for homeschool organizing. You’ll love this DIY Easy Duct Tape Pencil Pouch Back to School Kids Craft.

I admit it, I think I’m weird. Unlike some of my friends, I for sure don’t wither away if I don’t bake a cupcake (yours would probably taste better than mine too) or have a craft area. I told you I am weird. Tie in a project though with something I can’t live without like homeschool organizing and then I become obsessed.

DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

Too, why is it that you want something when you can’t have it?

I can’t really have a homeschool area now that we are trying to sell our house. I think I am just use to organizing my space normally at this time of the year.

But since I don’t know what type of house (or hotel room I will be vacationing staying in) I will be living in next year or if I can even get some of the same school supplies in South America, I decided to round up some ideas for diy homeschool organizing with duct tape.

DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

I do admit to being an Amazon girl though because I know they can deliver anywhere. A cereal box, or any box and a roll of duct tape ordered from Amazon and I can be in serious homeschool organizing business.

Look at some of these creative ideas for homeschool storage and see if you get the duct tape bug too.

Duct Tape Storage Crate

A crate, some paint splatter duct tape and some paint and in minutes you get a useful storage container.

Check it out at Michaels.

DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

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Aren’t these just too cute? 

Duct Tape Storage Boxes and Containers

Craft storage, office storage or all those school supplies could easily fit in here.  This could be made with some hot looking blue turquoise tape mixed with neon colored funky flamingo duct tape

Check it out at Small For Big.

DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

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Talk about inexpensive storage and to create something that you needed for an exact space, I found this on Joanns website. Click on the .pdf to download it and see it.

More Homeschool Organization Room Ideas

This project included foam board, poster board along with a few supplies and some of your time to create a nifty little organizer and this is perfect for those hard to find storage places.

DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

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A lazy susan with some buckets, bins, and some duct tape and you have a turn table of storage.  This would go great on a center school table.

This idea is from Wife at Wize House.

DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

For this next craft, any old ugly box you have on hand could be decorated to match your school room.  That is important you know!  Look at this safari pattern duct tape that could add pizzazz to a box.

Check out this decorated box at DIY Home Sweet Home.

DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

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Duct Tape Storage Boxes for Drawers

A few cereal boxes cut down and measured to fit your drawer and then covered with duct tape make awesome storage containers. 

Though she used paper in this next picture, I could easily see this in some pretty retro duct tape.

 Check out how to make the cereal box storage containers for drawers.

DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

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Duct Tape Clip Board and Accessories

How easy can this be!  A plain clipboard can be turned chic storage with a couple of rolls of duct tape.

Check it out at Craft Gawker.

DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

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Duct Tape Notebooks and Pencil Supplies

Basically turn boring composition book into fabulous by using duct tape. We have so many of those Meade notebooks that could use some love like this.

Check it out at Craft-O-Maniac.

DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

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Even pencil cases go from drab to fab!

Check it out at While They Snooze.

DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

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Another notebook design here.

Check it out at Inner Child Fun.

DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

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Duct Tape Clips and Magnets

I fell in love with how easy this project would be.  It is popsicle sticks glued on the pin,then covered in duct tape with magnets on the back of the pin.  This would make a great way to hang art or use them in your school area.

Check it out at Lines Across.

DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

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Duct Tape Covered Textbooks and Books

When we have to use textbooks, it could make the event more exciting if it was a bit more glammed up.

Check out the duct tape covered textbook at Doodle Craft.

DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

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DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

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Duct Tape Journal

I bet this beautiful rainbow journal could inspire any writer. It has purple stitching along with neon duct tape.

Check it out at Kitty Cat Stevens.

DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

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Duct Tape on the Go Craft Storage

And last, but not least is this on the go craft kit.  Isn’t that just swanky? I found it in Pinterest land and wished it has an original source on it, but it did not.

If you come across the creator, let me know because I am a give credit where credit is due type of gal.  But I just had to include it.  It looks like just velcro was used along with duct tape to keep all the supplies contained inside.

DIY Homeschool Organizing With Duct Tape

If you make something, let me know because then I can pine at what your making since I will have to wait for a while longer.

Hope you catch the tape bug. Corny, I know, couldn’t resist.

Finishing Strong – Homeschool Link Up Party {Homeschooling Middle & High School Years} #17.

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Finishing Strong- Homeschool Link Up Party

Thank you for joining us this week at Finishing Strong–the link-up that focuses on middle & high school students.

Finishing Strong Link Up Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

 

This week we are taking the time to learn more about Heidi Ciravola from Starts At Eight.

Heidi Ciravola Finishing Strong Picture Bio

Hi, my name is Heidi Ciravola and I blog at Starts At Eight. I live in Upstate New York where we have 4 seasons and the weather is usually more cold than warm. I am blessed to be married to my best friend since 1998 and we share our home with 3 children ages 14,11,8.

Heidi from Starts At Eight

When I first started blogging in 2009 I wrote a post about “Why Starts At Eight?” It is funny how much has changed since then. Now my blog is almost all homeschool related and not so much a personal journal. My husband jokes that I need to start a new blog to have as a personal journal! LOL!

I have been homeschooling since 2006 when I pulled my oldest out of public school after completing her 1st grade year. I now homeschool a high schooler, a middle schooler, and an elementary aged student, so my curriculum and resources run the gamut! You can check out my interview, The Face of Homeschooling, to learn more about our family and why/how we homeschool.

Besides blogging at Starts At Eight I am also a member of the Hip Homeschool Moms Blog Team and I am an iHomeschool Network blogger. I enjoy getting to know other homeschooling families and learning from their experiences. I also provide Homeschool Consulting Services for those who are in need of assistance along their homeschool journey.

Homeschooling High School

I am just completing my first year of homeschooling high school. I have to admit that even though I had been homeschooling for 7 years already, starting with high school made me feel like a “newbie”. As I researched and learned things I realized that the amount of homeschooling high school information out there was significantly smaller than the early and elementary years. Thus I have switched much of my blog focus to homeschooling the high school years.

I started a 10 day series on homeschooling high school with a post called, So You’re Scared to Homeschool High School. I wanted to let others know that it isn’t as scary as you might think, and that you are capable of homeschooling your high schooler.

So You're Scared to Homeschool High School from Starts At Eight

One of the big changes in high school is the need to choose and participate in elective courses. While researching for my daughter I wrote about the process, from what exactly is an elective, to suggestions for fulfilling elective credits, and I created a FREE Printable called Plan Your High School Electives Pack for you to use to help you along the journey.

My daughter ended up choosing things like photography and Latin as electives. Photography is a fun thing that we can do together as I am a photographer myself. The Latin serves as a foreign language, great vocabulary SAT prep, and will help her with medical terms as she strives to reach her goal of entering the medical field.

Plan Your High School Electives: Free Printable Pack from Starts At Eight

One of the ways we are working towards college is by preparing for and taking CLEP Exams to earn college credit. This spurred me to write a series of articles about this option. The first one is called, What is a CLEP Exam?

Along with this, we have had the opportunity to check out a few options for preparing for these exams, thus opening up the world of dual credit (doing high school and gaining college credit). Both Dual Credit at Home and JumpCourse offer different and viable options for earning college credit while still in high school.

What is a CLEP Exam? from Starts At Eight

Fun Unit Studies

Beyond writing about high school I like to share about what fun unit studies I am doing with my youngest daughter. She is the most unschooled of all our children. We will often veer off the beaten path because of some new interest that has sparked her attention! Things like Canada, Chickens, Balto and the Iditarod, Johnny Appleseed and Teeth (a 3 part series).

One of our favorite unit studies is our Bug/Insect Units Using Eric Carle Books. This allowed us to study so many different bugs using different Eric Carle books, including ladybugs, bees, crickets and grasshoppers, spiders, caterpillars and butterflies.

A Bug/Insect Unit Using Eric Carle Books: The Very Busy Spider from Starts At Eight

I hope you will follow my family along on our journey through homeschooling and find some resources, support, and encouragement along the way! You can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and G+.

 

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Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus
Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus


When We Used Story of the World as our History Spine

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

When we used The Story of the World as our history spine in the younger years, it was one right choice I made for us.

Although loving history, my knowledge included only the history of the United States and it was pretty lame at that.

Because the The Story of the World came out around the time my oldest son was in the early grades and because I had read numerous good reviews, I used it. 

It ended up being a perfect fit for all of my sons.  We did begin with Volume 1 and worked our way through Volume 4, which is the whole series.

When we used The Story of the World as our History Spine

It is hard to find history programs for very young children that are presented in a story format and that make teaching history to young children easy. That is one thing I appreciated about the format.

I think it’s a must to have not only the story book, but the Teacher’s Manual which has the activity pages in them or purchase the activity pages separately for each kid.

STORY OF THE WORLD AS A HISTORY SPINE

The teacher’s manual not only has questions that help you to review the story but it has the answers right there too.  No flipping to another section to find the answers  That is a huge tiny pet peeve of mine about teacher’s manual.

Also, there are plenty of resources listed and choices for extra reading for a variety of ages.

It is a multi-age resource, which is a great find too if you are teaching more than one child.

If you are new to homeschooling or if you don’t have a huge background in history, The Story of the World  makes teaching history painless. It would make a great addition to your curriculum too even if your kids are a bit older. 

If your oldest kid is beginning middle school, I think this curriculum is still doable to teach all your kids if you have that circumstance.

Volume 4 is targeted for grades 4 to 8.  So if you have children in that age range and want to use this, just remember that Volume 1 was written for 1st to 4th grade.  I don’t see any harm in using it for your kids if they are older and can tolerate a bit of the language written in the earlier volumes for younger children.  It sure helps the teacher mom along.

The Story of the World is just an introduction to history and I think it does a fantastic job of hooking your children on history along with the maps and activities laid out in the program.  It helped us to form in our minds some major pivotal history points that the boys still refer to today.

It has slight Christian content, but we always added more.  I have said before I appreciate that fact about curriculum sometimes because we can cover Bible subjects at our pace.

Overall, The Story of the World is a keeper for us because of the ease of use, story format, use for multiple ages, teacher helps and having everything laid out.

On to more history spines we used through the years in my upcoming posts.

Hugs and love ya,

Want to read more?

Review of What Every Child Needs to Know About Western Civilization by BrimWood Press.

How to Use a History Spine to Build Your Study of History

When we used Notgrass World History as our History Spine

8 Ways to Teach Homeschool History Other Than Chronologically

Should Homeschool History Be Covered in Chronological Order?

Teaching Handwriting When Homeschooling the Early Years Part 1

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Teaching handwriting when homeschooling the early years. After the topic of teaching a child how to read, there is probably no other topic that can worry a parent more than writing. Also, look at my page Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum and The Dynamics of How to Homeschool Easily and Smarter for more tips.

Having taught all three of my sons from the beginning how to write, I am eager to share what worked, what was fun and oh yes, what was flat out dumb too.

Teaching Handwriting When Homeschooling the Early Years Part 1

Instead of jumping right into the ideas though, I think it’s important for you to understand some basic background information about the process of writing that I learned the hard way.

Picture Books Library Lists

Educating yourself about the process too will help you to avoid confusion as you talk about it with others, research options and generally try to educate yourself about this beautiful and intricate developmental process. 

Do You Make this Mistake in Teaching Penmanship

It is hard to appreciate this process too unless you stand back and take a panoramic view.

Handwriting must not be confused with composition. They are two different skills which are talked about as if they are one. They are not.

As your child grows older, handwriting could be a tool that either burdens or beautifies a budding writer’s creative process.

Composing thoughts becomes a life-long skill, but there is a very small window of time for you to seize the opportunity to teach him how to write. 

Eventually, a writer uses both the physical act of pushing a pen and the mental act of arranging thoughts in a well-laid out system. 

In the earliest stages, it’s all about the physical act.

Then there is much information floating around about whether we should teach our kids print first, cursive first or if we even need to teach handwriting. 

How to approach a very basic but important skill almost seems like a guessing game when teaching it. 

In this series, I’m sharing tidbits about those topics so you can make an informed decision of how you are going to teach handwriting.

Don’t “Fix” What Children Like to Do Naturally

What I have learned in teaching my sons and helping many other new homeschoolers along the way is that we need to trust the natural bent our children have to pick up a tool, and yes to even use their fingers to scribble.

I have never forgotten what I read by John Holt.  It resounded with me as I have had what seemed like major highs where I could accomplish any task after teaching my first son his  letters and having tears pour down my cheeks too when I felt defeated.

John Holt said, “The infants at home were bold adventurers. 

It soon became clear to me that children are by nature and from birth very curious about the world around them, and very energetic, resourceful, and competent in exploring it, finding out about it, and mastering. In short, much more eager to learn, and much better at learning, than most adults.

Babies are not blobs, but true scientists.”

Understand first that your child has a craving to communicate through scribbles. 

Teaching Handwriting When Homeschooling the Early Years Part 1

Unless there is a developmental delay, your job will be to guide him to the next stage.

Don’t make this harder than it has to be.  Like childbirth and I’m going there today, you simply assisted your body, so to  speak, at the time of delivery. 

No amount of worrying was going to speed up the process as if you were in control of it.  Of course complications and delays are quite different, but again I want you to know that you just need to be prepared.

When it comes to penmanship, your children will present signs of being ready.

More Homeschool Writing Tips and Curriculum

Will you be ready?

Coming up in some other posts, I will be sharing some signs and signals of writing readiness by your children, ways for you to plan (and not worry) about the penmanship process, pre-writing activities, and other ways to gently guide your pre-writer through this process.

Here are the other posts in this series to see how the process unfolds:

Hugs and love ya,

Homeschool Field Trip Journal Pages

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

I have been wanting to create some homeschool field trip journal pages for a while, but have been hesitant to create them.  Writing for most kids is something you have to sneak in.  So I have been mulling over even the smallest detail about the forms.  For the field trip pages I created that even meant  brainstorming the title.

I just couldn’t bring myself to name the pages Field Trip Report because it sounds so — well — like a report.  My sons enjoy writing for the most part and I want to keep it that way.  Finally, I settled on the title Field Trip Journals because I think there is freedom in the word journal for a budding writer.  It almost feels like you are not going to squash their creative ideas before they get started.  I appreciate some breathing room when I write and I extend that same liberty to my kids.

Instead of my sons reporting back to me, I prefer they want to write about our field trips.  Too, I wanted to use a more whimsical form so our kids could feel like they own it.

Homeschool Field Trip Journal
Field Trip Journal 1

I have created some boxes for them to write in and then created a few more smaller blank spaces if they wanted to share one or two more ideas.

Some kids are word whisperers and I was sort of that way growing up.  Jotting down a word or two that I heard lately either gave me a chuckle or invoked a serious side. 

More Homeschool Field Trip Resources

The most recent word my kids are getting a chuckle over is come-uppings.  Is that even a word?  I used it one time in talking to them and they haven’t quit saying it since then.  I don’t care if it’s a word or not because it gives them a cause to pause in the day about their vocabulary and a love of words.

Then we have kids, I have one too, that is a doodler, a scribbler and part designer.  Picture words reminds him of an event.  The blank space is big enough for a scribble or two even by big kids.

So the blank spaces allows your kids and mine to make the page their own.  Too, I didn’t want the pages too babyish so they don’t outgrow them by Kindergarten.

I have 2 pages that have more manly man color.  My boys have low tolerance for anything too colorful and I try to minimize the eye-rolling.  Then of course on the ones for girls, I go girl color crazy.  I have 2 color choices for them also.

I am excited about the forms because you know how much our kids enjoy field trips with other homeschoolers or just with the family.  It has always been the highlight of our month.

I hope this sparks a fun and whimsical side to writing for the kids because I think I give my boys enough reports to write about.

How to Grab the Free Field Trip Journal Pages

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