 Welcome to LaDoc Way. I'm Jessica and today's video is gonna be a homeschool show and tell. The homeschool show and tell is an open collaboration hosted by Abby from Rooted and Rested myself. Our goal with the homeschool show and tell was really just to show that there's not one right way to homeschool and we do that by bringing homeschoolers together from around the world each and every month to share their personal take on a specific topic. This month's topic is homeschool mom must-haves and I am so so excited for this topic because well I'm ready to add some things to my wish list because Mother's Day is coming up and I don't have anything on it yet. But I'm also excited for this topic because I feel like in a world where we are being sold to constantly there is always things that we feel like we need that we really don't need. I am super super guilty of this. I like to call it shiny thingitis where you are you know scrolling or on Amazon or whatever and you all the sudden need all of the things because it's shiny and it's new and you just need to buy it. But I think sometimes we can forget how little you can effectively homeschool with and I think sometimes having all of the things can be really overwhelming at least for me personally. So while I really enjoy having tons of resources on hand I wanted to share like must-haves the bare minimum things that I feel like I couldn't homeschool without and then a few extra bonus things that I really really enjoy having on hand. So if you're interested in seeing my top five homeschool must-haves like absolutely couldn't homeschool without them stay tuned and then make sure you watch all the way to the end for a few bonus items. Now the reason I really wanted to narrow this down to no more than five items is because I feel like as homeschool moms especially we feel like we need to have everything possible to homeschool our kids well and if we don't have it we feel like failures. I also feel like if you're a new homeschool mom coming into the homeschool world and you're looking at all these amazing resources it can feel very overwhelming or even sometimes intimidating like I can't homeschool because I don't have all of this I'm not going to be good at it because I can't afford all of this or whatever. So I thought you know what I'm going to pick no more than five items that I must have but I couldn't homeschool without and that I think you can homeschool very successfully with just these. So my number one topic the thing I absolutely cannot live without and it is top of my list for a very very good reason is a library card. Yep you heard me write a library card that is the one thing the number one thing that I feel like most homeschoolers need. With my library card I have access to almost any book I could ever want. Our library allows us to have a hundred books out per card and each of us have a card. That means we can have 300 books either on hold or out. We also have interlibrary loans so we can get books from other libraries so that means for the most part unless it's like a brand new release and there's a weight on it we can pretty much get our hands on any book that we want. Our library also offers CDs and DVDs that you can check out so that means even more resources at my fingertips. Our library has story times and classes and the librarians themselves librarians themselves are a treasure trove of resources so all of those things come up with a library card as well and then apps like hoopla and overdrive or Libby depending on what you call her allow us to have ebooks and audiobooks at our fingertips using our library card for free. So all of those things are free with just a library card which is amazing and I know other libraries even offer games that you can get. I've seen some that now have like a topic-based like bagpacks and bags you can walk away with that's basically a unit study in a bag so make sure if you haven't yet to check out your library because there's so so many things that come from that one place and with a library card that seriously can make homeschooling possible with just that. Now my number two thing on my list is my laptop now this is my personal laptop I absolutely love it I use that probably on a daily basis we in our household actually have three laptops but you could do it with just one you don't need multiples you just need some sort of device that could even be a tablet or a desktop whatever you have but some kind of computer is definitely my number two because with this I can search curriculum I can you know access digital curriculum I can find freebies I can create my own curriculum I can stream videos from YouTube or any other streaming service that we have that would go along with whatever we're learning I can Google answers to questions that I might not know yet I mean like literally the things that you have at your fingertips because of that are amazing so definitely number two on my list is a laptop but it could be like I said any kind of computer number three on my list I did not bring out here because it's very heavy so just pretend I'm holding a printer because with a computer and a printer I can print off anything I want those freebies I was just talking about and digital curriculum that you've bought or that you have created in my case normally it's created and you can print multiple different copies so if you have three four five six kids you can print however many you need making curriculum so much more affordable one thing that I absolutely could not live without in our homeschool and it really really makes everything so much easier are the grade level skills checklist that I have because I can go to whatever grade Emily is in which this year it happens to be fifth and I can start reading off the checklist that things that she needs to know and it just gives me peace of mind knowing that okay we have you know evaluated works of literature through discussion debate and written critique we have done varied range of poetic forms we have plotted points on a coordinate grid like these are the things she needs to know in fifth grade and I can check off that we've known them or we've done them even if we haven't followed a specific curriculum and so it really gives me a piece of mind and I'm able to do that because I have a computer and a printer and I can just print them off and have them at my fingertips now if you do not have these yet I will link them in the description box this is a free printable it has all language arts and math skills from varied sources I put them together from preschool through eighth grade and then some suggestions for high school so I will leave the link in the description box and you are free to grab them and use your own computer and printer to print them out also maybe not necessarily a must-have for all homeschools but the next month has on my personal list and I will explain why in just a moment are a laminator and you guys this was like the cheap cheapest laminator I could find at the time and it has lasted from even since Emily was in preschool so we're talking six years now so it doesn't have to be top of the line cheapest one you can find as long as it works just keep it and keep it going and then also this was my big homeschool splurge years ago and I'm so glad I did it it is the pro click binder it's super super easy I have a video showing how I use it so I will link that up here in case you're interested and then I mean you could just use regular scissors but who has time for that so some kind of trim or cutter machine because it is so much easier and now the reason that those make my top list is because I had said before that you can find freebies or digital curriculum at better prices I create 90% of everything we use in our homeschool and because I have a computer and a printer a laminator or cutter and a binder it makes my life so much easier we live an hour from civilization so going somewhere to have something printed or laminated or bound is a pain in the behind and costly so it saves me money and it means I can have things almost instantaneously and it gives me the ability to print and bind things like my planner which keeps me sane and on track and things like our curriculum which basically means that we're ready to go I personally just laminate our covers like this is just a piece of black card stock for the back cover and this is just a cover on card stock laminated so that's what I do for the covers which is why I like the laminator in the cutter to make that happen and then the pro click binding one of the things I love I have only bought spines one time and I've never had to rebuy them because the spines open up and I can take the pages out when we're done do whatever I'm gonna do with them for our portfolio and then reuse the spines for our next study so again it's very cost effective now those are my top must haves those are the things that I could not live without like I can pretty much do 99.9% of all of our homeschooling with those few things and internet service obviously because I would need that to be able to stream those are those are it I need a library card need a computer need a printer my binder my laminator and cutter which again you could just use scissors but I really prefer that and then I could homeschool super effectively and efficiently with just those things but there are a few things that make life just a little bit easier that I enjoy and so I'm gonna share them as bonuses number one a bonus as erasable pens now there are tons of different ones on the market these are the friction friction is my favorite brand and I prefer the friction fine liners they remind me of the paper mate felt but these are erasable so they're nice and bold bright but erasable so when things don't go according to plan which is like 75% of the time maybe even 85% of the time I can just erase it and write whatever we did do or just erase it and draw a line through it because we didn't do anything whatever but it's super nice to have those not a necessity but an extra bonus that I really really appreciate in addition to those I really really love our scrunch maps we have had these again since we started homeschooling this is a map of the world they're very very thin they claim to be indestructible I mean they pretty much are you can't really rip them most people just ball them up it's I mean there's not really a lot that you could do maybe spill something on them I mean I haven't really tried to put them through the ringer but I love that they are super small not that expensive we can shove them in our morning basket we can take them with us when we travel we can do just about anything with them we've played games with them where she stood on them and jumped from one thing to another when she was younger they have been put through the ringer in our house and we have the US in the world and like I said I think they were less than $10 a piece so for $20 we have a map that is pretty indestructible takes up very little space I mean I could literally ball these up to fit in my hand I can shove them in my purse I can take them in the car travel whatever so they've just been a really really nice they're great when you do a lot of things like read alouds for your geography because as we're reading books or as we're learning things especially interest-based learning we can tie in geography almost seamlessly because these are kind of always at our fingertips so we're not doing you know specific geography maybe that day but we're reading a book that references Spain or references you know the fact that they've gone from maybe Florida to Georgia or whatever and it's just really easy and nice to have those on hand and be able to pull those out also a nice bonus but definitely not a necessity are Kindles or some sort of e-reader Emily and I both have the same version of Kindle I love them for a couple of different reasons one because it is very small it takes up hardly any room they are amazing for when we're traveling I remember we used to go on vacations and I would have like a whole entire separate bag for books and now I just need these right here and I don't run out of books because well I can just get more and a click of a button like I don't have to be like oh man we need to stop at a library or bookstore we ran out of books to read and again with that a library card that we already had as our must-haves I can get a ton of books as e-books for free and they basically deliver to our Kindle so I'm not normally buying books for it the investment was just the Kindle and then I mean sometimes you have to wait for a book because it's there's a hold on it especially if it's a really new or hot book but you can read for free once you've made that investment and again you can read anywhere on the go you can have you know numerous books at your fingertips so that having to tote that heavy bag and I really really like that it offers us the ability to read like in bed a little more comfortably so we're not having to have book lights or you know if she falls asleep or if I fall asleep this you know in the bed isn't nearly as bad as a giant hardback with a light on it at least in my experience rolling over all that is a lot more painful than rolling over on a small Kindle you can make the font whatever size you want so that you don't have to wear glasses at bedtime which for Emily and I both is an issue so I like that we can do that there's just a lot of reasons why those are a great extra for our homeschool but again not a necessity it's just one of those things of convenience and then the last thing that I really really enjoy that has become something we use very very frequently in our homeschool but again doesn't have to help doesn't have to be a must-have because there's other ways we can do this is our HP sprocket and this gives us the ability to sync phones or cameras to it from Bluetooth and then print pictures on sticker paper we use this for journaling for history timelines for projects tons of different things that has come in very handy again this is convenience though because technically speaking you could use your top must-haves which were that computer and printer to print any pictures you wanted and then just use an old-fashioned glue stick I would work just as nicely this is just a little bit more convenient a little bit quicker and one of those things that did make my wish list at one point and after years of it being on there I got it and we use it a lot in our homeschool now that we have it so those are my top picks my top five must-haves and then a few extras in case you're looking to add some things maybe to your wish list or to have a few extra resources in your homeschool for convenience now I would love it to hear your homeschool must-haves especially as a homeschool mom what are the things that you cannot live without the things that your homeschool would not run smoothly without or the things that your kids couldn't live without the things that just bring the most joy into your homeschool please leave them down in the comments I can't wait to read them