Homeschooling offers a unique opportunity for parents to customize their child’s education and provide a personalized learning experience. One way to enhance this experience is through the use of printable materials. Printable materials offer a variety of benefits for homeschooling families, including:
- Customization: Printable materials can be tailored to fit the individual needs of each child, providing a personalized learning experience.
- Cost-effectiveness: Many printable materials are available for free online, providing a low-cost option for accessing educational resources.
- Reusability: Printable materials can often be reused, reducing waste and saving money.
- Hands-on learning: Printable materials can be used to create hands-on learning activities that help children to practice skills and better understand and retain information.
At our household, we have decided to follow the Montessori method to homeschool. This approach emphasizes hands-on learning and encourages children to explore and discover at their own pace. It’s common to use different materials that the child can hold and practice skills with. But even though there’s minimal (to none) use of worksheets unlike other homeschooling methods, we use a lot of printables such as cards and booklets to supplement the lessons and provide extension activities for the children.
I personally create these Montessori printables (such as movable alphabets, three-part cards, math extension printables) and list them up on my Etsy, if you’re interested. Some of them are linked as examples below. Those highlighted in yellow are FREE!
I have also been a regular contributor of printable materials to homeschooling bundle programs such as the For The Love of Homeschooling and My Mega Bundles.
For these reasons, I want to share with you 90+ ideas sorted into different kinds of printables so you can create your own and provide the resources you need for your children if you want to. You can also use these in the classrooms!
What are the Different Kinds of Homeschool Printables?
1. Unit Study Printables
- Designed for in-depth learning of specific topics and integrates all related subjects into the topic.
- They are usually in bundles or collections and can include worksheets, reading lists, hands-on activities, bite-size facts, external links to references or videos
These printables are perfect for those who want their children to gain a deeper understanding of a subject or a book. The format and activities can vary depending on learning styles, methods of teaching, and ages.
2. Notebooking Pages
- Helps children organize, record information, and prompt children to write their own thoughts.
- Can include graphic organizers, writing prompts, reading journals, research journal, blank writing sheets, checklists, and record sheets for teachers
These help children organize and record information. These pages are great for those who want their children to develop organizational skills. These can also help the child unleash their creative thoughts into writing.
3. Booklets
- Used for mini-lessons to reinforce concepts, and can be made by children
- Can include reading words or short passages, writing prompts, coloring or drawing pages, numbers, and more
Booklets are perfect for children’s keepsake to remember the lesson better. These can be made by children as a compilation of their work or provided by the adult as a handy reference to their lesson.
4. Printable Decorations
- Enhances the homeschooling experience
- Includes bulletin board borders, banners, labels, and other decorative elements
These decorations are perfect for those who want to create an engaging and welcoming learning environment. We believe that the learning environment is also important like the learning materials and these create a space that your child will love to learn in.
5. Worksheets
- Used to reinforce concepts taught in lessons with lots of variety depending on age, needs of the child, skill being mastered, focus of the topic, etc.
- Some activities can be bound together and some can also be laminated to be reused again.
Worksheets are great for those who want their children to have extra practice with a particular concept, accommodating different learning styles and abilities.
Some examples include:
- Solving exercises such as math operations
- Tracing sheets for letters, numbers, phrases, quotes, verses
- Cutting sheets, strips, shapes, images (then gluing them after)
- Matching type
- Counting objects
- Graphing sheet
- Do-a Dot Marker activities
- Connect the dots
- Coloring pages and color by number activities
- Musical worksheets
- Telling time worksheets
- Puzzles such as mazes, word searches, crossword puzzles, cryptogram, sudoku
6. Educational Cards
- Also used to teach and reinforce concepts and could be customized to fit the individual needs of children in different ages. These can also vary depending on the method of teaching and activity being presented.
These cards are perfect for those who want their children to have a more interactive learning experience. We believe that learning can and should be fun, and these can be enjoyable for your child when presented with example and enthusiasm.
Some examples include:
- Sorting cards to practice comparing or grading, by category or classification or characteristics (color, size, kind, etc.)
- Sequencing cards (arranging by event, by order, or by level)
- Pattern cards which a child can duplicate with manipulatives
- Black and white cards which are usually for newborn babies
- Clip cards such as for counting, matching beginning or ending letter sounds
- Matching cards (picture to picture, picture to definition, word to picture, word to definition, or against a control card, shadow to image) such as Montessori nomenclature cards
- Manipulatives that can serve as DIY alternatives for other classroom materials such as movable alphabet letters and punctuations, grammar symbols, counters, bead math materials, etc.
- Word cards which help the child focus on a single word to read without images that give clues, such as puzzle word cards or sight word cards, phonetic word cards, words containing blends and phonograms
- Flash cards such as number operations cards, and vocabulary building cards with image, picture, and sometimes, definition
- Game cards such as for riddles, memory games, action games, board games
7. Educational Posters
- Designed to display educational information
These posters are great for those who want their children to have a visual representation of educational concepts. They can be used to supplement lessons and make learning more interesting and engaging.
Some examples include:
- Control sheets for activities such as sorting, matching, identifying parts and showing components of a whole
- Reference charts for alphabet letters, numbers, colors, animals, and other classifications
- Quantitative display such as charts, graphs, and diagrams
- Wall arts that convey beauty
- Motivational posters
- Maps
8. Mats
- Designed to provide a physical surface for hands-on learning
- Can include playdoh mats, dining placemat, counting mat, sorting mat, puzzle mat, writing mat, scavenger hunt game
These mats are perfect for confining work on designated space. These are usually used together with other printables or materials. These are also often laminated to preserve quality and be used again.
9. Piece Puzzles
- Used to engage and challenge children and could vary depending on age and skill being mastered.
- Can include symmetry puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, counting strips
These puzzles are perfect for those who want their children to develop problem-solving skills to form something that consist with pieces or to solve something that was unknown.
Conclusion
Homeschooling can provide children with a personalized and tailored education. Using printable materials is a cost-effective and customizable way to supplement homeschooling lessons. It offers benefits such as hands-on learning and reusability.
To make the experience enjoyable, it’s important to identify your child’s interests and learning style. Choose a homeschooling method that aligns with your goals and principles, and provide materials that support it.
This list provides different printable materials to offer variety in your home activities.
Comment below your favorite printable materials to use!
