If your homeschool is anything like ours, wall space is prime real estate. There are so many possibilities, so many things that could go up there to help reinforce concepts, inspire, or even just help create a beautiful environment in which to learn!
When we were first beginning our homeschool journey, On a whim (in one of many moments of newbie homeschooler self-doubt), I grabbed some charts online, the kind I thought were ‘supposed’ to be on the walls if your kids were in a public preschool or kindergarten setting. Trying to homeschool on a strict budget is quite a challenge, so splurging on these posters was kind of a big deal at the time, as well as deciding what to take up our little usable wall space! Anyway, I laminated them at the local office supply store, and hung them up, hoping I didn’t just waste a bunch of money just to take them down in a couple weeks when I found something else that would be much more useful to put up. Lo and behold, these charts are used everyday! Every. Single. Day.
Which charts are they, you might be asking? One chart of the days of the week, one of the months of the year, and a number chart 1-100. So simple, and so shockingly helpful!
The kids love counting (seriously, they run around singing the numbers from 1-100, thanks to that chart!) and run over to the chart to help figure out their math work, and practice skip counting (placing it down at kid eye level was key). With the older kids running around sing-counting, the younger ones are learning to count really quickly and easily just by listening to the older ones!
The days of the week chart has been really helpful for the kids learning the days of the week, and for helping them keep track of what day it is. I simply cut a star shape out of construction paper and wrote ‘Today!’ on it, and mock-laminated it with packing tape (my favorite hack for those of us without a laminator). I put the Today! star on the chart with poster putty, and the kids move the star every morning to whichever day of the week it is (seriously, they fight over who gets to do it). It really helps us stay on track because the kids are now generally aware of our weekly routine, so I don’t have to constantly remind them what we have to do each day (major sanity-saver!).
The months of the year was the chart that I had the most doubts about. Once they learned the names and order of the month, that’d be wasted wall space, right? Oh no. Our months of the year chart is a little treasure trove of important family days (birthdays, anniversaries), holidays, significant seasonal transitions (solstice, equinox, cross-quarter days), and even astronomical events (full moon, eclipse)! I made small, simple designs (or symbols in some cases) and cut them out, wrote the name of the significant day on the back, and (of course) mock-laminated them. With poster putty, each little tile is stuck to the month on the chart during which it occurs. At the beginning of each month, we take the tiles for that month off the chart and stick them to their corresponding date on the calendar (the free printable kind). The kids now know when their birthdays are (and those of their siblings), what month each holiday is in, which month belongs to which season and so much more! With the brightly colored tiles, the kids can take a quick look at the calendar and know exactly when the significant days are, which is great for my straight-arrow-plan-ahead kid, and my tends to run anxious-needs-to-know-what’s-going-on-kid, as well as my free spirit-super-excited-about-everything kid!
We made a few extra tiny unnamed birthday tiles (to mark the birthdays of those in our extended family) and the full moon and eclipse to place and replace each month on the printable calendar. The poster putty makes them super easy to take off the printed calendar at the end of the month and place back on the months of the year chart for next year.
While the posters themselves are gold, the placement was a big part of their success. I have the number chart way down near the floor, at kid height, right across from the breakfast table. The days of the week and months of the year, are slightly higher, just above the number chart. This way, every day they are sitting for breakfast or lunch and see these charts. When they need to check something for math, they run over and the number chart is right at their eye level. When they fight over who gets to change the star to the current day of the week, they do have to jump and grab it, but for them it’s fun (and it keeps the star out of the baby’s mouth 🙂
So while I don’t urge you to succumb to self-doubt and ‘should’ all over yourself, trying to figure out how to make your homeschool ‘legit’ by resembling a conventional school room, in this case it worked out. Some day I hope to cover the walls with beautiful botanical sketches or prints of priceless masterworks of art, for now, these simple little charts that once seemed so expensive, seem like a total bargain for all the good that they’ve done for us!
What do you put up on the walls of your homeschool?