Top 12 Simple Homeschool Supplies and Tools for Kindergarten & Elementary
What are the best simple homeschool supplies for the homeschooling family with little kids?
If you are preparing to venture into homeschooling, it can feel like you need a lot of STUFF to make this work!
Your Pinterest feed will likely try to convince you to convert an entire room into being your “school room.” Complete with desks, wall maps, tablets for every child, and shelves for all kinds of storage and books.
As a 12 year homeschool student AND a current homeschooling mom, I can assure you, you do NOT need all of that!
In reality, you don’t need all that much to get started homeschooling!
However, there are some simple homeschool supplies that would be helpful as you venture into homeschooling. You probably already have most of them in your home!
Today, I’m giving you the best simple homeschool supplies for young kids based on the 12 most commonly used homeschool resources and tools that my family reaches for again and again. If you have these things, you will have the basics well covered!
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A Quick Overview of our (Simple, Low-Tech) Homeschool Philosophy:
My husband and I chose to homeschool our children because we want to spend time with them. We also want to be their primary influences in terms of character development and work ethic. We take seriously our role of stewarding and encouraging a love of life long learning.
And we want our home to facilitate a rich family culture of connection, growing and learning together, sibling friendships, and working together as a team.
We tend toward a Charlotte Mason approach (with a lot of reading living books and focusing on character development). But with some Montessori and Waldorf approaches to education thrown in there too.
One thing we are very conservative with is screen usage. While there are many wonderful online resources for homeschoolers (and we do utilize some of them), we absolutely do not want our kids staring at a screen for hours a day.
So we tend toward analog, low-tech, hands-on activities, entertainment, and education opportunities the majority of the time.
This “Top 12” list of simple homeschool supplies reflects those values!
What Simple Tools for Homeschooling at Home Do I Need?
Since our home is small (650 square feet for our family of 6), these are all simple homeschool supplies that don’t need a lot of space to store and utilize. I consider these “the basics” for our homeschool lifestyle. And in reality, I don’t have a lot of other resources in our home specifically targeted toward homeschooling.
Simple Homeschool Supplies #1: A Planner That Serves You
Every homeschooling parent needs a way to plan and check their progress. From my own experience, a paper planner is the way to go.
(Remember, one of my family’s values is to minimize screen time, and that goes for my screen consumption as well!)
A robust, well-organized planner can help you plan your school year or your school term. It can help you track your progress through your plan. And it can do SO MUCH MORE!
My planner is where I meal plan, brainstorm seasonal projects, and block out time to do my weekly house clean (and track my quarterly cleaning progress). In my planner, I keep track of appointments, when the library books need to be renewed, which kid I’ve connected with each day, my health goals, and many other things!
Basically, a solid planner can become your external brain. So you can close down some of the tabs in your head.
The first year I homeschooled, I tried to use my google drive as my planner. It wasn’t the most effective for me. The second year, I used a cheap notebook and created my weekly spread on Sunday night with a ruler and pen each week.
This year, I designed a planner that does all the things I want it to do. I had it printed and bound, and am using it and loving it.
If you want to be notified if when this planner that I designed goes on sale, I will be launching it for worldwide shipment mid year 2025. Sign up for my Top 5 Monthly Recap or follow me on instagram if you want details of when it becomes available!
Must Have Simple Homeschool Supplies #2: A printer that prints in color and black and white
A printer (that prints in color and black and white) is one of most frequently used simple homeschool supplies.
I resisted the idea of having a printer in our home for a long time because I didn’t feel like we had space for one. But when I launched into our first year of homeschooling, one of the first purchases I made was a slim line printer.
Our version is, I believe, the Australian/New Zealand version of this HP DeskJet printer (I purchased mine from The Warehouse, and the model I got isn’t available any more, but this one looks very similar).
It has been a very good investment, and we use it all the time! I print our kids’ chore charts, and we print lots of color-by-number or mazes. We use it for household management tasks, homeschool worksheets, or fun entertainment coloring options.
I highly recommend getting a printer that fits your space and what you anticipate for your needs over the next few years. I wouldn’t want to print an entire curriculum or an ebook from our printer, but for our random documents every day or so, it is perfect.
Simple Homeschool Resource #3: A visual timer
Visual timers are a fantastic simple homeschool supply. They are great to utilize with young kids. It gives them a colorful, visual way to see the time that they have remaining until the timer beeps.
Our visual timer gets a lot of use in our house! We use it daily for our phonics practice. It’s also super handy for when the kids take their morning break. And it is a helpful assistant to tidy-up times and chores as it provides some visual limitations to how long a task can drag out.
We also use it for quiet rest time. And I use it for read aloud time to confirm with the kids that we did, indeed, read for 20 minutes!
It was well worth the $20 that I paid for it!
Handy Homeschool Resource #4: Cheap Composition Notebooks
We often reach for inexpensive composition notebooks to support our learning.
Last year, we studied creepy-crawlies and each week we worked our way through our science “loop.” On day one, we read the science chapter, then on day two, three, and four, we did activities in our science notebook, which was a simple composition notebook with room to draw a picture.
This year, we’re similarly using this easy-to-get-your-hands-on homeschool supply for early learners for both history and science. The notebooks are a designated space to draw or sketch different visual elements of our science or history learning, and a space to summarize key ideas from our learning.
I picked up our notebooks from our local office supply store, but I love how these on Amazon have a different color on the spine of each notebook, which would make it a lot easier to grab the correct notebook for the correct child off the shelf!
Essential, Simple Homeschool Supplies Item #5: Colored Pencils + Pencil Cups
Our kids LOVE to color. A good supply of colored pencils makes my absolute essential homeschooling items for kindergarten and early elementary list.
We use colored pencils regularly in our language arts and math curriculum, as well as for science and history, and the kids enjoy coloring in various forms. Our 5 year old even plays “families” with her colored pencils and they have entire imaginary lives!
Each child has a pencil cup with a unique pattern that they chose on the outside of the cup to hold their colored pencils. Since some kids are harder on pencils than others, we have decided to give each child their own set of colored pencils, although they do trade them around frequently.
These extra large colored pencils are perfect for little hands, if you are looking for homeschool must-haves for early learners. And our bigger kids enjoy the large variety of colors found in the large packs of colored pencils.
I like square design pencil cups so they utilize the space on our cube shelf optimally. This variety pack would be great for multiple kids.
Space Efficient Homeschool Resource #6: Manual Pencil Sharpener + Pencils + Erasers
With as much coloring as our kids do, I decided early on in our homeschooling that I wasn’t going to use the little tiny pencil sharpeners where you twist the pencil with your fingers and wrist.
Because I am in to space saving homeschool set up ideas, which translates to needing to be quite flexible with our homeschool set up, I opted to not get an electric pencil sharpener. Also, they were a lot more expensive at our local office supply store!
So I picked up a manual, hand-crank pencil sharpener that my kids can easily use. It can also move from location to location if needed (counter top, dining room table, outside, etc) without being tethered to an electrical socket.
Like this one on Amazon, you can set the “sharpness” of the grind, which means you don’t have to have ultra-fine sharpened pencils, which tend to break very, very quickly with young users!
I love to get standard, #2 pencils for my kids. I get each child a few pencils in one color, so I can easily tell who has remembered to put their pencil away and who has left it out.
And, since the erasers on pencils seem to disappear at frightening paces, I make sure I have erasers on hand. Again, I like to have a designated color for each child.
Homeschool Organization for Beginners Tool #7: Scissors, Glue, and Tape
Cutting paper apart and then gluing or taping it back together are common activities when homeschooling preschoolers, kindergarteners, and young grade schoolers.
Our scissors, glue, and tape are used multiple times per week. So I definitely think they are easy homeschool tools for small spaces.
I love having a solid pair of carbon steel craft-type scissors for my own use with homeschooling. And then we have several blunt-tipped scissors for our kids to use as well.
We keep a good supply of non-toxic glue sticks on hand, as well as rolls of scotch tape and masking tape. I’ve only ever found the basic cream-colored masking tape at our local office supply store, but I could see our family having a lot of fun with this rainbow assortment of masking tape!
Easy Homeschool Tool for a Small Space #8: Magazine Holders
Since our kids love to color, we always seem to have a lot of half-finished coloring or paper craft projects on hand.
I’ve found that having a magazine holder box for each child provides us with a way to organize our small space, keep it aesthetically tidy, and also provide a space-boundary of where the arts and crafts project can be contained.
Here, again, we give each child a different color or pattern to keep their art work in. Once the magazine holder is so full that it is spilling over the sides or no more papers can easily fit inside it, that’s our cue to go through the box and downsize.
Simple Homeschool Supplies #9: Hand-Held White Boards + White Board Marker + Eraser
We got a small, hand-held white board as part of one of our curriculums, and I’m so glad we did!
I wouldn’t have thought to buy a hand-held whiteboard, but we are constantly reaching for ours.
It is helpful for jotting down the math equation when reading story problems. Spelling words are easy to write and erase on the white board. And I even use it to leave notes or a checklist for our kids to do some independent tasks!
If you’re going to be homeschooling early learners, I highly recommend getting at least one hand held dry erase white board and some markers and an eraser. You’ll use it for all kinds of useful things!
Minimal Homeschool Set Up Checklist Item #10: A Library Card to Your Local Library
If you have a local public library, it’s a great idea to get a library card for homeschooling in the early years. Our family visits the library every 2-3 weeks and we pick up a stack of books.
Typically, we hit up the children’s picture book area for storybooks, and then I also like to browse for children’s novels or non-fiction history or science books to compliment whatever we are studying at that time in those subjects.
I also search the library catalogue online and make selections to pick up via click-and-collect. Since our local library is part of our city’s network of libraries, I can access books from all the different branches this way.
Usually, library cards are free if you live in the library’s zone, and it is well worth it to do whatever paperwork you need to do in order to get a library card.
If nothing else, it gives you a variety of children’s storybooks to read aloud with your kids, which is so valuable for vocabulary development and relationship connection, even if the content of the stories aren’t anything super academic!
I talk more about our love of reading aloud in my post on Slow Homeschooling, and the library’s resources is one of the ways that this approach to homeschooling is so enjoyable for us!
Affordable Homeschool Supplies List Item #11: Flash Cards
Having a package of flash cards is a handy homeschool supplies idea for early learners.
We use flashcards for a lot of phonics learning, so it does make sense that it may be considered a homeschool must-have for early learners for some families. Although I have been known to cut up regular sheets of printing paper if I didn’t have actual flash cards around!
But having a package of pre-made flashcards is handy.
I like to use flashcards with phonics and sight words by laying them across the floor and letting my kids hop from card to card as they practice their sounds or words. I also like to lay them out in a 2×3 grid and let the kids roll a dice to find out which word they need to say or sound they need to practice.
Another way I use flashcards is to hide the flashcards around the house and then send the child on a hunt to find all the cards, bring them to me one at a time, and practice the sound or word.
If you have kinesthetic learners or learners with a lot of physical energy, I think flash cards are a super handy way to channel that energy productively!
Simple Homeschool Supplies Item #12: A Cube Shelf or Other Easy-to-Access Storage Spot
Storage for homeschooling materials is listed here at the end of the list because I don’t believe you need anything super fancy or specific for your homeschooling supplies. Regular old bookshelves would work totally fine!
That being said, when we started homeschooling, I scoped out our home to figure out where I should put our “homeschool command station.” I decided that the ideal location was this passageway between the common area and the kitchen, since it was one of our few interior walls that wasn’t already being utilized for something.
After measuring the space, I decided that getting a large cube shelf would maximize the usefulness of that little area. Our cube shelf (which I actually found on facebook marketplace) was going to serve as our homeschooling supplies storage location, and it was also going to be a bit of an extended pantry area and kitchen storage area.
I love having the cube shelf because we can easily distinguish which cube is for which purpose. Additionally, I keep the kids’ math and language arts work books on a low shelf where they can access them themselves.
We use our magazine holders on the shelves to keep papers tidy. And I use desktop organizer drawers to store a lot of our everyday tools. It’s also easy to utilize bins for storing more messy things.
I’m a fan of any ways that I can empower my kids to take ownership of their stuff by simple organization methods and accessibility. For us, having a large cube shelf has been the perfect space saving homeschool set up solution.
What Other Simple Homeschool Supplies Do I Need to Homeschool a 5-year-old or 7-year-old?
If you are starting out homeschooling little kids, there are a few more things that I would suggest you consider. I don’t think of these as the basic, simple homeschool supplies, but they are worth mentioning.
1. A curriculum that fits your philosophy of education
A solid curriculum is one of the simple homeschool supplies that many families will consider a non-negotiable, and I personally agree that it is very useful for our family.
However, I also think there is room for the road schooling and unschooling families who are creating valuable, real-life-learning curriculums as they go. So it gets listed here in the “bonus” section!
As part of applying for the legal right to homeschool my kids, I needed to define my philosophy of education. It was super helpful for me to identify our family’s values in this area as we moved on to curriculum comparing and shopping!
I have a post focusing specifically on how to start homeschooling little kids, and in it one of the 3 steps is identifying your philosophy of education. I chat more about the different philosophies of education in the video below.
When you have your philosophy identified, you can narrow down your curriculum search to find a curriculum that caters to that philosophy.
Our family is using The Good and the Beautiful for our math, language arts, and science curriculum this year. I credit the curriculum and how it aligns with our values for making homeschooling a lot of fun for our family.
2. A laptop computer or tablet to access YouTube and other digital, online content
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we are very conservative when it comes to screen usage. However, I do love having my laptop to pull up YouTube to find interesting videos to watch with my kids.
Recently, we read about the tallest waterfalls in our devotional book, and we all wanted to see what it actually looks like. So we went down a little YouTube rabbit trail viewing famous and noteworthy waterfalls around the world.
My kids also enjoy doing a children’s workout video on rainy afternoons, and The Good and the Beautiful’s Youtube Channel has some fun ones, along with Miss Linky and GVO Kids (although I am really picky about which Miss Linky and GVO Kids workouts they watch because I like low-stimulation!)
I believe there is a place for screens to be an intentional tool on a simple homeschool supplies list, but I don’t think it is essential!
3. A pocket binder with clear pockets for art storage
As I’ve mentioned, our kids LOVE making art. And although we live in a small space, and although I am a minimalist, sometimes I feel like I should keep every piece of art they create!
I decided, instead, to keep my favorites in a display book with clear pockets to limit the amount of things we save. Thus, a pocket display notebook is one of our well used simple homeschool supplies.
Our pocket binder has been collecting the kids’ art for several years. I usually date and write who the art work was by on the back of the page. As the binder gets fuller, the kids and I go through it and we prioritize what to keep and what to toss.
It’s a fun way to hang on to the work they do, but also not let it completely overwhelm us!
Happy Simple Homeschool Supplies Shopping and Collecting!
I hope this list of simple homeschool supplies was helpful for you, and I’d love to hear in the comments below if you think there is anything I missed!
If you like these ideas, would you share this post on Pinterest or another social media platform? It helps my blog grow, and it may be helpful or encouraging for another homeschooling family out there.
And if you’re interested in other homeschool content, you may like some of my other posts on homeschooling:
- Weekly and Daily Routine: 1st Grade and Preschool
- Our Simple Daily Routine for 2nd Grade and Kindergarten
- How to Start Homeschooling Little Kids: 3 Essential Steps
- Slow Homeschool: Why It’s OK and How to Make It Work For Your Family
- How to Avoid Homeschool Overwhelm with Babies and Toddlers in the House