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Are there any supply lists available for the year plan Creation to Christ?
I would love a list of supplies for each week if someone has made one even if it is things commonly found around the house. I can make one up by going page by page but if someone else has already done it... I would like to make sure I am prepared for projects. My son really gets de-railed if we don't have an item and a project needs to wait. I know it is good for him to work on understanding and patience but I also want the school days to go smoothly and for him to have fun. He stresses easily.

I don't know of a supply list by week for the guide. I think a good way to do things is just glance over the upcoming week before doing your shopping for the week just to make sure you have what is needed. Usually the items are common things like construction paper, clay, toothpicks, etc. Most of the time anything extra that you will need will be in the history project or science box. Occasionally there are some foods that you can make with the geography guide, but they are optional. So it's pretty easy to just take a look a the history project box for the upcoming week and then the science box on day 4 for the experiment. If something unusual is needed for science, like M&Ms for one of the experiments, that is usually mentioned a day or two ahead of time. The most unusual thing for us that we needed to get was some refrigerated biscuit or crescent dough. It's all pretty common stuff that you can get at your local grocery or big box store so a quick look before doing your weekly shopping should be enough to keep you well supplied.

We will be using CTC in August and I would love a supply list as well! Thanks!

If there is one broken down by week or even by several weeks that would be awesome! We typically will have to put off doing something if it gets done at all because we don't have something listed...

Ladies,

One thing to keep in mind as you use the guides is that we specifically choose not to put a supply list in our guides for several reasons. One is that often many of our activities will suggest several variations of an item for you to use. For example, an activity may allow you to use chocolate chips, or raisins, or Oh-shaped cereal pieces. You would not need to have all of these items, as any will do. Or, another activity may mention using a bean bag or a rolled up pair of socks. If you made a list and gathered all of these items, you'd quickly discover that you only really needed two items from all of these listed! This makes a supply list daunting and confusing at best to make and to follow.

Next, we do not include a supply list because we simply intend for you to open your guide and teach. This means that we actually write the activities intending for you not to have to shop for special supplies. Not having what you need will then be the exception rather than the rule. This thinking stems from my past experience in supply list gathering with many other curriculums through many years of teaching. I was always daunted by the supply gathering, amazed at the expense once all of the supplies were added up, and challenged to find a place to store the supplies to have handy as the year progressed. This is not the experience we desire for you!

A last reason is that we know many families have multiple children and the gathering and storing of multiple supplies for multiple kiddos can really be a deterrent. Rather than requiring you to read a supply list in each guide that you are using each day, we simply expect you to gather at the moment the experiment or activity arrives. If you are a planner by nature, and I certainly am, then you may find this shift to working without a supply list a challenge at first. But, I encourage you to try teaching the guide as written, without the fervor of supply gathering. We've seen families make supply lists for our guides, only to ditch them as they realized they weren't necessary.

One last benefit of foregoing a supply list is that it enables you to make quick substitutions as needed. The longer you use HOD, the more you'll discover that even if you don't have the exact supply mentioned in the guide you can often easily think of something else that will substitute equally well and is right at hand. This is a wonderful part of teaching right within your own home and was a benefit I could never reap in the public school classroom!

I will also share that it has been a huge blessing for me to see my older kiddos learning to gather their own supplies as they work, put things away after they're done, and think of substitutions that may work when the situation occasionally arises. These are all organizational skills that every kiddo needs to learn and are a by-product of using the guides that I was thrilled to see in practice daily as my kiddos matured.

While there are exceptions to every rule, there is a rhyme and a reason (and much experience in teaching) behind everything we do. If the planner in me can make this transition, it is possible you can too! If you really feel the need to plan ahead, simply look over the week (or day) before it arrives and jot down the few things you may not have. It will be cheaper on your budget and quicker than gathering for 140-170 days ahead of time and will still allow you to quickly substitute things you may have on hand for those you might be missing from the guide.

Guides that do have unusual supplies (like CTC and its paint supplies or MTMM and its science kits) do have specific supply lists. The Introductions of our guides make sure to mention these things. The rest should be things you really do have in your home.

Blessings,
Carrie

Thanks Carrie for your reply!

I am not a person that can plan too far ahead, however due to the fact that we don't carry a lot of common household items (i.e. raisins, dry cereal, paper plates, etc)
I have learned to read through the next unit as we are closing out the week on Friday. Then I add any item(s) to my list, buy it on Monday. I come home, put it away, and FORGET about it until I pull the guide out on that particular day.
Then I am able to have a truly open and shut case. If it involves products upstairs, then we plan it around snack time. Otherwise it is all ready to grab downstairs.
I love the just grab it and go feel. Everything else is so planned that I love to use HOD guides, so I can focus more on my children.
I know it can be nice to plan ahead, but I think by doing it weekly you would have the balance in freedom by having it available, but not stressing by planning too far ahead.
Hope this makes sense.

Just wanted to say I love the way HOD uses common items around the house and have found that a special shopping trip is rarely required! I would definitely not think about buying up supplies for the entire year, just like to look over the coming week and make sure we have the items required or similar items to make our school day run as smooth as possible.

I do usually let my kiddos try to gather their own materials but love the idea of them putting them away as well...need to work on that one a bit!

I just thought that someone might have put together a quick reference for each week.

I'm sure most things will be around the house but a list might help me know at a glance if I needed to add something to my shopping list.

I'm glad that most things will be available right here at home.

I'm also an exception to the rule. Generally the only thing I will have for the younger guides is paper, glue, and aluminum foil. We generally don't have all the other things. And even some of the things we do have (paper, glue, scissors, crayons, etc) tends to run away So for me, a weekly supply list would actually cut down on my work. It would make the guide MORE open and go. There is at least one thing a week (with four guides) that we are unable to do until we have a store trip. Sometimes that is so far after the day that it just doesn't get done.

I do understand that a complete supply list is rather difficult to put together And I wouldn't expect HOD to go to the trouble since the majority of homes would have those items.

What I have done every year is I just go through the guide during the summer and for each week I write down any maps that need printed and then any supplies I will need. I keep that in my teachers notebook in the front and on Saturday I look to see if there are any of the supplies that I don't have in the house. Usually it is just things like grocery items. It really doesn't take me very long to do this and it actually helps me to get excited about the projects he will be doing during the year.