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Next fall, I'll be homeschooling my 3 children for the first time. I am doing BHFHG. I would like to start shopping for supplies right now. Please post what must-have items you buy for your homeschool. I mean school supplies,not curriculum books. Thanks in advance for your ideas!

For Bigger we have a binder with dividers for science notebooking, science experiments, history notebooking, and art. A lot of people use page protectors, but I just use a three hole punch and stick it in the binder.

We also have a composition notebook for each poetry and Language Arts (dictation, English, anything else that goes under that)

You'll need plain white paper, paints (right now we have cheap stuff because dd doesnt' really care that much), pencils, and I use a ton of sticky tabs to mark our places both in the guide and in the books. You'll need index cards and somewhere to store the vocabulary and Bible verses.... we have a recipe box with alphabet dividers for vocab and a photo album for Bible verse cards.

If you are doing DITHOR, I also use the tabs for this and I have a separate binder to put things like vocabulary assignments and "scratch paper" where she works on her end of genre projects.

We used a 3-ring binder, too. I did use page protectors in ours. We used a 3x5 recipe box for our vocabulary cards. (I really liked this option as it gave Grant practice alphabetizing after the cards were complete. ) We got a cheap 4x6 photo album at WalMart and used that to keep his Bible verses in.

So, notecards (we used 3x5 and 4x6), computer paper, some wide-lined paper, a notebook for dictation. We used a little paper sized white board for English our Bigger year. The white board was much happier than a notebook for some reason that year, so we went with it. If any of your kids are in R&S 3 or are above Singapore 2B, I'd also get notebooks for those subjects.

Masking Tape is called for a few times. It's an absolute staple of Little Hands to Heaven! But, I'm pretty sure we used it a time or 2 in Bigger. You'll need a CD player handy for the hymns (or sing them where your CD player is.

I copied the poems in that guide and put them in a pronged folder for Grant so we each had a copy to read from.

We got a Pampered Chef tool turnabout pictured here. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3775&p=27975#p27975 Not necessary...but we LOVE ours and it is sure handy. I got a set of little stackable office paper bins. My kids each have a "bin" that they put special papers they want to keep in, or work that I need to check over with them. We also have our construction paper in a couple more of those.

Here's another fabulous post by Julie of getting ready for Bigger this past year. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5531&p=40569

Have fun preparing!
Kathleen

Here is a very helpful and time saving time line and cover sheet that you can print out. I cut a file folder in half and taped it to another folder to make a tri-fold. The timeline worked very well for me.

http://daisyhomeschoolblog.blogspot.com ... files.html

hth,
Laura

Oh yes, we used a manila folder for our timeline, but I already had those from some unit studies and lap books we made last year.