I had thousands of conputer files of printables and several plastic bins of folders containing laminated cardstock manipulatives, just saved for whenever my son might need or want them.
Then I realized my son had somehow jumped from preK work to solid elementary – with fluent reading and writing and advanced math…and all those printables were just taking up space.
I threw out all the printables and changed the way we learn.
I spent tons of money on paper, ink, and laminating when my middle girls were very little.
Printables worked for us then.
I felt trapped by needing performative homeschooling and showing records of products, but I no longer feel that need. I can see their learning in the critical thinking skills and assimilating questions they ask on our evening walks and around the dinner table.
Now that my kids are growing up, the printables are boring and are met with eye rolls or just simply ignored.
I really don’t have the storage space for all those bins with files of 3-part cards, file folder games, and cutesy literacy and math activities. We move frequently with the military, and being minimalist is a necessity.
It’s very freeing to throw out things I don’t want or need anymore – trash, recycling, donations.
Printables can be a good introduction or substitute for learning about places, events, or people when you can’t travel to experience those things.
Also, I’m not into household printables either. I know they work for some people, but after years of trying and wasting so much paper, I am no longer in denial. I have come to terms with my preference to leave no paper trail.
The cute meal planners, household notebooks, artsy colorful day planners, adult coloring books, colorful prayer journals are just not for me.
I prefer my Excel spreadsheet for our budget and keep the synced family calendar on a phone app. I plan meals based on what I can find that looks good and on sale at the commissary and local grocery. I typically do the heavy shopping twice a month, around pay days.
I have a simple notebook for prayers, scripture writing, and journaling.
We also request companies to email us statements rather than send us paper bills in the snail mail.
Reducing our paper output is better for the environment and helps me maintain my goal of having a simpler life.
Paper items we still love to use:
Notebooking
We primarily use notebooking for assignments and assessment.
The kids have informal journals for art, travel, and writing. We also keep journals for dictation when the kids are young and learning grammar.
I print relevant notebooking pages for history and other subjects. These are more free-form than worksheets, allowing my kids to write about what they find interesting. We often complete these after traveling to summarize what we experienced and learned.
The girls still use their planners where I write their weekly reading assignments and reminds.
We still complete workbooks for spelling and Bible, because they’re easy and work for us. We still do Singapore math workbooks for elementary. We all love Life of Fred math with math journals. My girls are completing VideoText math for middle/high school and my son will too. We all use Apologia science textbooks as guides into real science learning, with lots of experiments and living books as supplements.
But almost everything else we do is experiential learning.
How we learn without printables:
Books
We read a lot. Like, a whole lot.
Our entire curriculum is based on books – literature and history and living books.
Books are super important to me and I want books to be important to my kids.
I don’t want anything dumbed down – we read the real book, not some condensed version in modernized language. We have real dictionaries and encyclopedias and bookshelves in every bedroom and the school room is full of great reading material. We max out our library cards weekly.
See our book lists.
Video
We like to watch videos on Netflix, Amazon, or YouTube that coincide with our studies.
We often compare/contrast the movie to the book.
Video is very important to studying history. It’s the only way we can see it other than in photos or by traveling to view the monuments, museums, and landscape. We also like how many videos bring history to life.
My teen and I watched Saving Private Ryan before our Normandy trip.
Experiential Learning
We like to travel to experience what we’re learning about.
We love to visit museums and natural wonders for art and nature study. I often center our travels around art museums.
We visit churches and castles and military monuments (every chance we get!) to study architecture and church history.
We loved living in Europe for three years to travel to places in history we’ve only read about!
We went to Greece and Rome and Ireland for ancient studies.
We’ve been to Paris and Prague. We went to London, Venice, Florence, and Bruges for medieval and Renaissance studies. We also visited Trim Castle while in in Ireland.
We went back to Paris for early modern studies. We toured an antebellum house and Stone Mountain when we studied the Civil War. We lived in Hawaii for three years and learned the effects of missionaries and plantations on island culture. We went to Flanders to see the WWI monuments.
We traveled to important places for modern studies. We went to Dachau and saw an American cemetery in Luxembourg where Patton is buried. We recently took a trip to Normandy and toured the D-Day museums and monuments.
We visit botanical gardens, aquariums, museums, and zoos for science. We also love nature hikes.
We complete art projects to learn about culture.
We created lovely vases by glass blowing in the Black Forest.
We painted Papier–mâché pots when we studied ancient Greece.
We made henna handprints when learning about India.
We created illuminated historiated initials when learning about medieval Europe.
Throwing out all our printables makes me feel so liberated!
Learning by experience helps my kids remember more than just playing with paper.
I love the direction our homeschool is taking!
I challenge you to make a positive change in your home or homeschool. De-clutter, try a new curriculum, do a family read-aloud, or choose a new technique. Tell me about it!
I started yesterday with deleting BUNCHES of printables. My kids have basically always detested them (except that math ones that were relevant to what they were studying).
It IS liberating! And my computer’s storage is actually breathing a lot better now! haha!
Yes, I’m tackling all the computer files. I have so many freebies because there’s something psychological about NEEDING ALL THE FREEBIES. I’m ok now. :)
Awesome! Printables are a waste of paper too- I realised when I threw out heaps and heaps of them! I use them when absolutely necessary, such as learning to write kind of stuff!
Great post!
#practicalmondays
Yes, my girls loved the printables when they were preschoolers and early elementary. My son does not like any of it and I figure it’s better to pass it on or throw it out.
So much paper. So many emails. I’m working on it while out for the summer from school.
We’ve filled up our paper recycling can the past two months and now I’m deleting all the computer files. I love de-cluttering!
Sharing!
Thanks for sharing!
This might give you a smile. I did not have a laminating machine. If I made printables or flash cards I did them by hand (pressing the laminating sticky together). Not a great way to make printables, but it worked for us. It’s so easy to find helpful education tools, print them and then have piles and piles. I am working on being more selective on what I print and just saving electronically till we need it.
We don’t have a laminator anymore. I started the last couple years by printing and tossing as soon as we were finished, but now we are de-cluttering and removing most of our paper products.
When my boys were little, the equivalent to printables was workbooks. Ugh. So much better to use real books, real experiences, and lots of hands on and face to face.
Yes, I’d love to quit workbooks too. We’re getting there!
I LOVE throwing things out! I am constantly in a de-cluttering mindset and that has improved the efficiency of my household 100%. I do love my household planner, but I make them myself so they are tailored to my home and I don’t have to deal with the unnecessary pages. I love your hands-on approach to homeschooling and we are working to get better at that ourselves. We just completed our first home school year so we are still getting in our groove.
Great tips, great going paperless. Thanks for linking up to Merry Monday! Pinned! Have a great week!
Kim
Thanks for pinning!
I am going paperless more and more and I also find it freeing.
When my kids were school aged, we also read the book and then watched the movie. It gives them a good perspective on what Hollywood does with a book, what has to be left out and what things are not accurate. You can’t just watch a movie and think you understand a situation. A good education all on its own.
Yes! We love comparing movies and videos to the books. We’re almost always disappointed in films based on books. My kids still mention how terribly inaccurate the movie Troy is!
I went through and cleaned out/ tossed out most of our printables a few months ago and I love how freeing it felt not to have a stack of paper waiting for me; reminding me that I probably wasn’t going to use them and had wasted time, paper, ink and money on them. We are a book family and love to read, watch videos, and take field trips… the paper stuff… not so much for us. We have a few workbooks for math and spelling and cursive but other than that we prefer real- life learning.
Oh my goodness! I have never liked printables for school (other than lesson plans) and household notebooks. After I weighed the cost of both ink and paper, it was just cheaper for me to buy flashcards and books that I could resell. After seeing all the lesson plan paper I threw out a couple of years ago, I’ve decided to by dollar store calendars to use for lesson plans. The only thing I print off is a monthly menu calendar for my twice monthly grocery shopping trips. All I see are $$ signs when I hear people talking about all their printables. :) Thanks for linking up with Thankful Thursdays.
Yay! I’m not the only one who doesn’t do well with household printables. :) Our homeschooling style is very similar to yours, although I’ve never been to Europe. Wow! I’m so enamored with Europe that I have a daughter named Ireland, one named London, and one of my other daughter’s middle name is Berlin. Someday… Visiting from Growing in Grace!!
Such fun names! You’ll have to visit those places with your girls someday! :)
I wish I could learn by traveling! :) These are all great ideas! I too have spent a lot of ink on printables that I don’t use, so I try to be very selective about the ones I choose. Thanks for sharing at Welcome Home Wednesdays!
Jennifer,
OHMYGOODNESS! Gotta say I’m officially jealous – I would give my right arm (and I’m right-handed) to travel as you do – although I can imagine it helps that you’re in the military!
Thank you bunches for sharing this at Coffee and Conversation last week – this is our #1 viewed post and we’ll be featuring it at tomorrow’s party!
Have an awesome week and summer…and you GO, girl! :-)
Yay for you for decluttering. Would a preschool want them or maybe some other Moms in your neighborhood might benefit from all this great material. Seems like such a shame for them to end up in the trash. Although, I have to say, I don’t “get” printables. I’ve never printed one, never created one, never downloaded one, I just don’t quite know when I’ve ever felt the need for them, but then my kids are all grown now. Do I have to turn in my “mom card” now? Seriously though, congratulations for weeding out all these unwanted papers.
Summer break has just been started this week. We are also decluttering our paper, especially worksheets that we will not use anymore and keeping notebooking pages and other memorable portfolio. Thank you very much for sharing in Talk it up Thursday.
I’m living in a world of printables. I still have littles who love them but I can see how they could take over. We are gearing up for next year and our piles are growing. Thanks for sharing lots of great ideas!!
My daughter had much the same theory with homeschooling. Her kids have both graduated, one is off to the Marines and the other has already graduated from college. Her style of teaching and allowing them to learn worked well for them.
I’m with you on many of the other printables, too. As you said, they work well for many others but seem burdensome to me. I use one handwritten bullet journal (no art, just lists) and when I journal, I do it as a computer document.
Thanks for sharing. I’m sure your insights will be freeing for many.
Experiential learning is one of my favorite parts of homeschooling! I love the liberating feeling of decluttering!!! At some point, you have to ask yourself, “Do I own this stuff, or does this stuff own me?” Much of the time, the stuff owns us.
Thanks for linking up at InstaEncouragements!
I’m not a homeschooling mom but I’ve always detested printables even from bloggers. I’d rather read an actual book or take notes. I too hate printables. I guess this resonates with many.
So great that you are living your way into a teaching and learning style that suits your family! I have such good memories of books, books, books.
Doing what works for YOU is so important! On my blog about preserving photos, memories, and stories, I’ve offered ONE printable ever (in my almost 10 years of blogging). For me, if a printable makes remembering information easier or “saving” tips or something you want to remember and do, it’s a great idea. Otherwise, as you say, it’s a lot of paper. ;)
#littlecottagelinkparty
Oh yes! I can so relate! Both for homeschool and home. We’re learning like you, too, and there is so much less clutter!
Aagh! I have a mountain of printables…years in the making. Time to rethink adding to the stack. Love your learning suggestions too!
Yes!!!
We’ve been moving in this direction!
For years we’ve gone to church, VBS, and such, and the kids have come home with bags of printed paper stuff. We used to keep it then I started tossing all of that. They never looked at them after the initial program.
We are moving into journals and notebooks as well. I do still enjoy laminating things to hang up, though! 🙂
Jennifer, I need to look at the things I’ve kept that no longer serve me. There is such satisfaction when we get the courage to let go.
I love the freedom that comes with recognizing what works for you and tossing the rest! It’s part of being secure with who we are in Christ, really (and I’m not always great at that.)
Thanks for sharing the freedom to embrace who God made me to be. :)
(And what phone calendar app do you love for your family?)
We just use the Apple and Google calendars at this time and my husband and teen daughter and I are color coded and synced.
“the freedom to embrace who God made me to be” is my prayer for everyone!
Jennifer, sometimes it’s just time for season of new. I like how you realized the printables had to go and it’s okay. :-) I like to keep things electronic as well. And I also have a few simple paper (hard copy) things, besides books, a prayer journal for one.
Jennifer, I not only have printables but full workbooks too — and I’m not even a homeschooler! Your excitement over the freedom it gives you have inspired me as well. And it’s a good time to purge before school starts for us next week.
Thanks for the tips and inspiration.
Blessings!
Jennifer I loved this post. So informative. I am a home school advocate both my children are homeschooling the grands. You have provided great insight and info that I will pass on.
I was glad to get a min. to stop into Pieced Pastimes and see your post.
I have been away too long. I hosted The Fabulous Party. Hopefully I can make it
back soon. I have missed your posts. Happy Memorial Day.
Blessings to your family!
I don’t homeschool. But I do teach at a school. I’m a specials teacher and we’re trying to reduce paper as well. Adobe Spark and Google Classroom are some of our favorite online tools. Good for you for finding a system that works for you!
Those are great tools!
I can surely think of bunches of things that we need to get rid of in our homeschool! #littlecottagelinkparty
I homeschooled my children too, and I somehow collected a filing cabinet full of printables. Throwing them out and completely deleting them from my computer was a little daunting. But after it was done, it was very liberating! Thanks for linking this post to the #GatheringofFriendsLinkParty 5