What prep to do for homeschool

[TingTastic]

Just trying to prepare for the joy that is homeschooling 3 young children whilst WFH fulltime again

Is there anything that would be useful to purchase in advance? So far I have:

• replenished stationery (pencils / rubber / sharpener / coloured pencils / glue / ruler)
• purchased headphones in the hope that there will be some semblance of online lessons this time
• cleared space for work and drawers to keep work in
• bought all the gin

Any tips to help make this as easy as possible and the children as independent as possible would be greatly appreciated (2 x Y1 and 1 x Y3)

My prep included:
1, teeing up Nanny and grandad for listening to DD read three times a week on Facetime. Nice for them as they are retired.
2, setting iPad app limits so DD knows exactly how many hours of Netflix and games she can use per day
3, buying more printer ink.
4, reading the school curriculum plan so I have a better idea what are the required standards for the core subjects this year, including the Statutory Spellings for y3/y4 (this would apply to your Year 3 child)

I found having a ready supply of healthy-ish snacks helped. You can make up a lunchbox pack in advance for each child, to avoid them badgering you for snacks. I found my DD in Y4 focused better when she had a bottle of water on the table and a snack box to pick at. So Monday could be boxes of raisins, apples, a tub of popcorn, cartons of OJ. Tues could be breadsticks and Dairylea triangles, tangerines, slice of cake, carton of apple juice. And so on.

Mine is year 6 and has been doing online school all year.
What we set up
A proper desk and eventually a better desk chair.
Something to write down assignments
The standard paper, pencils, etc.
A power outlet to keep on the desk so when we need to move her laptop we don’t have to climb under the desk
A riser for the laptop so it’s a better height for online classes.
A small whiteboard
Some fidget toys for during lectures
A printed schedule of the day
We use an Alexa to announce when each class is starting, but any kind of clock that can handle multiple, alarms will work.

What I found useful last time were
• printer ink & paper
• art supplies (A3 & A4 paper in white, black and colours, some card, paints) and
• basic stationery (pencils, pens, sharpeners, erasers, ruler, geometry kit)

Some of the school book publishers made their resources available last time and my dc were delighted to be let loose on the various games and extras.

My priorities were reading, maths and exercise and anything else we got through was a bonus.

Food habits were a bit odd too - we got through a lot more biscuits than normal.

Good ideas, thanks. Especially in terms of having healthy-ish snacks on hand that they can get themselves