Pinterest with Purpose: How I Use Pinterest for Homeschooling

When I first saw Pinterest over a year ago, I was overwhelmed.

How can I sift through all these great ideas?

What pinners should I follow?

What boards should I create?

Should I pin my own blog content?

How can I best use Pinterest as a help, rather than a time waster?

Do I really need another thing to organize in my life?

With some hesitation, I signed up to give it a try.  For the first few months I really didn’t do much with it. I was still trying to figure it out.  I wanted a strategy so that I didn’t waste too much time just staring at other people’s ideas that I may or may not actually be able to use in my own life.

I decided that if Pinterest was really going to be useful and practical for me, then I needed to narrow down my purpose (there’s that one word for 2014 popping up again).

Create and follow boards that focus on specific needs in your homeschool.

Are you looking for the perfect math curriculum? Create a board for math curriculum reviews. I may be biased since I’ve been reviewing homeschool curriculum since 2008, but real life reviews from others who are actually using the material have been so helpful to me in my own homeschooling. Finding a good math curriculum is a current need.

Other boards to create for current needs might include a board for the Civil War if you’re currently studying that time period, a board for British literature if you’re studying that, or even Legos if your kids are currently obsessed with those.  Remember that these first boards you create/follow are for current specific needs. That will make them easy to organize and easy to access when you need them most. You will be less likely to be distracted by other things if you start with that.

Create and follow boards that focus on specific wants in your homeschool.

These are the boards for future use.  For instance, you’re currently studying the Civil War, but you know that WWI will be coming soon and you just saw a great idea, resource, or blog post for that time period. You don’t want to lose the idea, but you don’t want to spend too much time pursuing it right now.

Did you see a great idea for middle school science projects, but your kids are still learning to read? Create a board called Middle School Science and pin it for later. Remember that the more specific you are, the easier your ideas will be to find and organize later. In this way you can use Pinterest as a time saver rather than a time waster. Notes that you might ordinarily make on scrap paper and lose by the time you need them can be visually organized for future use on Pinterest.

Create and follow boards that encourage your homeschool heart.

There is so much that is tangibly practical on Pinterest. Need a recipe for homemade play-dough, you’ll find it. Want to know how to organize your workboxes for maximum efficiency? It’s on there. With all these practical tips, don’t neglect the heart of homeschooling. I keep a board just for things that offer encouragement and inspiration to me as a homeschool mom. On days when things aren’t going according to plan or I need a little pick-me-up, I can find something positive to read from this board.

Create and follow boards that focus on specific subjects in your homeschool.

This is a little more obvious, but again I stress specificity. Think beyond math, reading, and science. More specific topics like lapbooking, free resources, unit studies, Charlotte Mason, and other methods can help you to narrow the subjects and make it more practical to use your Pinterest boards efficiently.

Ditch the miscellaneous category.

I actually learned this one outside of using Pinterest, but it applies. We have moved often, sometimes out of state moves. When you get in a packing frenzy, you have a tendency to start labeling boxes as “miscellaneous.” Big mistake! Whatever has gone into those boxes becomes doomed to “junk drawer” status, or it never gets unpacked at all. Now there might have been some really useful stuff in those boxes like scissors or extra pens, but if I can’t find them, I can’t use them. They are just so much flotsam to carry around from move to move.  Clutter is the enemy here.  If you want to make Pinterest really useful, don’t make it a junk drawer. Make sure everything you pin has a purpose so you will be able to actually find it and use it when you need it.

Those are some basics that I found helpful when I got started with Pinterest. If you already have some “junk” boards or pins, it’s not too late to clean them out and get a fresh start!

How do you use Pinterest for homeschooling?

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Sara

Author/Speaker/Consultant at Heart and Soul Homeschooling

Sara is a homeschool mom to 3 creative girls. She holds a degree in Social Work specializing in early childhood development, which led to her interest in individualized educational options like homeschooling. She believes that learning should be a lifelong adventure, not just a checklist to get through. She is a writer, avid reader, introvert (INFJ), and dreamer of dreams.

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