Gift and Supply Guide
MY TECH HIGH & TECH TREP FRIENDLY
Since our time with My Tech High we’ve been given about $6000 in reimbursement funds for educational materials. In this post I am breaking down some of our favorite things and also organizing them by items that can double up as holiday or birthday gifts. While these funds sure aren’t necessary to make a home-education possible, they are helpful in creating an inviting learning environment and such a blessing. If you are unfamiliar with programs like My Tech High - you can read more about our experience with them here. And, if you’re not apart of a program like MTH - these guides may also be helpful for those who are looking to add more educational items in your home, those new to homeschooling or veteran moms who might be looking for something new.
HOLIDAY AND BIRTHDAY GIFTS
Let’s face it, most places have a hard time competing with the convience and price savings that Amazon Prime members have. This also falls true for those who use programs like My Tech High because utilizing Amazon for your purchases make the process for shopping and reimbursements much easier. Unless there is substantial price savings somewhere else, I will choose to purchase an item through Amazon versus in-person at a store like Wal-Mart or Target because saving my receipts and then creating a digital copy isn’t worth my time even if its a few bucks cheaper elsewhere. Plus, I am a homeschool mom who is with her kids all day long so solo shopping trips are few and far between these days.
And a quick note on reimbursements - When I gather my Amazon receipts I save the order invoice as a PDF and match the title of the file to the description I put on the item in our My Tech High Reimbursement Tracker 2.0. I use 00, 01, 02, ect to organize the files on the tracker and the title of files on my computer so the files fall into the same order as I have them on the cover sheet. Once I have all the files for a complete reimbursement, I generate the cover sheet, and then I create one consolidated PDF and upload it as one file to MTH (so for my twins I am only uploading 3 total files per girl - the Core Funds $900, Technology Allowance $500, and $250 for Tech Class.) This makes it REALLY easy to go back in and make edits if the reimbursement request gets kicked back.
I went back through my Amazon orders for the last few years and added over 70 items that would be child-friendly for gifts. Most of these items are going to be for early elementary ages because those are the ages of my children. I tried to group like items together by subject. You’ll find puzzles and games for logic and math and lots of STEM friendly items - everything from lego education, wooden blocks to magnatiles and cardboard construction. I linked a few of the science experiments we’ve done and some nature friendly studies - butterflies, frogs and an ant one we’re going to do next spring. I added a handful of art and craft supplies because these are always easy gifts, some easy sensory bin fillers, and animal figures we love to use in our bins or just make play with. As far as books go - I could do an entire list of just books. We have used a lot of our funds on books! A lot! But, for the sake of simplicity, what I did was choose my top two educational favorites (The Big Book Series and Little Kids First Big Book Of Series) and rather than list them all - just know I would recommend picking your child’s favorite right now within that series. For example, if your kids are into space right now - I’d go find the Little Kids Big Book of Space - even though I linked the dinosaur one. I also added a few of my kids favorite early readers and picture books. You can always browse some of my other Amazon lists for book recommendations. We have lots for holidays and units we’ve done. Visit my MTH Friendly Gift Guide by clicking here or the button below.
BOXES AND SUBSCRIPTIONS
We’ve used Kiwi Co and Atlas Crates a ton for holiday gifts and birthdays. You can’t go wrong just shopping their store. The only other box subscription we’ve used is Music Adventure Box which we love. You can also buy these boxes individually without the subscription if you prefer that.If you’re looking to gift a subscription - a simple cheap one we have used for over a year now is Letters From Afar. We got reimbursed for these letters last year, but since it’s only $6 a month - I didn’t bother this year.
EXPERIENCES
If you’re in Utah, we have a family Thanksgiving Point Pass we get reimbursed every year (I don’t use it as a gift, but you could.) You might also look into the 365 Connect Pass. We’ve used reimbursement for day passes at the Space Museum, Natural History Museum and This Is The Place State Park too. Pretty much anything along these lines - even out of state. If you know you have a family vacation coming up - you can plan a number of activities and submit your day passes for reimbursements. We also get a National Parks pass each year. And, remember, you can also use these funds for plays and musicals at places like Hale Center Theater or the Capital Theater.
CLASSES
In years passed we’ve used funds for piano classes and a lot of people use funds for sport classes. These would both be great gifts including classes for things like cooking or sewing. As long as it’s a group class at a business that is registered with the state, you’ll be able to apply MTH funds toward the reimbursement. We have also used our funds for our Lexia and Prodigy subscriptions. We have been so busy with our 3rd grade materials we haven’t used Lexia as much this year. I would still recommend it, but maybe just for K-2nd unless you have a pretty light load. The free version of Prodigy is plenty, but the twins asked for a subscription for their birthday one year and so we did gift that to them (they wanted to be able to buy little animals or something like that only available in the subscription).
SUPPLY GUIDE
The list of supplies to run a household, especially one as a homeschooler, might be endless, but again I just browsed my old Amazon orders and added a few items. Almost all of these items are in other places on my storefront and some of the categories (like the Binding section has more details on what size of coils we use). If you’re looking for a large splurge item the number one thing I would recommend is getting yourself a good color printer. We have the ET-3760 and it probably the best investment we made with our funds. It is so nice not to have to worry about ink. Make sure to compare with Costco because we got ours on sale there for cheaper. Other than that - it’s mostly all the little things from colored pencils to laminators to wall maps.
Click here to view the MTH Friendly Amazon Supply Guide
CURRICULUM
Our core subjects come from The Good and The Beautiful and since it’s religious curriculum, it can’t be reimbursed. We do use funds for any secular mini units I purchase from Teachers Pay Teachers or Etsy though. You can view our curriculum picks for this year here.
I think that is it! I am happy to answer any questions you have. If you’re browsing through items and want to know a more detailed experience we had with something or sometimes an exact brand or size can be hard to link, please don't hesitate to reach out and ask.