What would you do if you won the lottery?
This will be a fun article to write and share with you all. I was prompted, “What would you do if you won the lottery?” and of course I have to put a homeschooling spin on it. So the new question will be “How Would You Homeschool If You Had 1 Million Dollars?” Keep reading to find out how I would put this money to use in my homeschool.
1. Hire someone to do ALL the printing and cutting
Maybe it's just me, but I am SO tired of cutting things out. I've looked into printing and cutting services, and I've looked into Cricut machines and other brands. We use For The Love Of Homeschooling a lot and their one drawback is that you have to print and cut things out if you want to do the games, crafts, and activities provided. So if I had the million, I would definitely hire one of those printing and cutting services, or see if For The Love Of Homeschooling would take my money and just send me their units every month already printed and cut out.
2. Buy a new printer
I know… I just said I'm going to hire someone to do all of that, but that is mostly for the cutting aspect. For the moments when I just need to print 20 pages of text and images (no cutting required), I need a better printer than what I'm working with. I currently have an HP Office Jet Pro 6970, and lets just say, you can't even find it on
3. Hire someone to record and organize everything.
The never ending stressor of homeschool is keeping records. Most states require some sort of record keeping and it is high encouraged regardless to keep track of your kids progress over the years. We currently use Homeschool Planet for planning and organizing our homeschool curriculums and for attendance and grade keeping. We then use CamScanner to digitize all of our completed work and store it in the cloud. No paper mess necessary.
To see how I use CamScanner to upload all of our work, check out my article “How To Record Your Homeschool Paper-free.”
It would be great to not have to worry about those things anymore. With my million, I would hire someone to not only upload and organize all of our finished work, but also plan out what we should do each day down to 30 minute intervals and keep track of any changes in schedule. I would also have them keep track of when we need to do a progress assessment and knowledge checks during the year. And then of course they would submit any documentation to the state or homeschool association as needed.
I guess this is just called an assistant or something. So yeah, I'd hire a homeschool assistant.
4. Hire personal trainers
This would be for our whole family! I don't mean just workout trainers either. I would have a specialized tutor for all extra curriculars. Currently my daughters are taking music lessons for ukulele and piano (we use this piano book), but they want to get back into gymnastics and swimming too. We currently just don't have the budget to do all of them at the same time, or drive to the different locations every week.
That's where this newfound million comes to the rescue. We would hire music teachers to come to us. When it comes to gymnastics and swimming, we would still travel to the locations, but now we know we would be getting our money's worth with one-on-one instruction every week. No more large class sizes for swimming and gymnastics. Now everything they learn, they will learn how to be the best.
As I said, this would be for the whole family. That means the toddlers will also be getting one-on-one lessons, and me and my husband would get lessons too (probably just hiring personal trainers to make sure we workout).
5. Fully stock all materials
How many times have you opened up instructions for a craft, just to be disappointed that you don't have some of the materials? That happens SO OFTEN! Well, with a million dollars, gone are those days! I will make sure to create a stock of every material we could ever need for crafts. I always feel so bad when my daughters bring me their giant craft book and excitedly ask me if they can make it, just for me to ruin their happiness and tell them we can't do it.
TBH, half the time I am questioning the authors of the book and wondering in what normal family would they have some of these materials just readily available (a broken porcelain vase? REALLY?).
6. A Remodeled Office/School Room
In our home, we usually do our school time at the kitchen table, however, the girls do have their own desks and I have a large office right next to the dining room table. Currently, it is packed full and pretty unorganized. I would love to have a better homeschool area that is well organized and using the space to the maximum of its ability. I have drawers and sections in my desk that isn't being used because I have no clue what would work best there.
I'd also like to provide a more inviting area around my kids' desks that they would want to be at. So with the million, I would probably buy all new furniture, paint the walls, have actual organizers, and make the area more welcoming for us.
7. Get all the memberships
Of course, I would become a member at every place we love going to, and even the ones we only sometimes go to. This includes the zoo, aquarium, library, trampoline park, indoor playgrounds, outdoor fun zones, museums, nature centers, national forests, and maybe even some fun arcade or gaming centers. Membership offers the flexibility to go whenever we want and for however long we want. It also usually gives us discounts for things we can purchase there. I love having memberships to places because it allows for an educational field trip that I can take at the last minute.
8. Order way more subscription boxes
I love subscription boxes, especially ones that provide things that I can't just buy off
Ivy Kids Kits is an award winning and well-established subscription box company for children ages 3-8. Ivy Kids creates monthly book-inspired, activity packed educational kits. Each Ivy Kids kit includes a carefully selected, highly rated children's book and over 12 fun, creative, and unique hands-on activities that promote the development of math, science, literacy, engineering, and art skills through play and exploration. Inside an Ivy Kids kit there are board games, arts and crafts, science experiments, projects, math manipulatives, story characters and so much more. Everything you need to read, play, create and learn is included in the kit and conveniently delivered monthly!
Conclusion
This was a really fun and interesting prompt for me to think about. I hope you enjoyed it too and maybe even came up with some ideas for when you suddenly come into a lot of money *cough* tax refund *cough*. If I had a million dollars, hopefully I could get everything off of my “12 Things Your Homeschooling Wife Wants for Christmas” list too come Christmas time.
In the future, I hope to write more blog posts like these in addition to my issue directed help posts.
I would love to include you in my prayers as we both pray over our lives and children. Feel free to email me and let me know how your journey is going.
