Home school printing tips for busy parents: the best print tips ever

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, homeschooling has become a new reality for many parents around the world.  How can parents best keep up with the need to provide printed learning materials for their kids?

Printing learning materials at home has suddenly become a real issue for many parents around the world.

With parents worried about the need to limit screen time with children who are often more confined at home, printed learning materials offer a great way to help children learn away from the computer screen.

For households with limited access to computers or laptops, the need to print learning materials is even more urgent.  If one parent needs to use the laptop to work, how can the kids study?

Printed learning materials offer many advantages.

The right tools for the print job

First off, you’ll need to invest in the right tools.  A home printer doesn’t have to be a big investment, especially if you choose the right printer for your needs.

Invest in a good quality paper, so you can print on both sides where possible while avoiding issues such as paper jams and bleeding inks. 

While print quality isn’t such an issue for your child’s school worksheets as it might be for an advertising flyer for work, poor quality printing and paper jams are an irritant you can all live without in what is already a stressful time.

Sign up for subscriptions and buy direct

With social distancing rules still in place in many countries around the world, we all need to limit our trips out for shopping and non-essential travel.  In this situation, subscription schemes for inks are even more desirable.

As well as saving money and ensuring you never find yourself running out of ink, you don’t need to make last-minute trips to the shops halfway through a print job.

It’s important to think about how many pages you are going to want to print over the course of a month and sign up to the right scheme.  This can make a big difference to how much you pay per month for this convenience.

Many paper or office supply companies also offer options to buy direct online – meaning you can purchase a few months’ supply of paper at a discounted rate and have it delivered to your door – further limiting any unnecessary social contact.

Make it easy on yourself

Download the relevant app for your printer to all your household mobile devices as well as your PC or laptop.  This way, if your kids are researching on the Internet using a phone or tablet, they can print off immediately without disturbing whoever happens to be using the desktop at that moment.

Set some ground rules

If you don’t want your kids printing off however many hundreds of pages their “cute cats” Google image search returned, you’ll need to give them a crash course in how to use the printer app.

If you’ve signed up for an ink subscription with a limited number of pages, it’s also a good idea to agree on some printing rules in advance.  What is acceptable to print?

Do your homework too

If you know your kids have online learning tasks to complete, print off the details the night before.  You’ll find it much easier to prepare lessons when they’re tucked up safely in bed, rather than trying the rush through it while making breakfast and handling your first work call of the day.

Have some fun stuff prepared and close to hand too!

While you are prepping lessons, why not print off some fun off-curriculum activities too?  It’s always good to have some word searches, fun quizzes, or coloring activities to hand for those moments when a calm activity is required!

Many cultural institutions are offering online activities such as coloring sheets and competitions for your little ones or young people in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Explore online and make use of the wonderful resources available.