Homeschool For (almost) Free
Whether you are working with a really tight budget or just trying to be a good steward of God-given resources, there are a lot of ways to save money and cut back on the cost of homeschooling. Here are a few ideas and resources that can help you succeed in homeschooling with whatever budget you have to work with:
Pray
No joke. If you are a Christian wanting to be a good steward of the resources God has given you, then prayer should be your first resort. Ask God to provide the items that you need and to give you discernment to know the difference between “need” and “want”. If you’re really seeking and depending on Him you will be amazed at how He will provide!
Pretend Play and Role Playing
As the famous quote from Jean Piaget says, “Play is the work of children”. Especially in the early years, the more children role play, the more they learn how to be responsible adults. And you, as the parent, can help them learn through play, by engaging with them and showing them how to pretend to be different characters and turn it into a game.
Here are a few ideas:
– Take an occupation and help your child pretend that they are doing that job, such as pretending that they are a firefighter, a doctor, a chef, a shop keeper, an astronaut, a zoo keeper, a farmer, or even a taxi driver . . . any job or occupation can be turned into a game!
– Take an animal and help your child pretend that they are that animal. What does that animal eat? Does the animal have any predators it needs to avoid? Where does the animal live? How does the animal care for its young? . . . pretending to be different animals will help the child learn more about living things, their basic needs, and the differences between the different animals.
– Take a story from the Bible and help your child turn it into a game. Read the Bible story together, talk about the different characters and what is happening in the story. Then grab a few basic props or costumes (with enough imagination you can create your own props and costumes with basic things around the house without needing to go out and buy anything) , then help your child act out the story. Playing through the stories of the Bible will help your child learn the scriptures and embrace them at a deeper level. It can also help your child learn to really enjoy the Bible, and not assume that it is boring (which, sadly, many children grow up thinking that!).
Real Life Experience
Don’t underestimate the value of life experience. Your kids can learn a lot just from being around you and joining you in every day activities. Take advantage of every day situations to create learning experiences for your children. Teach them how to:
– Cook meals (counting, home economics, fractions)
– Do their own laundry (home economics, motor skills)
– Garden and preserve food (nature, botany, health, science, home economics)
– Pay for items at the checkout (consumer math)
– Balance the checkbook or file taxes (consumer math)
– Help dad with house or car repairs (mechanics, carpentry, construction)
Just simple, everyday activities can be a great educational experience, and it doesn’t cost you anything.
Local Library
Take advantage of your local library. As you are looking through different catalogs and see books you want, instead of purchasing them, first go to the library and see if you can check out the books instead. If your local library doesn’t have what you’re looking for, just ask the librarian for an inter-library loan, and they can see about borrowing the book from another library.
Field Trips
Free field trips are available all around you, many businesses or government offices would be more than willing to give a free tour of the facility, all you have to do is ask. Click Here for a listing of great field trip ideas.
– Free Days. Often times, museums, parks, and zoos will offer a free day, so if you can’t afford the admission fees, you might try calling the locations you want to visit and just ask if they will be having a free day.
– Virtual Field Trips. The internet has certainly opened up some new opportunities for homeschoolers. There are many zoos, museums, aquariums, and government buildings that now offer virtual tours of their facilities. Chester Zoo, for example, has a lot of virtual tour videos. The Phoenix Zoo’s Digital Safari is also really good. The Louvre museum in Paris has a page called “Louvre Kids”, which is pretty interesting. And YouTube is full of virtual tour videos to explore.
Online Encyclopedias
The internet is a huge source of information. Instead of spending a fortune buying dictionaries and encyclopedias, take advantage of the wealth of information you already have at your finger-tips.
Wikipedia is probably the most well-known online encyclopedia. It touches on just about every topic imaginable.
Britannica is another online encyclopedia, similar to Wikipedia. They even have a Britannica Kids section, which is really great for children.
Apprenticeship
If a child is interested in a particular occupation, you may consider finding someone who works in that field and asking if they would be willing to exchange knowledge for labor. There are many people willing to teach the skills they know in exchange for some help in doing the work. This can be a great way for your child to get some real educational experience free.
Tutoring
Free tutoring can often be offered by senior citizens who would be more than willing to talk with a young student just to have the pleasure of their company each week.
Free Curriculum
I’m a little hesitant to recommend a free homeschool curriculum, because I have not actually used them myself, and really do appreciate the quality that I have found in certain homeschool publishing companies. But I also understand that published books cost money, and purchasing curriculum for every subject can get really expensive (especially when you have multiple students), so for that reason I really do want to share some good, FREE alternatives, for families who may be trying to homeschool on a tight budget.
Just bare in mind, that FREE still comes at a cost, because you will still be needing a printer and all the paper and ink required for printing. So when you weight the cost of having to print all your own pages, compared to paying for a published book, there are times when the FREE curriculum could actually become more expensive than the published materials – so just keep that in mind!
– Plain and Not So Plain Curriculum. If you don’t need a lot of instruction on how to teach, but just need simple, straight forward worksheets for your students, then this is probably the best resources I’ve found as far as FREE homeschool curriculum goes. It gives the bare basics of what you need to teach for grades 1 - 9, covering subjects like math, language, spelling, reading comprehension, writing, and vocabulary. And it’s just the bare bone basics of worksheets you can print and use for teaching your student.
– Guest Hollow. Not everything on this site is free, but they do have several free “online textbooks” (lessons you read online, with some pictures and videos to supplement the curriculum). Their free High School Geography and Cultures Online Textbook is actually pretty cool! They also have a free Biology, Government, and World History online textbooks as well.
– Freedom Homeschooling can be a good guide for finding free homeschooling curriculum for various subjects and grade levels.
– Easy Peasy is a very popular curriculum program for Christian homeschoolers, that is completely free.
– That It May Go Well (from Lamp and Light Living) offers their homeschool curriculum completely free, and the curriculum is actually pretty decent, from my opinion. It does not cover any math, though, so if you are going to use this curriculum, then you will need to supplement it with another math program. Also keep in mind, that even though the curriculum is offered for free, you will still be spending time and money on printing the worksheets, which, each grade level book is a few hundred pages, so that’s something to consider.
– The Good and the Beautiful offers their curriculum free (if you don’t mind doing all the printing yourself) or for purchase (if you want them to send you a physical book). As far as free curriculum goes, what they have to offer is pretty decent.
Printables and Downloads
Many homeschool families have made printable resources that are free to download and use in place of purchasing materials. Here are a few of those . . .
– The Homeschool Mom offers a free, downloadable homeschool planner which is actually really well put together. You have to subscribe to receive email updates to get the planner, but it is free, and you can always unsubscribe later if you don’t want to continue receiving their emails.
– Pinterest. Pinterest is not really a homeschool site, but I use it a lot in my “brainstorming” for homeschooling ideas. It’s just a site where lots of people pitch in and share ideas and resources with each other. I use it myself, quite a bit, so feel free to checkout My Pinterest Boards to see some of my favorite pinterest ideas.
Borrow from Other Homeschool Families
Get connected with other homeschool families through a homeschool support group. Support members are often willing to loan homeschool materials, or to give or sell resources they no longer need.
Recycle
Consider preserving the textbooks you buy so they can be passed down to the next child in line. Reusing the same books for each of your children can cut costs considerably.
For consumable workbooks, older children can write their answers in a composition notebook so that the workbook can be used again. For younger children, you can place workbook pages or printable worksheets in page protectors and let them write with a dry erase marker. They think it’s great fun and you can use the worksheets again!
Kindle Books
Amazon’s Kindle books are a great way to get books for a discounted price. Purchasing books for the Kindle is often much cheaper than purchasing printed copies. Don’t have a Kindle? Not a problem. Amazon has a free Kindle application that makes it possible to read Kindle books on your computer.
Online Ebooks
– American Literature has a large collection of stories, poems, famous speeches, and other forms of literature that are free to read online, no downloading necessary.
– Clarkness has a selection of beginner reading books that can be read online, on a device, or downloaded and printed out.
– Currclick. Free curriculum at the click of your mouse.
– Planet eBook. 80 plus free classics to download, including titles like Les Miserables, Little Women, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Around the World in 80 Days, and more!
– Kathi Mitchell. Free ebooks, with lesson plans and activities to accompany the reading assignments.
Online Read Aloud Books
– YouTube Read Aloud Children’s Books. There are several YouTube channels that have read aloud stories for children. Our family has used this a lot, especially since we live in Africa where we don’t have access to a public library. So instead of buying lots of books, we just take advantage of the read aloud story books on YouTube. We especially love when the books are animated, or have music or special effects added to them.
– Reading Rainbow. These are old classic TV shows, but the stories are timeless. The series really gets kids interested in books, and helps them discover the joy of reading.
Audio Books
– LibriVox. Volunteers at LibriVox record chapters of books in the public domain and then submit them to be posted online for others to listen to.
– Storynory. This site has published an audio story every week since November of 2005, so there are a lot of stories available. All the stories are beautifully read by professional actors and recorded in broadcast quality sound. All of their stories and audio books come with a full English text.
– Books Should Be Free. A great site for finding classic audio books. These books downloaded as a podcast, so when you go to look for it in your iTunes library, look there first.
Online Educational Games
There are a lot of free educational games available online that can make learning fun while at the same time helping your child prepare to work in a day and age that is very technology based.
– Sheppard Software. Hundreds of free, online, educational games for kids, covering lots of different subjects and grade levels.
– The Education website has a wide assortment of online educational games your kids can play for free.
– KidzType is a pretty good resource for teaching kids how to type on a computer keyborad. It has both lessons and games, very similar to the old Mavis Beacon program. Just be aware that it does include some vampire and zombie games, that you may not want your kids playing.
Supplement the Income
If, after utilizing all the above resources, you still find that you want to purchase new curriculum that is above your budget line, you may consider using a method of earning a little extra spending money to give yourself a little higher of a homeschool budget. Here are some ideas for Supplementing the Income and earning a little extra cash..