If your budget is so tight that you can’t afford to homeschool, does that mean you should quit and send your kids to (free) public school?
No way! Thankfully, we live in an era quite unlike our parents or even homeschoolers of just a decade ago. Because of the Internet, we can homeschool our children for next to nothing.
I buy curriculum sometimes. I also make my own (which is free). I’ve discovered the hard way that nothing is really free. It either costs time or money. If you have enough time, you can certainly spend very little money. If you have money but no time, then buy curriculum. If you have neither time nor money, check out some of my blog posts on how to increase your income.
If I had to do everything for free, these are some excellent choices:
Free General Resources
- Homeschool Share – free unit studies
- Curriculum Share – give and get free curriculum, with only the price of shipping
- Printer ink and paper are expensive! Be creative in your homeschooling, and if printing a lot of worksheets, remember that the price of a workbook might be cheaper than printing pages at home yourself. (It might be worth it to keep track of your printing expenses for a month, to see what you’re paying per page. This website gives national averages for several countries.)
- Free online high school courses
- Lots of help for homeschooling high school, from “Mission Possible”
- Many free downloads
- Donna Young.org – tons of free resources, highly recommended!
Free Bible Resources
- The Bible! Yes, it’s the best curriculum, and it’s free.
- E-sword
- Verses to memorize (from AWANA)
Free Preschool Resources
Just play and read together. That’s the best preschool curriculum, and it’s free. If you still want more, try these:
- Preschool by Stormie
- “Unschooling” preschoolers (This is one time I agree with “unschooling.”)
- Free preschool worksheets
- The Idea Box
- Letter of the Week lesson plans
- More ideas on my website…
- Ten Things to Do with Your Child Before Age 10
Free Learning-to-Read Resources
- Reading Made Easy with Blend Phonics (offered by Don Potter)
- Word Mastery: A Course in Phonics for the First Three Grades (offered by Don Potter)
- The Phonics Page
- Starfall
- Teach the World to Read
Free Spelling Resources
Free Handwriting Resources
- The best and easiest handwriting practice comes from copying Bible verses onto notebook or handwriting paper.
- Handwriting for Kids
- Custom writing paper
- The “Print Clearly” font for making your own handwriting worksheets
- Handwriting Ideas from Donna Young
Free Math Resources
- Math help and free textbooks from Don Potter
- First Lessons in Numbers
- A Plus Math Worksheets
- SuperKids Math Worksheet Creator
- Algebra
- Calculus – AP test preparation
Free Grammar Resources
- Daily Grammar — Start with lessons 71-75 and memorize the prepositions, then go back to lesson 1.
- Once you have a basic grasp of grammar, diagram a sentence every day. This can continue all the way through high school, for free.
- Grammar Land Exercises
Free Writing Resources
If you think about it, writing is just learning to talk slowly. If you can teach your kids to talk, then you can teach them to write. Also, writing improves when you study the writing techniques of good writers. Again, the Bible contains the best examples of writing!
- Discussing what you read together from the Bible. (Again, writing is just slow talking.)
- Having your children tell back to you (“narrate”) what they are learning from the Bible. As they talk, Mom should write (or type) their words onto paper.
- Learn how a Bible passage is put together by outlining it together. Try to “put it back together again” in written form by looking at the outline.
- How to Write a Research Paper
Free Literature Resources
- Book Adventure
- Using Real Books with older students
- 1000 Good Books (free from your local library or by searching online)
Free History Resources
- Use your library to make these free
- History for 1st-6th Grades
- History for 7th-9th Grades
- History for 10th-12th Grades (scroll down to “History”)
- Geography resources
Free Science Resources
- How to teach science without a textbook
- Nature Study (an awesome blog!) with online Field Guides
- An elementary curriculum guide
- Science Experiments
- Books to read in elementary school
- Books to read in middle school
- Books to read in high school
- Skymaps for astronomy
- Biology
- Physics
- The Physics Classroom
- Chemistry
- More free high-school courses from MIT
Free Music Resources
- Boombox Classroom
- Music Theory
- Piano Education Page
- Free Christian Piano Lessons and Arrangements (wonderful)
Free Art Resources
- Drawing Lessons
- Easy Art History Appreciation
- Art Attack
- Art Bug Mail
- Mr. Picasso Head (just for fun, but it’s addictive!)
Free Foreign Language Resources
- Does your library offer Mango‘s language-learning software for free?
- eLanguageSchool
- Foreign Language Resources
Please feel free to add more resources in the comments below, since it will be a blessing to other readers.
I ran across An Old Fashioned Education: http://oldfashionededucation.com/index.html (Click on Full Curriculum on the left to see resources broken down by grade level.) This is an wealth of links to public domain texts and living books available for free online. Miss Maggie has done an excellent job of laying out a full curriculum for each grade level, using almost entirely free books. We’ll be using her outline this year for all grades of history and literature.
There’s also Ambleside, for those who use the Charlotte Mason approach: http://amblesideonline.org/
Blessings!
Mary
Thank you, Mary!
I’ll second what Mary said. I combine both Ambleside Online and Old Fashioned Education with my two 8 year olds. We get the best of both to meet the needs of my children. Harmony Art Mom has good suggetions for art and music, although she does have a curriculum for sale too, and a wonderful nature study section which is free. I’m going to have fun going through your listing and seeing what I can glean, if not for this year, then to have if and when we need it. Thank you for all your work and blessings on your school year.
Hi Anne!
How about http://librivox.org for free audio books? We love them!
Oooh… (clapping hands with glee…)
Thanks, Jennifer!
I was so delighted to see Homeschool Share as the first link on the list!
Thanks for the shout-out! 🙂
Ami Brainerd
http://www.homeschoolshare.com
Well, Ami, thank *you* for helping us all so much! I know it takes a lot of time to develop curriculum, and you’re doing a huge service to all of us. (((hugs)))
Great post.