How in the World Can I Afford All of This????

In the community around me, I have heard rumblings of I can't homeschool, because I cannot afford curriculum. I can understand the sentiment, especially from someone who is new to homeschooling.

I am someone, who does not have a windfall of money to purchase curriculum. So I have to be creative. I have only purchased a "boxed" curriculum once in our 7 years of homeschooling. And even then I bought most of it used.

There are several ways we have been able to do this. For one, our first year of homeschooling, I knew a 1st grade teacher, who gave me all of her discards. I supplemented with the internet and a few small purchases. I tried to , whenever possible to purchase used. There are a whole host of used sites out there, not just ebay. One of my favorites is...

www.usedhomeschoolcurriculum.com

This one is run by a local ( to me) homeschool family.

I frequented yard sales, and always had my eye out, for good educational books. It is amazing how cheap they will sell educational books, because their children were not interested in them...

The local public library is a given, when you are on a tight budget. However, there are some years, getting to a library was difficult for us. Sometimes even that was out of reach for us.

So what I have done, is try to find things on the internet, that I could use to educate my kids. Also, when I did purchase, I did not want to purchase consumables, workbooks, etc.. because then I would have to keep buying those over and over. So I am more interested in something that can be used over and over.

I have purchased Ray's Arithmetic.

http://www.raysarithmetic.com/     this website is for a cd version for $59, however it can be used for years.

http://www.mottmedia.com/pages/publications.asp?Pub=rays  this website is for the printed version.  I purchased the whole set for $99. With 5 kids, and all the years oflearning we can use these for, I felt this was a wise investment.

I have come across some wonderful websites, that have lists and lists of things that you can do on the web to help you teach your children at no cost. If you are printing, then you will need to pay for ink and paper. I was blessed with a hand me down printer. It is about 10 years old, but it works!! It is a laserjet which is awesome, because you will not need to purchase ink nearly as often.  I had stopped printing altogether because of the cost of ink. I was just given this printer about 2 weeks ago.. and the amounts I have printed.. would have already run my ink out at least once.

I mentioned in my first post to the blog, that we are following Old Fashioned Education, loosely. Do check out her website

www.oldfashionededucation.com

Even if you do not follow her curriculum as she has designed it, there is a huge abmount of information there, and books that you can either read online ( for free) or print, on a myriad of subject matter.

This next website has a great list of free website items...

http://homeschool.withpurpose.com/

Now this is listed on at least on OFE, however I wanted to bring attention to the fact that Answers in Genesis,  has free curriculum on line for Jr High and High School age.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/cec/online_resources.asp

This link is also for AIG, however these are for videos of their speaker series. For Free.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/video/ondemand/

This is from Homeschool.com. They have a great list of freebies as well.

http://www.homeschool.com/Homeschool_Free_Curriculum/default.asp

Well, I think this is a good start of al lthe wonderful places you can get some quality curriculum for your learners!  Keep checking this space for more great sites!