If you follow a traditional school schedule, you will probably start planning and shopping for next year’s homeschool supplies and curriculum by April. If you homeschool year round, then you probably have been making plans and writing a to-do and to-buy list since January. Either way, you know that you want to homeschool frugally and stay within your budget this year! If this sounds like you, I have some tips to share!
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Homeschool Frugally With These Tips!
- Use curriculum and supplies you already have on hand.
In this way, you can recycle and reuse older student’s unused curriculum with younger students.
- Buy only the most important curriculum, such as the core subjects (math and language arts), and buy used when possible.
Especially for elementary grades, language arts and math are the most important subjects to lay a solid foundation.
- Use cheap notebooks and journals.
You can use spiral notebooks for nature journals, book reports, literature studies, copywork, penmanship, and more.
- Buy eBooks or find free eBooks.
Browse Amazon and you will often find many classics and nonfiction eBooks to use for reading, science, and literature studies for cheap or even free!
- Invest in a great dictionary, use your Bible & library card, and create your own curriculum for one year.
You may find that you really enjoy creating curriculum from scratch! Even if you don’t love it, a year of studying God’s Word & God’s world, reading great living books & learning new vocabulary words, while recording it all in a few notebooks may be good for both you and your children.
- Use free resources and printables online.
If you go this route, you may want to invest in a laminator, a printer (if you don’t have one), printer paper, and ink. But, you will find that there is a vast variety of amazing content available on the internet, most of it created by other homeschool moms and families! Notebooking, lapbooking, and work sheets for math, language arts, science, and every other subject can be found! You can also find websites offering free or affordable interactive math and other subjects.
- Be creative.
Do you have a Netflix subscription? Use it for homeschool! Choose quality documentaries in history, science, geography, or social studies and have your children write a short report afterwards. You can watch cooking shows and home renovation shows for extra curricular studies.
Resources To Help You Homeschool Frugally
So, now that you know how to save money while homeschooling, here are several online resources to help you get started!
- Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary (Kindle Edition)
- NotebookingPages.com
- Lapbooks
- Copywork
- Literature Unit Studies
- Math Resources
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by Stephanie, The Multi Taskin' Mom
This Post Has One Comment
Wow! I thought I was the only one doing this…creating their own curriculum! I thought I was a little crazy, as it is a lot of work! But I am still doing it after 5 years, because it works for me. I like the personalization, the price (though I still do buy some books), the freedom to teach what I want to teach, and the freedom to include or exclude what I deem appropriate. In addition, I live in Canada, and I find it harder to find Canadian-made curriculum in one place (maybe I just don’t know where to find it…CHER is a good resource). As you said, thanks to the Internet, and many generous offers, it is easy to find a lot of resources online. I also have the folders on my computer, sorted by subject, as you do. I also use a file case with worksheets printed out and sorted by subject, for those things I will be using in the near future, or that I find easier to just print out right away. We are also regulars at the second-hand store, where I have gotten many good finds, and we use YouTube a lot (with parental supervision, of course) for just about any video material we need. Thank you for some new ideas!