Tips for Homeschool Curriculum on a Budget

 I remember drooling profusely over the box of science curriculum. It had all the bells and whistles, an all-inclusive pack complete with the items for experiments and comprehensive lesson plans… to the tune of $300. Egads! That was more than I wanted to spend on the total of all of our homeschool curriculum for the year combined. That’s half a month’s worth of groceries for our frugal household. I swallowed hard and turned away.

Expensive curriculum is easy to find and can intimidate you into thinking that you cannot afford to homeschool. However, there are free resources available and other things that you can do to find homeschool curriculum on a budget.

Homeschool on a budget

1. Use your local library. Thoroughly ransack the shelves, combing them over for every morsel that you can use for your homeschool.
2. Skip buying the teachers books if you are well-versed in the subject matter and can interpret the lessons based on the student text. (The Horizons curriculum we use makes this super easy to do.)
3. YouTube, Khan Academy, and EduCreations are excellent free resources for visual learners.
4. Go in half with another homeschool family and form your own co-op using a single teacher’s text and a student workbook for each child.
5. Purchase curriculum that allows you to make copies.
6. For curriculum with a restrictive copyright, place worksheets in a page protector and have your child use a dry erase marker to preserve the worksheets for your younger children to use when they promote to that grade level.
7. Use social buying websites or incentive programs to get your homeschool curriculum for deeply discounted prices or even free.
8. Include public television in your homeschool as well as the resources made available online at the PBS for teachers.
9. Visit yard sales and thrift stores. You just never know what you might find.
10. Host a curriculum swap where friend get together and trade their old resources, educational toys, and learning manipulatives.

Pssst… Don’t forget that you can also homeschool for free!

How do you homeschool within a budget?