You KNOW can homeschool for free. You know there are a lot of free educational resources available on the internet. But how does that work, and how do you get started? I’ve got you covered.

How do you know what your child should be learning? I’ve got some information on that too.

New to free homeschooling?

Yes, there is a lot of free stuff on the internet but doing a search for free homeschool turns up way too many sites that just offer just a few worksheets or a “packet” of stuff for one or two lessons. Trying to grab all of those things and organize it into a coherent educational plan often seems impossibly crazy. You don’t have to do that. I promise you can homeschool for free without doing all that.

Maybe you’ve been homeschooling for a while now and have found that it can often be really hard to figure out what resources, books or curriculum are going to work for YOUR kids, because kids are just so different. But it’s so expensive to keep buying one product after another…

Some curriculum you find at a conference or in a catalog seems like it would be a great fit but when you actually get started with it you can see that it just doesn’t click with your child, but your budget isn’t ready to handle buying something else this year.

What kind of free homeschool resources are there?

There really are a lot of wonderful free homeschool resources out there, between the vintage textbooks that are now out of copyright and all of the open source educational material being created all over the world. It’s a wonderful time to be a homeschooler.

First Things First

Even though this site is about free educational resources online, the first thing I advise you to do is to get familiar with your local library.  Take a look around and see what kind of books they have. Ask if there is a homeschool section. Talk to the librarians in the Children’s section.

You can often meet your needs for science, social studies, and literature right there in your local library bookshelves. Math and language arts can be a little trickier because typically you would want to keep those books a little longer than most libraries are okay with loaning them.

Next, you ought to check out your library’s website. These days most libraries have an online presence, and they even subscribe to a lot of online resources. Most of those resources are then available to you for free through your library card.

One of the most popular library subscriptions is Overdrive, an ebook service. Overdrive has fiction, nonfiction, and audiobooks that you can borrow for free. Libraries get to choose how many Overdrive books are available to their patrons so makes sense to look into getting more than one library card  I live in a rural area so my local library system doesn’t have as much to offer as a library in a big city, but I found out that the huge library system in a big city all the way across the state offers free library cards to anyone who is a state resident. <insert evil cackling here>

My little local library has subscriptions to language learning programs including Pronunciator and to Universal Class, a service that offers online courses in all sorts of subjects. If I tried to use Universal Class on my own to learn something I’d end up paying about a hundred bucks a class, but with my library card, it’s free. I’m not kidding.

Some libraries offer such great deals on this kind of thing that even if you live far away from the actual library it’s totally worth getting a library card even if you have to pay a fee for it.

Using Free Education Resources from the Internet

You can choose free resources for one subject, or mix and match different free resources or even a few free resources and a few paid resources for a full curriculum customized to your preferences. It’s your choice. You aren’t limited by grade levels either.

And if you don’t like it, ditch it and try something else without feeling like you wasted your money.

Don’t Forget to Think Local

You can also choose to supplement your favorite homeschool curriculum with some great free or low-cost finds locally. It’s not uncommon to find something amazing at your local thrift store! If you have a local homeschool group you will want to make sure you attend their used book sales. Ask your librarian about local homeschool groups or do a search on Facebook.

Don’t forget to check out your local dollar store for deals on maps, posters, small whiteboards, and notebooks. Saving money on the basics like pencils means more money available to invest in the other things you know you are going to want to get to make your homeschooling experience more fun. Like glitter. No, seriously, you NEED glitter. Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t. Everything is better with glitter.

Ready to get started?