Oh my GRACIOUS! you really CAN homeschool for free!

And I proved it today! I started out the day simply wanting to lay out a plan for my kids school binders. We are just getting started with homeschooling full time, so I am taking it kind of slow. Not to mention the fact that we really haven't had the money to get everything I *wanted* to get for this year, so I had resigned myself to making due until we could. I had the basics covered, sort of, LOL I have our math curriculum (unless I change it :D) and I had a basic idea of working on handwriting with them. That left reading, which for now was simply going to be reading aloud daily with the kiddos. I am waiting on the Explode The Code placement test, to figure out if/where I need to start them in those books. Thanks to some very dear friends, art, geography, and science are taken care of.


SO ANYWAY... lol... bear with me, I'm worn out LOL

All I planned to do today was to get a rough schedule down for the kids' school day and maybe set up their binders. Somewhere along the line I decided to see what kind of curriculum I could find on the internet just to "kill time" until I could get the other books I wanted for writing, spelling, and language arts. Let me tell you... I thought I had searched extensively before but OH MY GRAVY, I found a TON more things. I literally spent ALLL DAY searching, creating, printing and yelling at my printer LOL This is what I came up with:

For all three kids:

Handwriting
Reading
Math (using Math-U-see) actually, but found several worksheet creators for extra practice
Language Arts
Spelling/vocabulary
Creative writing

For the younger kids, I did have a few workbooks that I was able to pick and choose pages from for a couple of the subjects, but for Nathaniel (3rd grade) all I had was his math. Let's see if I can lay this out for you....

Handwriting -
http://www.handwritingworksheets.com/ Pretty good for creating your own.
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/
www.kidzone.ws/cursive/index.htm VERY Awesome site :)

Reading -
Now, first and foremost I LOVE http://www.starfall.com/ great for online practice when the young ones want to play on the computer. My kids cannot get enough of this site! I also printed off a couple of readers for the younger two for the week.
For the older ones http://www.abcteach.com/ is a great site for reading comprehension worksheets.

Math
http://www.mathusee.com/ has a worksheet generator. It's good, but not much variety really.
http://www.mathworksheetwizard.com/ literally 1000's of worksheets
http://themathworksheetsite.com/ a great generator, but some is subscription based.

Language Arts
www.education.com/worksheets - This is the only site I used for Nathaniel's Language arts - English - Grammar exercises REALLY great resources, not just for language arts either.. they have many grades and many subjects
http://www.abcteach.com/
www.superteacherworksheets.com/grammar excellent!

Spelling/vocabulary

www.superteacherworksheets.com/spellinglevelc.html This link will take you to the third grade spelling curriculum but they have grade 1-4 REALLY great resource
www.mrsperkins.com/dolch.htm This has all the Dolch word lists, phrases, and worksheets. really good for preparing for spelling bees, etc.

Creative Writing
Again...
www.superteacherworksheets.com/writingideas.com this is more for writing prompts but still good.
http://www.rhymer.com/ this is a rhyming dictionary.. pretty neat for those that get writers block just trying to rhyme.
http://www.abcteach.com/ has lots of great writing prompt worksheets as well as writing paper.




So I guess overall, my favorite websites are http://www.abcteach.com/ and http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/ Both of these also have custom worksheet generators.

SO, it is doable. That is, You CAN HOMESCHOOL, essentially, for FREE. However, you do need money for printer ink and lots of paper! Most of the pages I found printed fairly well in black and white, which was good considering I had no color ink :)

Please feel free to share this with anyone you like, but please do also include a link back to my blog.

Thanks :) and Happy Homeschooling!