Buying curriculum can take a big bite out of your budget, especially if you’re homeschooling more than one child. But here is a list of free or nearly free items that you can use to supplement your curriculum:
The Homeschool Mom has created a variety of free planning pages. There are several variations including lesson planning pages, an unschooling planning page, and even weekly menu planning pages!
Word2Word offers free foreign language courses in a variety of foreign languages. You can learn just about any language you could possible think of!
The National Anti-Vivisection Society loans out replicas of animals for study. Besides being cruelty free, it is a great alternative to home schoolers because it is less messy and much easier to study a replica. They have replicas of cats, rats, frogs, fetal pigs and a variety of other animals. Your only charge would be shipping to return the replica back to them.
Building Big is a web version of the activity guide for the T.V. show “Building Big.” If you have a budding engineer. . .this is definitely worth checking out. Although it is based on the T.V. show, you can do the activities without having seen the show.
Common Cents is a website with lots of resources for teaching kids about money.
The PBS TV show, Scientific American Frontiers offers free activity guides complete with lesson plans and great ideas in PDF format.
Ambleside Online is designed to be as close as possible to the curriculum that Charlotte Mason used in her own PNEU schools.
The National Science Teacher’s Association in conjunction with the Food and Drug Administration is offering a free curriculum kit entitled, “Science and our Food Supply.” As of the date of this writing, the kits were on back order.
Starfall is an excellent resource to teach beginning reading. They have free printables, on line phonics games, parent helps and just about anything else you could think of to help you teach your beginning reader.
If you or your children were ever desperately curious about chocolate and how it’s made this is the guide for you: Cocoa Connections: From Beans to Bars A Resource Guide for Educators
Federal Resources for Educational Excellence has to be one of the best kept secrets. On these pages are dozens of links to free resources from the government in a variety of curriculum areas.
Between the Lions is a great show that helps teach phonics to kids. Their website also offers online games, worksheets you can print and activities to help teach kids reading.
Reading A to Z has everything you need to teach your child how to read!
Ology is the kid friendly website of the American Museum of Natural History. Your kids can do activities and earn cards. The activities are great fun and even if you decide not to go collecting cards, your kids will still learn a ton of stuff and have a blast looking around this site.
Ben’s Guide to the U.S. Government for Kids. A great website to learn everything there is to know about the U.S. Government. The fact that it is easy to navigate according to grade level is a big plus!
The website for the Exploratorium in California is worth looking into. It offers lots of hands-on science activities and other interesting reads.
Sonlight curriculum, while definitely not free, offers complete reading lists for each grade through their catalogs. In my opinion it is worth checking out even if you never intend to buy from them. Also, you can get the reading lists online.
Homeschool free stuff describes it all in the name. They offer free curriculum, lesson plans, software (pay shipping and handling) via weekly e-mail newsletter.
Easy fun school is an online unit study resource. If you add in a few extras, the unit studies are fairly complete and could stand alone. Or if you want more of a challenge, use them as extras.
Sheppard Software offers a variety of online, but free games for learning. The site is fairly comprehensive and would be a great way for kids to learn their capitals, countries etc.
Yahooligans, a children’s search engine powered by Yahoo, has a teacher’s guide section. It contains virtual field trips, activity ideas and other curriculum boosters.
At Discover School’s teaching center, they have created a site just for teaching tools. They have 4 tools that do the following: create lesson plans, create puzzles, create worksheets, or create quizzes.
The USGS has several online packets available (you download them and then print them) covering such topics as volcanoes, maps, explorers etc.
Splashes from the River offers a free online spelling course. The course is 30 lessons long and if you like it, you may want to check out her entire line of English courses (essay writing, grammar, and more).
Cable in the Classroom offers free videos on a variety of subjects.