Homeschooling for Free: Is It Possible?

If you have been considering homeschool, but all you hear about is how unbelievably expensive it is, you are not alone. Every day, parents walk away from their dream of homeschooling their children because of cost. Your child's future should never be compromised because of money, especially when you can homeschool your child for free.

Yes, that is right. You can homeschool your child for free.

You do not have to spend a fortune to provide your child with the best education available. So ignore the rumors about how expensive homeschooling has to be because the people providing you with information are wrong. The resources outlined here will get you on the right path to homeschooling your child, without the massive expense your friends have been telling you about.

Utilize a Free Online Curriculum

If you are in search of a free online curriculum, you are in luck. There are countless resources available to parents who need a full curriculum for their child's homeschooling adventure. Homeschool Base has a huge list of free online curriculum, a list of 100 top educational websites of 2017, and free Creative Commons resources that have been used by other homeschoolers.

As a homeschooling mom of four boys, I have become attached to a few websites, and all of them combined have made planning my children's education so much easier.

Easy Peasy All in One Homeschool

The first website is Easy Peasy All In One Homeschool. Not only do they provide you with a curriculum, they provide you with a 100% free online Christian curriculum for homeschooling your child. They offer full package home school for children preparing for pre-K, all the way to 8th grade. Their resources reach out to a wide audience, including Christian-based home school programs.

Easy Peasy All In One High School

Easy Peasy All in One High School is a branch off of their standard home school program. Just like they do for the younger crowd, they provide essential resources and full homeschooling programs for parents of high school students.

Khan Academy

Most people associate Khan Academy with a paid, online home school program. However, they do offer free resources to parents, including a full curriculum and a syllabus for each grade, so you know exactly what your child should learn throughout the year.

Khan also provides valuable resources, like printable worksheets, free online lessons, and much more.

Free Books and Curriculum Resources

There are a lot of free books and a curriculum for every grade, in every state, online. By going to Amazon and typing in “free homeschool” you will be able to download countless books about homeschooling, as well as parent resource guides. There are also a lot of books that focus their attention on how to homeschool your child for free.

Take Time Out to Find Free Homeschool Printable Worksheets

If you look around online, you will see that a lot of websites have free printable worksheets geared toward teachers and homeschooling parents. You can search for them by grade level, concept, and even school subject.

It is important that you do not center your child's education around worksheets, but they do give your child a chance to work through their lessons in a productive way. By providing them with a worksheet, you are reinforcing their reading and your educational instruction. It also gives your child a chance to branch out from your lesson plan and explore unknown territory. This provides the perfect opportunity for them to learn how to find information in the world around them.

Where to Find Free, Quality Worksheets

There are a lot of great places to find worksheets to reinforce your child's homeschool education. My “go-to” websites for free, high-quality worksheets are 123 Home School 4 Me and Homeschool.com.

Review State Standards and Write Your Own Lesson Plans

I have found this concept very exciting. However, some parents find it extremely intimidating. I personally find creating my children's lesson plans to be a very rewarding experience. You can adjust the standard curriculum to suit your child's needs, and to help them catch up in areas they are behind. Not only is it a rewarding experience, it is also free.

Create Your Own Lesson Plan From State Standards

To create your child's lesson plan, visit your state's homeschooling standards website. Here, you can view the different standards as well as the mandated minimum requirements for your child's grade. From here, you can create a lesson plan that doesn't just focus on the areas outlined by the state, but you can also use it to backtrack and determine what milestones your child did not reach while they were in public school.

Keep Yourself Up-to-Date with Free Events in Your Area

The best part of homeschooling is that you can use the world around you as a learning tool. If you keep up-to-date with free events in your area, your child will have a lot of fun things to do that will not cost you anything. If you are interested in homeschooling your child for free, you will love the advantage that “free days” give you that you may not have access to on a regular day.

How to Find Free Events

Watch your community calendar for “free days” at local museums, factories, state parks, zoos, and other educational venues. In most areas, you can find your community calendar online. You will be amazed at how many free activities you have been missing in your community.

If you plan your free outings far enough in advance, you can plan your child's lessons around the activity you will be doing. This will allow them to take more away from the event, and it qualifies as an educational field trip.

Use Free Online Lectures and Presentations When Possible

Did you know that there are hundreds, if not thousands of websites that provide a free, real-world learning experience that your child cannot miss out on? These websites offer free lectures, educational videos, and even networking opportunities to your child.

Taking notes during a lecture and interacting with other people during this lecture is an opportunity your child should never miss out on. It is a form of real world experience that your child would not get in elementary school, or even in a homeschool environment.

Great Places to Find Free Lectures and Presentations

There are a lot of websites that provide free educational presentations, lectures, and a chance to interact with other homeschool children from around the world. Each website you use for your child should be carefully screened because many of the lectures and presentations are not screened by a governing body.

I have several go-to websites that my children love, and all of the ones listed here provide excellent information on a regular basis. My favorites are as follows:

Science – DiscoveryKids allows your child to watch interactive presentations that take them to places most people never get to go in life. Today, they can go deep sea diving with great white sharks, tomorrow they can explore the solar system and planets that researchers are just bringing to light.

History - If you are trying to get your child interested in history, which can be difficult because there is a lot of reading involved, the History Channel is a valuable resource that you cannot live without. The history channel is not just on television, their website has countless free videos that you can align with your child's history lessons, making them more exciting than just reading a book.

Various Subjects - If you are looking for a website that provides fun, interactive videos on almost every subject, WatchKnowLearn.org is a great resource that allows you to reinforce what your child is learning at almost any time. It is a must-have resource for any homeschool curriculum.

All Subjects - NeoK12 is another website with a massive number of videos that align perfectly with any elementary homeschool curriculum. Make your child's educational experience fun and exciting. The more fun you involve in your child's education, the more interested they will become in the subjects you are teaching them.

Those Difficult Subjects - If you are not quite sure how to teach a topic to your child, leave it up to SchoolTube. This website is an amazing backup for when you aren't sure how to approach a subject. Watch the video a day or two ahead of time. This will give you a chance to find a worksheet that corresponds with what is being taught in the video. The worksheet will help your child focus in on information they would typically overlook in a difficult subject.

Older Children - When your child gets to high school, you may question your ability ton continue homeschooling. Some of the required subjects are beyond what we learned in high school, and if you did not go to college, some of the subjects may be extremely difficult to approach. However, Resources like MIT Open Courseware and Open Yale Courses, are there to help you along the way. They brave the tough subjects so that you do not have to.

Now that you have the resources needed to homeschool your child for free, there is nothing left to hold you back. Now, making your dream of homeschooling your child a reality is completely up to you. When you are ready, you now have all of the resources you will need to provide your child with the best education available, and you don't have to spend a penny extra to do it.