Money Savers

Education isn't cheap; even when it's done at home If you choose to buy a complete curriculum for your kids it can cost anywhere from $200.00 to over $1000.00. That doesn't even include the school supplies you'll need like paper, pencils, crayons, map pencils, pens and the list goes on and on. There are some things that you can do to save some money though.

One of my favorite places for free materials is the public library. We go once a week to the library and pick up award winning books, educational videos and listen to free concerts given by local musicians. The library in my town is a great resource but it's not the only one. I am fortunate enough to live right between two large cities and am able to go those larger libraries as well.

A great way to save on curriculum is to buy used. There are a couple of great homeschooling stores in my area that offer used curriculum for much lower prices. A lot of families will buy an entire year of curriculum and find out that they don't like it and then need to sell it to these stores in order to buy a curriculum that they like. This is a great opportunity for you to get workbooks that were hardly used.

I love the E-books that I find at The Homeschool Magazine  They offer several freebies and the E-books that aren't free are very reasonable. You can find E-books all over the internet and most of them are a lot cheaper than books you can buy. If you prefer to read something on paper, you can always print the book out on recycled paper. I use the backs of bills, letters, etc. for printing E-books as well as worksheets.

Speaking of worksheets, you can find great educational products at Teacher Created Resources. They have several free templates for fun worksheets. Education.com is another great resource for free worksheets. You can search the web and find all sorts of free worksheets and helpful, free sites for your homeschool. Education doesn't have to cost a fortune. Stick around and we'll discover new ways of keeping the costs down together :-)