I am constantly on the lookout for ways to make homeschooling more affordable and accessible to families like mine.  In the age of the internet, there is no reason why homeschool has to cost thousands of dollars annually.  Here is our strategy:

First, we are incredibly excited to be starting up this year with SchoolhouseTeachers.com.  We use streaming media extensively to enrich our homeschool experience, but having 5 kiddos, two of which are 7 month old twins, means constantly being on the lookout for a way to streamline our process.  Here’s where Schoolhouse Teachers comes in.  You can pay annually (they’re having a two-for-one sale right now), or you can split the payment up into monthly payments, which is what we do. If you decide to use the monthly payments, you still get a great deal, because the first month is just a buck!

This is an affliate link. If you click, it will give me credit if you decide to purchase.

Membership gives you access to online courses, planners, and recordkeeping.  There’s so many courses.  I had an opportunity to view another program like this in beta, and I was BLOWN AWAY by how much MORE is offered by schoolhouse teachers.  For just $12.95, I just couldn’t say no.  Here’s the thing.  They don’t charge per student.  They charge per family.  That’s right, no per head cost!  That’s almost unheard of in the curriculum arena.  It’s not just videos, either.  There are REAL curriculum, printable worksheets, copywork, spelling, electives, core classes and enrichment.  You even get a free membership to AppleCore recordkeeping software with your SchoolHouseTeachers account.  There’s so much, and I’m still discovering it all.  It’s amazing.

Second, we also utilize our entertainment and home shopping dollars by using resources like Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video for their wide variety of educational videos.  We take advantage of YouTube, which is free.  As we go through our school days, I share individual channels or videos that go along with our curriculum, but you don’t have to stop there.  Great enrichment is just a Google search away.

Search for sales.  Whether I am searching for math workbooks or paperback novels, I have three sites that I bounce between to look for best prices:  Amazon, Rainbow Resource, and CBD.com.  Amazon is always my first hit, because I can often get free Prime shipping.  Rainbow Resource has great prices, and usually has a free-freight-over-fifty rate, so I like to get my ordering in from them once a year.  CBD (Christian Book Distributors) has TERRIBLE shipping rates unless you get a coupon, but they have the best selection.  I like to get educational coloring books straight from Dover Publishing when they have their annual sales.  Then I pop over to Retailmenot.com to make sure I haven’t missed out on any coupons or free shipping offers.

Get on the mailing list.  Okay, I really hate this one, but let’s be honest – that’s where the best coupons are.  If you are in love with a particular curriculum, go ahead and join the mailing list so that you can be notified of annual sales and compare them to the discount sites’ prices.

Design your own curriculum.  This is a big one.  I save almost a thousand dollars a year because I don’t buy a package of pre-designed curriculum for each child.  When I first got started on my homeschool journey, I bought the Christian Liberty Press pre-designed first grade curriculum and HATED it.  We cried a lot that year.  The second year, I got a package from My Father’s World (the US History one) and we loved it!  However, there were a couple of things I wanted to tweak, and I realized that I could use various companies’ packages to model my own curriculum from.

We follow a Charlotte Mason / Eclectic sort of method for our schooling.  You can easily design your own curriculum on the Classic, Traditional, Montessori or other methods, though.

When should I not design my own curriculum?

• During your first year of homeschooling.  Seriously, no.  Do your research, find a kit that mostly fits your family’s preferred learning style, and use it to learn from.  Start designing next year, or the year after.
• When you need an outline.  If you need a pre-writted guideline to help you keep from getting overwhelmed, or you really like checklists, go ahead and buy a pre-written curriculum package with lesson plans.
• You live in a high-profile state.  If you live in a state that is heavy on homeschool regulations, go ahead and make sure that you purchase a compliant curriculum for at least the first two years while you get a handle on your state’s requirements.  You can always save money in future years once you are past the learning curve.
• When you want someone else to grade, test, evaluate, or recordkeep.  This is a biggie.  If you are in the highschool years and would like a third party to do testing or other evaluations, go ahead and check out great online distance-learning options through publishers like Alpha and Omega, Abeka Book, Bob Jones University Press, and Christian Liberty Press.  There are secular options as well, although I am less familiar with them.  For these services, you pay a hefty premium, but you gain third party recordkeeping and grading, which takes much of the legal burden off of your shoulders and into the hands of professionals.  Please understand that this is preference only.  There is no reason why your high school student can’t do an eclectic curriculum and still end up in the honors program at your local college.  Several families in our local homeschool group have proven this case.  

Homeschool doesn’t have to be, and shouldn’t be, unaffordable.  Everyone should have access to good learning materials; you just have to know where to look.  Keep watching for future articles on even MORE ways to save your family money while homeschooling.
Note:  At the time of this writing, I am not a paid affiliate of any of Amazon, ChristianBook.com or Rainbow Resource.  I may in the future decide to become an affiliate, but my opinions are my own.