Homeschooling For Almost Nothing

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Homeschooling For (Almost) Nothing

by: Mindi Schopp

The decision had been made. We were going to homeschool the children. My hubby and I loaded the kids in the van and drove to a town 45 miles away to a store we had heard of. It was a homeschool store and promised to have everything we would need to turn our children into homeschooled geniuses.

The store was simple looking enough; a nice quiet wooden building set way back from the noise of the interstate. Upon entering we were met by a smiling woman. We told her we were first timers in the home school department and were unsure of what we would need.

She smiled and assured us that she had homeschooled five kids from kindergarten through high school and she would help us find everything we needed. She showed us boxed curriculums that came complete with every subject needed to teach the grades we were looking for and even a nice teacher’s guide that explained exactly how the material should be taught.

She showed us educational games galore and science projects a plenty. There were gizmos to teach math and gadgets to ensure our children learned phonics. Songs on tape would teach proper English and even Spanish or French or German; and DVD’s to transport our little students to far away lands.

We were even more confused than when we walked in. Which curriculum would be best for our kids? Did we need all the gizmos and gadgets. What about the tapes and DVDs?? How were we to decide? What if we were wrong?

Then I looked at the price tags attached to all those goodies. I was sure there had to be some kind of mistake. Surely that nice set of science workbooks wasn’t $125 just by themselves! And could those language tapes really cost more than my electric bill?

My husband and I looked at one another with a sense of helplessness. There was no way we could afford any of these things, much less all of them. How could we homeschool our kids when homeschooling was going to cost more than a private school?

Then miracle of all miracles, my eyes fell upon a book entitled Homeschool Your Child For Free by LauraMaery Gold and Joan M Zielnski. I grabbed the book up and happily paid the $18.95 price and before we pulled out of the parking lot, I was reading. It seemed that one could homeschool their child for almost nothing. All you really needed was a computer with internet and a printer.

I searched website after website that offered free printable for all grades. I found interactive websites that taught my children geography while playing a game. I found online support groups where I could “meet” veteran homeschoolers who had tons of advise and weren’t trying to sell me anything.

My greatest discovery was a website called www.edhelper.com . It had a lot of free material, but for just $20 a year I could have access to all the material for either elementary or high school. My favorite things about edhelper was being able to make custom printables for my kids based on words I chose or the level I chose for them and the theme units that let us tie all of our studies together. Oh, and not to mention that since one price covers all of elementary grades, my children can either advance faster or spend more time on a subject.

I have come a long way from that eager mom in the homeschool store who wondered how I would ever afford to give my kids the education I wanted them to have. My biggest expense for homeschool is ink cartridges for my printer.

I can whip up my own curriculum for two kids for the week in about two hours on a Sunday night, or in about thirty minutes in the morning, if necessary. My computer allows me to give my children a wealth of knowledge even though I am far from wealthy.

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