Continuing our previous discussions about homeschooling, let's talk about online resources:

You don’t need a fancy or pricey curriculum to get started in homeschooling. Usually, each year before the beginning of the term, I will go to my State Department of Education website and download a copy of their curriculum standards as well as Scope and Sequence materials. I then use things I know interest my son to meet the content standards. For example, in Kindergarten, when I was teaching him to read, I used his love of trains to teach him left to right orientation in reading. The engine was facing to the left and the train would pick up freight cars behind it, so that the sentences would read left to right as they do in books here in the US (as opposed to cultures where one reads right to left, or vertically).

There are tons of websites with free curriculum ideas as well as unit studies. Unit studies are themed studies that incorporate each of the content areas. For example, a unit study on westward expansion in the US might include the Little House series for Reading/Language Arts, churning butter for science, building a model log home for Math and Art, and reading a train schedule or building a scale model for Math.

Don’t forget free resources like:

The Library: Most libraries have Reference Librarians who love to help kids. They also have computers with Internet access. Additionally, many have special activities, events and tutorials built around special topics or have special online/offline collections donated by corporations.

Museums: Most museums offer field trips for schools, homeschools included! Also, they generally have a special online area of their website for teachers with lesson plans and other curricula.

Companies: A lot of companies have special areas of their websites dedicated to educators. They, too, have lesson plans and other resources for teachers.

Local Resources: Try your local Park and Recreation department for classes. Also, many grocery stores, pet stores, factories and other types of businesses will offer “behind the scenes” field trips. Believe it or not, there are even “virtual field trips.” Use your favorite search engine and use the phrase “virtual field trips” to pull up tons of sites, as well as webcams of endangered species habitats, satellites and other cool things!

Your Network: Through church, work or other homeschooling families, you may know of someone who speaks another language, or has a special skill like chess, robotics, music or knitting! Ask if they would be willing to teach your child or a group of children.

Online Resources:

DLTK Kids: Resources for preschool and Kindergarten.

Enchanted Learning: The site has an extensive free section, however the modest “premium” content is only $20 per year and is well worth the money. Covers Kindergarten- about 5th or 6th grade (with a few resources beyond that).

A + Math: This site has tons of free worksheets as well as online interactive Math games for K-6th grade or so.

Discovery Channel “School”: The website offers an amazing and totally free selection of worksheets, puzzlemakers, and lesson plans for K-12. You can find resources for an amazing variety of subjects as well as get hooked in to the resources for the shows the channel has in its lineup.

Best Homeschool: Great articles, links and resources for just about every aspect of homeschooling, regardless of grade level.

Donna Young: The Donna Young website has a wonderful selection of free worksheets covering Science, Math, Language Arts, (I go there almost daily for her handwriting sheets!), as well as organization resources like homeschool planners, journals and home organizers. She also has worksheets that correspond to some of the more popular Christian curricula.

Jan Brett: Jan Brett's delightful website, with colorful, engaging artwork, has a wide variety of free resources. I found her phonograms to be especially helpful.

In addition, you may want to try to get a copy of Homeschool Your Child For Free. Many of the website URLs are most likely out of date by now, but it is still useful book to give you ideas about the various resources out there both on- and offline. The author also maintains a Yahoo Group discussion list that shares resources as they become available.