Home Schooling on a Dime

Like many people who are homeschooling, we're on a budget. Since homeschooling families are often giving up one salary and need to buy all their own curriculum, it is important to wisely use the resources we have. That can take many forms, including purchasing materials that grant families permission to make copies (so if you have several children you only have to buy one workbook). That's always a good thing, but here's my favorite amount of money to spend--$0.00

If you go hunting, you might find some great activities that only cost you the gas money to get there.

There is the fairly obvious library story time. This is great, since if you're like us, you are already making a trip there weekly. Our local library offers many different story times for various ages through out the week, but best for us is that they offer a special story time for home schoolers. It helps Kate to know there are other kids like her, who are being educated at home.

While we can't check out books at the library in the big city, we do drive there about once a month to enjoy great marionette shows, so look around and see what you might find nearby. I have to tell you, walking through their children's stacks gives me library card envy. I think moving will be worth it to gain access to all those wonderful books, but for now we're grateful for the really neat shows.

Next up, check local museums. For some activities, you might need to pay admissions fees (though often a membership is cheaper if your family will go somewhere twice), but we have found that some of these activities truly are free. Justin took Kate to an astronomy night hosted by a local science museum and we have taken her to art classes at a local art museum, neither activity required admissions fees.

Onto those memberships...they aren't free, but between family memberships and educator memberships (I have been able to get the educator discount everywhere I have asked when I take my papers from the district stating that we are home schooling--from museums to bookstores), you will likely find that it pays for itself in 2-3 visits, so every visit after that is free. We opted for memberships to a science museum and art museum for this year. As we plan to study biology next year, we will likely pick up the zoo in place of the science museum. I'm hoping to cycle through a few places, so we get to spend some time in each and truly get our use out of our memberships.

We can't wait until the children are older to take a trip to D.C., when they can really get a lot out of all those great (free!) museums too. I have a plan for studying U.S. history with Kate in 4th grade, maybe then...

Do you have any great free (or cheap) tips for home schooling or raising a family?