We were delighted to hear the topic for this week's Homeschool Minute:  Low Cost Curriculum. To those of us that have been homeschooling awhile, it seems like a lot of people think they have to spend tons of money to homeschool. Not true!

You really don't have to spend much money to homeschool. You can, of course. You can sign up for lots of expensive classes, and order the newest editions of the priciest programs, but that doesn't mean you'll necessarily be giving your children any more than someone who spends less.
 

Some of the very best curricula out there can be gotten very cheaply used. Honestly, middle school math or elementary grammar hasn't changed much. Why not get an older edition from eBay, Amazon, or a used curriculum sale or store? We're still using some of the books we bought twenty years ago for our first. Often, they're just as good as the new stuff and a whole lot cheaper.
 

You can also use free resources. Let's say you want to put something together for elementary school science for your kids, and they're interested in birds. Do some initial research on the Internet, and think through what you want to cover. Head to the library, and grab some books on every level (picture books, easy readers, children's, youth, and adult books) on the subject. Bring them home, and start reading. Get directions on the Internet to build a bird feeder. Identify the birds that come to your feeder with guides from the library or the Internet. Call your local extension agent and ask if you can borrow an incubator and hatch eggs. They usually provide everything you need, including fertile eggs, and you take the chicks back when you're done. Schedule a field trip with a local bird or raptor rescue center. At the end, you'll have a terrific learning experience for the cost of some gas and bird seed.
 

It looks a little different for high schoolers, but even at the highest levels, it can still be done very cheaply. Let's say you want to do a Great Books course to study literature and history. Choose a time period, and look online for Classic book lists. An older college level text can usually be gotten for less than $10 used online. Use the online lists and texts to structure your study. Most college texts are very readable by homeschooled high schoolers. If you were studying early American History, all the primary source documents you can imagine are free online. Get them reading them and writing about them. Your high schooler can have a better, more thorough course than they would at nearly any school in the country.  You can call it a college level course on their transcript, and it costs less than taking the family to eat from the dollar hamburger menu!
 

In case you're wondering what to do with all the money you'll save, we've recently realized that to actually produce some of the resources folks keep asking for--and that we think are very important--we need some help. Several people suggested Patreon, and so we set up an account. If you want to be a part of what we're doing, head over here: http://patreon.com/halandmelanie.  Regardless of whether you can help or not, we appreciate you!

Hal & Melanie Young
info@raisingrealmen.com