The Best Homeschooling Freebies

A couple days ago I talked about the cost of homeschooling. I thought I'd jump on the Top Ten {Tuesday} bandwagon and post my top ten favorite places to go for homeschooling freebies.

{One} - Homeschool Share - This is hands down my favorite free spot on the web. They have free lapbooks covering everything from "Abraham Lincoln" right on down to the "zoo." There are hundreds of topics for all age groups covered. I love Homeschool Share! And if you enjoy Five in a Row - you need to check out the resources there for that unit study. Fabulous.

{Two} - Donna Young - If you are in need of homeschooling planners or even home planners, you should check out this site. Donna has put together oodles and oodles of free planning forms for your home and school. This is not just a homeschool resource. I can't even begin to touch on what's there so be sure to check it out.

{Three} - Oklahoma Homeschool - Don't let the name fool you. Once you get to the main page you need to check out two things there. The first is FREE! Homeschool Forms and that's just what you'll find. The other - and one of my favorites and one I've used from time to time - is the FREE! Lessons Plans, FREE! Unit Studies, FREE! Timeline. I've used her photography unit study and others. A good source for free learning.

{Four} - The Lab of Mr. Q -  A really fun science blog/newsletter. Every month Mr. Q emails out a really neat experiment. We did one with gummy bears a while back that my boys still talk about. Click on Labnote Archives at the top of the website to see all the monthly experiments. However, are you looking for an affordable elementary school science? Mr. Q allows for a free download of his Elementary Life Science book. Yup, free science.

{Five} - Ambleside Online - I tell everyone about this one. Ambleside Online is an entirely free curriculum based on the Charlotte Mason philosophy of education. You will need to add math and phonics and perhaps buy some of the books (or borrow). It can all be done relatively inexpensively.

{Six} - An Old-Fashioned Education - If you are looking for an entirely (and I mean entirely) free education, then this is the place. An Old-Fashioned Education has full curriculum listed for grades K-11 (there are plans for grade 12, but it's not up yet). This uses public domain books so most are older texts, but very high quality. The entire schedule is even written out for you. It really couldn't be easier.

{Seven} - Free File Folder Games - I love file folder games. My boys love file folder games. This site has a bunch! Oh, what are file folder games? Just that....a game that is made out of a file folder. Typically the file folder is the base and if there are any cards or extras, they can be stored in an envelope attached to the back. I have a bunch of these and try to use them often.

{Eight} - Homeschool Helper Online - This site has some really nice lapbooks as well as unit studies. I've used the one on library skills (a state requirement for homeschools in my state) as well as the baseball one. There are also free unit studies. There are some more freebies as well (notebooking, record keeping, phonics, etc.) so be sure to check them out.

{Nine} - Head of the Class - I used this quite a bit for J6 this past year. Head of the Class is another free curriculum. Currently they have grades PreK to 3rd completed. Fourth and fifth grade are slated to be done this fall while 6th-8th will be done by next spring. It's interactive. Some of the work is done on-line and sometimes there are printable pages. J6 had a good time with this and we'll probably continue using it to some degree.

{Ten} - 1000 Good Books List - If you do nothing else, get a library card and read, read, and read some more. This list is a fantastic place to start if you don't have a clue what constitutes a "good" book. In fact, I'm off to print some of them off for my own use right now.