If you are looking for a great FREE United States History resource for your home school, you have got to check this one out: FREE United States History ebook
This is a great resource for homeschoolers!! It’s a downloadable ebook, with information on each of the 50 states: things they are famous for, events in history, important people that lived there, when they joined the United States, state mottos and more!
Get the free book here: FREE United States History Resource
A great alternative to traditional homeschooling curriculum is online homeschooling. Make use of the Internet to enroll your children in online homeschooling courses.
Online homeschooling offers so many benefits it's hard to know where to start...first of all, by enrolling your child in some online classes, it takes a lot of the pressure of you. For those of us who have a few children we are homeschooling, it can be hard planning enough activities and assignments. Online schooling takes the pressure off, but still allows us to monitor what our children are learning.
Which brings us to our next benefit of online homeschooling: the ability to monitor and decide what and how our children are learning. Unlike sending our children to public school, with online homeschooling classes we are able to view what activities the instructor is having our children do. We can also control what classes our children participate in, and plan extra activities for topics our children are interested in.
Online homeschooling provides structure that is hard to provide (especially in my hectic family life!) One of the problems I face is planning...it's hard to sit down and plan any long-term lessons and activities for my 5 kids. Online homeschooling would remove that obstacle.
High school is hard when you're homeschooling. These last 4 years of school are so important; you need records kept for college and higher level skills in subjects we know next to nothing about! Online homeschooling is definitely a benefit in this case...you have a set schedule, and copies of work that your high schooled student has done.
Now that we've discussed all the benefits, it's time to discuss where you can find sites that offer online homeschooling.
If you're intrigued and want to check out the different online homeschooling options, here's a list to get you started:
Global Student Network Online Homeschooling - This site offers unlimited online classes, although they do limit it to 7 classes at once. Online homeschooling is available for grades 2-12. Tuition is $625 with $100 discounts for additional children in the same family.
Christian Online HomeschoolingThe Jubilee Academy offers online homeschooling courses for $895, but they have discounts available for advance enrollment. Unlike the Global Student Network, The Jubilee Academy doesn't have all its materials online; but they do send you all the materials.
K12 offers an interesting array of online homeschooling options. I know here in Texas, the public school portion of k12 is free; however, I personally didn't like the limitations, which is why I opted not to enroll my children. Part of the appeal of homeschooling is that you can work on your own schedule, not someone else's; the public school option that k12 offers has the same attendance requirements as the physical public school system. They also have a very expensive private school option, which leaves it open to only the rich portion of the population.
The last online homeschooling option I want to share with you is Keystone. Keystone offers online courses for grades 6-8, and is a great deal less expensive than k12.
For more information on online homeschooling, this book is an excellent resource:
If you are looking for great, FREE homeschooling curriculum, you have got to check out this FREE American History Curriculum!
Created by an experienced homeschooling mom, this FREE American History Curriculum is easily adaptable to grades 2nd through 6th. It was created with a literature-based theme, but tries to incorporate some other subjects as well.
This Mom has it together!! :-) She includes everything you will need to implement her American History Curriculum:
I love this free American History Curriculum!! I am definitely going to use it for my younger 3 children. I've been looking for an American History Curriculum, and I give high kudos to this Mom for hers.
Especially since she included a daily schedule plan; let's face it, even with all the free curriculum materials available online, it can't be difficult to decide what to do on what day and in what order! On the flip side, purchasing curriculum is extremely expensive!
This free American History Curriculum covers the following topics:
If you have been searching for free curriculum, I highly recommend Guest Hollow's FREE American History Curriculum!!!
Peter and the Wolf 
I used it for Dakota and Amber. The others listened in, but only because it was on. However, the other kids liked listening for the different instruments on Peter and the Wolf, and associating the instruments with the Peter and the Wolf characters.
Each character in the story Peter and the Wolf is represented by a different musical instrument. For example, the bird is represented by the piccolo, Peter is represented by the clarinet and Peter's grandfather is represented by the bassoon.
Parents can easily use Peter and the Wolf to introduce instruments to children in Kindergarten, first grade and second grade. Get your copy by clicking the link below!
Do y'all use something other than Peter and the Wolf? What are some of the ways you have introduced music to your children?
Another great resource for homeschoolers is Super Teacher Worksheets. They offer a wide selection of free worksheets.
I use them for spelling words. They offer free spelling word lists and worksheets for grades 1 through 4. Amber's in second grade, so I get the free worksheets and free spelling word lists for grade 2. I like it because they also have free spelling lists for holidays.
Super Teacher Worksheets also offers different types of free worksheets for English. Free worksheets for English include the following:
If you want some free math worksheets, Super Teacher Worksheets has those too! You can find free worksheets for the following:
As you can see, Super Teacher Worksheets has a great variety of free math worksheets! You can also find fun puzzle worksheets too.
In addition to the great free worksheets, Super Teacher Worksheets offers great tools for teachers and information on all 50 states.
If you are looking for free worksheets for your kids, Super Teacher Worksheets is a great choice! Do you use them? Let me know what you think of the website!
I have started creating my other kids' curriculums for the coming school year. Ashley's math curriculum isn't complete; she's going to take Geometry, and I haven't found a resource for that yet. :-( So in the meantime, I decided to work on the younger kids' math curriculum.
I found a wonderful FREE elementary grades homeschool curriculum that I plan to use for Kiara, Amber and Dakota. The site offers worksheets, lesson plans, even a suggested daily schedule for the lessons.
I think the neatest thing about this free math curriculum is that it teaches in a "cyclical" method. I didn't understand this at first, but basically what it means is that it cycles through each of the several different elementary grades math categories, teaching a lesson from one category the first day, then the next category the second day, and so on. It's actually a good way to teach elementary kids math.
By teaching elementary grades math in this cyclical manner, all the material is fresh in their minds, and by the end of the year, they will have absorbed more of the material. Just my personal opinion of course! ;-)
So if you're looking for free elementary homeschool math curriculum, I highly recommend the CSMP program.
If you check it out, let me know what you think of it!