Home School on a Budget

SITE MOVE

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 13:31:00 +0000

We have moved the site to a new host.
Please click here for the new site.

Home-schooled Children Resources

New Website

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:43:00 +0000

There is now a new website where you can find many cheap supplies for homeschooling. The Homeschooled children website will be update and always will have discounted items on it that you can puchase. You will find used textbooks there at bargain prices.

Stop by today at Homeschooled Children website and pick up a few thinga that you need for homeschooling.

Buying Homeschool Text Books Cheaper

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:10:00 +0000

Since Textbooks is going to be your biggest expense when having a homeschool here is some suggestions of where to buy them and save money.

Yardsales: Buying books at yardsales is the way to add to your library at home for next to nothing. Many people have the books at the yardsales that you need for .10- 1.00 each. You can use just about anybook in your homeschool teachings. Not only can you buy textbooks also look for arts and crafts, paper, and other learning supplies that you need.

Thrift Stores: When going in a thrift store such as Goodwill check out the books. These books are very inexpensive and you will be surprized at the books you can find there. While some of the books may be older, they can still be used in Homeschool activities. Not only did I find many of my homeschool books there, I also got a Hooked On Phonics there one time for $9.99! Talk about a bargain!

Half.com: Always check here to find homeschool books. There are many that are less than $1.00 and will do the job fine. During the summer months, or at the end of a school year is when you will find the best bargains.

Ebay: Ebay is another great place to look for used books.

Amazon: Again Amazon has great deals.

Dollar Stores: While they don't have the text books, they have many other items there that you can use in your homeschool.

I never pay retail for books, there are many out there that you can get at a discount and will still be able to use for several years.

Handwriting Paper to Print

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:46:00 +0000

Looking for handwriting paper for free? Here is the links so you can print them off.
Handwriting paper to print (in color)
Small
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/practice24.htm

Small-Med
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/practice36.htm

Medium
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/practice48.htm

large- Medium
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/practice60.htm

Large
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/practice72.htm

Learn to write

This one is really cool, you add their name in before you Print it off

“My Name Is _______” (must have JavaScript enabled)
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/manuscript/names/_mynameis.htm#

2nd Grade Sheets

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:44:00 +0000

Alphabet (pre kindergarten – 2nd grade)

Learn how to write the alphabet – learn how to distinguish different letters.
http://www.tampareads.com/alphabet/alpha-index.htm

Worksheet that will is traceable letters that you design
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/manuscript/javascripts/_my8linestext.htm

Animals letter worksheet.
Pictures in color of animals with their name under the picture that is traceable printing.
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/manuscript/pictwords/index.htm

Create your own worksheet. Choose from many different words that will show a colored clipart of the picture, and the word under it.

http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/manuscript/pictwords/js_pictword_index.htm

Different worksheets with colored pictures that have traceable words to print.
Choose from states, animals, musical instruments, and many others.
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/manuscript/pictwords/index.htm

School Express

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:37:00 +0000

http://www.schoolexpress.com

This website has 10,200+ free worksheets for many subjects and learning topics. The worksheets on these pages are colorful, and fun. They have clipart drawings through out the worksheets which make the appealing to children.

There are worksheets for beginning handwriting, which they have several sheets on each printed letter of the alphabet. They have journal writing, where they have a different sheet every day that is different for 365 days a year. That you can print out for your child to fill in with their own words for their personal journal.

There are worksheets for history, math, thinking, science and thinking. Also you can find reading and phonics worksheets here.

You can do math online and have it graded online where you as the parent can choose how many questions there are in the test. Once the test is completed the child gets the grade and you can print the results. This is a great way to give a test to the child. They have math tests for Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. .
They have free online storybooks, where your child can read the book and click the next button to go on, they also have matching coloring books of the same book so that your child can really comprehend the story. You can create puzzles, mazes, word search online for the student from this site to again help the student understand what he has read much better.

You can make free awards for your child from a huge selection of awards each one can be customized to your preference. You can print them right from your screen online.
http://www.schoolexpress.com

Free Math worksheets

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 00:54:00 +0000

Cost: $

HomeSchool Math
For math for elementary age students. The worksheets offered here can be customized. They offer sheets for 1st -4th grade students. Telling time, counting, addition, fractions, and decimals. They have an answer key for all their worksheets. There are worksheets that you change fractions to decimals, and number with decimals to fractions. There are several pre-made worksheets. This website also gives great tips on how to teach math to your child.
http://www.homeschoolmath.net/

School starts soon

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 16:44:00 +0000

I'm starting my classes Monday, making final preparations now to get started. I have downloaded and prepared classes for 1 month. I am not stressing Shakespeare or old English styles, I just don't see much use for that. Instead I will teach things that they need to know later on. Things that will help them in life, like balancing a checkbook, writing resumes, and how to save money, invest in stocks. I think that is more important than Shakespeare.

Do you teach Shakespeare and Old English in your home schools? Or do you stress more on what the students need to know to get good jobs and get into a good college?

State's Tax Free Weekends

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 13:05:00 +0000

Most of the states have Tax-Free Weekends, where you can get the school supplies without paying tax. It does save a little. My state had the tax-free weekend last week, I went out and stocked up on things that I would need this school year. Might as well take advantage of it while they are offering it.

I did manage to get ink, and copypaper with no tax. The nice thing about tax free weekend is that most of the stores will have sales going on at the same time. So I really ended up saving.

I noticed that Walmart now has off name brand of ink. I picked up some of that figuring that it will be just as good. After all I only need the ink to look dark enough on the paper for the kids to read it. But the offname brand is considerably cheaper than the name brand. Some days I think it's cheaper just to buy a whole new printer then to get the ink. During the year, I do use alot of ink and paper. I am always printing off worksheets for the kids to use.

I love the tax free weekends. With no tax, and the sales I stocked up pretty good for the school year.

If my child was younger I could of picked up many books for them to use during the year, but they don't have alot for the older kids.

Make your Own Puzzles and Wordsearch

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 15:29:00 +0000

Cost: $
Website: http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com/

Create your own word searches, and puzzles using the words that you want to include. These are great because you can customize them and use words that your child can relate to and makes learning more fun for them.

You can choose from Drop down letters, math puzzles, hidden messages and many more. You can even add clip art to the puzzles, and make vocabulary lists. I have used these puzzle makers to help my children learn spelling, and word meanings. They can be so useful in teaching.

The nice thing about doing your own puzzle searches and word searches is that you can use it for any subject that you are teaching. These can be done even for math lessons.

These are fully customizable, and totally free. All you need to do is customize them, and print them and they're ready for you to use!
http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com/

Time to make schedules

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 14:57:00 +0000

Cost: $
Website: http://www.chartjungle.com/schoolhome.html

I'm behind making the yearly schedule for the assignments.
There is a nice place that you can download free charts, schedules, and even report cards. Of course it's all free.
I downloaded and printed many schedules off so that I know exactly where I stand as far as classes that I need to cover. It's an awesome place to get free things. They have many free organization worksheets for the home school teacher.

Chartjungle is a great place to get organized for the new school year. It doesn't take long to plan your classes using the worksheets that they have listed.

Learning to write Numbers and Cursive

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:21:00 +0000

Cost: $

Various Websites.

Here are places that you can get worksheets to teach your child to write

Kindergarten – 3rd grade.
Tracing letters, printing letters, recognizing letters, and cursive writing with worksheets that you can trace the letter, then write the letters. With the cursive learn to write whole words with their worksheets.

Learn to write Cursive words:

Learn to write numbers

Here are some blank worksheets with the lines drawn on them. These are usually hard to find in the stores and these are great to print off for practice sheets.

Handwriting paper to print (these are in color).

Small

Small-Med

Medium

large- Medium

Large

Colors and ABC Flash Cards and Worksheets

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:19:00 +0000

Cost: $

Colors – with pictures
Flash cards with the color and a picture

Preschool tracing page, coloring pages, letters, easy word charts. Easy words for children to learn.

Pre kindergarten- 1st grade activities, most of these worksheets are in black and white. Your child is the one that is going to be coloring them.

Math Worksheets 1st-4th Grade

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:18:00 +0000

Cost: $

Website

These are some great worksheets for math. I did find that my children liked doing the worksheets and learned quicker with them. I used many worksheets for all the subjects. I found ways to work it in. We used to have speed tests between them and me, where we would have the same worksheet and race to see who got the most correct in the least amount of time.

For math for elementary age students. The worksheets offered here can be customized. They offer sheets for 1st -4th grade students. Telling time, counting, addition, fractions, and decimals. They have an answer key for all their worksheets. There are worksheets that you change fractions to decimals, and number with decimals to fractions. There are several pre-made worksheets. This website also gives great tips on how to teach math to your child.

Learn to Print Worksheets

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:16:00 +0000

Cost: $
Website: Various

Learn how to write the alphabet – learn how to distinguish different letters.
http://www.tampareads.com/alphabet/alpha-index.htm

Worksheet that will is traceable letters that you design
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/manuscript/javascripts/_my8linestext.htm

Animals letter worksheet.
Pictures in color of animals with their name under the picture that is traceable printing.
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/manuscript/pictwords/index.htm

Create your own worksheet. Choose from many different words that will show a colored clipart of the picture, and the word under it.

http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/manuscript/pictwords/js_pictword_index.htm

Different worksheets with colored pictures that have traceable words to print.
Choose from states, animals, musical instruments, and many others.
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/manuscript/pictwords/index.htm

Awards to print for free

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:15:00 +0000

Cost: $
Website: http://www.schoolexpress.com/awards/index.php

Make awards for your child

You can make free awards for your child from a huge selection of awards each one can be customized to your preference. You can print them right from your screen online.

Personalize online and print from your computer!

Worksheet Website

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:12:00 +0000

Cost: $
Website: http://www.schoolexpress.com

This website has 10,200+ free worksheets for many subjects and learning topics. The worksheets on these pages are colorful, and fun. They have clipart drawings through out the worksheets which make the appealing to children.

There are worksheets for beginning handwriting, which they have several sheets on each printed letter of the alphabet. They have journal writing, where they have a different sheet every day that is different for 365 days a year. That you can print out for your child to fill in with their own words for their personal journal.

There are worksheets for history, math, thinking, science and thinking. Also you can find reading and phonics worksheets here.

You can do math online and have it graded online where you as the parent can choose how many questions there are in the test. Once the test is completed the child gets the grade and you can print the results. This is a great way to give a test to the child. They have math tests for Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. .
They have free online storybooks, where your child can read the book and click the next button to go on, they also have matching coloring books of the same book so that your child can really comprehend the story. You can create puzzles, mazes, word search online for the student from this site to again help the student understand what he has read much better.

This is an awesome website. Check it out today

Why I home school

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:40:00 +0000

Homeschooling takes a lot of work. But the benefits are well worth it.

I chose to home school because my daughter has Attention Deficient Disorder, and the school was pushing for me to medicated her constantly. The calls home started the 2nd week of Kindergarten, and they never quit till I finally had enough and pulled her out of public school.

In 5th grade she failed almost every class, the ones that she did pass she got D's. But because she passed the end of the year test, they moved her on to 6th grade. After that she learned that as long as she knew the material for the end of the year test, she didn't have to pay attention in class. It was a struggle to get her to go to school. Every morning was a constant fight to get her up for school. She said they made her feel stupid, and after a few meetings with the school personnel I understood why she felt that way.

I know that she wasn't learning disabled as they tried to tell me, but that she just learns differently then others. She got bored with the classroom setting. I pulled her out of school in the 7th grade in the middle of the year. The school tried to fight me on it, saying that she will never amount to anything with just a GED. That she NEEDED public education with trained teachers, to help her get a Diploma. But I did it anyhow.

That daughter is now 19, and has graduated from the Community College with a 3.2 average, and has an Associate Degree. She is getting ready to go to the University this year to complete her studies to become a Social Worker. I started her in college at the age of 16. It took her a little longer than 3 years to complete her degree, but that's fine with me. At age 19 she is still ahead of others her age.

The difference in confidence level was immediatly noticable in her after I started to homeschool her. She didn't feel stupid anymore, she became interested in studying daily. This child who I fought with daily to go to school, only missed 4 days of classes during college. In college she knew she was there before anyone else her age, and that made all the difference to her.

Since my state requires someone to stay home and homeschool a child, my husband quit his job to stay home since I had the better benefits in the family. It was a struggle fiancially yet we managed with the help of the Good Lord.

I didn't have the money to purchase school book programs, but I knew with a little research that I could do just as well as the paid schools could. I searched for free worksheets, and bought books from Goodwill, ebay, half.com, and yardsales. I downloaded many worksheets that were free online and learned all I could about the subjects that she would need in life. My total cost to homeschool my daughter was about $100 a year. Did I scrimp on her education for that amount of money? No, I don't think so. I just taught her wisely using all the free resources that I could find. The free resources are out there, they just need found. Since I do tech support, I was lucky to have Internet access at work that between calls, I could search, and I searched constantly to find the cheapest and best way to homeschoo.

As the days go on, I will add more links to the site, as well as the forms that I used to plan the school year. I learned by trial and error with my 1st homeschooled child, I am now homeschooling another child and my hopes are to start her in when she turns 16. My husband isn't complaining, he's still Mr. Mom, and working from home. After this last child graduates, my next hurdle will be sending him back to the rat race to go to work!

Free online Math Tests - Self Graded

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:32:00 +0000

Cost = :)

You can give math tests that are random all you have to do is set it up and the child takes the test, and the test is then graded. You can have it give up to 20 questions per test.

http://www.schoolexpress.com/funtime/math_generator/add-online.php

Below is a screen shot of a sample test.

Free Worksheets Online - Math

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 17:24:00 +0000

Cost: Price of Ink

Here is a great place you can print out math sheets for free.
http://www.homeschoolmath.net/worksheets/

You can print out clock faces, to help your child tell time, and they even have places where you can create your own pages and print the page as you designed it.

Here is an easy way to help your child have fun while learning math. they have many different math worksheets for your child to learn.

The math sheets go from Grade 1 through Grade 4 but you can design your own sheets if you want to for anygrade.

I found having the child do alot of worksheets is an easy way for them to practice without knowing it. Flashcards do work, but unless you practice it everyday, you will forget exactly how to do it.

Getting Ready for a new Home Schooling Year

noreply@blogger.com (Mommy Home Schools) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:57:00 +0000

This is my new blog about where to find homeschool items online for free. There are so many free resources out there to find things.

I thought that I would share my wealth of knowledge about homeschooling on a budget.

I will update frequently as I find more low cost, free things that will help the home school teachers like me save money while still giving quailty education. We all know that homeschooling our children is the best for them, but there is no need for it to cost a bundle.