Every homeschooling family knows they can go to their local public library to access free books, free videos and CD's, free audiotapes, and perhaps even free software to use in their homeschool. Here are some other ideas you may not have thought of for finding free educational materials for your family:

While it is common to bemoan the poor quality of most television programming, a homeschooling parent can easily build a year's worth of social studies' curriculum around the quality offerings of The History Channel, Discovery Channel, and A&E Network. While some discretion needs to be used because not all the shows on these channels are appropriate and of solid educational value, many are, especially those that are part of the A&E Classroom, A&E Biography, and Assignment: Discovery series. If you check the websites for these networks and/or series, most of them offer free teacher's guides with schedules of their upcoming educational offerings for the next three or six months. By combining library books on the same historical periods and topics with watching these shows, I was able to complete the curriculum for my son's sixth and seventh grade history courses at a cost of zero dollars.

The Internet is another source of many free educational sites. Again, a parent needs to check out the sites and use discretion in making choices. However, by running Google searches on various topics in science, math, history, and literature, I was able to find many valuable sites which my son and I used together. He especially enjoyed certain math review sites which were interactive in terms of problem-solving and drilling math concepts. We mainly used these sites as supplements to a math textbook and also for variety so that he didn't have to work with the textbook every single day. Since most students love to have time on the computer, working with websites in science and history was often a reward for days of hard work writing or doing hands-on work in those subjects earlier in the week.

Finally, many websites which sell educational and curriculum products offer free samples of worksheets, workbook pages, puzzles, etc. at their sites which can be downloaded and tried out by your children before you do decide to spend your limited curriculum funds on the product. This can give you an idea of how your child will like working with the material and the format it is in before you make an investment in it. Given the fact that most homeschooling families are living on only one income and that children have different learning styles and personalities, it also always makes sense, that when you do have to buy curriculum, to buy it from a company which offers a money-back guarantee. There are many different ways to teach and to learn the same material or concepts, so always give yourself and your children the freedom to try another way if the first method you choose doesn't work as you'd hoped. Enjoy the freedom and diversity of learning homeschooling allows!