If you are not careful, homeschoooling can be expensive.
It is easy to be lured by the latest piece of software that others are telling you will make a long-lasting difference in your child's education, the newest book that just happens to be on sale on Amazon.com or the "complete program" that will make your homeschooling life easier and prepare your child for an Ivy League college. Plus, that impressive homeschooling library looks so good when people come over.
Couple this with a common reduction in income -- most parents who stay home to homeschool are not generating a lot of income anyway-- and you can find your already tight purse strings stretched by a desire to buy much homeschooling " stuff." Be careful. Don't be a sheep. It doesn't have to be this way.
Here is how to homeschooling the Guerrilla/Bare Bones way -- spending $100 or less per year per child.
What you need:
a library card
a way to get to the library
a sack to carry books home in
paper and pencils
Examples of how to do it:
Go to the library as often as you can. Check out books on whatever subjects interest you and your child. The library can also lend videos, music, books on tape, computer software, and even copies of art to hang on your walls for a time. Read books, ask lots of questions about what your child read.
Use the internet to look up a Freecycle group in your area and use Freecycle for school supplies, old electronics to take apart, and materials for crafts and projects. You could also go to Amblesideonline and use their entirely free curriculum, including copies of e-texts to supplement your homeschooling, or give you a guide to follow if you feel that you need a guide.
Check out books on birdwatching and then go watch birds. Let your child draw pictures of the birds he sees, labeling the anatomy. Use this to fuel a study on anatomy, or ornithology, exploring it as far as your child is willing to go. If he likes art, draw the birds in detail. Let him draw many, then have relatives over for an art show.
Get as involved as the child wants to get with every subject he shows an interest in. Often subjects act like springboards for other subjects.
Go to free concerts, free cultural events, and and free community lessons. You can often barter services for tuition for a local class. Ask local theater groups if you and your child can see a dress rehearsal for free in exchange for a written review. Although a review written by a child is likely to be worthless to a theater company, they will often support a child's interest in theater and say yes. Have the child write the review, and then send it along with a thank you note to the theater company.
If your child is interested in computers, dig some out of people's trash. Let the child take the computers apart. Support him putting them back together again. Get books from the library on computer hardware and design and go through them together. Use the internet together, letting the child research topics he is interested in. If he likes writing, let him start a free blog.
If your child is interested in gardening and plants, ask people whose plants you admire for clippings and old plastic pots. You can create a beautiful hobby that enhances the home and opens up a portal to the study of biology with just a few clippings.
Cook together. You have to cook anyway, so why not teach your child?
Even long after the child can read well to himself for entertainment, read aloud to him. Pick books that are just out of his "reading reach" and give him the gift of literature and your time. Encourage him to draw, build models, legos, or do another hobby while you read.
Then, take the money you didn't spend on textbooks and workbooks and pay your rent, start a college fund, save for some land, or travel together.
What matters to his education isn't the money you spend, but the love, interest, and intellectual support you provide. Being available emotionally, intellectually, and physically are worth more than the most expensive private school tuition.
Recent Comments