The Best Free Homeschooling Curriculum

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How to Homeschool for FREE

Is homeschooling free? Yes, it can be! The biggest cost associated with homeschooling is the curriculum.

But with this list of my favorite free online curriculum, you can homeschool without paying anything!

The Best Free Online Homeschool Curriculum:

Khan Academy

We’ve used Khan Academy for math, SAT prep, computer programming, and computer animation courses. The site provides a wide variety of top-quality courses totally free of charge. Courses include:

• math courses from preschool all the way to calculus
• high school science
• arts & humanities
• computing
• economics and finance
• test prep

Khan Academy has instructional videos, automatically-graded practice problems, and a dashboard showing student progress. Students learn at their own pace. The website adapts the material to address topics that the student needs to practice more.

Additionally, Khan Academy has partnered with NASA, The Museum of Modern Art, The California Academy of Sciences, and MIT to offer quality content.

Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool

Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool is a complete curriculum for preschool through 8th grade. You can pick some or all the subjects depending on your needs. The choice is yours.

The site utilizes free online resources including books, interactive learning games, and educational videos. There are 180 days of organized lesson plans complete with tests and quizzes. Courses available include:

• language arts including reading, writing, grammar, spelling, and vocabulary
• math
• history/social studies/geography
• science
• Spanish
• Bible
• computer
• music
• art
• PE/health
• logic

To learn more about Lee Giles, the curriculum developer, and why she gives Easy Peasy to homeschoolers for free, read here.

Easy Peasy All-in-One High School

Easy Peasy All-in-One High School is the Easy Peasy curriculum for 9th through 12th graders. Therefore, the high school site is set up similar to the lower grades website.

You can select your high schooler’s classes or there is an option to put in grade level and the site will suggest the typical classes based on what is usually taken at that grade level. The following free courses are available:

• Math
• English
• Computer
• Spanish
• Science
• PE/Health
• Art/Music

Ambleside Online

Ambleside Online is a free curriculum that adheres to the Charlotte Mason educational philosophies. Charlotte Mason was a British educator at the turn of the twentieth century. She believed that rich literature and “living books” were better than textbooks.

“Living books” is a term that was coined by Mason to describe books that make the subject “come alive.” They involve your emotions so it’s easier to remember the events and facts described in the story.  

Ambleside Online provides a 36-week schedule which includes:

• history
• language arts
• literature
• poetry
• geography
• science
• art appreciation

The Charlotte Mason method for teaching language arts uses reading, copywork, dictation, and narration to teach vocabulary, handwriting, spelling, writing and reading comprehension.

Booklists for each year include links to the books, the majority of which are on the Project Gutenberg website, which has a library of over 60,000 free eBooks. Project Gutenberg’s books are in the public domain, which means they are copyright free.

Also, some of the books used in the Ambleside Online curriculum can be found at the public library.

Free Ambleside audiobooks on LibriVox.org: I was excited to recently discover this list of free downloadable audiobooks used in the Ambleside Online curriculum. Click here for the LibriVox “Recordings of Books on the Ambleside List” page.

An Old-Fashioned Education

An Old-Fashioned Education is a site that has free public domain textbooks, literature and curriculum sorted into school subjects. While Ambleside Online and Old-Fashioned Education both use free ebooks from the public domain, Ambleside Online does not include any textbooks.

The creator of An Old-Fashioned Education, Miss Maggie, includes textbooks because she prefers to teach with a balanced combination of textbooks and living books.  You can choose to use grade-level plans or choose individual subjects on the website.

My favorite resource on this site is the McGuffey Readers. I use these readers with all my elementary school-aged children as copywork and dictation texts.

Related Reading:

McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers Free PDF Downloads

The Good and the Beautiful, Language Arts Levels 1 – 5

The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts curriculum has free PDF course downloads for levels 1 – 5. The download is identical to the printed versions that they sell. It can be viewed on any device. This comprehensive language arts curriculum includes:

• Phonics
• Reading
• Spelling
• Grammar
• Literature
• Writing
• Geography
• Art

These downloads can be printed and bound at an office supply store.

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Online Public School

Another free curriculum option for homeschoolers is online public school programs. There are both full grade-level programs and a-la-carte programs, which allow students to pick and choose from a list of courses.

However, not all states have an online public school. Here are 2 sites you can check to see if your state has this option available to you:

• State-by-state list
• K12

I personally avoid using an online public school for elementary-aged children. You don’t have the option to cut out unnecessary busy work or teach to your child’s learning style.

However, it can be a great option for older students.

We use online public-school courses for driver’s ed and foreign language.

The coursework is all done online. There is a staff teacher that will be grading your child’s work and keeping up with their progress. Consequently, the parent is very hands-off with this method.

The Public Library

Lastly, the library is a great place to get free books. You can let your child pick out their own reading books. They are more likely to enjoy learning if they are interested in what they are reading about. Also, family read alouds for literature and history can be found at the library.

Need help choosing really great library books for homeschooling? Here are some resources for finding awesome educational book titles. I like to use the booklists on these sites to find good literature and history books that I can check out at the library for free!

• Five In a Row – This curriculum has excellent booklists for ages 4-8. We’ve been able to find almost all these titles at our public library.
• Simply Charlotte Mason – This is an excellent book list that is grouped by grade levels. 
• Sonlight – This literature-based curriculum site has a wealth of great book selections. To find booklists, just choose your child’s grade level and then click on the “What’s Included” tab. I can find a lot of these at the library, but not all.
• Mega Book List of Excellent Read-Alouds – This is a list of all the books we’ve personally read and love! Most of these can be found at the library.
• The Good and the Beautiful Book List – This is a free PDF download with info about each book, including the moral, literary, and educational value.

Related Reading:

The Super Easy Way to Do Read Alouds

Free Supplementary Resources

In addition to the free curriculum that I’ve already mentioned, the following list includes my favorite supplementary resources. You’ll want to check out each of these excellent resources.

XtraMath

This website provides free drills for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts. It keeps track of missed facts and those are repeated until mastered. It’s much more fun than flashcards because your child will see the facts chart fill up with smiley faces as they learn their facts.

Didax Virtual Math Manipulatives

This site has free virtual math manipulatives including unifix cubes, ten frames, number lines, number boards, base ten blocks, math balance, dice, spinners, pattern blocks, geoboards, algebra tiles and more.

Hoffman Academy Piano Lessons

Mr. Hoffman has 238 video piano lessons for free. He has a friendly manner that is very appealing to children. Additionally, I have found his methods for teaching piano to be very effective.

TIP: To access the videos for free, click “Log In.” At the very top of the login page, click on “Lessons.” On the lessons page, you can select the Unit and then you’ll see all the free videos.

Justin Guitar

This is a site with free guitar and ukulele video lessons. There are over 1,000 videos on the site including beginner through advanced guitar lessons and beginner ukulele lessons.

Starfall

Starfall is an interactive website that covers phonics, reading, and math skills for kindergarten through 3rd grade. The songs are catchy and the games are fun. In fact, your child won’t even realize how much he is learning with this site. The free version has loads of content, but some of the videos and games are locked without a subscription.

Typing.com

This is a very effective free typing program. Each lesson includes teaching videos and practice exercises to help with typing speed. You can create a free account, which will track your child’s progress.

Seterra Geography

All the interactive geography quizzes and printables on Seterra are free. The interactive map games are a fantastic learning tool for homeschoolers.

Duolingo

This free language program has 36 different languages your children can learn. We have used it to learn Spanish. It works great to build a solid foundation in a fun way for elementary and middle school students. Duolingo isn’t rigorous enough to be a stand-alone high school Spanish course, but it would be an excellent supplement for extra practice. There is also a free app available.

Art for Kids Hub

Art for Kids Hub is a YouTube channel that has an extensive “How to Draw” series. Rob, the artist, teaches kids how to draw with a step-by-step approach. There are over 1,600 free videos on this YouTube channel with a new video uploaded every weekday.

Related Reading:

The Best Free Family Bible Study App

Best Free Skip Counting Songs to Learn Multiplication Facts Fast

Where to Buy Used Curriculum

I personally like to do a mixture of both online and actual bookwork. Used homeschool curriculum is easy to find and keeps the cost of homeschooling very low. Here are some ways to obtain used homeschool curriculum for a fraction of the cost of retail:

• eBay
• homeschoolclassifieds.com
• local buy/sell Facebook groups
• used book sales
• amazon

In short, homeschooling doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, it can be done for free using online resources. I hope that this information will be useful to you as you search for ways to homeschool within your budget.

Comment below if you’ve used any of these free resources. What are your favorites?