Bees & Blessing

When I started homeschool, like with many things, I went in, wide-eyed, and full of positive thinking! Wow, how much money are we going to save, now that we don’t have to buy school clothes or new shoes every September just because it’s that time of year. We won’t have to pay for field trips or fundraisers or popcorn days or school lunches! We will save so much money!

As a naturally frugal person, homeschooling was going to be my opportunity to just stack cash and build our savings! I found out very quickly that homeschooling was not free. There are so many things you can buy. There is so many shiny new things in the window. Geography books, fun activities, math manipulatives, and don’t get me started on what you can find on Etsy!

But despite all the things that we can buy to homeschool our children, I have been able to homeschool pretty frugally for the past few years and I want to share with you how we do that. I am a natural list maker, so I’m trying to avoid always having lists for you here! But I do have a few suggestions that may help you save some money on home school.

One way that we save money is by buying a box curriculum. I talked about in my last blog how I choose to use a box curriculum, and how I make it work for us, but having all of my resources in one place helps me not feel the need to purchase much extra. Everything I need for language is included in my language curriculum. Any handwriting practice or reading materials are all included in one set.

I also finish our curriculum for the year, as opposed to switching up midway. A few years ago, when my son was struggling in history, we didn’t switch curriculums midyear because I had already paid for this one! Instead, we put it aside for the remainder of the year as I brainstorm ways to really make it work. The next year we finished the curriculum from the previous year, and it’s working perfectly for us now.

I am a big believer in using up what you have before purchasing something new. I do this even in my life. I don’t buy new shampoo until my old shampoo is gone. I don’t get new bedsheets until my old bedsheets need to be replaced. This simple principle has helped to save a lot of money while homeschooling.

This next tip I have for you is not for the faint of heart. But we do not buy books. I know! I am a huge reader and my husband and daughter are too (still working on my son!), but we do not buy books for homeschool. We check books out from the library. I like to get books for different times of the year. I like to get back to school books or winter books or spring books or books about Christmas, but I do not buy them. Buying books for every season can get really expensive and why spend our hard earned money on books that I can get for free at my local library.

I often will find reading lists for different seasons or topics were discussing and then immediately go to my library’s website and put all of those books on hold and they are conveniently ready for me when I’m ready to pick them up. Now if we get one of these books and find that we love it and we’re reading it over and over and over again, I do consider putting that on a list to maybe get for my kids for Christmas, but we are not in the habit of buying every book that we are going to read.

And speaking of the library, we also do a lot of free activities there. My kids were able to take an acting camp that other places offered for over $100 per child and my library’s offering it at no cost. We also participate in a lot of their art and stem activities, which I count as schooling hours! Bonus!

We also were able to homeschool frugally because we don’t do everything! My kids are limited to one extracurricular activity at a time. This is very hard for my daughter. She wants to do basketball and taekwondo and gymnastics and baseball, but those activities can get expensive, so we’ve set that boundary of one and done. We also don’t participate in everything that our co-op offers. We have opportunities to go on multiple field trips and other fun enriching activities, but we have decided that we will only go to the ones that we are truly interested in, like the theater, or their annual Valentine or Christmas party.

Just like with anything, you have to decide what you and your family are comfortable investing into your homeschool program. If you like all the shiny new things, that’s great, but if you are finding yourself spending a little more than you plan to on your homeschooling, I hope this article will help you see some ways that you can homeschool more frugally.