Step 3 in my 6 Steps to Ensure Your Homeschool Can Survive A Financial Crisis is to look at Free, Nearly Free, or low-cost curriculum choices to see if you can use an alterative if your homeschool budget is significantly reduced or evaporates althogether.

Here are three free homeschool curriculums worth looking at. If you like lesson plans or schedules to help guide your path, all three of these offer free lesson plans – either daily, weekly. And each have active communities of homeschoolers who are using the curriculums.

1. Ambleside Online

Using a combination of free public domain materials and resources you’ll need to purchase or borrow, Ambleside Online provides a full curriculum for k-12 in Charlotte Mason style.  Striving to create a free curriculum that Charlotte Mason herself would use, the volunteers at Ambleside Online have put together a full, robust homeschool curriculum.
 
The homeschoolers who use Ambleside Online are very generous with their knowledge and in helping bring more and more free resources online to implement a Charlotte Mason style homeschool. You’ll find a wealth of knowledge here, if you are interested in literature-based or Charlotte Mason-style curriculum.

If you are not familiar with Charlotte Mason and her teachings, I recommend reading Ambleside Online’s Introduction to Charlotte Mason and either Charlotte Mason’s original writings (available free on Ambleside Online) or a copy of A Charlotte Mason Companion: Personal Reflections on the Gentle Art of Learning by Karen Andreola.

Note: Ambleside Online is primarily a Christain homeschool curriculum, but because it is literature- and nature study- based, it is also easy for the secular homeschooler to adapt.

2. An Old Fashioned Education

An Old Fashioned Education is a free homeschool curriculum based on classic public domain literature and text books. The entire curriculum was developed by Miss Maggie, the founder of Hillbilly Housewife (one of my favorite frugal cooking sites), for her boys, after she discovered Ambleside Online wasn’t structured enough for her family.

Even if you don’t use the full curriculum, Miss Maggie has pre-screened, categorized, and links an amazing amount of free literature and public domain textbooks, making the site a wonderful reference on where to find free books for your homeschool.

The 3RHomeschooling yahoo group provides excellent support for those using An Old Fashioned Education, as well as other literature-based curriculum. Again, the members are as generous in their knowledge as Miss Maggie was in putting together this curriculum and ensuring it remains free.

Note: An Old Fashioned Education is a Christain homeschool curriculum, that uses books with a strong moral focus. However the secular homeschooler will also find the site useful in finding free homeschool curriculum and classic literature in public domain.

3. Simply Charlotte Mason

SimplyCharlotteMason.com is another free homeschool curriculum for those looking for a Charlotte Mason-inspired homeschool. Like Ambleside Online, this curriculum uses both free public domain litature and more contemporary resources that you will need to purchase or borrow. There is a free Curriculum Guide for Grades 1-12, and suggested resources for each subject by grade.

There’s a Community Forum for this site, where you can get support and questions answered. Also the two families who designed this curriculum give workshops.

This site is more commerical than Ambleside Online and An Old Fashioned Education. The site owners sell items on the site and their Charlotte Mason (”living book”) book finder does link to Amazon. But the curriculum and many of the resources are free or are available free from public domain sites. One special freebie unique to this site is the Book of Centuries - a free, downloadable pdf file that allows you to put together a history timeline notebook.

Note: Simply Charlotte Mason is also a free Christain homeschool curriculum, but like the other two, it can be adapted by the secular homeschooler by eliminating certain resources.

Next week, I’ll share more free homeschool resources, as this series on ensuring your homeschool can endure a financial crisis continues.  In the meantime, if you have experience using one of these curriculums or know of another free, full homeschool curriculum besides these three, please share in the comments below.

Thanks!

…Shannon

P.S. In case you are curious, I’ve tested out An Old Fashioned Education, and use it as an additional resource when looking for free living books for our homeschool.

Q: You mentioned that you are using the McGuffey Readers. Can you tell me more about how you are using them?

A: Before I can really answer this well, let me start with how I came to using them and why. 

We started with the McGuffey Readers – the second reader actually – at the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year and are now about 3/4 the way through the second reader.  I had heard of them before but at that time wasn’t interested in using any type of reader, much less one that was over a 100 years old.

But each child is different and my investigation into using public domain materials, stemming from my research into the Robinson Curriculum and then subsequently into the Accelerated Achievement (aka A-squared) and Old Fashioned Education curriculums, was enough for me to give it a try with my 9 year old.

Right now I’m only using the McGuffey Readers with my 9 year old, though my 11 year old has asked to do readings from the 2nd reader and I’m considering having her do some reading from the 3rd  reader next year or over the summer.  

I started teaching my son to read later than most, having learned a hard lesson with my oldest.  We waited until he was asking to learn to read, until he showed that he was ready.  When he was 7 ½, we started with the “at” family and the first couple Bob Books. When he proved that he was indeed ready developmentally to learn to read, we progressed with Reading Reflex.

He went from nothing to a strong 2nd grade reading level in less than a year. And now at 9 ½, two years after he started learning to read, he is reading 4th and 5th grade reading level books with no problem at all.

BUT…since most of his personal reading and assigned reading is to his self, I wanted to know for certain that he was understanding what he was reading and not just skipping over words he didn’t know or filling in his own versions.  So, this past year, part of his reading has been to read aloud to me from the McGuffey Reader.

So, to answer the real question, how am I using the McGuffey Readers…
 
As with anything I use, I decided to just start with it and see how it works out, knowing that I could always scrap it if it wasn’t going to work. But it really surprised me.  My son likes the stories – they appeal to him and his sense of justice and right and wrong. 

Each story is only a page or two long, with new vocabulary listed at the beginning of the story. We don’t use the vocabulary section. Instead, as we run across words that he doesn’t know (like “foe”) or have changed over time (like “gay”), I ask him what he thinks they mean or clarify the meaning for him.  This actually has been a bonus, as we’ve been able to talk about different words and how they might fall in or out of fashion over the years and how language may change.

We keep the reading light. Sometimes he’ll want to re-read a story he has read before, and that’s okay as long as he reads a new story as well. Sometimes, he’ll struggle with the pacing of a story or poem, so we’ll read it once and then maybe I’ll read it to give him an idea of how the pacing should sound, but then we’ll put it away and read it again on another day.

Primarily, when he’s reading, I’m listening for:

Is he really reading the words on the page?
I try to catch when he guesses at a word, or fills a word  in based on what he thinks it is going to say. I’m also listening for when he changes words with another word with a like meaning (he has the tendency to do this when he is reading ahead silently.) (

Is he reading quickly just to get through it, or reading for the benefit of others?
I’m not tolerating reading just to read it fast and get it done.  He needs to read for the benefit of sharing the story with others, so they can enjoy while they are listening to him read it.  So we work on pacing and inflection.

We talk about using punctuation as clues for “taking a breath”, reading with inflection, enunciating, and projecting his voice. 

Are there articulation issues we need to deal with?
My son (actually both of them) needed speech therapy. And so I’m also listening for articulation errors, where he might be getting lazy and that affects the ability for the listener (me) to understand the words he is saying.  Recently, it became evident that he needed to work on the “th” sound again; and we identified it through these reading aloud sessions.

Does he understand/comprehend what he is reading?
There’s no use in reading if he doesn’t understand what he is reading. And so, periodically, especially on the poetry or sentences he struggles with, I’ll ask him what it means. And then I’ll share what I think it means. Again, this is really low key, not coming across as a test, but as a discussion of the literature and the use of words.

Could I use other readers? Probably. But the McGuffey Readers are free for download from Project Gutenberg. Or in my case, the version I’m using (1879 edition) came with my copy of the Robinson Curriculum.  We just print it out and 3 hole punch it and keep it in a binder. No big deal.  

I really like the values projected in the edition of the McGuffey readers we’re using. The stories in the 2nd reader relate to interactions between children and their parents, their friends, birds, and the natural world.  And do so in a way that promotes courage, bravery, honesty, and caring for others. There’s two stories that are my 9 year old’s favorites that I think talk to this point well:

Henry, the Bootblack
This is a  brief story about an impoverished boy, who wanted to help his mother and little sister. One day he was rewarded with his honesty with $1, which he used to buy the equipment he needed to shine boots. The story tells how he captured customer with his politeness, and how he helped his family by working during the day shining boots and went to school at night.

In course of the story we have been able to talk about how much $1 would have been at the time, what a bootblack boy was, and how even though he was helping his family, he still went to school.  The story talks about the choice the boy made, to be honest and how he was rewarded for that honesty. Values I want enforced.

The Kingbird
This is a quick little story about the Kingbird and why it is named the Kingbird. It tells of how it uses cunning and quickness to protect the nest from much larger birds.  Not only is this a science lesson, and talks about birds, which my son loves, but it also appeals to his desire to protect those he cares about and talks to the warrior within him.

At this point I’m planning to continue with the McGuffey Readers, for my 9 year old and for the others when they are ready – at least as long as I find value in using them.

If you are considering them, know that, like with all books, there are differences between editions. And I suggest reading a little about those differences to see if matters to you.  Again I’m using the 1879 version that comes with the Robinson Curriculum, but others are available.  Free versions are available online through Project Gutenberg and other public domain repositories.

If you don’t want to print out your own versions, you can also buy them used or new, they often come as a boxed set but can be purchased individually as well. Again, watch for what version it might be (if that matters to you).  Amazon.com carries a couple different sets.  HSTreasures carries the 1879 version as does Mcguffeyreaders.com and a few other sources online.

Also use the McGuffey Readers? Please share your experiences!

Looking for a fun way to teach your children about UV light? Especially during the spring and summer months when they need to be wearing sunglasses and sunscreen, or in my kids cases, swim shirts as well.

In her comment earlier this week, Laurel reminded me of solar beads (aka UV Beads or Energy Beads). These are a great tool for teaching your kids about UV light and have some fun as well.

At first appearances, solar beads look like just little white plastic beads, like you would use for a kid’s beading project. But these are special in that when they are exposed to UV light they turn colors and then turn white again once out of the UV light.

We were first introduced to these last year and the kids loved them. The olders each made their own bracelets and had great fun showing them off to others. It was a novelty to see how much the beads would change color (if at all) under different types of light.

Personally I love Laurel’s idea of using the beads as a reminder to the kids to put on sunscreen. But in addition to that, the beads can be used in various experiments on how effective sunglasses and/or different levels of SPF sunscreen are in blocking out UV light, as well as how we are exposed to UV light under different light and weather conditions.

You can buy solar beads from a variety of sources online, just search for “solar beads”, “UV beads”, or “Energy Beads”. Amazon.com has several sets of a variety of quantities. And, Laurel recommended Steve Spangler Science, and I have to say a few minutes on that website and I am hooked.

Not only do they sell different quantities of solar beads, but also have written instructions for experiments with solar beads and and an explanation on how the solar beads work (look at the bottom of the solar bead experiment page). The site also contains lots of free science experiment videos, including this one on solar beads. Lots of fun to watch and get ideas from.

Enjoy!

Lately, my 7 year old is really into how things are made. Today’s question was “How is a Light Bulb Made?” And so we headed over to Google’s Video search to see if there was anything good available.

Here are two 5 min. videos that pulled not only my 7 year old’s attention but also that of his older siblings. One is for an incandescent light bulb and the other for a flourescent bulb. Enjoy!

…Shannon

How An Incandescent Light Bulb is Made

How A Flourescent Light Bulb is Made

Last summer, my daughter’s Chemistry curriculum introduced us to the idea that YouTube could be part of our homeshool science curriculum. Everyone would gather around the computer to watch the explosive reactions of alkaline metals hitting water and beg to watch it again.

Since then, we’ve periodically used Google’s Video search to find other free online videos that demonstrated a concept or inspired our own experiments.

As with anything, there’s a lot of junk out there we don’t want in our kids’ heads, but there is also some wonderful experiments and demonstrations that we wouldn’t be able to do on our own. We use these videos as springboards of conversation – not just on the topic, but also on safety and appropraiteness of the content.

This week my 9-year-old ran across this video on how to make a simple “bb gun” from a toilet paper tube, a balloon, a penny. From this, we discussed velocity, force, safety, when it is okay to replicate the experiment and when it is not, and what we could change to test how it work under different conditions (different type of tube, different balloon sizes, a different type of projectile, etc.)

Over time I’ll share more of our favorite videos with you. But for now, here’s my 9-year-old’s find for the week:

Safety Alert! I’m a big believer in over emphasizing safety. When watching any science videos or demonstrations, it’s always wise, especially with active, indepenent-thinking, creative children, to explicitly discuss when it is okay to replicate an experiment and under what conditions…and be sure to explain why or ask what would happen if they don’t follow the safety instructions.