Free Homeschooling Resources
This is by no means a complete or comprehensive list of places to find free educational material for homeschooling. I just thought I would share some of the best spots I’ve found for free homeschooling stuff, that might help anyone else trying to put things together on a budget. These should all be secular, except for the larger sites like TPT and Currclick. They will have religious content but there is enough secular stuff to make them worth mentioning.
I admit that this isn’t a particularly unique homeschooling topic, and whole sites are dedicated to helping you find free homeschooling materials. I’m doing it anyway.
Khan Academy (math, history, sciences)
You can get a huge collection of interactive video lessons for most grade levels, though I always found it a little hard to follow what order to do them in. But a lot of people love the program, particularly for the math. Lessons are easy to watch, and you answer questions during the videos to practice what you’re learning.
Prodigy (math)
Prodigy doesn’t really teach math, but it is a super fun way to get some additional practice and reinforcement. It’s a classic “dungeons and dragons” style of game where math questions need to be answered when you want to cast spells. It’s free, and the dashboard lets you choose topics or subjects and to monitor your kid’s use and success rates.
Duolingo (languages)
I’m a big fan of Duolingo, and have a review for it elsewhere on the site. It’s a free site and app that lets you choose one of many languages to learn. It walks you through lesson by lesson with grammar and vocabulary, including audio content so you can hear things pronounced.
*Teachers Pay Teachers (everything)
To be honest, TPT isn’t an entirely free source. Lots of publishers to have freebies available, and the site often has specials where you can download a number of free choices each week. Though some are a little pricey in my mind, many are just a dollar or two for a full unit study or resource pack. I use the site a lot.
Worksheet Works (math, English, geography)
This site is a personal favorite of mine. You can print out customized worksheets on a huge range of subjects. Some of the puzzles are fun, and there are great tools to make your own cursive practice sheets too. I found the math worked OK but the problems weren’t as random as I’d like. For some 2-digit multiplication practice, for example, half the problems had the number 17. Not a huge problem.
Youtube (everything)
Well, this one should be kind of obvious but you may be surprised at the quality of some educational channels on Youtube. There is a lot more there than cute cat videos. This is one resource that is genuinely too large to describe, but you can check out our Skip the School channel and get directed to a number of really good educational channels based on our subscriptions list. All secular too.
Spelling City (English)
This is a site with a mix of games, quizzes and word lists for both spelling and vocabulary learning. The free version is just basic spelling tests and about 10 games, but the cost is quite low if you want the premium version that includes more games and more vocab and writing skills.
Maps4kids (geography)
There is great geography info on this page but I find it a little dry/wordy to keep kid’s interests. But there are loads of free printable maps for countries around the world, and more details maps of US states. They’re pretty up-to-date though I noticed that South Sudan isn’t indicated on the Africa map.
Steve Spangler (science)
Lots of science experiments to keep your kids having fun while they learn. Some have videos and others just have clear photo tutorials. You may have the materials around the house though some will require more specialty supplies (all for sale through the site if you do choose to invest in some).
Daily Grammar (English)
You get a daily grammar lesson via email or through their blog, to learn new grammar concepts and work on practice questions. The lessons are very simplistic but it can be a great addition to other language arts work.
Scholastic (reading, literature)
As you can guess, Scholastic is all about books. They have a really big collection of unit studies and literature guides to go along with books you’re reading. Discussion guides, lesson plans and even some vocabulary resources too. Books can be gotten for free from the library for a no-cost literature program.
*Currclick (everything)
Another big site that covers all topics, and it includes printables, resource packs as well as classes. Like TPT, it’s not all free but some publishers do have free material on occasion and there is a nice “pay what you want” feature for some products. There is a search key under World Views where you can choose only non-faith based content too, to help with your secular searching.
A few more:
And don’t forget your public library. There are endless great booklists that you can print from websites and then just get the books for free from the library. Not only can you find non-fiction reference books on all topics for all ages, don’t forget that you can add in some interesting fiction to help cover history, social studies and geography too.
Honestly, this is just the tip of the free homeschool resource iceberg. My intention wasn’t to list everything, but to provide a decent starting place and to show you that it is possible to find a great mix of stuff without spending anything.
*not completely free nor completely secular. Too good to pass up though.
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