The Cost of Homeschooling

Our first official homeschooling purchase was a pair of $1.99 writing tablets from Walmart, one for printing and one for cursive. Dino has been begging since last Christmas to learn cursive. Tim told him to practice printing neatly, and when he had that down, we would teach him how to write in cursive.

Next I bought two Complete Curriculum workbooks (2nd and 3rd grade) and two in-between-grade "summer" workbooks from Sam's Club for math, spelling, reading, and reading comprehension worksheets.

Tim and I picked up 30 classic chapter books from a flea market. Most were "Great Illustrated Classics" like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Three Musketeers. I'm not counting these in our school cost, since we would have bought those anyway for our home bookshelf.

We bought notebooks, pencils, and erasers, pencil boxes, and all of the other regular school supplies from Walmart. These don't really count either, since we would have gotten those for public school anyway.

Tim picked up several math games and flash cards from some neighborhood yard sales.

And I bought puzzles, math games, states-and-capitals flash cards, and a few other school supplies from Dollar Tree, where everything is $1. I was surprised by the variety of school supplies stocked in Dollar Tree in June!

My biggest purchase was the Life of Fred elementary math book series. The 10 books are used for several grades. Since they are textbooks (not write-in workbooks), I will be able to resell them for the full price. Initial investment cost was $140, but I will get that full cost back when we are finished with them.

I also purchased the 7-book series of Sonlight Sequential Spelling books. I bought the set for about $90 on eBay, and like the Life of Fred books, I should be able to resell them around that cost.

I still want to get a book for music class, either piano or recorder, I think.

I splurged and ordered the Well Planned Day Family Homeschool Planner, July 2014 - June 2015.

I'm sure I will think of something else between now and then that I just have to have. We will definitely utilize the public library, and take advantage of local museums' homeschool days for discounted field trip rates. It looks like it will cost us right about $100 for this year's disposable homeschooling supplies, not counting textbooks which we will get our money back on resale.

Check out all of my homeschooling posts!