Homeschooling Anyway, With Little or No Money

The new school year is just around the corner. If your family, like ours, has little or no money to spend on homeschool curriculum or textbooks, what can you do?

While I was researching on the internet to find more homeschooling freebies, I ran across the following links:

The Homeschool Foundation, http://www.homeschoolfoundation.org/ , helps needy homeschool families, and families with special needs.

What About the Poor?—read articles concerning Homeschooling, government and the poor, http://www.honestedu.org/essays/cardiff/poor.php

2001 Education Freedom Index, http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_24.htm , statistics and studies on how Education Freedom Improves Student Achievement.

"Implementing tax credits for private school scholarships, adding new charter schools, adopting school report cards, sanctioning failure, and deregulating home-schooling can produce test score gains, in an entire state, that would otherwise require thousands of additional dollars in per-pupil spending."

Surprise--more money doesn't necessarily improve test scores, but more freedom for parents to educate their children will! You can homeschool, and help your child succeed, on a shoestring.

If necessary, we can homeschool with as little as a library card. How can families make ends meet, and still find the resources to homeschool? Find out how in my co-authored book, Homeschooling on a Shoestring .

An Eagle's Nest Homeschool and Travel Resources

I've been working all week on updating A Wise Steward's Page for Writers--and I'm exhausted! Thankfully, I think all the links are updated and work correctly at last. Please let me know if you find anything unacceptable.

The page started out for two reasons:
1. As I've researched my personal writing needs, it made it easy for me to organize things when I put them onto my writer's page.
2. When people ask me writing questions, I don't need to reinvent the wheel. I can just refer them to the page.

Anyway, enjoy. There are a lot more self-publishing and e-book resources, as I've been looking into that aspect of publishing.

Finding the Good

An Eagle's Nest Homeschool and Travel Resources

J.F. Baldwin, in his book "The Twelve Trademarks of Great Literature," wrote:

"Many Christians think that they have done their cultural duty when they turn off the TV, avoid steamy movies, and break their heavy metal CDs. They think the battle is won by not reading Harry Potter.

But Philippians 4:8 makes it clear that eschewing the bad isn't enough. Christians should also seek out the true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy..."

So being a Christian isn't just about denying yourself the bad. A mature Christian denies themselves the bad, because they know they can have something far better. In the search for good entertainment, check out these free sources:

Christian video
N'Lightning Software
Tribe of Judah
Christian Computer Game Review
Christian Spotlight's Guide to Games
Retired Army Lt. Col. David Grossman
Christian Game Developers

An Eagle's Nest Homeschool and Travel Resources

Evaluating Entertainment

In our quest to "raise up a child in the way he should go," we're taking a hard look at media that our family consumes. Here are some sites with free information to help families evaluate entertainment such as movies and video games:

The 10 Commandments Project
Focus on the Family--guidelines on video games
Christianity Today’s movie reviews
Plugged In Online
Charisma Magazine article about video gaming: Not Just Fun and Games

Updating George Washington's Code to the 21st Century

George Washington's Rules
This week we're prayerfully considering our family Code of Conduct. Our research so far shows that a personal Code of Conduct was the norm for previous generations. A Code of Conduct makes it easier to do the right thing, without having to think about it. It's easy to get into trouble, for instance, if you've never thought about the proper thing to do if you find yourself in bad company, through no fault of your own.

We're still working on updating George Washington's Rules of Civility for the Twenty-first Century. I am somewhat surprised to find that research shows our first president acquired his Rules from French sources. However, for all anyone knows, they could have originated many centuries earlier. They certainly were written from a biblical worldview, which clashes with our modern humanistic society.

What are we to make of this maxim, for example:
"Put not off your Cloths in the presence of Others, nor go out of
your Chamber half Drest." Certainly, modesty is lacking in today's America.


Switching gears for a minute, I wanted to share a great freebie that I found recently. Looking for textbooks for next year's homeschool? Get yours free, after shipping, at Insights Online Textbook Program
Just to be clear, however, we don't use many textbooks at our house, until junior high grade level. When we do use textbooks, we're finicky about what we use.

Free Sources for Family Standards

This week we've been working on developing moral standards for our family, regarding media such as video games, movies and T.V. We've always assumed that our kids would just develop their own standards based on the Bible, and hopefully our example. However, we're beginning to realize that we need to be clear and specific.

With this in mind, here's an interesting free site:
George Washington’s “Rules of Civility” applies today; read an expanded version of his Rules:


Of course, our first president didn't have X-Box games to worry about. However, the basic principles of self-control and good behavior haven't changed. What do you think?