Free Public Domain Curriculum: An Old Fashioned Education

I am big on using public domain material in our homeschool. I often use several, PD (public domain) books each year. I touched briefly on this subject in the post about homeschooling on one income.  Today I want to share a free site with you that has been a great help to me for several years. You can find public domain curriculum for grades K - 11 at An Old Fashioned Education. 

Very Convenient

You can just follow the curriculum as is. As you'll see when you visit, everything is conveniently laid out for you. An Old Fashioned Education even includes 40 week schedules for each grade. Depending on how you homeschool, this may be of help to you. When I first began homeschooling I used to try to adhere to precise scheduling. But ultimately for us it turned out to be more of a burden than a help. So, today I would use this more as a guide. 

Homeschooling on One Income

When my husband and I married almost 9 years ago, we agreed that I would stay home with the children. A couple of years after that I became a homeschooling stay at home mom as well. Since marriage, I have never worked outside of the home and I wanted to share some tips on how we homeschool within our means.

1. We borrow hundreds of books a year from the library. This is no exaggeration. Our library has a check out limit of 50 books for a lending period of 21 days. So every 3 weeks we check out the maximum number of books. Just this one resource alone is invaluable to us.

2. I use public domain books found on the internet. There are thousands of free books available for downloading or reading on Google Books and Archive.org. I printed off and bound primers and readers to give my children a strong foundation in reading once they learned phonics. They learned phonics from library books and Starfall.com (also free).

3. We use non-consumable textbooks. Once my oldest started middle school I felt that he needed textbooks to continue on his educational journey. But I have 3 more children that will eventually need those books as well. So, I applied a great approach that the public schools use. I pass down the books to the next year’s student and the children are not permitted to write in them at all.

4. I buy used books. Those non-consumable textbooks that I mentioned, whenever possible I try to buy a used copy in good condition from Amazon. At the beginning of the school year I was able to get a Pre-Calculus book and a Chemistry book for under $11 (total) for my 10th grader.

5. We use free video courses available online. You can find several at  Learner.org and M.I.T.’s open coursework site. Those books that I bought for my son, he uses those to go along with the Chemistry course on Learner.org. And, his Pre-Calculus class is taught by an M.I.T. professor - courtesy of the internet. For Spanish II, he’s using the 52 week video course Destinos. There are practice lessons to go along with the course on the site, so there was no need to purchase a textbook.

Aside from the $11 I mentioned above, the only cost for our homeschool this year has been for: basic school supplies, gas to go to the library, printer paper, and ink cartridges for our printer. It takes some planning and extra prep work, but it is possible to homeschool almost for free.

Serfronya Wallace

The six loves of Serfronya Wallace's life are God, her husband, and her 4 children - whom she homeschools. Serfronya enjoys sharing educational tips and writing about her family's homeschooling journey at Cookie's Domain.

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Become a Homeschool Product Tester!

I ran across something rather interesting over at Homeschool.com and KNEW you'd all be eager to jump on board. If becoming a product tester for homeschooling products sounds like something you might enjoy, keep reading...

Senior Editor and Co-Founder of Homeschool.com, Rebecca Kochenderfer was kind enough to share the following with me:

"We have over 8,500 Product Testers at Homeschool.com. Product Testers are a valued and highly respected segment of the Homeschool.com team. When we create new programs on Homeschool.com we run them by our Testers first. When I wrote “Homeschooling and Loving It” I sent free copies to our Testers to thank them for contributing to it. And it is our Testers who select the Top 100 Educational Websites each year and also our Top Ten product list for curricula. Our Testers also receive requests from outside companies to test their products. I have a great deal of affection for our Product Testers and I communicate with them personally. If your readers would enjoy becoming a part of the Homeschool.com Product Tester team, please refer them to: Homeschool.com."

I don't know exactly how many positions Homeschool.com might have available for product testers in your particular area or grade level, so my advice would be to jump on over to the site now and express your interest! Imagine getting to sample new material FREE while helping to shape the homeschooling product industry!

Happy Homeschooling!