Thrifty Homeschooling Tips
1. Buy Non-Consumable Workbooks: Yes. These do exist. But you have to keep your eye out for them. Most homeschooling workbooks, primarily "boxed" curriculum such as Abeka are for one time use only. They are meant for one child and cannot be copied or used for more than one child. When looking at a book, or downloadable PDF see if it is allowed to be used only for one child or for all the children in one family. If you look at the fine print you will see some companies allow you to print out and/or copy for all children in your own home. It can be a tremendous blessing when homeschooling several children, to not have to continuously buy consumable workbooks, year after year.
2. Check For Used Before Buying New: Recently, when purchasing science materials for my two boys, I visited the website of the company I wanted to buy from and had my materials in the cart, ready to check out. The price of this particular company is low anyways but since I was buying for two students, I decided to look around first. I checked Amazon and Rainbow Resource and Rainbow Resource had the same materials for several dollars cheaper. Glad I checked!
3. Print Out Printables on DRAFT Setting: Once I learned about "draft" I wasn't so nervous about printing out so many pages for our homeschool. Printer ink is a killer in our homeschool, a money guzzler, that's for sure. When you print out in the "draft" mode on your printer, it uses less ink and makes your cartridge last longer. The colors are a bit faded but for a simple worksheet, it gets the job done! If I want to print out nice bold colors for something to hang up I just go ahead and use up my ink. Draft works best for coloring sheets, crossword puzzles and handwriting pages.
Do you have any homeschooling money saving tips? I would love to hear about them! Just comment below...
