My 10 Best Websites for FREE Homeschool Printables

[photo by tonx]

I'm going to be totally honest, okay? My husband and I have no money. We're on public assistance. Not very conducive to homeschooling, right? Especially when public school is free.

So how do we do it? (Why we do it is another topic entirely.) Well, we spent part of our tax return this year on some curriculum--mostly used, and what we couldn't get used, we bought through Rainbow Resource. We also use the library a lot. But that's only part of what I use to teach The Boy. 

The rest comes from the internet. 

Honestly, I don't know if I'd be able to homeschool if I didn't have internet access. There are so many awesome free resources out there. In fact, when we were doing preschool, all of our materials and ideas came from the internet.

I obviously can't point you to all the free homeschool stuff on the internet. But I want to show you my most-used sites. The Boy really likes worksheets, and he's currently doing schoolwork that's either kindergarten or first-grade level, so this list is biased toward those areas. But a lot of these sites have materials and activities for multiple ages and abilities, and some of them aren't even homeschool sites--they're for educators of all kinds. Awesome, right?

Here they are, full of free resources, with my most-used sites toward the top:

• Education.com--tons of stuff here. I usually go to the "Worksheets" tab or the "Activities" tab, and then do a search or just click on "kindergarten" or "first grade." 
• Lesson Pathways--used to be a paid site, but it's free now. Technically, you can use this site to design a complete curriculum. It doesn't have its own materials; just links to other sites on the web. But it has them organized into different subject "pathways," from K through 5th grade. Again, I usually just do a search for whatever topic I'm looking for.
• Classroom Freebies--SO MUCH STUFF here, from PreK through 12th grade. Put together by classroom teachers, but most of it is adaptable to whatever purpose you want.
• Kids Activities--good for classrooms, homeschool or just family activities. Ranges from PreK to middle school.
• Mr. Printables--if you're going for originality and cuteness, this is the place. They tend toward younger kids. Not a blog, but they seem to update pretty frequently.
• Watch Know Learn--videos! Says for ages 3-18, but they seem to mostly be for older kids. Do a search with the search bar, instead of using the links in the sidebar. I find more interesting stuff that way.
• Homeschool Share--exactly what it sounds like. I don't use this site as often; I tend to forget it's there. But it's full of good printables, especially if you're into lapbooks.
• Homeschool Creations--Jolanthe is pretty much a celebrity in the homeschool blogging world. Her printables are awesome. I really need to use this site more often.
• Confessions of a Homeschooler--another homeschool-blogging rock star. Erica's blog covers all kinds of homeschooling topics; her Teeny-Tiny Tot School ideas are awesome if you have toddlers running around.
• And, last but not least...Pinterest. I'm serious! Just in the last couple weeks, I've used this, this, this, and this. And I'm thinking about doing this. [Note to self: You also have a million homeschool pins that you have not used.]

So, there you have it. Don't forget to enter our Getting Started Giveaway, if you haven't yet. It still has only a few entries, so your chances of winning are very good. And art supplies make really good Christmas gifts for kiddos.  

The Story about Ping

Have you read The Story about Ping, by Marjorie Flack? It's really old. I loved it when I was a kid.

So I was really excited to find this worksheet on Homeschool Share: Color Ping's Family. (If that link doesn't work for some reason, go to homeschoolshare.com and search "ping.")

Ping has a huge family. This worksheet that I found has a little duck representing every member of Ping's family, and then instructions like, "Color Ping's uncles orange." Ping has seven uncles, so Little Boy picked seven ducks to color orange. And so on.

So there ya go. Reading, counting, and coloring in one activity.

Finger-Writing

So, remember this post, when I tried to have Little Boy "write" numbers with cotton balls--and it didn't quite work?

Yeah. So I decided to take a step back with the writing-type activities. I didn't get this one from anywhere in particular; I've seen it lots of places. It's pretty basic. And it was much easier for Little Boy:

That's rice in the tray. You could put pretty much anything in the tray, though--pudding, beans, sand, shaving cream...anyway, I took the magnetic numbers off our front door again, so he could imitate the shapes of the numbers and "write" them in the rice with his finger.

Like I said, this was much easier for him. I've got a couple more activities like this up my sleeve--I hope they'll work as well as this one did.

Dominoes!

Isaac's brother had the best idea ever for a Christmas present for Little Boy:



Little Boy loves to count and loves to line things up. And isn't that pretty much what dominoes are all about? Yep, turns out that Little Boy also loves dominoes.

The dominoes box says that it's for age 8+. I guess that's for really playing the game--strategizing and all that. Little Boy's pretty far away from there. But it's a great game for a four-year-old to work on counting, matching, and...

...lining things up. Heh.

Preschool Math: M&Ms and Graphing!

Little Boy loooooves numbers. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned that before.

A few times.

We don't do math activities as often as I'd like. We both liked this one--him, because he got to count, and both of us, because there were M&Ms involved.

I just now decided that M&Ms should be involved more often.

Anyway, I got these M&Ms Graphing worksheets from Sugardoodle--but I can't find the exact link now. If anyone else finds it, could you let me know?


So, first he had to sort the M&Ms by color. Cute worksheet, right? Yeah, I wish I could take credit for it. But...really, I just print stuff off the internet.


And then we went through, color by color, to count them up and then color in the appropriate number of rectangles on the graph. I had never heard of preschool graphing skills! Makes me feel all proud of him.

(Really, he's pretty ordinary. So I try to feel proud as often as I can.)

And I bet you can guess what we did after all that counting and graphing. I'll give you a hint: all that work made us hungry.

...Which is why, if we do this activity again, we'll have to buy new M&Ms.

The Number Line!

Whew, it's been awhile. And we've been working on a lot of stuff!

First up...



We finished the number line!



So now...we have to figure out something else to do for math.

Butterfly Math

Little Boy loves math. He likes other subjects, but math is his #1. So I try to work in some extra math activities once in awhile.

I printed out this butterfly number matching game from Along the Way. I liked what she did with it, and I had Little Boy do something similar.


I hung these butterflies from the counter on one side of the room. Little Boy had to "catch" a butterfly with a little net and count the spots on the butterfly.


Then he had to run to the other side of the room and match the butterflies with the right flower. [I've been trying to find ways to add more movement to some of our activities--using up Little Boy energy is always a good thing.]

And what did he think of it?


I think he liked it. That's a happy little man.

Learning Time: 1-2-3s

Does anyone else have that Jackson 5 song stuck in their head...y'know, "ABC!  Easy as 123!"  No?  Never mind, then.

Anyway, after Little Boy and I work on ABCs for a few minutes during "learning time," we move on to the number line. He LOVES the thing.  We put up a new number every day.  I want him to be able to recognize numbers from 1 - 100, so we've got a LONG way to go.

Sometimes we play a number game, too, but we usually just stick the new number on the wall and count 'em up.

Next time: Fine Motor Skills (i.e., Teeny Movements for Teeny Hands).