Our Favorites
This is a listing of our absolute FAVORITE homeschool websites, curriculums, and product providers. Click the image buttons to visit the websites.
This is a fantastic (& free) Charlotte Mason based homeschool curriculum plan. Although we do not follow AO strictly, there is much valuable information to be learned by studying the layout of their program. Very helpful information.
Cindy Rushton is known as the Binder (or Notebooking) Queen. She has oodles of great information in the form of homeschool books, audios, and online chats. Check out all she has to offer you!
CurrClick offers hundreds of popular homeschool products and curriculums in downloadable format. Each week they a special freebie from one of their publishers!
This is a fantastic homeschool science series for your elementary-junior high age students. Supporting Charlotte Mason methods of learning, Elementary Apologia is very easy to implement for a variety of ages and scores especially high with notebooking / lapbooking families.
Hands and Hearts has wonderful notebooking resources and hands-on history kits with everything you need for great hands-on homeschool projects. They also sell many resources for Classical and Charlotte Mason homeschooling families.
Historical timeline figures from Homeschool in the Woods are the absolute best you will find. We have their full collection on CD and it’s so versatile! If you are serious about notebooking history or wanting to create a timeline notebook, your money will be well spent.
Molly has some GREAT ideas when it comes to using index cards in your homeschool! Also be sure to check out her freebies and notebooking forms.
We own three products from Institute for Excellence in Writing: “Teaching Writing: Structure & Style” (TWSS), “Student Writing Intensive - C”, and “Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization”. We have found all of these products to be absolutely delightful! TWSS has given me (Mom) the ability to teach writing to my children regardless of what homeschool curriculum, style, or method we use. Starting when the children are in the 2nd/3rd grade, I begin to “lightly” teach the methods and structure given in this program. As they get older, we implement more adding layer upon layer of styles and techniques. The approach is very natural and works well with our notebooking. (We used the Student Writing Intensive with our teenage son - it’s based on TWSS but includes video segments/structured syllabus for the student.) Poetry Memorization has been a very successful program for my younger children (K-7th grades at the time of this writing). Each “mastered” poem is continuously practiced each week along with each new poem. A schedule of how to do this is included with the program. The kids and I have loved it!
We have used Knowledge Quest Maps during most of our homeschooling years. They make studying historical geography SO much easier. We use their specific map products made for the Tapestry of Grace curriculum, but they also offer generic map products that will accommodate any homeschool history and/or geography program.
As a former high school math teacher myself, I cannot recommend this program highly enough. We have used a variety of programs, but stopped with this one. The kids truly “see” what they are doing - they have understanding of what to do, when to do it, and why! They are not just learning a handful of skills. Instead they are learning concepts that provide them a foundation upon which the skills can be laid. This is a very effective program and one that lends itself well to large families, like ours. They offer a free demo DVD as well as some demo videos online here: http://www.mathusee.com/demo.html
This is our website! We offer lots of free homeschooling resources like printables, notebooking pages, charts, etc. as well as affordably priced themed sets too!
If your are considering the Charlotte Mason method or just want to learn more about it, then you need to check out SimplyCharlotteMason.com. They have put together wonderful, wonderful information about the Charlotte Mason method and have made it all SO . . . SIMPLE! They have also published a variety of great resources. We personally have used Spelling Wisdom, 106 Days of Creation, Laying Down the Rails, Hours in the Out of Doors, as well as some of their free ideas and resources. LOVE this site!
Tapestry of Grace pulls together history, geography, literature, and more through a Biblically based unit-study approach. It is a 4 year program, although many families (like ours) take a slower approach. It’s a perfect fit for the notebooking family. The support and information provided by this program are phenomenal. Our family personally does not do everything provided in this curriculum (I don’t know a family who could!), but instead we pull the best parts for our family this go around and intend to pick up more the next time through it. Once you purchase each level of this program (4 levels), you will never need another program for K-12. Click the above button for more info and links to free samples of their curriculum.