I have been homeschooling for a long time.  My oldest was in 2nd grade when we decided to begin our homeschooling adventure.  She is in her final year of college getting her Bachelor’s degree.  That makes me old.  But I tend to look at it and say that it makes me experienced.

I used to anticipate getting all of the homeschooling curriculum magazines and I would pour over them to view all of the new products that they had to offer each year.  I would circle each that I wanted, and start writing out my long list of items.  Things looked promising, I had high hopes of filling up an entire day of doing schooling.

Things were good till about halfway in to the year.  We grew tired of doing some of the work.  We realized that a lot of it was repetitive, especially going from year to year.  There were so many “extras” that consumed much of my time as a mom.  By the end of the year, I had started reselling my items on vegsource.com and went looking for the next best thing.

This cycle repeated itself every year.

Then it happened, my husband was laid off of work and it was time to begin a new year.  I had 4 children that I had to do schooling with and no money to do it.  Meanwhile I had 4 little ones under 5 years old to tend to during the day.  What was I going to do?   I wasn’t an internet person at all.  Had never even heard of a blog!!!  But I started looking for cheap ways to homeschool my children.  I was amazed at all of the FREE resources that were out there if you were willing to take the time to look.  I had my printer full of ink and started printing worksheets.  That was our first year of FREE.

The next year rolled around and I had the opportunity to buy curriculum and I did.  After spending $500 to get  complete programs for all of the children, I was a little disappointed in myself, but went with it.  We had a good year, but all the while, I thought that I could have saved our family a huge chunk of cash for some time searching.  I vowed to do it the next year.

That is what I did.  But I also started a blog.  So I did online schooling for my children and put it on my blog for others to use.  This was all great for us and it helped out many others but, I realized that the internet is changing so much, and so many people are using advertisements on their blogs now and that can lead to children viewing inappropriate things.  What was a good alternative?

Offering a completely FREE printable curriculum so that you would have no need for internet access each day.  This was perfect for our family.  We have 5 doing school this year and there would NOT be enough laptops to go around. It was going to be the answer.

But it took some time to do.   I spent about a month writing entire years worth of curriculum based on the scope and sequence for each grade level.  I know it works because we have recently moved to a state where you have to test your children and my children have all passed their grade levels by doing the curriculum that we offer.

It takes some time to print everything off and then some time punching holes, but well worth it.  We spent hours, punching holes and putting them into folders for the year.  I made a folder for each month and put all of the papers that they were going to do in order and hooked them in. I made my own homemade workbooks just like the ones we spent $500 on in previous years.

Here is one of the first grade folder sets.  I made one for each month and wrote the months on the front. 

For first grade, I didn’t punch holes in the pages because I didn’t know how many pages my child would complete each day. The first couple months are easy, only doing a few pages each day.

I have on the printable pages, how many you are supposed to do for each day.  That way you know which days your pages start and end.

As the year progresses, worksheets increase.  This way if your child cannot get them all done in one day, you can do them over multiple days.  I wrote inside each folder, how many days per week and how many weeks per month to work.  Helps a busy Momma keep track.

Here is Autumn who will be doing her first grade folders.

This is what my living room looked like as we were putting the pages in order.  Lots of paper dots everywhere.  My children enjoyed playing with the “snow.” 

I put each month in order and handed them to a different girl.  Brooklyn put all of hers in her folder.Jadyn did her’s too.  We were tired.  We did 50 folders that day!!!  Our backs were sore!!

Click here to view all of our FREE schooling resources. Keep reading for step by step instructions on how we did schooling completely free for 5 children this year.

Up next……….step by step instuction

**I must disclose, I did have to pay for paper, ink, and folders.  I bought a case of paper at SAMS club for $12 and ink cost me $10 by buying them online,  and the folders were like 12 cents or something ridiculously cheap!!  So technically it wasn’t FREE you have to pay for those items, but $28 divided by 5 children is like $5 each.  I think it is safe to say its FREE. Most of us will spend $5 on a Starbucks that lasts for a few moments.  This will last for 180 days worth of schooling—-definitely a deal!

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net