Well I'm all for frugal!
Most of us homeschoolers have enough materials on hand to educate a small army...lol.
This summer go through your bookshelves and make 3 piles:
THROW AWAY
KEEP
SELL/GIVEAWAY
Throw Away Pile: The first pile is just plain old junk, stuff that is used up, scribbled on, torn up etc. Get RID OF IT!! Including that workbook you bought on Ebay that smells like nasty musty YUCK!!
Keep Pile: This is stuff that you can use, organize it by subject, I like to buy magazine holders from the Dollar Tree or use cereal boxes with the top and side cut out and some cute wrapping paper to cover them. They are very durable if you put some clear packing tape on the bottoms. Use these for booklets, workbooks and things like that. Put subjects on them and on free days or Mom is sick days, tell our son to go and pick out an activity and spend an hour working on it. It makes learning fun because he can pick what he wants to do. Jot down what you have and later on in the summer when you really start planning out the coming school year you can see what you have to work with.
The sell/giveaway/trade pile is for stuff that is still usable, but you don't need it anymore or it did not work for your child. I have gathered up enough stuff to sell that I was able to buy some new goodies at the homeschool convention that I might not have otherwise been able to afford. The giveaway items are things that are still in usable condition that you can bless another homeschool family with. PaperBackSwap is another great way to get rid of books you no longer need. Check them out to see how they work. Or read my blog post on how it works.
By looking through what you have, you can make a plan of action for your coming school year. I am betting that everyone has at least 1 full subject that they can teach this next school year without having to buy a thing. Take some time and get digging around, see what you can find to
THROW AWAY
KEEP
SELL/GIVEAWAY
Post on here to let us know what you find!
Moe
