How to find an Accredited Homeschool Curriculum

I recently received an email from a woman seeking help. She was planning to take her child out of school and begin homeschooling. The problem is that she was only planning to do that for a little while and the child would then be re-entering the public education system. The school administration insisted that she find an accredited program to use to home educate her child.

She was not in a financial situation to afford many of the accredited programs online. There are many wonderful accredited homeschool programs available, but they do cost a fair bit of money.

You can find a great list of such resources at http://www.homeschoolsantafe.com/Homeschool-Curriculum.htm

This was my response to this woman seeking advice:

I wish you the best of luck in your endeavor to homeschool your child. Unfortunately, when I lived in New Mexico I was unschooling with no intention of having my child attend school. So I had no need to care about accreditation. I now live in Virginia.

Unless you plan to continue to homeschool through high school, you probably do need to get an accredited program. Many of the homeschool families I know in Santa Fe have either started having their child attend a private school, or they enroll their child at the Community College as soon as that is possible. In Santa Fe it is age 12. They will get their high school diploma by taking the GED exam.  

This list of organizations is from my website. I'm not sure if the one for New Mexico is still in operation. I know the ones for Santa Fe are though, so you might start there. Just ask to join the list and then post to each the information you sent to me. Homeschool parents are typically very helpful with requests like that. Or you could simply put all that in your request to join. The moderator might actually answer your questions.

Homeschool Organizations in New Mexico

Home Learning Community of Santa Fe
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/homelearningcommunityofsantafe/

New Mexico Homeschool Community
http://www.newmexicohomeschoolcommunity.com/

Santa Fe Homeschool Association
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/santafehomeschoolassociation/

Both Santa Fe groups have approximately 150 members. The New Mexico site used to be a yahoo email list but is now a website with forums for discussion. Some families choose to be on more than one list so they don't miss anything.

Southwest Home Education - http://www.southwest-home-education.com. This organization hosts the homeschool trip to disneyland and other regional events.

 

There is an online program that is very good - particularly for your child's age. I don't think it is accredited though. Here is the link: http://www.time4learning.com.

Best of luck,
Takara  

Cheap Discount Homeschool Books and Curriculum

I have fun finding great homeschool books and materials at a discount. It's almost a game. 

I pick up books and reference guides all over the place. I visit yard sales, used book stores, and second hand stores. Since the turn over at some of these places is fast, you might find nothing one day and a bunch of stuff another. Homeschool book sales are a gold mine. They are often held at the end or beginning of the school year.  

Recently we actually did an out and out swap through one of the homeschool boards. Nobody had to buy anything. We just all brought whatever we were no longer using and we could take anything that would be useful for our child(ren). 

If I find a series I like, I always google discount or cheap followed by the name. I buy a lot of home school books and materials at Amazon. I also check eBay, but don't often find anything there.

There are a few places that offer used homeschool curriculum  for sale. Just google it. Sam's club has several very nice workbooks for subjects up through about 4th grade. You can often find them for sale at a discount at homeschool book sales.   

If I know the subject I need something for and I'm not sure about what book or program to choose, while I'm researching I often read the reviews on Amazon. You can learn a lot by doing that.

The homeschool buyers co-op is free to join and offers great discounts on very nice programs. We've enjoyed several of them.

If you want to include on-line learning, time4learning is very inexpensive. We used it through 4th grade. Then my son lost interest.