Frugal Friday

Homeschooling families generally have a need to be thrifty. We are mostly one income families, and these are tough economic times. At the same time, we have a great desire for our children to have the best education available, and there are so many wonderful (and often times costly) materials available.

So what do you do? How do you provide a top notch education on a less than stellar budget? One way you can do this is to make yourself at home in your local library! Libraries offer loads of phenomenal literature and media resources at little or no cost to you! Many of them also offer fantastic summer programs to encourage your children as readers, and they often even have a participation level for babies and toddlers!

One of our local libraries has an EDU section. This section is filled with all types of educational materials available for checkout- from curricula items like "Spelling Power", to leap pads, guitars, even Moody Science videos. These items are on checkout for a whole month at a time! It has been a fantastic resource for us.

We also use the library to check out books (our current read aloud "Oliver Twist" is on loan from the library, as are my sons reading books for this week!), audio books (my husband commutes to work over an hour one way, and he loves these!), videos, and EDU items. Our library also has a genealogical research area, and my son has done a school interview with the librarian who staffs that area to learn a lot about the history of the city.

So, If you haven't already, make friends with your local library (and librarian, who can be a huge help to you!) and save some money