Tea House with Australian Money

There was a time when my Toads loved to play grocery store.  I have checked out many a little boy with a basket of fruits & veggies.  I have tried to move it towards playing tea shop instead.  I need the fortification of a cup to get through the activity and everyone appreciates the biscuits.  Our menu yesterday included Turkish delight.  Grandma took pity on us after our Turkish delight failure which I posted about here.

Younger Toad just loves to play and older Toad is getting a little better about change.  He can count out his money to pay for things great, but when the coins don't add up even, he struggles with figuring out what he's due in change.  With tea shop, I write out a little bill, and he has to figure it all out like at a restaurant.  He does better figuring the sums when it's written down.

Of course the novelty of this is different money - it comes in colors, and there's animals, and one dollar coins instead of bills.  We had a talk about currency and the differences among countries.


You can find images of the reverse side of the Australian coins at the Royal Australian Mint website.  The front side is an image of the Queen.  Wikipedia has images of all the bills.  I formatted them up and glued them together after printing them on card stock.
  Australian Coins and Bills

I've shared this post:
ABC and 123
Earning My Cape 
Gricefully Homeschooling 
Happy Whimsical Hearts
Juggling With Kids
Kitchen Fun With My 3 Sons 
Learn with Play at home 
Love2learn2day 
Print a palooza

Free Classes for Homeschoolers

This is the third and final installment on my series on ways to save money in the homeschooling process.  The first, general post is here, the second post of free media sources is here.

It's actually harder to find free content for younger kids.  Some universities are moving towards offering free courses for no credit which is great but not everyone is ready for that.

Multiple Subject Areas
Currclick - They usually have a selection of free courses every term such as chess or book club
CyberLearning - A project of the National Education Foundation.  
I mentioned Open Culture in my free media list.  Their list of 500 free college courses is here.
Check with your state also.  We have the Florida Virtual School which is free to FL residents.
Free World U - I've used their flashcards before.

Math and Sciences
IXL Math - This is a paid service if you want the full suite of features.  They do allow you to do up to 20 math problems per day for free and you could work through the whole year that way if you wanted.
Khan Academy - Offers learning opportunities in math and finance mainly (they are branching out into humanities more).
NASA digital learning environment - NASA has so many amazing resources.

Finally, don't forget your local public library.  They are a great resource and probably have some of the Great Courses in their collection which are normally quite expensive.

I would love to expand this list focusing on the elementary level.  If you have any resources please leave them in the comments section and I can update the post for everyone.

Happy learning!

Update Oct. 2012
Check out these too:
Academic Earth 
Education Portal
Hippocampus
ItunesU

Free Media for Homeschoolers

 I did a post last week about ways to save money homeschooling.  You can read it here if you missed it.  I wanted to break out some of the links for clarity.  This post is all about free media sources to supplement your studies.  I've enjoyed all these websites, some more than others, please preview as necessary for your family.



Primary source materials - These are mainly museums that put original documents up on the web.  There are so many more here, please add your favorites in the comments.
The British Library -
Gilder Lehrman - Gilder Lerhman Institute of American History
Library of Congress
Massachusetts Historical Society -
National Postal Museum - a division of the Smithsonian

Audio books and sound materials
Ambling Audio books 
Free Music Archive - free music recordings, audio stories and story books for kids through Kazoomzoom
Kiddie Records Weekly - Vintage kids records - really fun
LibriVox - Free audio books
Lit2Go - stories and poems as Mp3's 
Story Nory - Free audio books for kids
Wild Music - sounds exhibition from the Science Museum of Minnesota

Print books
Amazon freebies for Kindles
Baldwin Project for Children's Literature - ebooks of children's classics
Bartleby - Great books online
International Children's Libray - Mulit-lingual
Project Gutenberg - 40,000 free ebooks
Rosetta Project - Complete Library of kids books - great options for foreign language study
Wikibooks

Video
Early America - Short historical films
National Film Board of Canada 
PBS
TED talks
Top Documentary Films - Free documentary films
Wolfram Demonstrations Project - Science models

Some of everything
Open Culture

And last but not least, check with your public library.  Ours offer audio book and music downloads for free.

Post in the comments section any wonderful sources I've left out.

Enjoy!

Ways to Save Money on Homeschool Curriculum & Supplies

 Here's a list of ways I've saved some money on our homeschooling adventures.  Hopefully there's something in here that can help you keep your costs down.  They are in no particular order.

Groupon and Living Social - You've probably heard of these, but 8coupons will list these and all similar deals by your zipcode, making it easier to keep track of them.  I've been able to get deals on Little Passports for social studies and deals on admissions for field trips.

Gift Card Granny - This is a site that compiles gift card resellers.  I've used this for office supply gift cards.  Depending on the store and the site you'll get a certain percentage off your purchase.  Since these get mailed to you snail mail this requires some advance planning.

Refillable Ink Cartridges - I can't imagine homeschooling and using off the shelf manufacturer ink cartridges.  I think that cost alone would pay for private school instead.  I use refillables but even remanufactured represent significant savings. 

Sharing - I shared my All About Spelling vol. 1 with a friend.  She liked it so much she decided to use it as well and said she'd let me use her vol. 3 so we each saved the cost of a volume.  For longer distance sharing try http://market.swap.com for books or movies.

Buy used - There are several options here.  Are you signed up for your favorite yahoo homeschool group?  Many of them allow selling items on certain days or exist just as curriculum listserves.  Homeschool classifieds, home educators resource, Educator's Exchange are all options online.  Addall and Alibris (emails coupons frequently) are online used booksellers for mass market books.  Also, be involved in your local homeschool organizations and coops, they often have used curriculum sales.

Buy in bulk - Homeschool Buyers Coop is an option that many have heard of.  Also, you can organize your own group buys.  A person at our homeschool coop organized a group buy for Nova Natural toys for a 15% savings for example.  Contact a publisher and find out what kind of deal they can give you for a certain number of copies to organize your own group.   Even if you only pair up with a friend, you split the shipping.

Free curriculum options - Homeschool Launch is a file sharing service for homeschoolers.
Currclick - has weekly freebies as well as frequent larger giveaways.  Many curriculum providers have email blasts or facebook freebies so sign up with your favorites.
 
Free classes & free audio books - The list here is rather long so I'm going to break these into a separate post.  Here is the post for free media.  Here is the post for free classes.

Please post a comment with your favorite homeschool money saving idea!

Update Oct, 2012
Try Freeshipping.org to save too.