While we believe the best resource a homeschool student has is his or her parents and our academies, we have found a few other great free and almost free resources that we wanted to share with you.  We hope you enjoy! If you have any ideas to add, please let us know.
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GENERAL:

Smithsonian Education
www.smithsonianeducation.org/students/explore_by_topic/explore_by_topic.html
Interactive lessons on the topics of science/nature, history/culture, art, and people/places.

Study Jams
www.studyjams.com
This is a free site from Scholastic.com. Through real world examples presented in a multimedia format, StudyJams helps students understand the underlying concepts of math and science so they are better able to solve individual problems.  For Grades 3-8.

ABCya!
www.abcya.com
ABCya.com offers free educational computer games and activities for elementary students. Grade level lessons incorporate areas such as math and language arts while introducing basic computer skills.

Fun Brain
http://www.funbrain.com
Great array of games including math games, reading games, and games for both kids and parents to play.

Hoagies Gifted
http://hoagiesgifted.org
The all-things-gifted site, full of resources, articles, books and links to help and support parents, teachers, and gifted children alike. This is a free site.

FREE OPEN COURSES ONLINE

Open Coursware Consortium
www.ocwconsortium.org
Free, open educational content—high quality university-level educational materials. These materials often include course planning materials and evaluation tools as well as thematic content.

Hippo Campus
http://www.HippoCampus.org
Free, high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects such as algebra, calculus, physics, statistics, U.S. history, biology and more.

Weebly
Openeducationsource.weebly.com
This free site offers educational resources available for homeschooling and supplemental education for kids Pre-School through High School and beyond. Subjects include math, science, social studies, English and more.

MATH:

GeoGebra
www.geogebra.org
GeoGebra is free and multi-platform dynamic mathematics software for all levels of education. It joins geometry, algebra, tables, graphing, statistics and calculus.

Xtra Math
https://www.xtramath.org
This a free web site for students, parents and teachers. It helps with the foundations of all math—addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
STEAM:

How to Smile
Howtosmile.org is a free-access collection of 3,500 of the best hands-on science and math activities for all ages. Based at UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of the Science, SMILE makes STEM fun and educational, and draws activities from leading science centers, science and science education organizations, universities and national agencies.

SCIENCE:

Exploratorium
http://www.exploratorium.edu
The Exploratorium is located in San Francisco—but this site is of interest to everyone, regardless of location. Topics cover every day science, the earth, the human body, living things – even the science of baseball. This is a free site.

NASA for Students
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/index.html and http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov
Nasa.gov is a great site for students K and above and includes educational programs, Nasa e-clips, podcasts, and MORE. Starchild is geared toward a younger audience interested in learning about “space stuff”. Both sites are offered free of charge.

Middle School Chemistry
www.middleschoolchemistry.com
You can download all of the lessons from Middle School Chemistry for free. Middle School Chemistry is a resource of guided, inquiry-based lesson plans that covers basic chemistry concepts, along with the process of scientific investigation.

Science Buddies
www.sciencebuddies.org
This is a free site with over 1,000 science fair project ideas in more than 30 different areas of science. Great for home experiments too.

WRITING:

Starfall
http://www.starfall.com
Starfall is a free site that provides a systematic phonics approach in conjunction with phonemic awareness practice for kids Pre-School—2nd Grade.

Brave Writer
www.bravewriter.com
The website offers many free resources including podcasts, daily writing tips, exercises to try at home with your children, a forum where you can post questions, plus much more. In addition, the website sells a variety of products.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE:

Duolingo
www.duolingo.com
Free language education in Spanish, English, French, German, Portuguese and Italian.

HISTORY and GEOGRAPHY

National Geographic
http://ww.nationalgeographic.com/kids and http://education.nationalgeographic.com
Wonderful content, amazing pictures—and who doesn’t like the National Geographic? Plus, it’s a free site.

ART & MUSIC

HomeschoolPiano
http://www.homeschoolpiano.com and http://jazzedge.com
Lessons follow a 6-step cycle that makes it easy for students to master the piano. Students have online access and learn at their own pace in the comfort of their own home or wherever they have internet access. No special equipment is needed. You can view the lessons as much as you like on any computer, tablet, or phone. Drum lessons are also available.

Online Drum Lessons

Click here for drum lesson info.

Harmony Fine Arts
http://harmonyfinearts.org
Homeschool art and music plans, written by Barb. Read how she includes art, music appreciation, and nature study in her children’s educational programs. Free, and items for purchase are available on the site.

SUPPLEMENTARY/FUN PRODUCTS and WEBSITES

Bookemon, Inc.
http://www.bookemon.com
Free, easy-to-use online, iPad and iPhone book creator for parents, educators and kids to create their own personalized books in pro-quality print and e-book format. Their exclusive edCenter platform gives homeschool parents a safe and secure environment to collaborate and work with their kids online. Their Young Author Press program helps young authors turn their creative writings into published books with ISBN-13, which allows students to be recognized as published authors worldwide.

Internet Marital Arts (IMA)
www.internetmartialarts.com
The site offers online martial arts courses which include web-based instructional videos, training, monitoring, and an online belt testing program for individuals age 6 (beginner friendly) and older. Students can train on their own schedule, and train anywhere while having access to instructor feedback—it’s the cyber martial arts learning solution.

How Stuff Works
http://www.howstuffworks.com
Fun site for everyone. Topics include engineering, environmental science, forces of nature, innovation, and more.

Teach With Movies
http://www.teachwithmovies.com
Lesson plans based on movies and films, such as The Sound of Music, Diary of Anne Frank, Mulan, and more. Teach With Movies provides the curriculum materials but not the movies themselves. 350+ guides—this was a subscription site and is now free.

Typing
www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing
A free and fun colorful website with animation and games introducing touch typing to children ages 7 to 11.

Songs for Teaching
http://www.songsforteaching.com
Thousands of children’s songs, lyrics, sound clips, and teaching suggestions. Songs about science, mathematics, social studies, the fine arts, life skills and more. You can listen to the songs online for free or purchase songs that you like.

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