Mike Farris:
This week, I’m joined by my daughter Christy Shipe. Christy, we’ve been talking about your discovery of a lot of inexpensive and even free sources for homeschooling curriculum. Can parents use free resources even when they’re getting into the upper grades?

Christy Shipe:
You know, to be honest, I don’t know much about beyond grade 8. I’ve only researched the elementary grades. My kids are in second, third, and fourth grades, so that’s most of what I’ve been researching. If you’re following a scope and sequence, though, it really helps guide you to the right resources for each grade. But the great thing about homeschooling is that you can also gauge your child’s progress and speed up or slow down accordingly. So, for example, I have my second-grader in third-grade spelling, because I discovered she already knew the second-grade words.

The internet is a great place to research resources by grade level. And Internet4classrooms has all of their resources organized in a scope and sequence for grades K-8, so that’s been very helpful to me as a starting place for my research. I also think just speaking to other moms about resources that they’ve used is a great idea.

Mike:
Christy, that’s very helpful. And when your kids get old enough, we’ll have you back to talk about high school. I’m Mike Farris.