Homeschooling on a Budget

Do you want to know an ugly word? Budget, blah. My husband does finances for a living, so unfortunately I must stick to one; that deserves another blah.

I budgeted well at the beginning of the school year and I was able to get all of my supplies for the whole school year without breaking the bank. Unfortunately, I didn't foresee that my little monkeys would gobble everything up so quickly. We finished a year's worth of world history and science in one semester. Although I wanted to just go and buy a bunch of more curriculum, I couldn't justify spending more money. OK, I could justify it, but apparently not well enough to convince my husband. :)

I decided/had to get creative and it has so far been pretty fun. For science, we had studied chemistry this last semester, so I thought we would just continue with chemistry but do it on our own. Kind of tricky, because I'm not a chemist, or that smart, but it has been fun to learn and figure it out together. I have a song, where we are trying to memorize about the 41 most common elements on the periodic table. I also found a lot of fun experiments on Pinterest and free lesson plans about Chemistry. This last week we set stuff on fire; needless to say, we all had a good time.

Next, I had to do something for our world history. I seriously can't believe how fast we finished our history. We were having so much fun with it that they would beg me to read more. We studied ancient world history and I felt like we could have gone more in depth with some of what we studied. Thankfully my lovely husband, who is a nerd, had a Greek history book lying around. It is full of big words, which I have to explain a lot, or look up a lot, but it is really giving us a better understanding of their society, government, religion and so on. Also, my oldest son took after his father's nerdiness and is a huge Greek mythology buff; he helps explain A LOT of things for us/me.

After we finish studying more in depth about Greece we will move on to the Roman Empire. My nerdy husband also has a great history book for that too; he is so handy! So far my kids haven't wanted to make any projects about Greece, but if we do decide to make something I will just look up ideas on Pinterest. Seriously, how did we live before Pinterest?

Maybe with all the money we save on curriculum I can talk my husband in to taking us to Greece to REALLY get a good understanding of their culture??:)