I'm trying to come up with a budget for homeschooling for next year. I know it's going to be more than we've spent in the past few years, but I am trying to keep it down, as with a move, things are likely to be tight. I think I might have a plan that will keep the budget for books, etc. in the $500 range, maybe less.
History -- The History of US is available in both print and audio at the library. It doesn't look like any one book will take more than 6-8 weeks to cover. I would like to get the study guide for W though (saves me having to continue writing my own, though if I get the thing and don't like it, I might still do my own. But at $9, I'm willing to take the chance that I'll be able to save myself a boatload of work. This Country of Ours is available at The Baldwin Project and at least partly at Librivox. I have a copy of How Our Nation Began that my grandmother saved from my dad's school days.
Literature -- Dh and I have decided that every month I should present W with a list of maybe 8-10 possible readers for school and let him pick 1-3 off of the list. I might do the same with A, we'll see if he's ready for that. I'll try it with T if she's home. I know it will work with W, not sure about the middles. In any case, some of the readers and read-alouds will come from the American History Literature guide I bought on clearance at Overstock for $22. I'm not sure how I'm going to like the questions and activities, and some of the selections aren't appropriate for at least A, maybe a few not for W, either, but between the large group, small group and additional book suggestions, it's a good resource for making my lists.
Language Arts -- For W, our main focus will be writing ... specifically, writing term papers. I think we're going to use Analytical Grammar's guide ($15 plus shipping), though we also found this free recording ... the speaker sounds like Casey Kasem LOL!
I'm not sure what I'm doing with A. I need to get him writing more, but probably need to do some grammar, too. He's a workbooky kid. For writing, I'm kind of looking at this, from Trigger Memory.
For the boys' math, we've decided to go with Life of Fred. We'll start with their pre-algebra books, Decimals and Percents and Fractions, at $19 each, that's $38. Plus a couple of grid-ruled notebooks each for them to work in. T will either use the SRA textbook or do CIMT, so cost is negligible if she's home. I've already made and will make a few more Montessori materials for E. So math should run between $50 and $60.
Science: Real Science 4 Kids has their Bio 1 and Physics 1 bundles on sale right now ($less than $175 for both). We might supplement with these free books, courtesy of the state of Florida. They're supposedly mostly high school level, but W could do them easily, I think. We might also read Joy Hakim's Story of Science (avail. at library).
We'll be doing Pilgrims of the Holy Family for Religious Education and to start exploring careers and such. I'm thinking about getting Fallacy Detective and seeing if he'd just read it on his own (he might). Not sure what else. We're trying not to structure them too much but have them take control of a lot of what they learn, but still want to make sure th bases are covered.
Oh -- and French ... if anyone has a good French program ... textbook/workbook would probably work best. I can speak it well enough to teach. We've been dabbling in Spanish and Sign Language for a while, but we're thinking that since I was at one time pretty fluent in French, that might be the best language for them to learn now.
I'm debating on whether or not to upgrade Homeschool Tracker ($30) or have the dc use Montessori-style goal and record forms that I made. I think I'm leaning toward at least starting with the forms. For anyone interested, you can download them Daily Record Weekly Plan and Weekly Summary ... I'm working on Quarterly and Annual Goals sheets. If they don't work out, I'll move over to HST.