Another post in the YES! You CAN Homeschool High School Series! For more posts on this topic please click here.
I have met a lot of homeschooling families over the last 14 years and while we’re all different, and homeschooling for different reasons, I have seen one thing we all have in common: we all like a good deal and look for inexpensive curriculum options. Homeschooling has always been popular with one-income families but lately I’ve seen it grow into other, non-traditional sectors; the single parent sector, the two working parents sector, and the grandparent homeschooling grandchildren sector. These homeschooling families often not only want, but need, an inexpensive solution.
The Internet to the rescue!! It’s now possible to provide an entire education, for very low cost or FREE, thanks to the internet. What follows are some of our favorite resources for homeschooling high school without going broke. The links below can be put together to provide an elective, a core subject, or even an entire high school career.
Alison.com is my 17 year old’s favorite online learning resource. She can complete a class in a matter of months (sometimes weeks) and really enjoys being self-paced. In addition to classes in general education topics, Alison offers several diploma programs, an ACT study program, and foreign language courses. When you finish a course you can print a certificate of completion for a few dollars.
Open Culture is another wonderful online learning resource. Whatever you’re looking for, you can probably find it here. Open Culture pulled together over 900 courses from universities and makes them available for free in one place. Additionally, Open Culture provides certificate programs, a full k-12 curriculum, 46 foreign language options, and over 600 free ebooks.
Coursera is another online learning community that offers classes for free. Most of the Coursera content comes from major universities, and many specializations are offered, in addition to 13 foreign languages.
MIT Open Courseware offers quite a few high school science and math courses, as well as exam prep courses.
Saylor Univeristy isn’t a resource we have used, but I’m including it because I have a friend who homeschooled her children through high school AND COLLEGE graduation, for very little money, using Saylor classes and Thomas Edison College (the link to that is on the Saylor page).
edX is the brainchild of Harvard University, pulling together hundreds of high school and college-level courses from several Ivy League universities into one place for free.
Khan Academy – no list of internet resources for education would be complete without a link to Khan Academy. Khan Academy has everything, literally, that you could want for educating your high school student. Advanced math? It’s there. A course on ancient Egypt? It’s there. Politics in the modern era? Yup, there.
For more high school resources that are cheap or free I recommend visiting the following sites, who have covered the topic more in-depth with resources we haven’t used yet :)
Let’s Homeschool High School
Hoagie’s Gifted Internet Investigations
