12 Great Online Homeschool Resources

Homeschooling in the age of the internet can be so much fun. The first are 7 new-to-me resources that you might find useful in your homeschool. The last five sites are ones I already use regularly, and they're worth their weight in gold!

1. Homeschool Through Highschool

Loads of great information for homeschoolers, especially for those who plan to homeschool throughout the high school years.

2. Virtual Field Trips

Go on a field trip without leaving your home. Virtual Field Trips offers a complete educational package with objectives, lesson plans, questions and answers, and additional activities and sites to visit. The virtual tour is done for you—all the educational research, site navigation, and step-by-step instructions turn web browsing into a goal-oriented educational experience. (And again, it's free!)

4. Ambleside Online

I'd heard of this site before, but I had never investigated it until now. Great free information (using the Charlotte Mason method) that you could use to prepare almost an entire curriculum.

5. Vocabulary Coach

Various word games and activities to help you learn over 4,000 vocabulary words. There are several different options to choose from and you also have the choice to view words according to difficulty.

6. An Old-Fashioned Education

A directory of free homeschool curricula, literature and text books organized for the use of homeschooling families. Full-text books, available for free online, are organized in an easy-to-use manner for homeschoolers.

7. Starfall

An excellent online learn-to-read program. It's both well-organized and well-done.

8. The Math Worksheet Site

My absolute favorite math worksheet generator. There are many customizable features on each worksheet so you can tweak them to your needs, and since it's a generator, you get a different worksheet every time you print one out. The free section of the site is great, but the subscriber section is even better; it's well worth subscribing at the very low cost. You could even subscribe for a month and print out as much as you want.

9. Fact Monster Flashcards

These are the online math flashcards my kids use everyday. The layout is great, and the kids only have to use the 10-key and the enter key to do the cards; there's no need to touch the mouse in between each flashcard like you have to on similar sites.

10. Education World

There's just tons of stuff on this site. Some of the geography curriculum we've used I downloaded from this site: Where in the World is Mrs. Waffenschmidt and A-Z Geography. There are many helpful resources in every subject area at Education World, but sometimes you have to dig a little deep to find them.

11. Geography Games

Sheppard Software has some fantastic geography quizzes disguised as games on this site. The games are customizable and you can even do learning modes in all three categories: capitals, geography, and landscape. This is one of my favorite sites for online geography practice.

12. How Stuff Works

Does your child want to know how a refrigerator works? How about how toilets work? My kids have asked both of these questions, so we went to this site for the answers. HSW isn't a boring site either, answering questions with just words; they usually have animations or videos to help get the point across, and they do a great job!