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Thursday, July 29, 2010

Gearing Up For School

I have been working super hard the last couple of months gathering our school books for the new year. As many of you know, we homeschool in our family, so I do my best to find good books that my kids can really learn from.

This year, my children wanted to study World History in depth, so we decided to go with Sonlight. When I checked out the package that I was going to have to purchase, the price was a total of $653! WOW! I almost fell off my chair at the sticker price.

Many people that use Sonlight say that they don’t like the hassle of trying to piece together and track down all the books, but for me, I love a good frugal challenge–and that is what I looked at this as. So I posed myself a question–Could I really find all the books in this curriculum package and still be within my budget for school curriculum for the year?


Do you see how full that bookshelf is? Let’s see how I did! My budget for our school books this year was not to exceed $400.

Sonlight Alt7 Program (new $653)                                             Total Paid–$305!
Math U See Pre Algebra (new $85)                                              Total Paid–$27!
Math U See Epsilon (new $65)                                                       Total Paid–$35!
Ace Science Biology for my older child  and Earth Science for my younger child (new $85) Total Paid–$30!
Biology Dissection Kit (new $39)                                                  Total Paid–$20!
Biology Labs DVD (new $44.95)                                                    Total Paid $13!
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So the total is just a bit over my budget of $27. However, how I paid for these purchases, I only spent about $150 out of pocket. How did I pay for the rest? And how did I find such great deals? Here’s how!

~I signed up for Swagbucks last year and do all of my searching on this website. By searching from their site I earn bucks which I was able to spend on Amazon gift cards. So much of my shopping I did online at Amazon–and I purchased from sellers rather than the Amazon store.

~I bought many of the Sonlight titles from places like Vegsource, Sonlight used book forum, E Bay, Paperback Swap, Half.com, and used curriculum swap groups on Yahoo (there are TONS).

~I sold our older curriculum from last year and used that money to apply towards our new curriculum.
The really neat thing is that all this money did not come out at one time. I simply spent a little here and a little there when I had a few dollars to spare.

So, as you see, there are many ways that you can save money on buying your curriculum. Don’t get frustrated by the price of something. Search and find a way to get it at a frugal price!
What about you? What are you doing to gear up for school??

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We are into our third week back now, and finally smoothing out the flow. With the Robinson Curriculum, there is very little cost and it lasts for the full 12 years (and then some, lol!) I was able to purchase it used for $99 and we buy the books for free or minimal cost of Amazon and read off our iPod and computers.(1.99 max)We pay Saxon math books used at our local consignment bookstore. That bookstore is where I buy and sell, and generates most of my money over and over. Oh how we love HSing!