Where can I buy used homeschool curriculum, the new stuff is not in my budget.?

Question

Where can I buy used homeschool curriculum, the new stuff is not in my budget.?

Answer 1

I know my mom asks around among other homeschool families.  She searches ebay and craigslist.

Also, one she uses alot is http://www.vegsource.com/homeschool/

cause they have a swap board.  You can list both sales and wants, and search for different things.  Some mom's are willing to trade texts, if I'm remembering correctly.

My mom's biggest splurge of the year, though is at the homeschool book sale.  SEARCH (SouthEastern ARea Christian Homeschoolers) hold a book sale in Southwester PA every year, and there are seminars and lots and lots of books.  I'm sure there are things like SEARCH (which covers the whole southeast) in other areas, as well.

Answer 2

New stuff isn't in our budget either.  We've gotten ours from a number of sources.

Homeschool support group sales.  Join some local support groups in your area--you may find several in Yahoo groups if you search.  They often have used curriculum sales at the end of the "school year", during the summer, and in the early fall.  One that I'm in even has a regular "free table" at park meetings where people can leave items that they don't want and others can choose items left there--all for free.

The public library.  We've found a number of great sources (textbooks, curriculum designed for homeschoolers, and books that can be used as part of your own curriculum) there.  We've found a lot of great stuff on the library shelves to check out, as well as stuff at the library's sale table (where they sell donated materials to raise funds for the library).

Yard sales (or tag sales, garage sales, or whatever they're called in your part of the country).  Obviously these are hit and miss, but you can find some great deals at these.

Freecycle.org    Freecycle is a free group where things that people would otherwise just throw out are given away online to someone in the same local area who wants them.  I've seen people giving away curriculum items on our local Freecycle groups and I've seen people asking for such items.

Craigslist.com  This organization is free to join, too.  They have local groups with classified-ad-type listings.  They have some stuff listed for free, others for stuff to be sold.  We've gotten good deals on curriculum items through them on occasion.

The public schools.  Our public schools sometimes get rid of unwanted materials by giving them away to the public.  Most are old, outdated books, but I've found that a lot of the older texts are better books than the more recent ones.  And I don't think it really matters in some subject areas if the book is older; I mean, basic math is still basic math.  But sometimes they have newer things that they get rid of, too.

Online sales' sites.  We used to get a lot of good deals on eBay.  Now eBay doesn't allow teacher materials, so as long as you don't mind going without answer keys, you can get stuff on eBay.  But there are lots of other sites where homeschooled materials are bought and sold.  There are many yahoogroups devoted just to buying and selling used curriculum.

And don't forget to mention homeschooling stuff to relatives who want wishlists for gifts for the kids.  We've had relatives buy great books, science kits, educational games, and more for the kids.

Answer 3

Try this yahoo group.  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeHomesc...

People post things that they want to give away to help out fellow homeschoolers.  Usually you only need to pay S&H.

Answer 4

I typed it in google and got over three million hits. That's my first suggestion.

What we did in our situation was 1) check the library, there are many textbooks in the system, we were able to find all of our math, through calculus, as well as chemistry, biology and history in the library. 2) contact the local homeschool support group. Our group has two book sales a year, one in the spring and one in the fall in which anyone can have a table set up to sell their old books, manipulatives, computer programs. We've gotten some great stuff there for very cheap (rosetta for $20 cheap)