Homeschooling has been a big part of my life these last 2 months, since I started homeschooling our oldest in January. Homeschooling is a bit different than it was when I was homeschooled, nearly 30 years ago, and the internet has been a great resource for many things (as well as a great distraction for my student). Here's a few things that have been great for us.
I always enjoy hearing what works for other people and I like sharing things I like, it's part of the reason I have a blog. I've been doing these monthly posts for 10 years and they also provide a nice little snapshot in my life at a moment in time! See more here! Some affiliate links may be included!
1) Teachers Pay Teachers
I knew about this site because my sister who teaches kindergarten has been selling on it for quite awhile. I do not need her kindergarten resources for my 6th grader but I have found nearly anything else I am looking for on here without putting out a ton of money. I've bought World War II Europe maps, study guides for books we're reading together, a test for a book we read that I had chapter discussion questions for (going back to a book my Mom used for me!), etc. Most items that I'm looking for are around $4-$7 which is a great value for not having to make a test for a book myself. It's been fantastic.
2) Geography Map Games
I think my son's junior high social studies teacher used these at school too but we've found them very useful too. We focused on Northern & Eastern European geography when reading Number the Stars and are now working on the states. I personally enjoy taking the states one and seeing how fast I can do it (69 seconds is my best at 100% accuracy, of course. I want to get that under a minute). There are a lot of different ones, apparently I don't know my National Park locations that well (at least of the ones I haven't been to).
3) Word Search Puzzles
I make a word search with his spelling words every week and I use this one every single time, just typing in his spelling words and then it makes it for me. I save as a pdf and print. Takes less than 5 minutes and is free.
4) Typing Club
As much as I begrudge so much work being done on computers at schools now, I do think typing correctly and well is a very important skill to have. He works on Typing Club one or two days a week and, honestly, it wouldn't hurt me to practice on there either. I did a good bit of Mavis Beacon 30 years ago and am decent at typing but could be better!
5) Bible Gateway
I have used Bible Gateway for years as a quick way to look up Bible verses in a variety of translations. When I assign him Bible chapters to read he nearly always has Bible Gateway read it to him as he follows along in his paper Bible.
6) Homeschool Pop
Bonus 6th pick this month. I do not want to have to explain parts of speech and objects of prepositions and all of that. I think I would just confuse us both (the number of times I google what part of speech a certain word is while I am grading his grammar worksheets without an answer key is...a lot). This is always the first YouTube channel I check for instructional videos. They don't have everything but they've had many we've found useful. And my 6th grader says they aren't annoying so that's high praise.
I'll probably have more to say about homeschooling when we are nearing the end of the semester, it's certainly was a rough start but things are going fairly smoothly now!
