Spending Money: Homeschool Budget

One of the perks of homeschooling in Alaska is that you get a budget. Each homeschooling provider (for example, there is Connections, IDEA and Raven Correspondence in Homer) gives a slightly different dollar amount, but through Connections one receives $1600 per child K-5, $1900 for middle school kids, and $2300 for high school students (I'm pretty sure about the amounts and grades, but not totally). My kids are very much conscious of budgets, so part of the interest of homeschooling for them has been having a large amount of money to "spend" on their educational materials.

Unfortunately, I did not realize that we had to 'buy' all of our textbooks. Back when I sat down with the supervising teacher last spring and we decided on materials, she never mentioned costs for anything, so I mistakenly assumed that we were just borrowing the materials from the district (since they already had many of the materials and books we ordered) and would return them at the end of the year. As I found out, that is not the case. We had to purchase every textbook, teacher's manual, workbook and more. Apparently there is a storage space in Soldotna where homeschoolers can go and borrow things from, but there is no such space in Homer so we have to get the materials ourselves.

Our startup costs for homeschooling were large, in part, because I hadn't learned to scrounge around and find materials from other sources yet. True, we got an awesome chemistry kit, a robotics lego kit, a physical science lab kit and more. We also had to get a whiteboard, markers, easel paper, pencil sharpeners and other basic supplies that a school would already have. So before we even started school we'd probably spent over $1000 already.

Once we started adding sports and art lessons, that finished off our budget. Those things are very expensive. The sports and lessons are paid for, but not supplies, so that comes out of our own pocket (sports equipment, etc.). Our budget has been hit for the year, and I have learned that $3500 isn't that much money when we're trying to provide a vital, enriching education for our kids! Next year, however, we'll be much smarter about this whole thing. Plus, we'll already have lots of that 'big stuff' that we won't need to buy again.