Books are one of the greatest expenses for home-educating families. Here are some tips to stack homeschool library shelves without breaking the bank doing it.
Public Libraries
Libraries are a home educator’s best friend. Librarians are fantastic sources of knowledge when it comes to preparing book lists to accompany specific topics or recommending new authors, and most libraries will source a copy of any book not currently in their catalogue upon request.
Many libraries offer loans for e-books, audiobooks and magazines which again is brilliant for home educators. Magazine articles make interesting lesson resources. Try photocopying interesting articles and keep them in a grab and go folder that the home learner can choose from.
A library of over 60,000 books that can be downloaded and read for free. If you’re looking for classic literature ebooks, look here first.
Second-Hand Books
Partly to keep the costs of homeschooling down but mostly because we believe books should be shared, wherever possible, we buy books second-hand.
Charity shops are often good for finding novels to read, but it’s never a guarantee and if you’re looking for anything specific it may take a while to find it. Instead, use online sites like Ebay / Facebook to source reference books or specific reading books.
When it comes to reference books for home education, you don’t necessarily need the latest publication. A book a few years ‘out of date’ will be cheaper and just as useful. Narrow searches by publishers or subjects that support your homeschool curriculum plan. You can also sort by publishing date which is useful for keeping up with curriculum guidelines and making sure the information in the books is up-to-date.
N.B If buying textbooks for exam study, the most up-to-date version is what’s needed. Exam curriculum changes frequently so ensure home learners are studying from the right book.
Buy in Bundles
A fun way to make a home library more library-ish is to buy bundles of books. Once we find a genre of writing we enjoy reading, we tend to stick closely to it. Buying books in bundles fills a home library with an array of genres that children can explore freely and can encourage them to step out of their reading comfort zone.
Ebay is great for this because it allows you to sort the bundles according to the age group of the reader.
To try (!) and stay within a budget for home-ed books:
- Invest in reference books that will be useful through more than one key stage: DK books are good for this.
- Buy ebooks. Ebooks are a great way to test-run new authors or a book series as the cost of ebooks tends to be significantly lower. If you enjoy the first book in a series, buy the series as paperbacks to add to the library.
- Buy books second-hand and in bundles.
- Book share with friends – recommendations from peers are a passive encouragement boost for reluctant learners.
- Follow publishing companies & bookshops on social media to take advantage of sales throughout the year (and use the publishers websites to source lesson resources linked to the book).
- Set up email alerts on Ebay for favourite authors / a specific book someone wants.
- Charity shops are brilliant for books; especially classic novels, books that have had sporadic popularity and last year’s textbooks. Try asking local charity shops to keep any textbooks to one side and let you know when any come in – people are mostly willing to help.
Encouraging children to read starts young, but it’s never too late to start. Try adding in small blocks of read-aloud and silent reading time into the homeschool day, letting readers choose their own books and scattering books you’d like them to read in amongst books they graviate towards.
0-7: Read to them! Stories, real-life books, books of facts. Read everything and everything, encouraging them to read along with you as their reading proficiency grows.
7+: Introduce chapter books (with incentives to completing a book, if necessary!). Continue to read aloud from a variety of genres – graphic novels/comic books totally count.
TBR Piles: One way we encourage our readers is with piles of books that they will be able to read once they’ve read others. The To-Be-Read pile includes books we’ve deemed inappropriate for now (content-based), so will be accessible at a certain age/after topic-based conversations etc; or that will be more challenging from an academic perspective – if they want to try they can choose to take them on as a challenge.