4 Ways To Keep Kids Learning At Home On A Budget

Whether you’ve fully committed to homeschooling, been thrust into the role of educator during the pandemic or are simply looking for new ways to teach your child new skills, you’re probably finding it difficult to balance education with a family budget. 

It doesn’t feel like education should be such a great expense, but it’s hard to argue with the monthly outgoings on resources and equipment. 

If you want to be a proactive parent when it comes to learning but may not have the cash to splash out on a tutor or the most advanced schemes right now, here are some great ways to keep kids educated on a budget. 

Find materials with great reusability

It’s crucial you find materials such as toys and books that don’t get boring after one sitting.

Repetition is essential in a child’s education. It builds confidence and essential connections within a child’s brain, making new skills and facts easier to retain. 

Part of how you drill these lessons into a child’s brain is through the resources and toys they use, even if it’s just during play time. 

There are a number of brilliant educational toys out there that offer great replayability to even young, hyperactive minds. If you’re finding your child struggling to learn through play try one of the many great kids subscription boxes available on the market today. Delivered straight to your door, in these boxes you’ll find brilliant games and toys that demand creativity from your little one. This demand for their own participation and ingenuity is often what makes a session more memorable to a child. 

Of course, media content is an important part of learning and can help to convey messages and facts you’re not overly familiar with. Online educational resources from trusted sources are often the best way to go, as they’re vetted by independent bodies and tweaked to perfection from years of use. 

Kids grow up fast, but you want to find resources that retain their value that you can go back to for years to come and grow up with. 

Free resources are your friend

You should never rule out the value of free resources.  

Free tools, books, videos and even games have the power to turn a lesson around and fully engage a child in a new topic. In our new online media landscape just because a resource is free doesn’t mean it isn’t good. 

Teaching is a highly collaborative profession, with many educators willing to share what they’ve found useful in their lessons. These plans, books and more are just as effective when you’re trying to teach a child one-on-one from home. 

While something of a landmine to navigate through for child-friendly content, YouTube (particularly its Kids section) has a collection of both playful cartoons and songs that will appeal to young children and morer traditional educational videos from experts who understand how to engage with pre-teens. 

Of course, you can always turn to the library. Though not as glamorous as online alternatives, libraries have a wide away of resources you may never have otherwise considered or stumbled upon. 

Work with other parents

Perhaps the best resources available to you though are other parents going through the same struggles.

Homeschooler or not, parents across the country are asking themselves the same questions. How can I keep my child-focused? Is this topic too heavy? Is this resource really appropriate? 

Rather than suffer in silence parents should turn to each other and realize there is a well of untapped potential in collaboration. Sharing lesson plans, resources and even equipment is one of the best ways to create a varied learning experience, without breaking your own back. 

Consider working together with a local community of other parents educating their children (you can find plenty through social media or on parents forums) to plan lessons and share expensive resources amongst yourself. A textbook is a lot less split between five families, and one may find that perfect online video that engages your child. 

This kind of collaboration is a brilliant way to ward off the grind of teaching and ensures your child gets some variety in their education. 

Turn everyday tasks into lessons

Some kids want to follow you everywhere you go. For some, it’s about security, but most of them just want to feel grown-up. 

What if I told you that those everyday chores they keep interrupting could be leveraged to make fantastic home lessons? 

Everything you do in a day will be something they need to learn at some point in their lives, with many household chores being real-world applications of lessons you’re trying to teach. 

Cooking can become home ec or chemistry classes, as you explain the processes of making a meal and what’s going on as you light the stove. 

Cleaning the backyard becomes a lesson in gardening, exploring the wonders of nature and the creatures that inhabit it through what’s right outside your window. 

Even bills can become quick-fire maths lessons to make the whole process a little more fun for you.

These are revolutionary ideas and certainly not replacements for full lessons, but integrating your children into your everyday will help broaden their understanding of the world and see the things they’ve learned in the classroom come to life. 

Just because you’re teaching on a budget doesn’t mean your lessons will be any worse. A huge investment doesn’t guarantee a better quality of education. How much your kids learn from home will depend on what you put into it, which requires creativity, passion and dedication — whether you’re working with a budget or not.