As a way of living, frugal living is a choice. But today, most of us choose to be frugal, just because we can save our money. But frugal living is more than saving money. Its about creativity to utilize everything around us to manage our needs.

As a homeschool family in a remote area, we have to be frugal. If not, we can’t have learning materials. We have to be creative in managing everything around us to be learning materials.

Our homeschool using Cambridge curriculum. We were studying the curriculum, and we have in our mind what our homeschool needs to accomplish the curriculum demands. We use our knowledge about the curriculum demand to looking for learning materials that available around us. I know our money doesn’t enough to buy all learning materials that suggested by the curriculum. In my opinion, learning will be great if creativity involved in supplying learning materials.

Here are the list of what we can do to our frugal homeschool:
√ Using free websites to read classic and good literatures to learn language art

√ Using free ebooks to learn math and science

√ Using free tutorials to learn crafting

√ We are living in a company area where so much expert living as neighbour. They are chemical experts, mechanical experts, chinese native speakers, and even a doctor. If we don’t understand the topic that we learn, we can ask them to explaining to us. Of course, as a mother, I have to pay them some cakes or cookies… lol!

√ We use everything that we can have around us to crafting. Woods, fabrics, paints, or else. We can’t buy crafting materials that only available at city daily. It will wasting time and money. We go to the nearest small city not more than once a month to buy goods that are not available in our area. It took one hour and about $15 to reach the nearest small city, expensive and so tiring.

Using learning materials that suggested by curriculum is good and easy. But in some cases, we don’t have enough money or resources to buy them. Frugal homeschooling needs parent to spending more time than not frugal. But, frugal homeschooling also push parent to be smart and creative. Later on, this frugal habit will be adopted by our children, they will be frugal too. However, frugal living will make our child less consumptive, they will be more productive. That will be good to our country and society.

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