Free Stuff Archives - Truly Rich and Blessed

Freebie Fridays: Free Homeschool Curricula for Your Preschooler

March 8, 2013 by Tina 5 Comments

As you may probably have guessed, I am SUPER loaded with work this week, thus the lack of posts. I wasn’t able to write a Word-filled Wednesdays post though I did mean to. Plus, we’ve been pretty occupied with my father-in-law’s confinement and all. (Please do keep praying for him — I can’t say more about his illness yet, out of respect to my husband’s family, but he needs all the prayers he can get!)

Anyway, I’m writing a quick Freebie Friday post for y’all in between writing and editing tasks. I’ve been receiving some emails and messages on lately about what we use to homeschool our three year old daughter.

The truth is, we don’t actually do much “schoolwork” with her, if you get my drift. It’s more of lots of read-alouds, free play, free time to use her imagination, some sensory and fine motor play with paint, sand, playdoh, clay and water (when I remember to include it, haha), some dress-up play, etc. I’m not using any curriculum with her, though I may start using one when she turns 4 in July. Then again, with Baby due to come out late April or early May, those plans may still change!

For those of you who do want to use a homeschool preschool (aka homepreschool, according to Susan Lemons) curriculum with your kids, here are some links to sites that provide free curricula. 🙂 I hope they’ll be helpful to you all!

Mater Amabilis — A Free Charlotte Mason curriculum for Catholics

ABC Jesus Loves Me — A Free Bible-based Preschool Curriculum

Ambleside Online — A Free Charlotte Mason curriculum

Letter of the Week — A Free Preschool Curriculum by Brightly Beaming Resources

Raising Rock Stars Preschool — A Curriculum by Carisa, the awesome mom behind 1 + 1 + 1 = 1

That Resource Site — Free Catholic homeschool resources including worksheets, templates, journals, learning games

Hubbard’s Cupboard — Free Preschool, Kindergarten and Christian Resources

I also recommend you try reading Susan Lemons’ blog. I learned a lot about homepreschooling from her. 🙂 OK, back to work now for me. God bless, everyone!

Freebie Friday: Free Resources for Your Lenten Reflections

February 22, 2013 by Tina Leave a Comment

I have JUST finished commenting on some of the blog posts in our “Keep Love in Lent” Link-up and I am so inspired by all that I’ve read so far. I know I should be working/writing, but I decided to read the posts “assigned” to me as part of my reflections for today — and I’m glad I did! (Pls. do take a look at the Link-up if you have the time, you won’t regret it!)

While reading some of the entries, I realized that, aside from our family Lenten traditions, and the daily Mass readings, I don’t have any additional resources specifically for Lent. Some of the other Catholic bloggers have lists of Lenten readings and reflections, so I decided to look for my own, too, and I will try to incorporate them into my daily prayer and Scripture reading time (which I still struggle with, so please pray for me!).

I found a few free resources online, so I’m sharing them with you all here. I hope you’ll find them useful. 🙂 God bless, everyone!

Free eBooks: Lenten meditations and reflections

Free Lent Resources from IgnatianSpirituality.com

Season of Lent & Holy Week: On-Line Lenten Resources, Activities & Devotions for Catholics, Orthodox and Protestant Christians

(Photo source: http://www.bernardine.org/lent.html)

Freebie Friday: StoryNory.com — Listen to Children’s Audio Stories for FREE! :)

February 15, 2013 by Tina 3 Comments

Today is a super hectic day for me, as I have lots of deadlines to meet. We weren’t able to join the families of Catholic Filipino Academy on their outreach activity to Anawim this morning, as Tim isn’t feeling that well. Formal homeschooling will have to wait for now, as I have articles to write and edit. In the meantime, both kids are hanging out with me here in the living room, while I attempt to make sense of all that I have to do. (Lord, please help! 🙂 )

Thank goodness, then, for Storynory, a website I discovered a few years ago, when we were still based in Timor Leste. Your kids (and you!) can listen to lots of audio stories online, or even download them for listening later on in your mp3 players, computers, cellphones or other gadgets.

The stories are categorized such: Original Stories, Fairytales, Classic, Educational and Junior. If you have younger kids, I would suggest you start with the Junior stories first. 🙂

Most of the stories are told by a storyteller named Natasha, in a British accent. This may be a bit of a challenge if our kids aren’t so used to British-speaking people, but you can also look at it as an exercise for their auditory/listening skills. 🙂

All right, that’s it for now! 🙂 Time to get back to work! Hope you and your kids enjoy Storynory as much as we do! 🙂

Freebie Friday: Free Curricula & Resources from Catholic Heritage Curricula! :)

November 9, 2012 by Tina Leave a Comment

Our son, who just turned six, is enrolled with Kolbe Academy Home School. Since Kolbe has a K-12 curriculum and therefore has no Prep level (when we were discerning whether to continue homeschooling or not, we had him assessed earlier this year at conventional preschools and were told that he could be admitted to Prep), Tim is still in Kindergarten. (Does that bother me? Well, it used to. Reading articles like this and this helped me get over it! :D)

Aside from our Kolbe curriculum guide, we are supplementing Tim’s lessons with materials from Catholic Heritage Curricula or CHC (mostly given or lent to us). CHC’s website has a page totally devoted to free resources, which you may want to check out — whether you are homeschooling or not.

There are tons of resources available. 🙂 Just click here to access them.

I’m going to try some of the stuff from the “A Catholic How-to-Draw” section on the page, though they may be too advanced for Tim right now (plus, he’s not really into drawing!). 🙂 Maybe I’ll have a go at them first! Ha, ha!

For more freebies, please click here.

Freebie Friday: Tons of Free Homeschool Resources!

July 13, 2012 by Tina Leave a Comment

Y’all know that I am a ~~struggling~~ homeschool mom who also happens to be quite frugal (or kuripot, as we say in the Philippines!).

Since I started blogging and being active on social media websites, I have received quite a few inquiries about homeschooling (which is why I maintain a separate blog on homeschooling altogether). I do my best to answer people’s questions —to the best of my abilities and based on my limited experience, plus interactions with other homeschoolers. 🙂

I try to help out other homeschoolers, especially here in the Philippines, as much as I can and I believe this Freebie Friday post may be useful to non-homeschoolers, too, who wish to enhance their children’s learning experiences at home (or anywhere else — remember, “the world is our classroom,” as one of my fellow homeschool mom’s blogs says.

So without further ado, here are a few (because there are SO MANY!) links to FREE homeschool resources. Hope these help y’all somehow! God bless!

I found this image here, another site with homeschool freebies! 🙂

1. Especially for (but not limited to) homeschool organization, forms and record-keeping —
Donna Young’s Printables and Resources

2. A variety of compiled resources — includes links to resources for Bible Study, Life Skills, Mathematics, Language Arts, Phonics, Printables + Worksheets, Writing, Art and MORE!:
Free Homeschooling Resources (I don’t know who compiled the resources here, but I was pleasantly surprised to find my homeschool blog listed there! Cool!)

3. The Happy Housewife’s compilation of Free Homeschool Resources — Contains a lot of links to other great homeschool bloggers’ sites, too! 🙂

4. Free Homeschool Math Resources from HomeschoolMath.net — Its site description explains it all: “… a comprehensive math resource site for homeschooling parents, parents, and teachers that includes free math worksheets, lessons, online math games lists, ebooks, a curriculum guide, reviews, and more. The resources emphasize understanding of concepts instead of mechanical memorization of rules.”

5. Free Homeschool Curriculum + Other Resources from Homeschool Buyers Co-op — Site description: “…the Co-op’s database of free curriculum and other educational resources. We hope you will find curriculum and other resources here that engage and enlighten your children!

Note: We make every effort to recommend websites that have content that is appropriate for general audiences, but parents should ALWAYS preview the sites for suitable content.”

6. An Old-Fashioned Education — It’s described as “a directory of free homeschool curricula, literature and text books organized for the use of homeschooling families.” I’m going to try to go through this site this weekend — Miss Maggie, the owner, creator and mom of that site has a treasure trove of resources!

7. Free Homeschool Curriculum on Successful Homeschooling —This is a compilation of links to free homeschool curricula. 🙂