Below is a list of free curriculum I've found online (curriculum, not random one page resources). For something to count as "curriculum" in my book, it should...
- Be at least unit study length (last a week or more).
- Cover a subject to some completion, in a sequential, organized way.
One word of caution...many of these are printable resources, and "free" is always relative for printables. It's worth it to calculate in printing costs: look up how many pages, on average, you can get per printer cartridge on the printer you use, add in the cost of paper, and then calculate how much a printed resource will really cost you. For some resources you can view it on a tablet or computer and avoid the cost of printing that way. In other cases it may cost you less to buy a used or even new resource than to print one out for "free."
I have included a few resources, that while not a full curriculum, I feel are so helpful/essential that they should be included here (and will always note that in the description).
New and Limited Time Resources
All new resources stay in this section for a while, as well as further down in the subject lists. Sometimes there are resources only available for a limited time, which I also share here, right up at the top, so people can find them more easily.
CKLA Core Knowledge Language Arts Skills(KG - 3rd Grade) This curriculum is meant for classroom teachers but looks very easy to adjust to homeschooling. It teaches pre-reading and reading skills from KG through 3rd Grade, as well as some grammar, spelling, and comprehension skills. I've looked through parts of the curriculum at different stages, but only used the decodable readers (which are wonderfully illustrated and, at least at the KG level, has some of the best stories in decodables I've found).
Engineering Adventure Units(Grades 3 - 5) Real-world, open-ended engineering activities.
All/Most Major Subjects
The Gentle Classical Preschool Curriculum
Ages 2-4. Described as a mix of classical, Charlotte Mason, and Montessori for the preschool set.
No need to re-invent the wheel. This list on Kingdom First Motherhood has a number of preschool curriculum available for free (some are Christian, and I think some are secular but I'm not sure).
Easy Peasy All In One Homeschool
Covers all of the core subjects and some supplementary subjects. Uses free online resources. It's a Christian resource. (I've heard good things about this curriculum overall, but I've looked over their reading material and I do not suggest this curriculum for reading. It may be great for other subjects though.).
Ambleside Online
Kahn Academy (online lessons)
All Ages - Videos and online practice problems for various subject including math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. (I've personally used the math lessons and am very happy with them...not sure if all subjects have practice problems or just math). A secular resource. While it has many subjects may not be enough for a full "curriculum" on it's own.
Discovery K-12
K-12 - Complete online curriculum. Secular resource.
Virtual Homeschool Group
K - 12 - Virtual
online classes for various grades and subjects. This is sort of like
an online homeschool co-op. Classes are free but you may need to obtain
books and supplies for some classes.
Lesson Pathways
K-5th grade curriculum using free, screened online tools.
Core Knowledge
Pre-K - 8th Grade program covering language arts, history and geography, mathematics, science, music, and the visual art.
An Old Fashioned Curriculum
Curriculum using mainly free online texts.
The Puritan's Homeschool
A K-12 Christian Curriculum (reformed Churches).
Mater Amabilis
K - 12 Catholic Charlotte Mason curriculum.
MIT Open Coursework
High School/College. Various subjects. My understanding is these are actual classes taught through MIT, on video and available online. A secular resource.
SUPPLEMENTAL RESOURCES WORTH MENTIONING
Not "full week" resources, but well organized collections that could be cobbled together to make a full resource (including full single day plans).
SAS Curriculum Pathways
CK-12
Books, videos and other
resources...some of which I would consider a complete curriculum, on a
wide array of subjects. I'm including some resources under the
categorized sections before, but wanted to includes this here for you to
explore yourself.
Language Arts
5 Essential Pre-Reading Skills
This is not a curriculum, but I include it here because it's just such a good place to start before formally teaching your child to read. It helps you know if you're child is ready and if they aren't, give you some practical ways you can help them get ready.
Progressive Phonics
Early through Intermediate Literacy Stages - This
program teaches reading and handwriting (the handwriting is a similar
style as Handwriting Without Tears). It does not teach spelling. I've used the phonics readers
from beginner level on and love them. One key feature of this program is that readers are color coded so that parents read a portion of the words and kids read words at their level. I find this program works especially well with children with ADHD as the co-reading and short length of the readers helps keep their attention during that stage where it's harder to understand what you read because reading speed is still so slow. The co-reading aspect also allows them to not add many irregular words until the intermediate
level, while still keeping the stories interesting, while I like. For some topics in the intermediate and advance levels I found it didn't offer quite enough practice, though. (And the advanced levels are "under contructions" and don't cover quite all the skills a child will need...like right now they don't include instructions on -CLE words like apple, puddle, ect.) Also, while I like that it repeats high frequency words enough for a child to learn them, sometimes it is hard to understand whether a child has mastered the phonics concepts or just memorized the words in the readers. So, I supplement with practice with nonsense words to check for concept understanding.CKLA Core Knowledge Language Arts Skills
(KG - 3rd Grade) This curriculum is meant for classroom teachers but looks very easy to adjust to homeschooling. It includes materials for teaching pre-reading and reading skills from KG through 3rd Grade, as well as some grammar, spelling, and comprehension skills. I've looked through parts of the curriculum at different stages, and it looks solid, but I've only actually used the decodable readers (which are wonderfully illustrated and, at least at the KG level, have some of the best stories in decodables I've found).
Treasure Hunt Reading (by Prenda)
This
is s systematic mastery based phonics program (secular) teaching
reading, handwriting, and some grammar (things like capitalization and
punctuation). It uses videos and teacher/parent led workbooks. It
looks solid and I really love some of their ideas. (For example, even
if you don't use this whole curriculum, you might want to use their
wordless stories, which have comic book style spaces for kids to draw
pictures for the story, which is a great way to check comprehension).
Teach Your Preschooler to Read
and Reading Instruction and Phonics by Stephen Parker. The first is a free online book about why to teach Phonics and the second shows how.
Charlotte Mason Reading How To
Pre-School to age 6 or 7 Aproximately. This isn't so much a curriculum
as an instruction guide on how to teach reading in the early years
(followed by some suggested resources, some free, some not). Could be
used with any readers, or children's books.
The Good and the Beautiful
Levels
1-5 (1st through 5th grade) are available for free in downloadible
form. You click on the numbers at the bottom of the description of the
printed math books, which are not free, and you can find the free
curriculum. These are complete language arts curriculum, covering
phonics, reading, spelling, grammar and punctuation, literature and
writing. This program does teach phonics but I've heard some criticism that the order it teaches in is somewhat confusing. (Non-denominational Christian)
Spel-lang Tree
A phonics based reading and spelling curriculum (designed for the classroom but can be used for homeschool).
Alpha Phonics
A beginning phonics program. It can be purchased printed, but there is also free materials later on (I'm not sure if they are the exact same as the printed version but they might be. They do seem to be complete with both a printable workbook/readers and lesson guide.
Word Mastery
Grades KG-2. A free phonics based curriculum from the 1900s. It is designed for classroom teachers but looks very easy to use in homeschooling as well.
Phonics Instruction Freebies by Teacher Training for Students With Neurodiversity
This is a slowly growing list of instructional PDFs to help teachers and parents teach phonics to learn to read and spell (to all kids, not just kids with special needs). It is not yet a complete phonics program but is a good start. It may be more complete later (they seem to be adding levels slowly).
Various Free Phonics Lessons
This list has so many free phonics programs I decided to just link to it in stead of copying them here. LOTS to choose from.
Fly Leaf Books - Decodables Readers
Through
the 2020-22 school year, Fly Leaf publishing is making it's decodable
readers free online (not for printing...must be viewed online). They
also have free downloadable worksheets and lesson plans with some of
their decodables, and some free online activities.
Free Decodable Readers
This
isn't a whole curriculum, but it's such an essential supplement I
wanted to add it here. This is a list of free printable books and
passages, and some books meant to be read online, to help reinforce
phonics concepts. These are great to supplement whatever you are using
with you main reading program. (Suggestion...since different phonics
concepts may be taught in a different order in different program, you
can use a highlighter to highlight words with concepts your child hasn't
learned yet, so that they will know those are your words to read).
Sight and Sound Reading and Handwriting
Pre-K - K. Free beginning reading and handwriting (manuscript...ie, ball and stick).
Listen, Write and Read
Early Literacy Stages - A progressive curriculum to improve reading and writing with a focus on sight words.
Starfall.com
Online reading program. I've heard there's an app too. We used this years ago with our kids and it was great.
Teach Your Monster to Read
Online reading program.
Free Phonics Curriculum
This is just another list of free reading curriculum, but I'm including it since they go over some different resources than I have here.
Word Connections (For Multi-syllable Words)
3rd- and up. A
research backed program designed to help older students who can read
single syllable words but have trouble with multi-syllable words. It
also teaches common prefixes and suffixes (this is a large part of how
it helps students with longer words, by helping them recognize and read
these sections of words). It's aimed at 3rd grade and up, and meant to
be done 3-4 times a week. I could see where this might work well for younger students at that
level as well if the lessons were broken up into smaller sessions (I've now used this with several 2nd graders I tutor). It's 40 lessons long and each lesson is meant to take 40 minutes, but working one on one I found these could be done more quickly.
HOW TO ACCESS:
It can be tricky to actually figure out how to download Word Connections. At the bottom of the page to the right of the Word Connection pictures there's a link saying "Click Here to Access." That will take you to a figshare page. You have to scroll down past the text and at the bottom of that page, you'll see those three Word Connection Pictures again. Click on each one and on the page you get there is a red button to download.
Syllables Spell Success
A reading a spelling curriculum. Its a Christian curriculum but can be used in a secular way. I have not used this curriculum as a whole, but I have used their
nonsense word lists for practicing/assessing with nonsense words.
EnglishGrammar101.com
Free online grammar lessons...graded for you.
Daily Grammar Lessons
Roughly 3rd Grade and Up - 100s of daily short grammar lessons.
Spelling Solutions 1
For All Ages. Spelling Solutions teaches students how to spell the 250 most commonly used
words in the English language using a process described by Charlotte Mason in the early
1900's using "mind photography."
Wordly Ways
Grades 8th - 12th. Free literature and composition curriculum. Includes World and American literature.
National Novel Writing Month - Various
There are various lesson plans and free printable resources for NaNoWriMo, most of them month long, which you can find at the link above.
9 Week Unit Study on Emily Dickenson
Unsure of grade level, but looks like middle/high school.
Beatrix Potter 9 Week Unit Study
Free Poetry Pack
Poetry Unit Study Guide
Free guide with links to poems and instructions on how to discuss poems and other activities to do.
History
Adventure Tales American History
(Plus State History for California & Arkansas)
Graphical US history books (available online and as pdfs). Volume I covers Exploration through the Civil War and comes with a teacher's guide, activity pages, and audio files. Volume II covers the Guilded Age through the Depression, and comes with a teacher's guide. There are other supplementary books going into more detail on various aspects and people from American history.
Free Multi-Age History Curriculum by Field of Daisys
All Ages. A literature based Christian curriculum covering Ancient times through the Middle Ages.
Big History Project
For Middle and High School Students. A common core aligned video based social studies program. You can register as a teacher or use their public course...both to my knowledge are free, though I'm not sure what the difference between the two are .
Myths, Maps and Marvels
A free history curriculum, but it does use some resources that are not free (unless you can find them in your local library).
Reading Like a Historian
A stanford history project using primary sources to teach kids how to teach students to read like a Historian. Looks aimed at High School Age.
Marion Brady - Investigating World & American History
For 5th through 12th grade. This program is designed to teach critical thinking skills more than to teach history. As such, it doesn't attempt to cover history completely, but does cover the historical subjects it touches on DEEPLY. It is intended for classroom use but could be adjusted for homeschool use.
CK-12: US and World History Sourcebook
Covers history from Colonial Time to WWI, and World History from Ancient to Modern Times.
You-Tube Through Ancient History
(Middle School/High School). This video list I put together could be used as a spine for ancient history with some additions. There are some worksheet suggestions added but apart from that not much in way of assignments.
This Country of Ours, Part 1 by Henrietta Elizabeth MARSHALL
1917 Audio version of a 1917 History Book on US History.
HISTORY UNIT STUDIES:
Pirates Unit Study
14 page pirate pack with information and activities. Subscription necessary for freebie.
Experiment With the Vikings
This free resource combines science and history, and touches on concepts in chemistry, biology, physics and more. Contains both narrative and experiments. It says its for primary to age 14, but some of the science concepts I
think would be harder for younger students, and I think could certainly be used with students older than 14.
Asia - It's People and History (Limited Time)
Unit
study, over 100 pages. If I remember right this is a Christian
resource. This has been offered free before but I believe it's only
free for a limited time now.
Geography and Culture
Elementary Geography by Charlotte Mason
A beautifully written geography book...seriously, gorgeous wording. It was written sometime before 1923, but the topics work today with a little tweaking (For instance, in her description of the planets, she says "As each one keeps at a regular distance form the sun all through its journey, the more distant the planet is, the longer is the time it takes to finish its course." We now know that some planets have eliptical orbits so this is not completely true. )
Home Geography by C.C. Long, PhD
This book was originally published in 1894 as an instruction book for teachers, but the lessons I read seemed easily adaptable for today, and some of them actually very kinesthetic (something I didn't expect as much in lesson plans from the 1800s.)
Marion Brady - Investigating World Cultures
Junior
High - High School - A study of world cultures focused not so much on
specific cultures but on how culture works and can be understood using a
systems approach. It was intended for classroom use but probably can
be adapted for homeschool.
Free Geography Curriculum List
This list includes some of the resources here (but not all of them), and some that aren't here.
Project Explore
Videos (and corresponding lessons) on various world cultures.
Lego Travel Adventures Unit Study
Ages 6 - 8. I debated over whether to include this here or in Unit
Studies, but this does cover quite a bit of geography (as well as some
other non-related things) and while it's not even close to being
comprehensive, for the age group it's a good geography introduction.
Monthly Free Country Unit Study from Knowledge Quest
Every month they give away a different free unit study to subscribers.
Asia - It's People and History (Limited Time)
Unit
study, over 100 pages. If I remember right this is a Christian
resource. This has been offered free before but I believe it's only
free for a limited time now.
Africa Unit Study
A
unit study I designed meant to take about a week. While it does use
some books, most of the books are available in the Free Online Library.
Math
The Good and the Beautiful
Levels 1-5 (1st through 5th grade) are available for free in
downloadible form (you click on the numbers at the bottom of the description of the printed math books, which are not free, and you can find the free curriculum). These are complete math curriculum and are the same as their printed material, but in downloadable. (Non-denominational Christian)
Kahn Academy (online lessons)
K - College. Videos and online practice problems for various subject including math. I mentioned it in the "All Subjects" because there are various subjects there, but math is by far the most well developed.
Free Math Programs
This is more of an index of free math programs....including some I don't have here. Yes, I'm being lazy and just posting this--but they've gone to a lot of trouble of linking to the specific parts that cover math in some "all over programs" as well as programs that just do math.
Mathematics Enhancement Programme
K - 6th - British mathmatics program (thus, the spelling above).
I Hate Mathematics Book
Free pdf of a Marilyn Burns book with creative math activities, especially for kids who don't like math.
Science
LONGER RESOURCES
McGraw Hill Science California
Grades 1 - 6. Textbook, reading and writing in science, and activity book.
ACS Inquiry In Motion (Study of Matter)
Downloadable book for grades 3-8 with lesson plans for the study of matter (and the scientific process). Designed for classroom teachers but seems adaptable to homeschool use. Very complete resource.
Life Science Curriculum
Elementary - 36 week life science curriculum. Includes text, worksheets and activities (see parent resources).
Marine Biology
Grades K-8. (NOTE: Only the printable version of this is free. On the site you will see a price for the printed book, but underneath you will see a text box with "How to Get Your Free Download." ). This is a religious curriculum put out by a Latter Day Saints organization. I've used this curriculum, and as non-denominational Christian I found nothing that I couldn't use with my child. It's an excellent resource that goes deep into the science with fun activities.
Science Unit Studies and Lesson Plans
A whole other list full of more free science Unit Studies and Lesson Plans.
ACS Middle School Chemistry
Lesson plans covering matter (solids, liquids and gasses), changes of state, density, the periodic table and bonding, water molecules and dissolving, and chemical change. This seems very complete, and while designed for classroom use seems adaptable for homeschool. If you are attempting to match your State Standards, you can use their widget to determine which standards these lessons apply to.
Thunderbolt Kids Science
Grades 4 - 6. A free science program by a foundation in South Africa, with online resources, including experiments and activities, and free printable workbooks.
Guest Hollow - Biology Textbook
High school - A Christian biology textbook including a Bible study covering creationist views with a list of FREE high quality books you can access online.
Astronomy
High school astronomy curriculum using free material found online (designed from a Texas Astronomy textbook).
UNIT STUDY RESOURCES
- 1 Week to Several Months Long
(Also see "More Unit Studies" section at the end of this page)
Experiment With the Vikings
Elementary - Age 14 (see note). This
free resource combines science and history, and touches on concepts in
chemistry, biology, physics and more. Contains both narrative and
experiments, in 47 lessons. NOTE: It says its for primary to age 14, but some of the science
concepts I
think would be harder for younger students, and I think could certainly
be used with students older than 14.
Caves Unit Study
Elementary - A 13 - 15 day study I designed when my son was 7, but I've included resources for older kids as well that I found along the way. It was designed around a trip to a local cave using the book "Caves" by Donald Silver (which we had at our library) but you can use a lot of it without the book (but the book is great, so if you can swing it, I suggest using it.) It has daily activities, videos, crafts, etc.Engineering Adventure Units
(Grades 3 - 5) Real-world, open-ended engineering activities.
Geology Kitchen
Geology Kitchen is a twelve episode online video series that uses food
metaphors to explain earth science concepts in a fun and entertaining
way.
Learning About Planets Unit Study
Grades 1-6
Metals Unit Study by Hands of a Child
Grades
4 - 10. Includes a 6-day Planning Guide, Related Reading, 15 Hands-On
Activities, a 9-page Research Guide, and Answer Key. Students will be
introduced to the properties of metal, the periodic table, types of
metals, key regions where metals are found, mining for metal, recycling,
and more.
NIH Lesson Plans
The
National Institute of Health has various free lesson plans for various
health related subjects (mostly for high school and middle school, but
there is one unit for elementary students. Some of the lesson plans would last a week or more.
Bible/Religion
Calvary Bible Curriculum
Separate detailed Bible studies for ages 3-KG (56 lessons) and grades 1st - 6th (325 lessons).
The Biblical Feasts
E-book about the feasts talked about in the Bible
Foreign Language
Duolingo
Completely free online/app platform for learning a language.
Memrize
Initially free online/app platform for learning a language. There are extra services you can purchase (and it may only be the beginning lessons that are free...but I haven't gotten far enough to tell).
Buena Gente
Learn Spanish with this video series. The videos are entirely in Spanish, but have a feature where you can turn on sub-titles, and there is supplementary materials to help you learn the words in the videos.
Art
Teatime With Sally
Weekly bite sized art lessons delivered to your inbox (starts in October 2019)
Redemptive Artistry
Elementary - 13 Free step-by-step lessons that progresses from basic techniques to art projects inspired by famous artists.
Other/Electives
Logic
Middle School/High School - a complete 20 unit curriculum
Code Buddies Coding Classes
They are offering free Intro to Artificial Intelligence and Intro
to App Development due to the pandemic. I am not sure how long this
will be available...though it's been available for a few years now. I
keep checking and it's still there.
MORE FREE Unit Studies and Lapbooks
While I do list a few under topics listed above, I'm not attempting to list all the free unit studies out there on this page, as you can find hundreds...and they are on nearly any subject you can think of. Since there are many already collected on the sites below, I'll just send you to those sites to browse.
Stone Soup Homeschool Resources - Unit Study List
Ultimate List of Unit Study Resources (May include some paid ones too)
Homeschool Share
Gypsy Road Unit Studies
Shannon's Unit Studies and Lessons (Christian Curriculum)
Ellen Fun Learning
Oklahoma Homeschool
Homeschool Giveaways and Freebies
Homeschool Helper
3 Boys and a Dog Free Unit Study List
Currclick (mostly paid ones but some free.)
Teachers Pay Teachers (mostly paid ones but some free)
Lapbooks
While lapbooks can sometimes be supplemental some can be used as a complete study, including text to complement the laptop building (the completeness of the lapbooks on the following sites may vary).
Ultimate List of Free Lapbooks For Every Subject
Free Homeschool Lapbooks
Just including this graphic to make this easier to post on linky lists, like the Frugal Mommas Linky and Penny Pinching Party
and the homeschool linkies you'll find here.
Another good Free Curriculum List
And Another
And Another
If you know of any other free curriculum resources that you think should be shared here, please leave me a note in the comments (unit study size or longer only, thanks).
Engineering Adventures - Nov 2023
CKLA Language Arts Skills - March 2024