If you want a free homeschool curriculum that covers a full year, start with Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool. It lays out 180 days of lessons per level, online, at no cost. Ambleside Online is the free pick for families who want real books instead of screens. The Core Knowledge Foundation gives away its K to 5 language arts and science as downloads. None of them charges you a cent for the lessons. Each still leaves a few jobs to you (record keeping above all), and honestly, that part is what this post is about.
I’m Marisa. I read each program’s own pages and FAQ again this week, so the details below are theirs, not a review site’s summary. Where a program says something plainly, I quote it.
Easy Peasy All-in-One: Every Subject, Online
Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool is the closest thing to a free school-in-a-box. Lee Giles began putting assignments online in 2011, and today the site runs from preschool through 8th grade, with a separate high school site. It’s Christian in outlook. Each level has 180 days of assignments for the core subjects, and it folds in the extras like art and music.
And yes, it’s free. In the site’s own words, “all of the reading materials, etc. are all free and online.” You’ll need paper and pencils, plus some minor supplies if you do the experiments and art projects. The FAQ’s list for a younger child is short: pencil, scissors, glue, crayons or colored pencils.
If you’d rather work off screens, the EP store sells printed books for math and reading (language arts too), each with 180 days of assignments. That’s the one place money comes in, and it’s optional.
Easy Peasy uses levels instead of grades, and the FAQ’s example is worth reading twice. One 3rd grader might be in reading 1, language arts 2 and math 4, while another 3rd grader sits at level 2 across the board. There are placement guides for the core subjects, plus a placement test for newcomers. Use them before you pick a level by age.
The math runs from Kinder Math and More through EP Math 1 to 4, then Math 5/6 and Math 6/7, with Pre-Algebra and Algebra 1 after that. If you set a level and a theme in its assignment tool, the FAQ says a day ends up being 7 subjects, because 5 of the courses run weekly. That’s a full day, so it’s worth knowing before you add anything on top.
Here’s the line I’d underline. Easy Peasy keeps no records for you. Its FAQ says it straight: “You are responsible for all record keeping.” The site tracks which lesson you’re on and nothing else. So if your state asks for attendance or a portfolio, that file is yours to build from day one. The FAQ adds that Easy Peasy “cannot provide report cards or completion certificates or transcripts,” so if a school ever asks for a report card later, it comes from you.
For high school, the same FAQ explains credits by hours. About 150 to 180 hours of work makes 1 credit, and 75 to 90 hours makes half a credit. That’s a handy yardstick even if you never use their courses.
Ambleside Online: A Free Plan, Books You Find
Ambleside Online is a free Charlotte Mason curriculum run by the AmblesideOnline Educational Foundation. It’s built in years rather than grades, from Year 0 (kindergarten) through Year 12. It’s openly Christian, though the FAQ says families of all beliefs are welcome to use it.
What it gives you is the plan: booklists, schedules, study guides. What it doesn’t give you is the books. The FAQ is upfront about it: “You do need to find the books, which may require spending some money.” You can buy them, read the ones that are online, or borrow them from the library.
The method is Charlotte Mason’s, and the FAQ leans on one idea of hers in particular: short lessons. She wrote that they teach children “the value of a golden minute,” and the schedules are built around that. For a parent new to all this, short lessons are kinda the relief. A school morning doesn’t have to be long to be a good one.
Two gaps to plan for. Ambleside doesn’t schedule a math program; its FAQ has a whole answer on how to choose one. And record keeping is yours again. How parents keep records “is their choice and may depend on the requirements of their state,” the FAQ says, and it suggests anything from a printed schedule with math added to a plain journal.
I think Ambleside suits a parent who likes reading aloud and doesn’t mind a library run every week. If that’s not you, it’ll feel like a lot of hunting. Turns out the library is the bigger ally here than most people expect (the numbers are a bit further down).
Core Knowledge: Free Downloads From K to 5
The Core Knowledge Foundation is the odd one out, because it wasn’t written for homeschoolers at all. It’s a school curriculum that’s free to download. Its homeschool FAQ says you can download the entire K to 5 language arts program (CKLA) from the foundation’s site. The history and geography materials (CKHG) are free as well, teacher and student both, and so are the science materials (CKSci).
The thing is, it was built for classrooms. Expect to adapt a teacher guide for one child at the kitchen table, and to print the student pages yourself. If that’s too much paper, the foundation sells homeschool sets, and the language arts kits come through its publishing partner, Amplify, which calls them “single student kits.”
One detail worth knowing: the free CKLA downloads for grades 3 to 5 are the 1st edition. Amplify sells the 2nd edition, which comes with “various upgrades.” Both, the FAQ says, address the Common Core standards for their grades. For a free year, the 1st edition is pretty much fine.
What Every Free Program Still Leaves to You
Put side by side, the three have the same shape. The lessons are free. The work around the lessons is yours.
- Record keeping. None of the three keeps your attendance, grades or work samples.
- Math, if you pick Ambleside. Easy Peasy has its own math levels. Ambleside leaves it to you.
- Books and paper. Ambleside’s booklists and Core Knowledge’s printing are where small costs show up.
- The required subjects. Free doesn’t mean it matches your state’s list. Check your state’s own page before the school year starts.
That last one is the step people skip, and to me it’s the one that matters most. A free program can be excellent and still miss a subject your state names.
Where Homeschool Families Get Their Books
The best data on this is old but still useful. In its 2003 survey, the National Center for Education Statistics asked homeschool parents where they got curriculum or books. Most used more than one source. The public library came first at 78 percent, just ahead of homeschool catalogs and publishers at 77 percent. Retail bookstores came in at 69 percent, and education publishers outside homeschooling at 60 percent.
About half used materials from homeschooling organizations. Then the smaller sources: 37 percent got some from a religious institution, while 23 percent used materials from their local public school or district.
Homeschooling has grown since then. NCES reports that 5.4 percent of students were homeschooled in the 2020–21 school year. (In its main household survey, one condition for counting a child as homeschooled is that any public or private school enrollment stays at 24 hours a week or less.) But the library number is the one I’d hold onto. It’s the free resource that pairs best with Ambleside’s booklists, and it’s genuinely underused as a curriculum source.
A First Week With a Free Program
Whichever program you pick, the first week sets the pattern. Here’s a plain plan for it. Nothing fancy, and none of it costs money.
- Monday: read your state’s own page and write down the required subjects and the records it asks for. Don’t print anything yet.
- Tuesday: place your child. That’s the placement guide for Easy Peasy, the right year for Ambleside, or the right grade’s first unit for Core Knowledge.
- Wednesday: request the first books from the library, or download the first unit’s PDFs.
- Thursday and Friday: do short, real lessons, and file one dated work sample from each day.
By Friday you’ll have a working schedule and the start of a portfolio. I’d take that over a perfect plan on paper any day. And if the week goes sideways, that’s information too: it usually means the level’s off, not that the program’s wrong.
How to Pick One This Week
Here’s how I’d choose, in order:
- Read your state’s own page first, so you know the required subjects and what records it wants.
- If you want every day laid out for you, go with Easy Peasy. It’s the least planning of the three.
- If you want living books and short lessons, go with Ambleside, and line up a math program and a library card before you start.
- If you want a school-style sequence you can print, use the Core Knowledge downloads for K to 5.
- Whichever you pick, start a portfolio folder on day one: a dated list of lessons done, plus a few work samples each month.
Nothing stops you from mixing them, say Easy Peasy’s math with Ambleside’s books. I’d just keep one weekly rhythm so the pieces don’t fight each other. I mean, a free plan only saves money if it actually gets used.
I’ll add more free programs here as I read them properly. If there’s one you use that isn’t on this list, tell me, and I’ll go through its own pages the same way.