Do you have one of these in your back yard? I certainly don't, and I'm constantly looking for ways to cut costs in our education budget! I learned this tip from someone in our co-op last year. I think it had to do with The Story of The World Activity Guide. I now use it with all of our curriculum that is in the form of a workbook. I'll use our writing curriculum, Writing With Ease, as an example.
I did watch for the workbooks to be on sale at our homeschool used book sale, but I didn't have any luck. (I did, however, find two years worth of our Latin program for a total of $17!) After that I went to Amazon and purchased the workbooks ($23 each for a total of $46) I would need for both children.
I took them to the office supply store and had them unbound ($3), purchased 2 spiral notebooks ($3 each) and then three hole punched the workbook pages and put them inside. I also bought two additional notebooks (one for each child - another another $6 total) in which I will put copied pages as need be. These are their own Writing With Ease Notebooks.
At this point, I have spent $58 on their writing curriculum. When the time comes for the next child to use them, or for us to be finished with them, I will have a clean copy, ready to pass down or sell. If I can recoup 40 or 50% of what I spent I think that's pretty good... after all, they are like new, and even if their own notebook. Now, if you came upon these at a curriculum sale for maybe $10 or $12 a piece , wouldn't you think, "JACKPOT!"??
When I did this with our Story of The World curriculum last year it worked so well! The children each have notebooks with their names on them and know what to pull out when the schedule says "history", "writing", "science", etc... (follow the link I gave you to find GREAT printable notebook covers for each volume of Story of the World!) In many subjects, this lends itself well to notebooking, of which I'm a huge fan! If you're interested in notebooking, this "Learn More About Notebooking" post might help. (I'm digressing....)
The best thing is that everything is organized in our bookshelf. Last week we took a field trip that referenced some of the things from the beginning of last year in history - Miss B took out her SOTW notebook and was reviewing the information. I love it!
I'm sure you do something similar or have another great organizational tip for me... can you leave me a comment and share?
