homeschoolers are weird.when people discover that i home school the questions immediately follow:
"nu-uh! do people really do that?" or "how do you keep your sanity?" or "what curriculum do you use?" or "how do you have time to get it all done?" or "won't your kids end up weird?" or "will you tell me more? i'm so fed up with our schools!"

and the honest to goodness truth of it all is that...drum roll please... we love it, we make it work for us, we like to be around each other most of the time, we are a very social and normal family, and my kids LOVE to learn. we don't use any set curriculum other than math and reading as daily activities; everything else we do is according to what they're interested in. learning has no boundaries, we do school in some form every day. they ask a question, or i pose a question and then we research it.

in addition to bookshelves filled with books and workbooks bought from walmart, here's a list of our very favorite websites:

learning games for kids: they cover and link to everything from animals to logic, math to geography, vocabulary to health.

bbc schools: they might have a funny accent, but they've really got everything for both primary and secondary schools. our favorite from this site is their keyboarding game, E picked it up this week and is soaring through it. she had never typed before sunday and is now on stage 8, we can barely keep her off the computer!

both edhelper (pre-k through 12th) and enchanted learning (pre-k though 3rd) have tons of printable school items on every subject. we go to enchanted learning for every holiday for crafts or information. also, learn4good and kidssites are ones we're just discovering.

with math there are soo many awesome sites: math fact cafe and cool math games which are our favorites, explore learning (which has a free trial, but is worth the moolah!) singapore math, and for the older kids-- wolfgram mathworld

science: physlink, at this point though we mostly use enchanted learning for a lot of our science questions.

great resources for parents: education world, pbs parents, attachment parenting, create better writers, about homeschooling, homeschool.com, surfing the net with kids(she sends a newsletter every week with a subject and 3-5 GREAT sites to help kids learn more about the subject)

sign language
dictionary.com
wikiHow
writing resources
pbs.org to find show times
classics for kids-- info about classical music and composers.
faqkids-- where why turns into WOW! hehe

some that are highly popular (and for good reason): starfall--this is how F learned to read on his own and pbskids

games just for fun: playhousedisney, make a flake, hasbro, kidzone, learn4good games

also, there are many opportunities in every community for school aged kids. in salt lake city, kingsbury hall has an outreach program where tickets are only a few dollars per child and as homeschoolers, we qualify! i've taken the older kids to so many awesome cultural events for about 10% what we would have paid had we gone in the evenings. also our library system's database is entirely online, i could put a book on hold from HOME.

so whether you want to supplement your child's education with fun activities or if you want to jump into home education... go with your gut and click through to find what works for your family.

all the best!