Links

This list of links is by no means intended to be exhaustive- it's merely a selection of my favorite resources. Have fun exploring!

Homeschool Links

If you are considering homeschooling or trying to choose curricula, the best way to make a decision is to read extensively. Read book reviews, magazines, and catalogs. Read homeschool and curriculum-related forums and bulletins. Read materials from many different perspectives until you understand the issues and options which surround the decision. Then will you have a large enough knowledge base to make an informed decision.

This isn't a comprehensive listing of homeschool sites- that would be impossible to maintain- but it is a list of the sites I've found interesting and informative. The list is not sorted by type of site (catalog, information, magazine) because many of the sites have overlapping purposes. The descriptions should tell you enough to let you know which sites will be most useful to you. Many of the sites are connected with paper publications or catalogs, so be sure to request information to read off-line. If you find a dead link or would like to suggest a site to add, please e-mail me.

National Home Education Network
"The National Home Education Network exists to encourage and facilitate the vital grassroots work of state and local homeschooling organizations and individuals by providing information, fostering networking and promoting public relations on a national level. Because we believe there is strength in a diverse network of homeschoolers, we support the freedom of all individual families to choose home education and to direct such education." Lots of excellent information here, including reprintable articles for homeschool newsletters.

National Home Education Research Institute
Need some statistics to support your decision to homeschool? Dr. Brian Ray?s organization is the source for high-quality research results. His book, Worldwide Homeschooling, is a fascinating snapshot of homeschooling around the world.

The Eclectic Homeschool Online and Eclectic Homeschool Lite (for beginners)
An online resource for creative homeschoolers. Feature articles, resources, product reviews, topical web link index, bookstore, academic departments, homeschool advice, support & legal information by state.

Homeschool Curriculum and Support
This well-organized site offers excellent information and links to many interesting resources. It's like a huge, well-annotated directory of all things homeschool-related.

The Home School Internet Resource Center
A good source for useful links and information.

Home Educators Association of Virginia
A state organization that provides complete information on homeschooling in Virginia, including The Virginia Homeschool Manual, a huge compendium of valuable homeschool information. They also sponsor a statewide convention and homeschool graduation in June.

Homeschooling Boys
If you are homeschooling boys, here are some excellent articles.

World Book Scope and Sequence
The encyclopedia company has put together a typical course of study for preschool through high school. This can be useful in planning your own course of study.

Family Classroom & The Homeschool Encouragement Center
The Homeschool Encouragement Center is a safe haven for Christian homeschooling parents to come for guidance, encouragement, practical suggestions, prayer needs, and daily fellowship. There are links and online chat.

Home Schooling Resources
Look no further for homeschooling ideas, materials, curriculums, and resources!

Charlotte Mason Approach
Penny Gardner is the author of the Charlotte Mason Study Guide, and her site is packed with excellent articles and information about CM's delightfully simple and effective educational methods. She has a wonderful list of books and links, and I like her encouragement for mothers to enjoy learning along with their children.

John Taylor Gatto
If you're undecided about the merits of the public education system, John Taylor Gatto's books, Dumbing Us Down and The Underground History of American Education offer an insider's look at the goals and methods of the government school system.

Jon's Homeschool Page
One of the oldest homeschooling pages on the web. Lots of links and useful information, including a list of homeschool-friendly colleges. Fortunately, the list is hardly necessary anymore, as most colleges are homeschool-friendly. .

Unschooling
Unschooling is the novel ideal that institutional, coercive methods of learning are neither natural nor effective, whether used at home or in government schools.

The Well-Trained Mind
Susan Wise-Bauer's site focuses on classical education. You'll find book reviews, links, and articles here. Free e-mail updates.

Trivium Pursuit
One of the original sites devoted to classical education. The Bluedorn's offer a nice selection of articles and a "Christian Logic" e-mail loop as well as new and used curriculum materials.

Learn in Freedom
This text-heavy site is loaded with excellent information supporting "learning in freedom, taking responsibility for your own learning." It offers articles and excellent links for learning resources, including a regularly updated list of colleges which accept or actively recruit homeschoolers (as noted above, this list will always be incomplete, as most college now welcome homeschoolers).

Christian Book Distributors
Good prices, fast shipping for a wide variety of (not just Christian) homeschool materials. I've ordered a lot of things through their catalog and website, and have always been happy with their service. Their frequent catalogs contain interesting book and product reviews by the Andreola family.

Tapestry of Grace
This is a very popular unit study that "attempts to show how the Word of God and the Hand of God are the warp and woof of the tapestry of time."

Life in America
A chronologically arranged unit study, focusing on American history.

Homeschool Social Register
This site offers homeschool families a private, non-intrusive way to contact other homeschoolers in their geographic area. There are links for homeschoolers worldwide, plus topic based links. A new feature of this site is the Homeschool Wiki-- a user-compiled batch of articles on "the most painless way to satisfy the bureaucratic requirements for homeschooling legally" in a specific geographic locale. It's a fast-loading site and a terrific resource, so take a little time to browse!

Vegsource
This vegetarian-oriented site hosts some very active homeschool forums with boards for practically every brand of homeschooler, as well as a used curriculum swap board. Lots of interesting reading! I've swapped curriculum on this board, and it's amazing how quickly you can sell or buy exactly what you need. They have strict rules as to what can and cannot be listed, so be sure to read the rules before posting.

Whole Heart Online
Clay and Sally Clarkson, authors of The Whole Hearted Child, have put together a helpful site and offer a free e-newsletter.

Vision Forum
This company offers great prices on the reprinted G.A.Henty historical fiction, plus the All-American Boys Adventure Catalog, the Beautiful Girlhood Collection, and more.

Sonlight Curriculum
This website is loaded with valuable information and it hosts some excellent forums offering subject-specific help. People often ask what curriculum our family uses, and I am happy to refer them to Sonlight. We adapt their wonderful core packages to suit our own learning styles and interests, and we have been delighted with almost everything they recommend. A Sonlight education will be not only well-rounded, but also thoroughly enjoyable. Try them!

The Elijah Company
This family-owned company has one of the most interesting catalogs I've found. The articles they include are a mini-education in homeschool basics. Be sure to request a copy and sign up for their free e-mail newsletter. (2005 update-- Unfortunately, the Davis's have closed their store, but you may sign up for their free e-newsletter and even purchase a copy of their wonderful resource guide for a very reasonable cost.)

Greenleaf Press
The Famous Men series was one of my favorite history resources for the elementary years. The Greenleaf site offers articles, e-mail loops, and a look at the Greenleaf catalog. Another catalog must-have.

Lifetime Books
This company offers an "always incomplete resource guide" with excellent product reviews. They also have a free e-newsletter and several discussion lists. This could be the biggest homeschool catalog available!

Cornerstone Curriculum Project
The Quine's website offers outstanding resources including Music and Moments with the Masters, World Views of the Western World, Adventures in Art, Science the Search, and Math Made Meaningful. An excellent foundation for literacy!

Timberdoodle
A small, family-owned company that focuses on hand-on learning tools. They carry some unusual items, and provide excellent service.

Tobins Lab
An outstanding homeschooler-owned company that offers books and items that encourage science through discovery, lap book resources, and more.

Common Sense Press
The home of Learning Language Arts Through Literature, a Charlotte Mason compatible literature program, as well as other homeschool resources.

Design-A-Study
Kathryn Stout offers simple, logical, and inexpensive overview guides for language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and more. These are excellent resources for putting together a custom curriculum.

Teach America to Read and Spell
An inexpensive, phonics-based reading and spelling program.

SAT Preparation
Jacob Richman has developed this site with over 3,000 multiple choice questions divided into 21 groups. There is also a database browser to review and print the questions and the correct answers.

Fluent Handwriting
My favorite handwriting program is affordable and infinitely adaptable. You can use the same book and CD with all your children, and by installing the Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting font on your computer, you can create custom copy sheets for each of your children (standard worksheets are included with the program). It?s a great way to have them practice handwriting while copying their memory verse. I highly recommend the program!

Professor B Math
If the thought of math brings something less than delight, you ought to meet Professor B. His unique, enthusiastic approach uses a scripted text and videotapes to teach math in a relatively enjoyable, low-stress way.

Chalk Dust Company
Another source for math video courses.

Kids Educational Software For Preschoolers
Smart Neurons provides educational software for preschoolers and kids to help enhance their pre-reading skills, story building logic and imagination.

Carolina Science
This homeschool-friendly company has a huge catalog of science supplies, plus an interesting site with a lot of math, technology, and science information.

Runkle Geography
An excellent geography course that includes a simple system to help you memorize countries of the world.

Word to Word
This site provides links to many free foreign language resources. They offer dozens of languages, from Abenaki to Xhosa, and language courses, translators, and much more.

High School Diploma
At James Madison High School, you can earn a high school diploma anywhere, anytime, in distance learning courses that let you study at home.

The Pearables
This family-owned company offers interesting character-building tales designed to "bear fruit."

State Unit Studies
About.com offers free, basic unit studies for each of the 50 states. These sites are sometimes very slow to open, and you may find annoying pop-up ads, but the information can be useful.

Clonlara School
An accredited alternative school, providing K-12 curriculum to home educators.

Robinson Self-Teaching Curriculum
Dr. Robinson has an inexpensive, formula-based approach to homeschooling. His own children seemed to learn well with this approach, but it probably helped that he is a scientist and could provide a bit of help through the math and science content! His CD's may be helpful as a supplemental library for homeschoolers.

Rainbow Resources
Not a pretty site, but a huge selection of discounted homeschool curricula, some useful links, and downloadable planner pages. They also offer a large catalog (I'm not kidding when I say large-- it's almost as big as Richmond's Yellow Pages Directory!). Their booth is always mobbed at curriculum fairs, so the catalog is definitely the easiest way to shop.

Children's Books
Heavily discounted homeschool books and resources.

Chatham Hill Games
A good source for educational toys, games, models, and puzzles.

Hearthside Homeschool Helps
A gentle introduction to Konos- an activity-based unit study.

Titus 2
Steve and Teri Maxwell have put together a nice site for Christian homeschool families. There are active message boards, particularly for Teri's hyper-detailed organizational system, Managers of Their Homes. They also offer a free monthly e-newsletter.

Flylady
If you battle with organization issues and household maintenance, visit Flylady. Through her system of daily e-mails, she will teach you how to make your home an orderly, happy place, fifteen minutes at a time. It takes a few days to get used to her reminders and to remember what a 27-fling boogie is, but the whole system is very much like having a caring mentor at your elbow, keeping you on track. As you read the e-mails, you learn to focus on what is important, and to accomplish a lot in manageable bits.

Special-Needs Students
Judith Munday's site offers professional help and resources to parents homeschooling children with special needs.

Smart Kid at Home
Home is a wonderful place for gifted students. They are able to learn at their own pace, take college classes as early as necessary, and enjoy an in-depth exploration of ideas that is not possible when much of their time is wasted in school. This site explores some of the benefits, and offers articles, links, and other information.

Dorling Kindersley
This is the publisher's site for some of my favorite history and science books. They're the kind of bright, well-illustrated books you and your kids will pick up and read for fun.

Usborne
Another publisher of enjoyable history, foreign language, and geography books. The Usborne Book of Science is an excellent study tool for the Natural Sciences CLEP.

Children's Books Central
Offering "A PLACE TO START: for writers, readers, collectors, illustrators, librarians, teachers, parents, publishers, printers, storytellers and kids." Lots of information and excellent links related to children's books, both old and new.

Free Homeschool Forms
Donna Young's site offers free, printable forms for every conceivable homeschool need, plus homeschool forums and more.

Free Elementary Worksheets
If your child needs to brush up on a particular skill, this site has many free worksheets on virtually every subject available for download.

Kaboose
This site is not specifically for homeschoolers, but it contains links to many educational items and interesting sites.

Unique Teacher Gifts
Unique teacher gifts and educational awards consisting of crystal apples, golden apples, and marble apples etc.

The Home Fire
Terri Camp's site, offering books, a homeschool DVD, bread-making equipment, workshop tapes, and more.

The Parker Family Website
Here's a look at one family's homeschool, with some very helpful articles.

Enhanced Learning Products
Quote: "Enhanced Learning Products specializes in educational materials, toys and games that help kids learn in fun and easy ways by involving the senses. Educational songs, puzzles, manipulatives and more help children enjoy learning. We also offer free educational information to help parents and teachers."

Christian Word.co.uk
A simple Christian site for simply the best in Christian books, teachings, articles, poetry and music CDs.

Magazines

Home Education Magazine
One of the pioneers in the homeschool field, this magazine and its website are loaded with useful information, especially for those with an unschooling bent. HEM's periodic sale of back issues is a bargain worth waiting for. Free e-mail newsletter and downloadable homeschool guide.

The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
This high-quality magazine offers a lot of reading for your subscription dollar, including in-depth product reviews and articles of encouragement. Watch for their subscription specials, as they offer some terrific deals. This is the only homeschool magazine I subscribe to!

Home School Enrichment
This magazine offers a broad selection of articles that advance its goal, which is "to provide encouragement and information to the Christian homeschool community."

Homeschool Today
Comprehensive site hosted by "Homeschool Today" magazine, a Reformed-Christian perspective publication that offers ready-to-use lessons in art appreciation, grammar, etc.

The Homeschool Link
This free, tabloid-style news magazine is a great deal. It contains some excellent articles and links to other homeschool-friendly sites.

Homeschool World
Mary Pride's "Practical Homeschooling" magazine and accompanying website has good articles and reviews, active forums, and useful links. Columnists have included John Taylor Gatto and members of the Swann family.

Home School Digest
This isn't a huge site, but it has good links, plus a look at Skeet Savage's quarterly journal, "Home School Digest." This glossy-covered, perfect-bound magazine is packed with articles from a conservative Christian perspective.

Home School Enrichment
This magazine offers a broad selection of articles that advance its goal, which is "to provide encouragement and information to the Christian homeschool community."

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Distance education degree programs

There are far too many distance learning programs to list here. Be sure to see the Doing College Your Way page for some listings of searchable directories that can help you find the right program.

Distance Education and Training Council
A source for general information on the subject.

Excelsior College (formerly Regents College)
One of the oldest non-residency degree programs. It was begun as part of the New York University system, and has continued to expand its degree offerings.

Thomas Edison State College
An accredited, residency-free college.

Charter Oak State College
COSC offers an attractive array of short or no-residency degree programs.

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Non-Traditional College and Distance Learning Links

Princeton Review
An outstanding site, offering searchable college databases with detailed information on accredited schools.

Education Index
A gazillion or so links to education resources for every stage in life. Nicely done.

Adult Student Resources
This site has a lot of good information and links for the non-traditional student.

Back to College
More information for non-traditional students. An excellent site with articles, discussion forums, and more.

Free Scholarship Search
In addition to lots of financial aid information, this site offers a good article for non-traditional students.

Cut College Costs

This site offers a selection of articles and links to help you save money on college.

FastWeb
This free, high-quality scholarship search site now offers college searches also. You'll be amazed at how many scholarships this free service discovers for you!

Portfolio Library
A portfolio is useful for non-traditional students who wish to document achievements, and it can also be helpful in a job search. This extremely useful site offers instructions and samples.

Used Textbooks & College Textbooks
CampusBooks.com offers used textbooks and college textbooks price comparisons and shopping.

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Study Help : Language Arts - History - Art - Science and Geography - Miscellaneous

Library of Congress
The nation?s library - everything you'd expect in a library, plus multimedia presentations on U.S. and World History, Today in History, and much more.

Internet Public Library
Links to oodles of information about lots of things from almanacs to zoology. Interesting!

Purdue University OWL
Purdue's Online Writing Lab (OWL) provides on-the-spot help with writing and grammar questions, plus workshops, and a free e-newsletter.

The Literature Network
This site offers searchable online literature, including books, poetry, and short stories. A very helpful resource when you can't get to the library!

Writing About Literature
A wonderful, detailed article on how to write about literature. You will need to know this for my English classes, as well as for college.

Norton Anthology of English Literature
Introductory essays, brief author biographies, quizzes, and more for English literature. Very useful.

Norton Anthology of American Literature
Background resources for American literature.

Guide for Writing Research Papers
Helpful information on research papers. Includes everything from note-taking to citing sources.

A Word A Day
Sign up for AWAD, and you'll get daily e-mails with an interesting vocabulary word, its definition, and its use in context. Great SAT prep!

Poem Hunter
A searchable poetry database with over 35,000 poems.

Bartleby.com
This is one of those research resources that would have been unthinkable in the precomputer era. Having access to Bartleby.com is like having a library of anthologies at your fingertips. You can search the database for the full text of many prose and poetry works as well as access an encyclopedia, dictionary, thesaurus, quotation database, and English usage handbook. Add this one to your list of Favorites!

Books Online
The PDF Project has full texts of great books in Adobe Acrobat PDF format available on CD-ROM. Free samples are available.

Rocket Reader
Reading Improvement Progam: Improve your child\'s reading speed and comprehension with RocketReader speed reading software. Great for homeschooling families. FREE trial copy available from the website.

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Internet History Sourcebooks
An awesome site from Fordham University containing collections of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts for educational use. There is a ton of information here.

Read Your Way Through History
A list of good books arranged by historical time period. Quite helpful!

The Victorian Web
This extensive, scholarly resource contains articles and essays about art, literature, philosophy, political science, social history, theatre, economy, and virtually anything else that happened during the Victorian era.

American Library Association Biography Links
A list of links to online biographies, plus other link lists.

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Kids Art
Ready-to-use instructions for art projects, art-related games, links, and other resources.

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Foreign Language

The Easy French and The Easy Spanish

Great Commission Languages offers these two excellent, multi-grade language programs. They have been very well reviewed by Cathy Duffy and others, and are a wonderful, multi-sensory way to learn a language. If you are looking for a phonetically-based language program with Christian content, be sure to check these out!

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Country Reports
Data on over 260 countries around the world, including maps, flags, histories, national anthems, weather, and more. You have to subscribe for full access, but you can get basic information as a guest.

Geographia
Explore other countries through articles and photos. A fascinating site!

Exploratorium
This museum of science, art, and human perception offers an excellent site with articles and activities.

Insect Lore
A well-designed site with more than you really want to know about insects.

The National Map
A U.S. Geological Survey site that provides access to maps and other information.

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Learn the Net
If you aren?t familiar with how to use the internet, this is a very helpful site.

Instacert
This site offers study help for CLEP exams. There is a fee for access to some resources, and I have not tried what they offer, but you may find it a useful resource.

Snopes
Remember hearing tales about alligators living in the sewers and other urban myths? If you hear something you think may be too good or too bad to be true, check it out at Snopes, a site that specializes in debunking myths. Very interesting!

The Old Farmers Almanac
History, weather, gardening advice, and more.

 

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Writing

The primary danger in discovering all these lovely writing resources is in spending all your time reading about writing, rather than writing. If you are seriously interested in becoming a writer, I challenge you to sit down and write for 15 minutes every single day. The best time to do it is often before you check your e-mail, but any time of day is better than not doing it at all. Remember, reading is an important part of learning what to write, but the best way to learn to write is to simply do it!

Writing World
One of the best writing sites on the web. This site is loaded with helpful articles and dozens, maybe hundreds, of links, organized by genre. It used to be a contender for "Ugliest Site on the Web," but it's been cleaned up and is easy to navigate and read. If you subscribe to only one free writing newsletter, you might want to make it this one.

The Writer
An excellent magazine on general writing topics with a free newsletter.

Writer's Digest
Another popular writing magazine with a useful site and free newsletter.

Writers Market
Where and how to sell your work. You can join for a small monthly fee and gain access to a searchable database of publishers and agents.

National Association of Women Writers
An informative, free newsletter.

Purple Crayon
Harold Underdown's site for writers and illustrators of children's books. An excellent resource.

The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators
A professional organization for... well, you guess.

Write for Kids
Smart Writers
More websites about writing for children.

Essay Contest
Write a travel essay and win a trip!

Anastasia Suen
This writer's site offers helpful information and the Intensive Picture Book Workshop.

National Novel Writing Month
Devote the month of November to writing an entire 50,000-page novel! This site sponsors the event, and sends out weekly newsletters in November. I tried this in 2004, and plan to do it again. If you learn nothing else from the experience, you learn the important principle that you CAN sit down and write 1700+ words every single day whether or not you feel inspired. And who knows, perhaps you'll end up with a rough draft that can be polished for publication!

Bowker
If you've written and self-published a book, you need an ISBN. This is where you get the ISBN and list your book in Books In Print.

Our Creative Space
A writer's site containing publishing links, articles, and more.

No Plot, No Problem This is the book that will guide you through writing a novel in 30 days. It's a huge help, and a lot of fun, too!

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Financial Aid

FAFSA
FAFSA stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid. This is the application you must fill out in order to receive financial aid, and this official government site offers all you need to fill it out and submit it online. Very convenient, and essential to the financial aid process. Note that the official application is FREE, and don't be fooled by other sites that charge a fee for simply filling out the application.

Money for College
If you want extra, personalized help with the financial aid process, this award-winning site offers in-depth guidance from a Certified Financial Planner with an MBA. Numerous testimonials indicate that the assistance he provides can significantly increase your financial aid. With federal and state aid shrinking, it makes sense to do everything you can to maximize your chances for an outstanding aid package.

FastWeb
Need money for college? Use FastWeb's free scholarship search to find information on more than 600,000 scholarships! The web's fastest and best free scholarship search.

Free Scholarship Search
Another searchable database for scholarships.

Cash for College
An excellent site by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators that offers answers to all your financial aid questions.

The Student Guide
The US Dept of Education offers a helpful, downloadable guide to financial aid.

FinAid
"The SmartStudent Guide to Financial Aid" has some great resources.

Financial Aid Resource Center
Sponsored by EStudentLoan.com. Has useful information.

The Consumer Information Center
This government sponsored site offers free information on many topics. It's always changing. You can get lost once inside the CIC!

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Testing and evaluations

College Board
Home of the SAT I & II, CLEP, and AP exams. Learn about the tests, try out some practice questions, and when you're feeling confident, register for your exam. A good site with lots of information.

DSST
The Chauncey Group offers DANTES exams, which are similar to CLEPs, except that they are untimed. Each exam is worth 3-6 college credits.

Graduate Record Examinations
GRE's are the exams you take when preparing to enter graduate school. A few colleges that offer life experience credit for returning adult students will accept a GRE score as proof of knowledge and grant up to 30 credits in the subject area of the test. This site offers detailed descriptions of the tests as well as sample questions.

Portfolio Library
A portfolio is another means of evaluation, particularly useful for non-traditional students who wish to document achievements in return for college credit. This extremely useful site offers instructions and samples. If you are interested in portfolio credit, be sure to find out your school?s policy and desired format.

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Career Aptitude and Personality Assessments

 

Job Hunter's Bible: The What Color is My Parachute? author's site. A lot of job / career related information plus links to some very good career-aptitude and personality tests. An excellent place to begin.

Princeton Review offers a brief test based upon the Birkman Method. After replying to about 36 questions, your responses are categorized by color, and you are provided a targeted list of links to very detailed and helpful career descriptions. This test is quick and appears to provide fairly accurate results- don't miss it.

Advisor Team: This site offers the very detailed Keirsey Temperament Sorter. This test, which was very accurate for me, reveals temperament type at no cost, but a 10-page report which includes character type, career choices to consider, and information about relationships with the other personality types, costs $14.95.

This well-designed site offers three of the major tests: Keirsey, Enneagram, and a personality test. A very user-friendly site for the serious tests, but I would skip the other non-scientific tests offered.

A very attractive site with a test based upon the SDS/Holland test. I found the results of this test more accurate than the results of the original Holland, but that may not be true for everyone. The site offers other useful information. One very nice feature is that career results link directly to the government's Occupational Outlook Handbook which provides very detailed and current information about the job. If you register, you can store your test and career information and refer back to it as needed.

A test that is in the developmental stage. The results are fairly accurate, but you will want to take the test with a dictionary at hand, as the vocabulary level is very advanced.

This is an authors' site with information on their four books, plus a quick overview of the Myers Briggs Test. Interesting for a quick visit.

Career development manual from the University of Waterloo- helpful non-interactive self-assessment tools.

This site offers several full-length tests based upon the classic Myers-Briggs personality assessment tool. Full-length exams cost from $16.95 to $24.95, and include detailed, personalized reports.

This is more fun than useful, but it was remarkable how accurate this quick little personality test turned out to be. Choose one of nine graphic images, click on it, and read about your personality type.

An introduction to basic life skills- this is worth a look, though you have to pay to take the assessments and gain full access to the site.

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Entrepreneurship

Owning a small business is ideal for many people, including homeschooled teens and their families. Here are some helpful links to get you started. Be sure to browse for more information in the Home Business section of the website!

Educating for Success
A website and e-newsletter dedicated to information about entrepreneurship for homeschooling families.

Working From Home
Paul and Sarah Edwards site, offering free book excerpts, teleseminars, a free self-assessment for self-employment, and more. The Edwards wrote the classic Working From Home, and continue to write on entrepreneurship. If you are interested in working from home, you definitely need this book.

A Home-Based Business Online
Practical business ideas, opportunities, and strategies for the home-based entrepreneur.

Small Business Administration
An essential site if you're thinking of starting a business?lots of solid information on laws and business principles.

Internal Revenue Service
Everything you need to know about taxes, right from the horse?s mouth.

123 Home Business Guide
Articles, links, and a free e-newsletter

Entrepreneur Magazine Online
A lot of information and helpful lists.

Mothers Work at Home
Work at Home Moms
Internet Based Moms
A selection of sites for work-at-home moms.

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Philosophy and resources for lifelong learning

Autodidact- the art of lifelong learning

Association for Non-Traditional Studies in Higher Education

Unschooling- learning via life experience rather than formal classes

Lifelong Learning- search here for distance education programs

Educational Freedom- there are interesting links from this rather radical site

Patent Insight- Here's a site for active minds. Information about inventing and making a profit with your invention.

Mind Map- A site with resources for maximizing brain power.

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Travel

Rick Steves
Our favorite guide for European travel. If you want to plan a practical trip, visit Rick's website, read Europe Through the Back Door and Best of Europe. We loved the small, relatively inexpensive hotels he recommends, as they were right in the heart of the areas we wanted to visit, and within walking or metro distance of everything else. His information on how to get around by train, how to interact with the 'natives,' and how to make the most of limited time in a museum (see his Mona Winks guide) were immensely helpful to us on our Europe trip.

Our Log
Our personal journal, in message board format, of our 2002 trip to Europe. Includes packing tips.

Literary Traveler
A unique site that offers photos, essays, literary tours, and a free newsletter, all themed around authors. You can read about Walden's Pond, Beatrix Potter's Lake District, or Stevenson's Samoa. The site is indexed by author or place, so you can use it to add visual context to an author's work, or to see what authors have written about a place you plan to travel.

Cultural Travels
Another interesting site for planning a themed trip. I would still rely on Rick Steves for the bulk of my planning, but this is interesting and useful. The travel stories are usually very informative.

Map Quest
If you need a map or driving directions, this is an excellent site. The driving directions are overly detailed (telling you how many feet to travel on a curving road before starting to bear right or left, for example), but if you cross off all the excess, the directions are basically sound.

AAA
Join AAA for maps, Tour Books, roadside assistance, and TripTiks for car travel in North America. They offer a lot of information, and if you drive old clunkers as we do, you?ll be thankful for the free towing feature. This is not the place to go for cheap airfares, though!

Expedia http://www.expedia.com
Cheap Tickets http://www.cheaptickets.com
Orbitz http://www.orbitz.com/
Travelocity http://www.travelocity.com
Hotwire http://www.hotwire.com
Travel Hub http://www.travelhub.com
Great Travel Deals http://www.onetravel.com
Priceline http://www.priceline.com
All these are sites where you can shop for cheap airfare, hotel reservations, and car rentals. Frankly, I often get the best results from going to individual airline, hotel, or car rental sites and choosing the ?lowest available? rates.

Vacation Rentals by Owner
If you'd like to rent a cabin in the mountains or a cottage by the beach, this is a useful site. Owners of short-term rental properties can list here, and there are listings from all over the U.S. as well as around the world.

Cheap Family Travel
A collection of articles and links that will help you find inexpensive, family-friendly travel options. Not pretty, but fairly interesting.

Romantic Weekend Getaways
This site offers a searchable selection of romantic bed and breakfast inns across the U.S. There are some very nice listings here, many with photos and links to individual websites.

Untours
If you'd like to spend a couple of weeks in an apartment in a wonderful place like Paris, check out what Untours offers. We haven't tried them, but they are mentioned very positively on many travel websites. Their free newsletter is well worth signing up for, as the photos and stories are perfect for armchair traveling.

Casa Tranquilla
Spend a week or two in the tranquil Umbrian region of Italy. This American-owned villa has three available apartments (the Lodge, the Lower Farmhouse, and the Studio), accommodating 2-6 people, and offers a pool and beautiful views. About 1-1/2 hours to Florence, 2-1/4 hours to Rome, and 1 hour to Assisi.

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Genealogy

Family Search
Genealogy information and a free, downloadable, high-quality genealogy program. Sponsored by Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but open to anyone.

Cyndi's List
A huge site with over 200,000 genealogy-related links. An amazing resource.

Treasure Maps
A homespun site with an excellent free e-newsletter, Pajama Genealogy course, and helpful information.

Ancestry
A well-organized commercial site with thousands of searchable family trees.

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