Amy’s Homeschool Budget: August and September

My ankle tragedy may have made me slack about posting my August budget, but it certainly didn’t make me slack about stocking up on school stuff. I’m lumping my August and September purchases together in this post so that I can catch up. You'll notice that paper is something I splurge a bit on—it's one of my little homeschool luxuries, and I like having the good stuff to work with. Usually I would have spent a much bigger chunk of my budget at this point, but we decided to forego official classes this fall (see below).  

• 12 Miller’s Notesketch books, which we go through like candy. I love that half the page is lined and the other page is blank—perfect doodling while writing or taking notes.
  12 @ $3.99 each = $47.88
• 2 Bare Book bundles, which are beloved by my children. (Two of them are already in progress—a book containing the perfect Pokemon team and a story about a bird who is afraid of heights.) The packs come with three big and three small blank books, which seems to be a good variety for us.
  2 @ $19.99 each = $39.98
• 5 Create-a-Cover Sketchbooks—I really love the paper quality of these and have been known to steal one from the shelf for my own personal use. We use them for art—the pages are sturdy enough for light watercolors and acrylic painting or for collage or just for drawing.
  5 @ $3.99 each = $19.95
• 12 Palomino Blackwing Pencils, as part of our continuing quest to find the perfect pencils. (These were pricey, but so far, they are definitely the best in terms of holding their points, especially for writers who tend to break into artwork mid-paragraph.)
  $23 for 12 = $23
• 3 packs of Oxford multi-color index cards for Latin vocabulary cards. We use different colors for the different parts of speech, which is handy when we want to do a quick declension drill.
  3 100-card packs @ $5.49 each = $16.47
• Annual membership to our homeschool group. (The price increase for classes this year meant that we couldn’t afford to sign up for classes, so my daughter opted to sit in on my publishing class and my son is “auditing” Philosophy for Kids, which is conveniently taught by my best friend. It’s possible that we could have figured something out cash-wise, but with my unexpected broken ankles, we decided to just sit this term out. We’ll sign up for “real” classes during the January term.)
  $35
• Independent reading books from our library’s book sale—I picked up 30 new-to-us books (including three Edward Eagers, David Macaulay's Castle, and Five Little Peppers and How They Grew) for super-cheap.
  $50

Total spent inAugust/September: $232.28
Total spent this year to date: $391.28
Total budget for the 15-16 school year remaining: $3,409

Total budget for the 15-16 school year: $3,800
(You can read more about our budget breakdown here.)

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