Math Books
Look at Army and other sites for basic math books. The Army prints free books for soldiers who need trig skills to aim a mortar, but the book is just covers the math. These books are not restricted and free to download because since the Army wrote them, there can be no copyright because your tax dollars paid for them.
Also, look for textbooks teachers have written and are trying to sell by giving away the pdf copies. They don't care if you download them because they are trying to get the teachers to recommend them as a required book. Type in google something like "free math textbooks" or "free online textbooks". You will be amazed at what's free. Medical textbooks, Electronic engineering (starting with very basics), etc.
I found one site that teachs algebra with computer video movies. They are all free. I don't have the link but some googling can find them. Look at the US Army Corp of engineers for construction textbooks. They are free. NASA has at GREAT spaceflight book in pdf at their Jet Propulsion Lab in California. In many of these books there are math review chapters that cut right to the meat and don't bore the students to death.
If you can get a child interested in something like spaceflight engineering then you can find tons of books from the government websites aimed at kid levels all the way to PHD.
I just LOVE the free learning on the internet, but since I could read, I've been motivated to read factual books along with fictional books. I'm an explosives engineer (US Army) and got most of my mechanical engineering learning from either our books (free and most are not restricted) and free text books. I was an electronic (radar and missile guidance and aircraft communication specialty) for 20 years, besides broadcast consulting and I didn't know one thing about how to use explosives to weld or do positive industrial tasks until I started googling. Now I'm one very high in the department of explosives safety and self-taught.
This stuff is not rocket science only, it goes all the way down to gradeschool. Get your kids interested in projects that require some kind of math or other subject. (My hobby is fiction writing and I learned more from reading the books from the genre I write in than from reading books that were written by wood be authors.
These books may be free but you have to download them in PDF format and sometimes it is difficult to read with a computer. If I had a child of homeschooling age today, I would get a little DELL (No I don't get kick-backs just great experience) MV-10V which is a mini-notebook with a 160 gig hard-drive which will hold LOTS of books and the keyboard is standard without the extra right-side number keys, etc. The keyboard is 97 percent the size of a standard computer keyboard which is just right for smaller hands like mine and my grandchildren's. Load the documents up with some interesting reading material like NASA's spaceflight book and watch you kids go. For three-hundred nine-nine plus tax and shipping I got 160 gig with three USB's a built in WFI internet card that is permanent and can be turned off, but I use it with our 2-wire internet sold by Atand T and yahoo which gives you one wired and one wireless output. (2 outputs).
If your kids have a tendency to surf or not do homework with the book set yourself up as the administrator and turn off the net stuff. Set your child up with a password that's easy for them to remember and don't give them any admin. rights and you can focus them on what they can view in their documents areas for school. Then turn it off for some nighttime fun. Get them interested in model rockets, boats, space-flight (use NASA) and any other hobby that you can encourage them to learn math and reading which are the two major items that will continue to be used in ANY subject.
Teach them trig by showing them that to fly due West in an airplane they have to figure out what heading they need if the wind is from an angle off to one side. A LOT more fun than drawing triangle's on paper. My five year old grandson can tell you more about how to load a container of bombs than I can based on the wooden blocking required to hold it steady if it holds 10 2000 pound bombs and has to go through a hurricane without splitting open the container and killing the crew by smashing them. I know teaching bomb stuff to kids may not be your thing, but since I have to do it, that's what I teach him and I take him to the airport every Sunday afternoon to watch the planes and he's already figured out how they come in at an angle if the wind is strong from the side. We also launch model rockets together, bought at Wal-Mart, but I go to Estes webpage, get the facts on the rockets and motors and have him caliculate the height and then we made a homemade angle measuring device so he can use trig (at five) to figure the real height. We try to beat each other on the calculationed height and he often wins. The key is, fun, active and practice with a challenge.
Right now we'[re building a model airplane that will fly itself back home (using a GPS module) if it loosing its radio link. He['s loving that because now he's learning how gps works and I don't think he completely understands satellites are falling during orbits, etc. But, as he grows he'll know it by the time he's in high-school level. Take him to your local air national guard and see if they will let him sit in the cockpit of an F-16 after you have taken him to an air-show where military fighters boomed overhead.
Girls may not enjoy these things, but women, get out your thinking caps and figure out how you can get your girls excited about something you can "calculate", or "READ". As with boys I would say READING skills are numero uno in staying up with all more advanced subjects. If they can't read, they are dead in the water as far as enjoying school, projects and other educational items. This is the reason I HATE trying to make kids memorize or learn the KJV because it will bore them to tears until they hate to read. I devoured Good News for Modern Man in gradeschool while sitting in church ignoring the preacher. It may not have been the greatest translation, but I got some great stories and loved reading them like a real book designed to entertain and get my attention.
Just a few words of thought on homeschooling education.
