My Favorite Deals at Homeschool Buyers Co-op

My favorite homeschool subscriptions: WORLDkids, daily current events and news for kids, and Doodle Maths, a math app for kids through age 14!

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received compensation from the Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op in exchange for writing and publishing this post, although I have been a member of the Co-op for years. All opinions — and photographs — are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review. Any links to the Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op are affiliate links, which means if you click through and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission.

If you’re new to homeschooling — or if you just haven’t been to Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op in a while — you’re in for a treat. The Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op is an online homeschool marketplace which leverages the vast number of members (it’s free to join) into mass purchasing power. And that means great homeschool deals!

5 reasons the co-op is great place for homeschool deals

1. There’s no gimmicky membership fee. Just create a free account, and you’re in.
2. You get group-buy discounts, but you don’t have to wait for the group buy to fill up. The Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op has already negotiated the discount for you, and it’s there as soon as you’re ready to make your purchase. Just shop as you normally would!
3. There’s a ton to choose from, for a wide range of ages, from phonics to drivers ed. And new homeschool products are constantly being added.
4. There’s a great section of homeschool freebies.
5. You can earn points with every purchase. Even better, when you come back later to shop again, you can layer these SmartPoints on top of the group-buy discount to save even more.

What can kind of homeschool deals can you expect from the Homeschool Buyers Co-op?

Doodle Maths, an excellent math app for ages 4-14, is available at a discount from Homeschool Buyers Co-op

One of my favorite homeschool tools is a math app called Doodle Maths. It’s designed for students ages 4-14 (preschool through 8th grade) which right away gives it a wide range of appeal. So many of the math apps I’ve encountered focus on early elementary math, and really don’t offer much challenge at all past about 3rd grade math. This can be quite a bummer when trying to find math enrichment for a preteen or young teen.

My expat friend Marie is the one who first told me about Doodle Maths, and I was really excited to see I was able to purchase a 12-month Doodle Maths subscription from the Homeschool Buyers Co-op for just $34.50, instead of £55.99 (about $79.99 USD).

Doodle Maths is built from the UK National Curriculum Standards, thus the plural term maths. I’ve been exploring the UK National Curriculum standards this year as Aveline takes customized online classes with some expat friends, and am profoundly impressed thus far. The National Curriculum is incredibly solid!

When you first start Doodle Maths, the app will ask your student a series of questions to directly calibrate the app to your child’s level. But no stress. If you feel like you’ve messed up the calibration for some reason, you can restart and recalibrate again at any time, using the free Doodle Connect parent app.

I love Doodle Maths (and the included companion app Doodle Tables, which teaches multiplication) because —

• • • It’s responsive, and constantly adjusts, advances, reviews, and tailors the content directly to your student’s abilities.
    • It doesn’t display grade levels to the student. Your child will never realize they are working on material that’s above or below grade level.
    • Because it’s so customized, time spent in the program is time spent legitimately learning new concepts and solidifying weaker ones, rather than wasting time on irrelevant topics or skills.
    • Only ten minutes a day is needed to steadily advance and tier up your student’s math abilities.
    • It’s fun, and easy to fit in to your day!

Purchase a Doodle Maths subscription.

WORLDKids, my favorite news and current events for kids, is available at a discount from Homeschool Buyers Co-op

Whenever I’m asked, “What’s a good source for kid-friendly news?” or  “How can my kids keep up with current events in an age-appropriate way?”, my answer is always the same: WORLDkids! WorldKIDS is my absolute favorite news for kids; I like it far better than Newsela, Time for Kids, or CNN10. 

Of course, there’s no such thing as completely objective news; everything is written from a point of view. WORLDkids is definitely presented from a Christian worldview, often with a relevant Scripture tie-in at the end, but they actively take a much more positive, upbeat, and less political perspective than its adult counterpart, WORLD Magazine.

My nine-year-old loves checking her email each weekday morning to read the Daily News Shorts, and is always thrilled when another magazine arrives in the mail. More than once I’ve overheard her discussing current events with adults, referencing facts I know she learned from our WORLDkids subscription.

Over the last few months, the WORLDkids Daily News Shorts have covered the following topics:

• the Space X launch
• Dragon Boat races in Taiwan
• Hagia Sophia’s new mosque status
• the discovery of a pocket-size dinosaur
• the status of commercial fishing
• wildfires in the Western United States.

The material is relevant enough to what’s going on in the world to keep kids abreast of current events accurately, but kid-friendly enough as to not be entirely depressing. This is an impressive feat at any time, but particularly in 2020!

Subscribe to WORLDkids.

In addition to Doodle Maths and WORLDkids, you’ll also find other great homeschool deals at the Homeschool Buyers Co-op

• …bulk discounts on hard-to-find historical fiction from Bethlehem Books (titles like Son of Charlemagne and Augustine Came To Kent)
• …lower prices on Home School in the Woods’ popular lapbooks, maps, and history curriculum

and much more.