Free Homeschool Curriculum That’s Actually Complete

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You searched “free homeschool curriculum” and got a list of forty things. Most of them are a worksheet site, a YouTube channel, or one subject dressed up as a whole school year.

Four programs on the internet will carry a child through every core subject for a full year without charging you for the plan. A few more are excellent and free, but they aren’t a curriculum, and the difference matters when it’s February and you’re the one who has to decide what happens at 9 a.m. I spent years in classrooms, and now I’ve watched families hit that wall at the counter of my store. This is the short list, with who each one fits and who should keep looking.

What “complete” actually means

A complete homeschool curriculum covers the core subjects (reading, writing, math, science, and history or social studies) for a full school year, with a schedule that tells you what to do each day. If a program misses any one of those, it’s a supplement. A good supplement, maybe. Still a supplement.

That definition cuts the usual “free curriculum” list down fast. A phonics app is not a curriculum. A library of science videos is not a curriculum. Even a very good free math course is one piece out of five, and somebody still has to decide what happens with the other four.

Here’s the test I’d use before you commit a year to anything free: open it to a random week in March and ask whether you could run that week tomorrow morning with what’s on the screen. If the answer is “yes, after I print this and grab a library book,” you have a curriculum. If the answer is “I’d need to find something for writing,” you have a piece.

The four free programs that cover a full year

All four have been running for years, publish a plan for every school day, and cover the cores. They differ a lot in how much you do, how religious they are, and how much is on a screen. Prices in this post were checked in October 2026; sites change, so verify before you commit.

Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool

Lee Giles started posting her own kids’ assignments online in 2011, and it grew into a full PreK–8 program with a separate high school site. Every grade has 180 days of lessons. You pick a reading level, a language arts level, and a math level for each child, and the site tracks the day. Reading, writing, grammar, spelling, math, history, science, Bible, art, music, PE, Spanish, and logic are all in there. It uses only free materials found on the internet, so a lot of the day is clicking out to other sites.

The math gets you to pre-algebra by leaning on sites like Khan Academy and MathIsFun for practice, and Cathy Duffy’s review says kids who finish should be ready for Algebra 1. Reading starts with sight words before phonics, which I’d watch closely if your child is the kind who needs every rule spelled out. As a special educator I saw plenty of kids who could memorize a hundred sight words and still not be able to sound out a new one.

Who it fits: Christian families who want zero planning, several kids on one theme, and a program that runs from a laptop. Parents with little time to prep.

Who it doesn’t: Families who want secular content (you can skip Bible, but the history and science lean young-earth). Kids who do poorly with a lot of screen time. Anyone who wants a textbook they can hold.

Discovery K12

Discovery K12 is the secular all-in-one. The student account is free and includes all of the curriculum for PreK through 12th grade: math, language arts, reading, history, science, plus PE, arts, and electives like Spanish and personal finance. Each day is one scrolling page of assignments with embedded videos, written instruction, and PDF worksheets. The site estimates roughly 5.5 hours a day from second grade up, which is a long day for a homeschooler. Trim it.

The catch is the answer keys. They live in the paid parent/teacher account, listed at $99 per family per year in October 2026 (check current pricing), along with attendance records and transcripts. Cathy Duffy’s 2023 review found some first-grade lessons pitched too high and said the program works best from about third grade on. Grammar instruction stops after fifth grade, so plan to add something for middle school. The site is clear that it’s a platform for independent homeschoolers and not an accredited school, which is the right thing to say and worth knowing before you ask it for a diploma.

Who it fits: Secular families, kids in upper elementary and up who can work from a screen on their own, parents who want attendance and grades handled for them.

Who it doesn’t: Kindergarten and first grade. Families who can’t supervise internet research. Anyone who wants Common Core alignment; the site says it isn’t.

AmblesideOnline

AmblesideOnline (AO) is a free Charlotte Mason curriculum that has been running since 2001. It gives you a complete booklist and weekly schedule for every year from kindergarten (Year 0) through Year 12, plus teacher notes and a support forum. Charlotte Mason means short lessons, “living books” written by one person who loves the subject, and narration, where the child tells back what was read. If that’s new to you, our Charlotte Mason for beginners guide explains it in plain language.

You pay AO nothing. You do need the books. Many are old enough to be free online, and AO flags which ones to buy if money is tight. AO is a Christian curriculum and says so; it also says families of all beliefs are welcome and may want to swap a few titles. It doesn’t publish its own math program; it lists options and you pick one. That’s where used copies earn their keep: a secondhand Math-U-See or Saxon set is the cheapest way I know to fill that gap. Our math comparison will help you pick between them.

Who it fits: Families who love reading aloud, want a rich literature-and-history education, and are willing to hunt down books. Parents who want to teach, not just supervise.

Who it doesn’t: Parents who need a daily script. Kids who hate being read to. Families who want everything on one website. AO is a plan, and you are the teacher.

Mater Amabilis

Mater Amabilis is the Catholic answer to AO: a free Charlotte Mason curriculum from a Prep level (ages 4–6) through high school, built to be faithful to the Magisterium. It lays out religion, language arts, history, geography, science, poetry, picture study, music, Shakespeare, and civics by level, with reading schedules and some lesson plans. The site calls its booklists “suggestions” and expects you to substitute freely.

Math is listed only for high school, so for the younger levels you choose your own, just like AO.

Who it fits: Catholic families who want the Charlotte Mason approach without editing a Protestant booklist.

Who it doesn’t: Anyone who isn’t comfortable with a curriculum that puts the faith at the center of every subject. Families who want a daily script.

Great free resources that are not a curriculum

These get recommended as “free homeschool curriculum” constantly. They’re free, they’re good, and each one leaves at least one core subject empty.

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is free math from early grades through calculus, plus science and history courses, some grammar, and SAT prep, and the Khan Academy Kids app for ages 2 to 8. It’s the best free math instruction online. It is not a language arts program (grammar and composition barely exist outside a few courses), it has no lab science, and it doesn’t tell you how much to do each day. A planner like Homeschool Planet sells lesson plans that break Khan courses into daily assignments, which fixes the pacing problem. Use Khan as your math and keep looking for the rest.

CK-12

CK-12 is a nonprofit publishing free digital textbooks (“FlexBooks”) in math from first grade through calculus and science from kindergarten through physics, with practice questions and an AI tutor. Strong for middle and high school science and math. Thin on reading and writing, and there’s no daily plan.

Core Knowledge

Core Knowledge posts its full language arts (CKLA), history and geography (CKHG), and science (CKSci) programs for free download, mostly K–5 with some grades beyond. These are real classroom programs with teacher guides, and the history units are some of the best free material anywhere. Two cautions: the teacher guides are written for a classroom and take real reading to adapt to one kid, and the free math is a separate open-source program. If you’d rather hold the content in one book per grade, the What Your First Grader Needs to Know series by E. D. Hirsch covers the same Core Knowledge sequence, and used copies come through my counter regularly.

The Good and the Beautiful language arts PDFs

The Good and the Beautiful gives away its full-year Language Arts courses for Levels K through 8 as PDFs, readers included. That is a complete language arts program at no cost, and it’s a generous thing for a publisher to do. It is one subject. Everything else they publish, math included, costs money, and the free PDFs are long, so printing is the real cost. In my experience the printer is where the money goes, so plenty of families print the course book and buy the readers and answer keys used instead of running a home printer dry.

Who these fit: Families building their own curriculum one subject at a time, or patching a hole in one of the four complete programs above.

Who they don’t: A new homeschooler who needs someone else to decide what today looks like. Assembling five free pieces into a school year is a skill, and it’s fine not to have it yet.

Free online public school isn’t homeschooling

Stride/K12, Connections Academy, and state virtual academies advertise tuition-free school at home. They are public schools. Your child is enrolled, a certified teacher assigns state-aligned curriculum, and you act as a “learning coach.” Attendance and testing follow public school rules. Stride’s own Arkansas Virtual Academy page draws the line plainly: in homeschooling, parents carry the full responsibility, including choosing the curriculum.

For some families that’s exactly right, especially if you need the structure or the accountability. Just know what you’re signing up for. If you want to choose the books and set the pace, and answer to your state’s homeschool law instead of a school’s calendar, that’s homeschooling, and the four programs above are built for it.

What “free” still costs

Nobody runs a free curriculum for zero dollars. Three things show up every time.

Printing. Easy Peasy worksheets, Core Knowledge activity pages, and the Good and the Beautiful PDFs all come out of your printer. A year of that runs into real ink and paper, and a lot of families eventually buy the printed workbook anyway.

Books and a math program. AO and Mater Amabilis send you shopping. Easy Peasy and Discovery K12 include math, but if your child needs more practice than an online course gives, you’ll add a workbook. Textbooks turn over fastest in my store, which means the used math shelf is almost always full. Buying the one subject you need secondhand keeps a free curriculum close to free.

Your time. The all-in-ones ask less of you day to day; the book-based plans ask more. Neither asks nothing. Does your week have the hours the program assumes? Answer that before you pick, because it’s the reason families quit in November.

How to choose in one afternoon

• Decide on worldview first. Christian all-in-one: Easy Peasy. Secular all-in-one: Discovery K12. Charlotte Mason Protestant: AO. Charlotte Mason Catholic: Mater Amabilis.
• Open the program to a week in March and read it like you have to teach it tomorrow.
• Check the math. If it’s missing or thin for your kid, pick a math program before you start, not in October.
• Try it for two weeks before you print anything in bulk.
• If none of the four fits, you’re building one piece at a time. Our guide to free and low-cost curriculum for every subject is the next read.

And if a free program doesn’t fit your child, that’s information, not failure. We don’t know which approach fits a kid until we watch them try one.

Frequently asked questions

The short version

Four free programs cover a full year: Easy Peasy and Discovery K12 if you want an all-in-one; AmblesideOnline and Mater Amabilis if you want a book-based plan. Everything else on the usual lists is a strong piece, not the whole thing. Pick by worldview, check the math, and buy the one gap used.

Browse used math curriculum →

Sources

• Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool, home page (grades, subjects, 180 days, free materials, Christian; checked October 2026)
• Cathy Duffy Reviews, “Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool” (math path, sight-word reading, young-earth content; review dated October 2020, checked October 2026)
• Discovery K12, “Frequently Asked Questions” (free student account, non-Common Core, not accredited; checked October 2026)
• Discovery K12, “Parent/Teacher Account” ($99 per family per year; checked October 2026)
• Cathy Duffy Reviews, “Discovery K12 Online Homeschool” (grades, subjects, hours per day, grammar through grade 5; review dated August 2023, checked October 2026)
• AmblesideOnline, home page (Years 0–12, free, since 2001; checked October 2026)
• AmblesideOnline, “FAQ” (cost, books, Christian orientation, math; checked October 2026)
• Mater Amabilis, home page (levels, Catholic, subjects, high school math; checked October 2026)
• Khan Academy blog, “Free back-to-school resources for families and homeschoolers” (subjects, Khan Kids ages, free; August 2026)
• Cathy Duffy Reviews, “Khan Academy Courses” (no complete language arts, no lab science, no pacing; review dated April 2024)
• CK-12 Foundation, mission page (nonprofit, free, subjects and grades; checked October 2026)
• Core Knowledge Foundation, “Homeschool FAQs” (free CKLA, CKHG, CKSci downloads; checked October 2026)
• The Good and the Beautiful, “Free Homeschool Language Arts” (Levels K–8 free PDFs; checked October 2026)
• Stride / Arkansas Virtual Academy, “Online School vs. Homeschool” (public school at home vs. homeschooling; updated April 2026)