favorite homeschooling resource

The Homeschool Classroom's writing prompt link-up: what is your favorite homeschooling resource?

My favorite, absolutely indispensable, homeschooling resource is ... THE INTERNET! I love our series of tubes!

We're still new enough in our homeschooling adventure that I can't tell whether this or that textbook or material works for us or not. But before we even got started, I spent 2-3 years reading homeschooling blogs and kindergarten art blogs and crunchy lifestyle blogs and other similar websites, and they were crucial in helping me to make the decision in the first place to move forward with homeschooling.

I have a number of blogs on my Mom's Reading List page but only a couple of them have made it into my Google Reader. The rest I check only occasionally, when I'm sitting down to feed the baby or hold a sick kid. My top-ranked blogs:

The Homeschool Classroom - no, really! This is not just a kiss-up.
Simple Homeschool
Latter-Day Homeschooling

Thank you to the contributing writers and founders of these blogs. They've made a big difference for me.

Since then, I have no idea how many things I have bookmarked online. In my homeschool folder, I have over a dozen sub-folders by topic and each of those folders have tons of bookmarks. If I'm wondering how to teach something, I look around on my blog list or do a google search. My most recent one was "how to teach memorization of the addition tables." I look up field trip options whenever we travel. I find videos about animals to watch for science. I do most of my book shopping online.

Homeschooling would be really, really different without the internet.