Dynamic 2 Moms~Welcome~
Free Lapbooks, Notebooking, Unit Studies
Favorite Free Downloads & Sites
As homeschoolers we have unique needs. That is the need to get as much free as we can.
lol There are so many wonderful downloads that we can take advantage of and that are really more useful than others in our journey. So we will be adding to this page from to time as we find them and/or use them.
Even though Kelley loves more techie things than I do, we both like programs that are not real complicated to learn and use. My name is "Not Technical Tina" for a reason. LOL So these programs are easy to use for a non-techie person.
**Remember everything posted on here is FREE.
Happy downloading!
Computer Related
Free Anti-virus
AVG is the program we use and it is one of the best antiv-virus programs we have seen. Here is a review on it:
This antivirus program offers rock-solid protection. AVG Free provides the bare necessities, including a real-time shield to prevent infections, anti-virus and anti-malware wrapped up in one engine, and a link scanner for Web surfing with care.
Free Computer Scan
Trend Micro Housecall
When I first started using the internet,Trend Micro Housecall was a life saver. It is a free online scanner to help you keep your computer free of bugs. It scans to see if your computer has been affected by spyware, viruses or other malware. It is has been free as long as I have used it.
Free Web Filtering Program
K9 Web
We also have this program called K9 Web protection installed to monitor our children's safety on the net. You can filter out websites and popups. Too, you can monitor how long they are on the internet by using your password. One other nice feature is that it filters out websites that are know for spyware/malware.
Word Processing Related
Free Office Suite
Open Office
Why pay for a word processing suite or spreadsheet software when you can get one for free? Yep Open Office is free.
Some homeschoolers think it's even better than Microsoft's 2003 Word or Excel because it has the ability export files to PDF. You can create letters, reports, newsletters brochures and insert graphics.
Jarte
Jarte is another free word processing download that we like. It is more simple to use than other programs because they tend to have too many features and you spend more time trying to figure out how to operate them. It says it was designed for students, small business and home users. Alot of students and children like this one.
Pdf Editing To Type Into Existing Pdf
A few choices here.
Foxit Reader
Ever get a pdf and wish that you could add your own information? We have that need in our homeschooling world because so many wonderful forms come to us that way.
Well here are some choices to do that.
With Foxit it says that it "watermarks" the page when you save it. To get around that here is our tip: "Print your page BEFORE you save it" Hee Hee..LOL
PDF-Exchange Viewer
As explained on the free download you can mark up pages, add comments and annotations and it has where you can use typewriter mode.
Go here for PDF-Exchange Viewer Look toward the bottom for this to link you to the free download "PDF-XChange Viewer (Free)"
File Hippo - Adobe Reader
Adobe Reader has pretty much been the reader of choice and it still remains good.
But have you ever wished you hadn't updated to a "newer and improved" version of Adobe?
Remember --I think it was on the Adobe 7.0 version it had a "typewriter button" so that you could fill in your documents? If you want that older version again, File Hippo has the older versions of Adobe. Yippee.. Go here to download older versions of Adobe. Create A PDF
Cute PDF
Turn your documents into pdf so that you can share with others.
Equal to Publisher
Page Plus SE version
Desktop Publishing software.
No sense in paying for all that fancy software when a wonderful version is free to use to create all your pages and minibooks for lapbooking and notebooking. I think it is just as good as Publisher and I have Publisher and use it too. It would have been nice to know about this before I purchased my software.
Equal to Photoshop
Paint Net
Free Image Editing software but it DOES use layers unlike a lot of the free image editing downloads.
Paint Net in my opinion is just as easy to use as Photoshop for your pictures . It is what we use on this site and we LOVE it! Lol
Homeschool Record Keeping
Also, look at the Curriculum Planner page for a free dated lesson planner and some more links.
Free Homeschool Record Keeping Program
Homeschool Tracker Basic Edition lets you plan,manage and reschedule lesson assignments. You can keep track of attendance and so much more. The basic edition is free, the plus edition does cost.
Sometimes we prefer paper lesson planning and we have forms for you to use for FREE on ourcurriculum planner page.
Free Voiced Reader
Natural Reader
Natural Readers turns written text into spoken word. This is good for books that are on Internet Explorer and for anybody that likes to be read to or to just listen.
Educational Games
Free Games
If you have any math phobic children like us, then they will thank you for one of the best multiplication games we have seen and used. We agree with the reviews! Our children beg us to play this too.
Free On-line Storage
Windows Live Sky Drive
We know there are numerous sites but we like the Windows Live Sky Drive. It gives you 25GB of space. You can share with friends or set the settings to where nobody but you see what you store. We like to use this to back up our files onto. I don't think anything is "fail-safe" but we trust this a lot more than the others since it's Windows.
Go here to set up your storage
