Did you know Wichita has a wealth of free educational resources homeschoolers can use? While many were intended for teachers in public or private schools, most of these free resources may be adaptable for your homeschool lesson plans.
Most of Wichita’s museums and other educational organizations have educational resources online and are easily accessible to anyone who wants to use them in combination with their visits.
Wichita Homeschooling Resources
These resources are fantastic for anyone who wants to learn. I did not homeschool, so I’m not familiar with curricula or Kansas homeschool requirements. I just wanted to share some of the resources I’m aware of for parent educators in Wichita because there are so many of them and they’re almost all free or cheap!
Your local Libray
Wichita Public Library is no doubt one of the best resources in town. Click HERE for all their activities and classes
Wichita Public Library Offer: Stam to Go! Kits
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- Money, Math, and Economics kit
- Math Games and Trivia kit
- Machines and contraptions kit
- Green energy kit
- Food and Nutrition kit
- Flowers and unicorn kit
- Dinosaur kit
- Arts and Crafts creative kit
- Click HERE to see the full list
Kansas 4-H
You don’t have to be a member of 4-H to benefit from some of its educational resources, like its newly developed Clover Classroom.
Click HERE for FREE Projects and lessons
Old Cowtown Museum
Before you visit Cowtown, go to oldcowtown.org and click on the Education tab to peruse the materials available. Print them ahead of time to get the most out of your visit. Cowtown has educational materials for so many interests/education levels it would be ridiculous for me to try to list them all her. Their downloadable materials are designed to support different topics, so that may help you narrow down the ones you want.
Great Plains Nature Center
The Great Plains Nature Center offers checkout boxes (for free) for teachers on a variety of subjects, including facts about Kansas. Link here The GPNC also offers free pocket guides about nature and wildlife in the region. These can be found in the Owl’s Nest Gift Shop inside the nature center.
Museum of World Treasures
MOWT offers FREE admission for teachers, including homeschool teachers (bring some kind of identification). You will find a wide array of topics supported by a visit to this crazy awesome and eclectic museum. The name – Museum of World Treasures – is not a misnomer and is probably the best way to sum up what you’ll see there, but here are a few: natural history, ancient civilizations, military history, Hollywood memorabilia, American history… There’s more, but you get the idea.
- Homeschool teachers may receive free general admission any day when presenting an HSLDA card or documentation as a non-accredited state school. (Pricing may vary for educational programming.)
- Homeschool co-ops can request group tours at our school group rates ($6 programming fee for children old enough to participate, free for teachers). See our Field Trips page for more details.
- Each September, we offer a Homeschool Family Day when all admission is $6.
Kansas Aviation Museum
The Kansas Aviation Museum has done a lot of work to become a fantastic educational resource for aviation, science, math, and aviation history. They offer group tours for both youth and adults, educational activities, student and scout experiences, and the popular Little Aviators program for younger kids. Visit the Education Overview page on the website for more information about what’s available.
Klausmeyer Farm in Clearwater, KS
Best known now for its fun pumpkin patch and sunflower fields, Klausmeyer is a working dairy farm in Clearwater, KS and has been offering field trips for years and years. Check with them to see if you can get a homeschool group together for a field trip, or visit when they’re open to the public in July and October. There’s a Klausmeyer Dairy Farm website, but they update the Klausmeyer Facebook page more regularly.
The Wichita WATER Center
The Wichita WATER Center has items available for checkout. Discovery Boxes contain curriculum guides, hands-on materials, storybooks and more. Family Adventure Packs contain storybooks, investigation tools, and activities custom-designed for the WATER Center trails.
Other local places that may offer homeschooling resources:
- Exploration Place – STEM
- Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum – local history
- Firefighters Museum
- Kansas Sports Hall of Fame
- Botanica
- Lake Afton Observatory
- K-State Research & Extension Center
- Wichita Public Library – too obvious? Your library card not only gets you access to the print resources housed in the physical library branch buildings but to an enormous cache of databases, scholarly articles, etc.
Motherhood on a Dime has some really fun and budget-friendly Kansas Day projects for kids.
