And here’s my pitch for Scholastic: If you sign up as a homeschooler (which takes a little time and verification by way of phone call from them to see you’re an actual homeschooler and not reseller) then you can place your own orders online. At the start of the school year they do amazing deals, and last fall I got 10x bonus points and for every catalog I ordered from and spent $20 I got $10 extra in credit to use right then PLUS ten more free books (those were pre-selected.) I ordered from 2 or 3 catalogs, getting some little kid books & birthday gifts for older kids along with the Scholastic DVD collection that was on sale. I got enough bonus points from that one order to get a game for C’s birthday that he wanted (a knock off version, granted, not the name brand game) and a father’s day gift for Kit and a clearance Christmas book for St. Nicholas Day, a yoga for kids book, Zen Shorts and Zen Ties AND three copies of one of the kids’ favorite books! They had it on clearance so I got back up copies – Scaredy Squirrel!! (They LOVE that book, as does Kit, it’s really funny.)
So even if you only order ONCE a year and use that order for birthday, holiday, baby & school books then you’ll get an amazing deal and some bonus points to shop with… I cannot believe how many fun books we got! And we’ve gotten literally over 50 books and 8 DVDs plus the game and I think I spent $60 total. For EVERYTHING. My bonus points got me 9 items and their clearance price was $25, it would have been way more at the already cheap Scholastic regular price – and I got it free (including free shipping.)
There are baby books, parenting books, school books of every subject, science kits, puzzles & games, novels, classics, Newberry and Caldecott winners, collections. It’s a dangerously fun site to explore!
Also, if you establish yourself as a homeschooler then friends/family/your co-op can order through your homeschool site as well, which is easy to set up.
Thanks for the reminder! I did this in Florida but haven’t signed up again since then. My only gripe with them, is that I wish they did more hardcover and less paperback. The ratio favors paperbacks and they just don’t hold up long-term. I’ve told myself I will only buy hardcover from now on. I’ll just keep watching Scholastic for the really good deals on those ones. I do love Scholastic though!
I’ve only gotten paperbacks from Scholastic because their hardback prices were comparable or more than what I could find on Amazon. My kids seem to be rough on hardback vs. paperback pretty equally and I figure I would rather replace a $1 paperback than a $10+ hardback. Though we’re also trying to do a lot of training on how to turn pages without tearing them and putting books back in bins or on shelves so they don’t get left on the floor. 🙂 But for the ones we know we’ll want forever, like special birthday books, we get those hardback from Amazon. (Did you hear about the Amazon Mom? Three months of free 2 day shipping on all orders, no sign up fee?)