Julie Naturally
natural self-reliance for Christians
Do you live with piles of papers, toys, clothes, and other clutter scattered around your home? Ever feel uncomfortable or anxious because of it? If you want to have lasting peace and calm in your life, it’s super important to stop ignoring the negative effects of clutter. Research about the relationship between clutter and stress …
Lately, I’ve seen lots of folks hoarding toilet paper and paper towels, rice, beans, hand sanitizer, and ramen noodles (huh?). You might think all these folks were stocking a prepper pantry. But, if they were true preppers, they’d already have what they need. Preppers don’t wait for something bad to happen. They know that bad …
I love Jesus, I love supporting small businesses and artisans, and I would love to have the Holy Land experience. However, I can’t afford a trip like that, so I do the next best thing. The Holy Land comes to me in a quarterly subscription box from Artzabox. This time, I got to experience the …
Some of my favorite stealth learning tools are educational games. I have shelves full of them for almost every subject, too. But, most of them are language arts resources and geography and living history resources. I tend to buy kits and manipulatives for science and math. Recently, I discovered a new game to add to …
Even though there are many Christian homeschooling companies offering great products, sometimes Christians might want a secular homeschool option with a neutral stance. There are several possible reasons for this. For an unschoolish mom like me, I like living books. Sometimes I appreciated the convenience of a living books curriculum rather than DIY it. However, …
Because we unschool, there really isn’t a school year, per se. However, opportunities open up in the summer–especially for teens–that aren’t available September through May. So, sometimes I have had to take that into account when planning our learning goals for the year. And while the older ones took advantage of these opportunities, I had …
As an unschoolish family, we like to use a variety of resources. Sometimes, we use online homeschool lessons and sometimes we use more analog type living history resources or language arts resources. But, even though I know better by now (I have been doing for 20 years…), I still sometimes worry about knowledge gaps. It …
Have you ever felt like your prayer life was a bit stale? Or, have you struggled to teach your kids creative ways to pray to develop their relationship with the Lord? I know I have. I have tried creative worship ideas to bring new life to praising the Lord. But other than prayer journals, guided …
Homeschooling offers the flexibility to take the summer off, homeschool year round, or switch it up and try some free homeschool products and camps in the summer. After all, summertime is a great time to experiment while keeping kids busy. We did a lot of that when my kids were younger. I liked to take …
I feel that historical timeline figures are an important part of a living history approach to homeschooling. Even in an unschooling home like ours, they really help kids understand the flow of events. I mean, if one day you’re learning about spacecraft and the next day, you’re looking up Roman columns, you need some context, …
These days, everyone seems to know how to start homeschooling, even people who have never homeschooled! For example, public school textbook companies turned homeschool curriculum providers tell parents to use their books. Virtual charter schools invite parents to sign up and shell out a few thousand dollars for their homeschool help. But, a vibrant homeschooling …
I know, I know. There’s no one right way to homeschool. But, I will argue that there is a right way and a wrong way to homeschool pre-K and preschool. To me, preschool encompasses three and four-year-olds and pre-K is the year immediately before Kindergarten. As an unschooler, I feel that homeschooling preschool mostly means …
As an unschooling mom, a literature-based approach using the best living books I could find seemed like an awesome idea. I admit, though, that I did add in educational videos, crafts and other hands-on projects, field trips, and other teaching tools. But, the one thing I pretty much avoided was textbooks. Even for math. I …
As an unschoolish mom, I like to take advantage of online learning platforms that offer interest-based courses for kids and teens. In fact, some of these platforms offer alternatives to college education you may not have considered. And, for younger kids, you may have heard of Outschool. We tried that platform for a few classes, …
Recently, I learned that one of my favorite homeschool curriculum providers, Mr. D Math, just published a new book, TEACH by Dennis Dinoia. I had to take a look because I’ve talked with Dennis personally and we have a lot in common. We’ve talked a couple of times about troubleshooting in homeschooling and about self-directed …
As a person who always got picked last for gym class, I grew up dreading sports. I had poor eye hand coordination and struggled to connect my hand with any moving object smaller than a beach ball. It took me for-ev-er to learn coordinated movements, such as sophisticated choreography. But, I loved to move and …
I’ve always felt that typing is an essential job skill, even though I wasn’t very enthusiastic when my mother made me take it in high school. The problem is that it’s just kind of there and that means that learning to type is often boring. All you do is sit there staring at the screen, …
When I was in high school, one of the electives I took was economics for high schoolers. I remember the law of supply and demand as a key part of macro-economics. Even though a lot of it was a bit dry, my favorite part was pretending to invest in the stock market. We selected and …
Earth Day is an opportunity to exercise good stewardship and show kids how to care for the planet God gave us. But, you want to use fun Earth Day activities that are easy for kids to do. We want kids to learn the importance of plants, the benefits of the outdoors, and develop a real …
When my older children were teens, I spent a LOT of money on dissection specimens and chemistry lab equipment. I still have some of that equipment, but not the chemicals. I remember the time and mess involved in doing homeschool science labs myself. Sometimes, I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing, even …
One of my favorite ways to teach math is with games, especially free math games for kindergartners. In the old days, we used file folder games or a book like Games for Math by Peggy Kaye to create homemade games for practicing math facts. Now, there’s Beast Academy Playground from Beast Academy. A friend of …
Have you ever felt like you were missing something when you tried planning your homeschool around learning styles and multiple intelligences? Have you ever chosen curriculum because it was visual and engaged your child’s visual-spatial and nature intelligences? And then, when he still struggled to do the work, you got frustrated? I have. This has …
I raised a son and a daughter with ADHD. In addition, my younger son shows signs of mild ADHD and/or Asperger’s and my other daughter has an Asperger’s diagnosis. After trying a curriculum-based approach for a couple of years, I hit a wall. It just wasn’t working and I almost gave up homeschooling altogether. But …
Are you stumped for strewing ideas to inspire new interests in your kids? Need some boredom busters that don’t bust the printer or the bank? Here are some of my tried and true sources of ideas, in addition to using nature to inspire new interests. See if some of these might get your child excited …
