Julie Naturally
healthy, natural living for Christians
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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
Every year, my church has Missionary Christmas and they invite one of our missionaries to come and speak about Christian missions. It’s wonderful to see slide shows and hear about the impact they are having in Taiwan, Germany, India, and even in remote northern Canada. There is always an invitation to the congregation to be …
If you’ve some of my other posts, you probably know that I don’t advocate giving prizes for Bible memory. I had very bad experiences with teaching my kids about God’s Word whenever prizes were involved. What worked the best was talking about my own testimony and how God has worked in my life. The second …
When my children were smaller, we belonged to a different church. In that church, one of the congregants was deaf. So, an interpreter stood at the front of the church each Sunday, signing what the pastor said. It fascinated me to watch her hands move and her face change as she helped the deaf person …
When my oldest children were younger (they are adults now), I incorporated many different educational experiences into their homeschool. These sometimes included computer games. At that time, it was things like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Reader Rabbit, Clue Finders, and Zoombinis. Nowadays, those games are not readily available and everything is online, …
Recently, I tried making a list of kids life skills that all homeschoolers need to teach. I wanted to help unschoolers focus on what’s important since we tend to do things more organically. As I began making my list and doing some research, I came across the Life Hacks Series from Hess UnAcademy. Wow! She …
One skill that every student should learn is typing. I can’t think of any situation where you don’t need fast and accurate typing. Doesn’t everyone pretty much use a computer keyboard for work, school, and leisure these days? What better way to learn than through free typing games! I wish this option had been available …
