Journal Themes

Fun-Schooling with Food | November Journals On Sale Now!!!

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / 1 Comment

This month, is all about food!!

Scroll to the bottom to find the sales!

Cooking, baking, and growing your own- we’re covering all things food journals this month.

Food Journals

We believe teaching children to cook is a crucial life skill. And in the Fun-Schooling community, we have lots of amazing chefs. It’s been our joy to create several food-based journals for your children to enjoy. The links below will take you to peek inside videos so you can see exactly what’s in these wonderful journals.

  • Adventures Around the World– Learn about culture, history, and yes- food- for over two dozen countries.
  • Garden Research Handbook– The essential guide for maintaining a thriving garden. This is one of our most in-depth research journals yet.
  • The Baker’s Fun-Schooling Journal– Perfect for students majoring in baking or who want to hone their skills a bit more.
  • The Chef’s Fun-Schooling Journal– A core journal for Chef’s of all ages and stages. This has become a popular Mom School journal too.
  • Smoothie Time– Math, Home Economics, Nutrition, and Smoothies!! Students will make over a dozen smoothies and gain skills to be more comfortable in the kitchen at the same time.
  • Wilderness Adventure Handbook– Students will learn about foraging for wild edibles and how to survive outdoors.
  • Yum-School– Make 15 different dessert recipes with visual instructions. Perfect for introducing students to cooking and honing skills in experienced cooks. Includes guides for adapting recipes based on allergies and dietary needs.

ON SALE

Paperbacks & E-Books – up to 30% off

PDFs – up to 50% off

What questions do you have about Fun-Schooling and cooking?

What resources are your students (or you) using alongside these journals?

Help other moms out and let us know in the comments.

Fun-Schooling Fashion, Arts, and Culture | October Journals on Sale Now!!!

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / Leave a comment

This month, we’re talking about Fun-Schooling Fashion, Arts, and Culture.

Scroll to the bottom to find the sales!

Homeschooling fashion design is a subject many Fun-Schoolers are interested in

Fashion

We have four journals about homeschooling Fashion. Students will have plenty of chances to design their own clothing in all of these journals. For students who are really serious about fashion design, consider the PDF versions so they can have more blank forms to fill in.

  • The World Wide Fashion School– travel the world and learn about fashion and culture in over a dozen countries
  • Time Travel History – Fashion Dreams– Explore how fashion changed from 1800 to 2030.
  • Design a Dress– Create 75 different outfits!
  • DIY Fashion Design– Our most flexible fashion journal. Full of blank pages to make notes and design items. Students also love to use this as a portfolio by pasting in photos of fashion items they’ve sewn. (currently out of print, any of our other “DIY journals” are the same inside

Find them at https://www.funschooling.com/homeschooling-with-fashion

Arts

There is no wrong way to Fun-School the Arts!

We incorporate art into all of our journals and think art is a critical piece to learning. For our discussion it is visual art, music, theater, and dance- I also include writers as artists & creators!

We have several arts journals, here are some of our most popular-

Culture

Easily travel the world and other cultures from the comfort of your own home

Our journals make it easy to introduce your child to people and cultures around the world. We have dozens of options to help your family do just that. Here are a few of them-

  • Book of Dance– 40 types of modern and traditional dance worldwide.
  • World Tour– Students study an animal, instrument, and country for each letter of the alphabet.
  • Adventures Around the World– Learn about life, people, nature, inventions, historic events, cool places and unique attributes of dozens of different countries.
  • Travel Dreams: 30 Fascinating Cities–  This book leads you on a scavenger hunt though each city as you imagine planning your trip to each place.

Join our private Facebook Group to check out a Peek Inside of 12 of this month’s theme journals-

ON SALE

Paperbacks & E-Books – 15_% off

PDFs – 50% off

BOGO

We have several codes for Buy One Get one FREE through October 12th. Find all the details here

What questions do you have about Fun-Schooling fashion, culture, and the arts?

What resources are your students (or you) using alongside these journals?

Help other moms out and let us know in the comments.

Best Homeschooling Hack!

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / 1 Comment

Mom’s Best Homeschooling Hack! Many moms wear their kids out by teaching too many subjects! “Seven a day keeps the sceptics away!” Oh no! Please stop!

It’s a good idea to combine many subjects into one learning time to save your sanity! Instead of segregating all the subjects into different courses, try this multi-subject learning trick.

For example, let’s talk about United States Geography. Sounds boring? Not at all! It’s a vast topic!

Were not just looking at maps! When you dig deep into each state you will unearth every subject in a fun and natural way! You will easily cover History and Social Studies at the same time, when you learn about each State! But wait! There is so much more.

Your children will remember more of what they learn with this method, and you will save a lot of time and energy.

You can use YouTube videos and library books to learn everything and create your own unit study! It’s free! Make it more interesting by talking to a travel agent!

Organize your own curriculum with a cute notebook, or use a Thinking Tree Geography Journal that covers multiple subjects. That’s the easy way!

You can even add science and math to the USA studies by learning about plants, animals and ecosystems in each state. Study a favorite animal or person from each state. Plan a trip!

Kids can look at all the statistics, records, timelines, and dig into a bit of local economics of each state and cover math.

They can add cooking to the mix too! Home economics!

Why not study the art and inventions of each state too?

What about careers? What about politics? Don’t forget local literature! While you are at it learn to spell words related to each location.

I think that geography is the best subject to focus on when you want to cover every subject with efficiency!

But at our house, we are Fun-Schoolers, so we don’t call it geography. We call it Travel Dreams! It’s so easy with Thinking Tree! We studied Hawaii together–all about sea turtles, surfing, arranging tropical flowers and planning torch-lit native parties!

It’s so fun.

The Thinking Tree offers four Geography Journals for you to enjoy! They also last a long time. Each book can last one to four years depending on how long you take to study each part of the world. Kids of all ages can use the same book!

How to do it:

We think that it works best to study the United States in Elementary School, the Seven Amazing Continents in Middle School, and 30 Fascinating Cities during Highschool.

🙂 Seven Amazing Continents – Travel Dreams Geography – The Thinking Tree: World Geography & Social Studies The Creative Research Handbook for Library & Internet Based Learning

🙂 United States – Geography, History and Social Studies Handbook: Do-It-Yourself Homeschooling

🙂 Travel Dreams Fun-Schooling Journal: 30 Fascinating Cities – An Adventurous Approach to Geography & Social Studies

If you are in Canada look for our Canada Geography Handbook on Amazon.

Canada – Geography, History and Social Studies Handbook: Do-It-Yourself Homeschooling Our Great Country The Thinking Tree

Celebrating Science & Technology

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / Leave a comment

The Fun-Schooling theme for July is Science & Technology! Keep an eye out for sales on your favorite Fun-Schooling science journals!

Our 7 Subject Science Portfolio – Minecraft & The Real World is one of our best sellers, and covers Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Meteorology, Physics, Technology and Zoology! Here is a review from Amazon:

“This is one of our favorite fun schooling journals! This is an all in one science portfolio which means your student will study various topics in science and compile a portfolio of all of their best work. This includes a section on botany, chemistry, geology, meteorology, physics, technology, and zoology. Once you’ve chosen your books that you’re going to read there are pages for summarizing your reading time, copy work, designing your science topic in Minecraft world, notetaking and illustration prompts, documentary reviews, diagrams, science experiments and observations, comic strip pages, vocabulary building prompts, Real world versus Minecraft world, coloring, geography and history, biography studies, audiobook time, nature study and drawing, biography studies, audio book summaries, AND occupation studies! What more can I ask for in a Science Funschooling Journal! I’m getting one for every child! Over 250 pages to show your research.”

Shop for physical Fun-Schooling science journals on Amazon here. Find a list of all of our themes for 2023 here. Some science PDFs that are discounted right now:

How Do Unit Studies Work with Fun-Schooling?

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / 1 Comment

Unit Studies…

  • A deep dive into a topic/interest
    • Can be based on an animal, nature topic, hobby, interest, book, place, person- anything really!
  • Combine multiple educational subjects into the same topic
    • For example, a unit study on horses might look like:
    • Math- calculating horse speed, stride, distance, stats, etc for racing horses. Managing a budget for horse feed and equipment. (lots you can do with horse math!)
    • Science- horse biology
    • Social studies- horses around the world, how horses are used in different cultures/communities, horses throughout history
    • Language Arts- read a classical book about horses, do copywork on horses, learn to spell horse-related words
  • Multiple ages can work together on the same unit study with age-appropriate materials for each subject
  • Students can also work individually on a unit study
  • Great for students who tend to get “sucked into” a subject
  • Goes well with our idea of choosing a major https://funschoolingwithsarah.com/?s=major
  • Can last as long as you’d like- a day, week, term, month, or even an entire school year!
  • An easy way to combine elements from multiple educational approaches/methods (see the comments below for links to the other educational approaches we’ve covered)
  • How do I set up a unit study?
    • Start with a Fun-Schooling journal based on what your child wants to learn about- or a blank core journal or Master Class if we don’t have a themed journal on the subject
    • We’ll talk about this more on the 21st- information below

How do you set up a Fun-Schooling Unit study? Make sure to join the main Fun-Schooling group, and then click below to watch!

Fun-Schooling Themes for 2023!

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / 2 Comments
JANUARY
FEBRUARY
MARCH
APRIL
MAY
JUNE
JULY
AUGUST
SEPTEMBER
OCTOBER
NOVEMBER
DECEMBER

Make sure you never miss out on special sales, coupons, and giveaways this year as we feature journals for these themes in the coming year! Join us in our Mom’s Homeschooling Support Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/FunSchoolingwithThinkingTreeBooks/

January- Language Arts

February- Math

March- Animals

April- Social Studies

May- Mom School

June- Core Journals

July- Science/ Technology

August- Back-to-School

September- Minecraft

October- Fashion

November- Cooking & Food

December- Holiday School

Experience Gifts-We’ve Got a Journal for That!

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / Leave a comment

If your kids don’t need one more video game or yet another fashion doll or action figure for Christmas, perhaps you might consider the gift of an experience instead! Click the highlighted words below, which are hyperlinked to some fun options!

Here’s some inspiration:

What unique ideas have you tried?

When Your Children Love the Sea…

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / Leave a comment

When you visit the ocean you can try to understand your place in a bigger story.

The waves keep rolling in, washing away my footprints. The sun rises higher, like it does every day. The tide comes in as usual. The heat rises and falls. The shadows lengthen and shrink.

Are your kids in love with the ocean? You’re in luck! Look at all these beautiful books you can choose from!

See a flip through of our All About Oceans Marine Biology Handbook here: