creativity

Fun-Schooling & “The Let Them Theory”: A Perfect Match

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / Leave a comment

As a mother of 15 and the creator of Fun-Schooling, I’ve spent decades helping families embrace a natural, joy-filled approach to learning. Recently, as I’ve been reading The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins and listening to her podcast, I realized just how deeply her philosophy aligns with what I’ve been teaching through Fun-Schooling for years.

For me it started on the day I woke up, a homeschool mom of eight who was worn out micromanaging their education and depressed because there was no joy. So I said, “Today I will just say YES to whatever they want to do.” I had created a beautiful environment for learning, but curriculum was boring, limiting and too much work for me. I was drained and wanted to enjoy being a mom while homeschooling. I told my kids, “We are going to Fun-School today”. It was amazing. The learning that happened amazed me, and the joy set us all free.

Mel’s Let Them theory is about releasing control, allowing people to make their own choices, and letting go of the urge to micromanage. Fun-Schooling is based on the same principle—letting children study what they love, explore their passions, and skip the boring, outdated schoolwork that kills curiosity. Instead of forcing learning through rigid, one-size-fits-all curriculums, we let kids take the lead, trusting their natural desire to grow, explore, and create.

Here are ten ways Fun-Schooling and The Let Them Theory are a perfect match:

Let Them Learn What Excites Them

Mel Robbins encourages us to let people pursue their own interests, even if we don’t understand them. Fun-Schooling follows this same logic: if a child is obsessed with horses, let them dive deep into everything horse-related—biology, history, art, business, and storytelling—all through their passion.

Let Them Skip the Boring Stuff

Traditional education forces kids to memorize facts they’ll never use, leading to burnout and frustration. But what if we let them skip what doesn’t spark their curiosity? In Fun-Schooling, we trust that when a child is deeply engaged, they’ll develop the skills they need naturally.

Let Them Make Mistakes

Mel emphasizes that people learn best through their own experiences. Fun-Schooling embraces this truth—kids don’t need to get everything “right” the first time. They need freedom to experiment, fail, and try again without fear of judgment.

Let Them Go at Their Own Pace

Not every child learns on the same timeline, just like adults don’t all hit milestones at the same time. Fun-Schooling allows kids to develop skills when they’re ready, not when a curriculum says they should.

Let Them Create Instead of Conform

Mel Robbins challenges us to step away from people-pleasing and embrace individuality. Fun-Schooling does the same by giving kids the space to create, imagine, and build rather than just regurgitate facts.

Let Them Follow Their Curiosity

We trust that adults will figure things out when they’re interested in something—why don’t we extend that same trust to children? Fun-Schooling encourages kids to chase their curiosity, knowing that a self-motivated learner will always go further than a forced one.

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Early Education: A Playground for Real-World Skill Development

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / Leave a comment

In our family of 15, we don’t view k-12 education merely as a stepping stone to college. Our kids don’t even know what “grade” they are in half the time.

Instead of focusing on traditional academics, we see childhood as an exciting opportunity for our kids to begin crafting real-world skills centered around their passions.

As a homeschooling mom I get to create an environment for learning that inspires each child in the pursuit of their unique dream or calling, while exploring fulfilling options for a career.

Ages 2-5
From the outset, we introduce our kids to stories of passionate people who never give up, do great things and solve problems in the world. We are laying the groundwork for a life where work and calling intertwine. We love to read about people and find out about the jobs of the people we meet, from the high call of being a mommy or daddy, to the world-shaping influence of authors, political figures, heroes, artists and inventors.

I remember when my son Joseph was five, when he would meet someone new he would say “Hi, my name’s Joseph, I’m a scientist. What are you?”

Ages 6-9
We help our children to start a tiny business and engage with the world in ways that spark creativity and entrepreneurship.

  • Isaac’s bracelet-making and sword crafting were not just about making money but about igniting his creative and business acumen.
  • Leah, Ember, and Lilly’s craft sales at festivals were lessons in art, economics, and teamwork.
  • Rachel’s book reselling taught her about value, negotiation, and her love for literature.
  • Esther’s bath salts business combined chemistry with marketing, all while following her interests.

Ages 9-12
We deepen their engagement with their passions:

  • Providing resources like an aviary for Laura who is passionate about birds or a piano for Joseph who is gifted in music – these gifts allow them to live their passions daily.
  • We emphasize learning by doing, ensuring that education is not abstract but connected to real-life applications. Why learn something from a book when you can do it in real life? As homeschoolers we are not limited by the walls of a classroom!

Ages 13-20
Here, we move from exploration to mastery:

  • Investing in their vision on their 13th birthday We provide them with real tools to build their dreams, whether they lead to a career or a calling.
  • Skills taught are those they’ll use in their chosen paths, like marketing, leadership, or specialized knowledge.
  • We limit distractions to keep their focus on what truly excites and fulfills them. No phones until they are ready to run a business that requires it. They have to pay for their own phone, and we parents put filters on the device to keep the kids safe and productive.

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Turning Home Into the Epicenter of Human Life

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / Leave a comment

My house is a place of creativity, innovation, technology, tradition, beauty, art, music, good food, and education. Fun comes first!
As the one who organizes and orchestrates the events and environment for over a dozen children and an adventurous husband, I’ve embraced an opportunity to throw out the common uses of the rooms in my house.
Most houses were designed to serve as a place of relaxation and comfort for hardworking couples, and school age children. As a homeschooling mom and home-based entrepreneur I began to rethink the way Americans use their homes.
I saw the impractical design of a home as an opportunity to transform the underutilized living spaces into something far more useful and exciting.

What It Looks Like
Our kitchen is now a “Science Kitchen” and a place for fermenting, cooking classes, experiments, a place for making body-care products, and for inventing new remedies and recipes. In the past our kitchen was a birth center, where a few of our kids were born!
Our living room is a lending library and music room where family and friends gather to create music together and to read, share and borrow books. Our living room is also a place where children can play with puzzles and puppets. Sometimes it becomes a church, where we gather daily for Bible stories, worship and prayer.
Our dining room serves the usual purpose of a space for family meals, often squeezing two dozen of us around three tables! But often we set up the space as an Art and Game cafe! Watercolors, beads, and rubber stamps await the touch and imagination of creative kids. We added a coffee bar with three espresso machines and a beautiful assortment of ceramic mugs and flavored syrups. During the week the tables are used as a school space for my five or six youngest kids.

The nook attached to the kitchen is a tearoom, with a DIY tea making station complete with about twenty healing blends of loose leaf teas made from herbs, flowers and spices which were grown in our garden, foraged from our woods and meadows, and imported from around the world. On our recent trips to Italy, Greece and Israel we searched for local blends to bring home and recreate.
The media room in the basement is a Preschool Paradise – even though our youngest child is nine. We fill my house with young moms who have little ones every chance we get.
Our office is a studio of creativity, design, publishing, and relaxation for myself and my team of collaborators who often drop in to work on projects with me.
Our garage is a charging station for two Teslas and a Cybertruck. It is also a gym for my kids who are into fitness and bodybuilding, and another part of the garage is a pottery and jewelry making studio. My husband has a workshop in yet another section of the garage.
Half of the old barn has been renovated into a DIY creative space for neighborhood homeschoolers, complete with a Lego city, shelves full of games, a small stage, and loads of art supplies. The other half of the barn serves as an art studio for our daughters who are studying oil painting and drawing. The space also includes the set for a podcast studio.

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How AI Can Make Us All Feel Like 1950s Housewives

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / Leave a comment

In every era of rapid technological advancement, humanity faces a crossroads. Today, as AI and robotics threaten to replace human labor on an unprecedented scale, we are confronted with deep questions: What will happen to our jobs, our purpose, and our value? How will we spend our time, our energy, and our lives?

This isn’t the first time we’ve faced such a dilemma. A striking parallel existed in the 1950s when household technologies revolutionized daily life. Tasks that had once demanded weeks of effort—gardening, raising meat and eggs, canning food, sewing clothing—were suddenly replaced by mass production and modern appliances. The washing machine, refrigerator, vacuum cleaner, and telephone transformed the role of the housewife, freeing up vast amounts of time.

For many women, this was both liberating and disorienting. The work that once defined their survival and value within the family became unnecessary. They were no longer the primary producers of food and clothing, and their contribution shifted. Many entered the workforce or turned to consumerism and leisure.

But this “freedom” came with unforeseen consequences. Fast-forward 75 years, and we see a society grappling with obesity, mental health crises, loneliness, and fractured families. The very technologies that promised to make life easier have left many people without a sense of challenge or purpose.

Now, as AI advances at breakneck speed, we are entering a new era of disruption. Entire industries may be transformed or rendered irrelevant. What will happen when robots and technology handle most of the tasks that once filled our days? Will humans—like the 1950s housewives—find themselves with too much time, too little purpose, and no meaningful challenges?

Humans need to be challenged. We thrive on purpose, on working hard for something that matters, and on the satisfaction of overcoming obstacles. If AI takes over the bulk of our work, the question is not “What will we do with our time?” but rather, “How will we use it meaningfully?”

Click here to consider some answers to these questions, and discover some actionable points for you and your family.

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Do You Have a Super-Creator?

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / 1 Comment

Two of my kids are Super-Creators. They seem incapable of learning anything directed by another person, unless they need the information to help them in their creative pursuit.

SUPER-CREATORS have a powerful mental image of what they want to create and their life quest is to create it. Anything that gets in the way of the creative process turns into a struggle and is seen as a threat to the Super-Creator’s quest. Some have projects that will be completed in a day, while some take years and never lose focus.

They imagine the end result in great detail, and they seem to work backwards to bring the concept into reality to match the vision. Often the imagined creation is something far beyond their skills and abilities. If they are leaders, they will enlist others to fill in their gaps or show them how to overcome obstacles. They are not intimidated by the dream as long as they feel supported.

Super-Creators have no time or energy for anything they feel is irrelevant to their quest. They are very focused on the task and very distracted and even slothful when a parent or teacher tries to divert their attention. If the parent gets on board with the project and just responds to the needs of the child… and does not try to take over…results can be out of this world!

We have a habit in our culture of trying to make Super-Creators into respectful and obedient students, thinking we are teaching “discipline”, and we destroy who God created them to be. Super-Creators are rare and, if you have one, consider yourself to be entrusted with a rainbow unicorn!

Who else has a Super-Creator?

What questions do you have? What victories have you experienced?

Here are some journals to help inspire your Super-Creator!

Making the Ordinary Extraordinary

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / 1 Comment
Shot from Olive Branch Farm, courtesy of Toni Jackson-Lawrence

I try to infuse beauty and creativity into the simple things of life wherever I am, when we have little or much. It’s all about seeing the ordinary and everyday things as opportunities for wonder, spice, faith and shared delight.

In 2010, a realtor came to look at the house we are moving from, she said we need paint over all the murals because people want ordinary houses to imagine their own ordinary lives in.

Some people are talented with paints and pencils, others craft with words, still others are creative in providing memorable experiences. Truly, anyone can make the ordinary extraordinary–because what makes life beautiful are the people, the shared moments and smiles, baby giggles, the love and learning, the music, making and experimenting, time in worship, perhaps some furry cuddles, investing time in doing things together…and maybe a sweet treat or two!

Join us for about 5 minutes with the Brown family on a rainy day over a decade ago. The same things that made life feel magical back then still create the same wonder today!

Sarah’s Mom Tips: Don’t Fear a “Learning Gap”

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / 4 Comments

Don’t be afraid of learning gaps.

Kids don’t need to learn everything.

Kids need to know HOW to learn what they need when they need it.

Sometimes we fear learning gaps, but if a child knows HOW to research there will be no permanent holes because the child will be capable of learning on the go.

There is no way to prepare a child for what life and the economy will look like when they are adults.

Today’s standardized education is already behind.

It is research skills, creativity, character and resourcefulness that will insure potential for successful adult life.

Thinking Tree focuses on life skills, thinking skills, planning skills, being innovative, being creative, being resourceful, great character development, having excellent research skills, reading and writing skills and a strong work ethic. These things are NOT usually part of a standardized curriculum plan. You may worry that your kids will not be on grade level; but the skills that matter most are often overlooked and undervalued.

How Your Child Thinks: Visual Thinkers (Part 2)

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / 3 Comments

children who are visual or creative thinkers

My child has a totally different way of seeing the world! He thinks in 3D Pictures.

Stop for a moment and look up from your computer. All around you are things that were designed by someone. Even the webpage in front of you was designed. Your computer was designed. The room you are sitting in, and the clothing you are wearing? Everything was designed, and chances are they were designed by a person with the gift of being able to think visually.

Some people are able to imagine something in their minds that has not yet been created. They are able to envision a better way of doing things. They are able to envision an object and change the size, shape and color using the power of the 3D workstation called the imagination. The people who designed the objects all around you were often called bad students, day-dreamers and doodlers. They are the visual thinkers.

Creativity journal for artists, songwriters, poets, writers, dreamers, thinkers

What if your child is a visual thinker? Only 10% of the population has the power to think visually, rather than to think with words. The people with the most powerful of visual minds often have an imbalance when it comes to standardized learning situations. The visual mind swirls with colors, ideas, music, art, and creativity and drives the visual thinker into a state of constant creativity and movement. Standardized systems of learning try to conform the child and make efforts to normalize him through medication, punishment, and control so he will not be a disruption in the classroom.

The visual thinker learns differently, and if you ask me, I would tell you that they can not be taught, they must discover. They struggle with the lifelessness of flat pages, the discomfort of the desk, the buzz of the fluorescent lights, the dullness of flat words on a page, and concepts void of emotion, dimension and wonder. They will ponder the mysteries of measurement and time, but their minds go blank when sitting at a desk staring at repetitive lists of math facts. They create works of art and new inventions from items rescued from the trash can, but can’t hold a pencil correctly when asked to write down their spelling words. They can tell the most amazing stories and their words will take you to far off lands and fill the air with magic and mystery, but if asked to put a sentence on paper, they might just cry. They are brilliant, they are amazing, they are curious and brave… until they are forced to conform to a way of learning designed for children who have no dancing, no questions, no music and no colors in their minds.

The majority of students will be content to follow the instructions, fill in the blanks, and make their lists on paper, but the visual thinker was not created for desks, for charts, for lists, for textbooks, for flash cards, for teachers, or for chalkboards… they would dance on the desk, and challenge the teacher. They would add color to the chart, they would roll up the chart to make a telescope or a musical instrument, they would stack the text books and build houses for invisible people, they would turn the flashcards in to a magic trick and turn the chalkboard into a work of art that belongs in a museum. They are constantly in search of the third dimension, the music and the movement.

Find Part 1 of this series here: How Your Child Thinks (Part 1). Continue to How Your Child Thinks: Inventors (Part 3)

Fun-Schooling: Out with the Old, In with the New!

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / Leave a comment
How to Fun-school

(Be sure to visit the tab on this site entitled “Flip to Fun-Schooling”, which gives lots of detailed information and links.)

Your first step in changing over to Fun-Schooling is to think about what is currently working well, and what current curriculum options and methods are not a good fit for your kids.

Take courage and get rid of all the stressful stuff. Take it out to the car right now, or burn it, or donate it. If your kids really hate it, let them burn it. Celebrate a new beginning and replace everything that didn’t work with Fun-Schooling.

New Fun-Schoolers often need to start with a few of the the smaller more focused journals, or just a Core Journal and stack of library books that the child loves.

The whole goal is to take away what isn’t working and replace it with something that brings your child joy. Some things need to wait, like reading or multiplication. You know these things matter, but your child isn’t ready to master them.  Your child may need an extra year or two to develop the mental skills for certain things. So focus on the skills your child is ready to learn and stop pushing the things that stress the child’s heart and mind.

There are so many wonderful ways to learn, we don’t have to settle for boring or miserable things, just because it’s always been done that way.

Also, celebrate your child’s efforts, talents and small accomplishments. It’s common to just hammer away at the problem areas and make our kids feel like failures. Everyone will have a happier existence if we focus on the good things and not our worries.

No one wants to live under a magnifying glass that is constantly  zeroing in on the flaws, yet that is what traditional education is all about… counting our mistakes and judging us and grading us based on all the imperfections in our work. This is no way to live, or raise a child. This method of education and parenting is the reason most of us to think we will never be good enough because we can’t be perfect.

This is why we don’t have grades and answer keys in Fun-Schooling Journals. They base the child’s education on research, logic, thinking, being resourceful, problem solving, creativity, a quest for knowledge–all based on the child’s passion and career dreams.

My children love learning because it’s a quest for the mystery of knowledge, power, understanding, beauty, skills, and invention. Learning something brings each of us closer to unlocking an ability or solving a mystery.

Remember when your child was four or five and they were so curious about EVERYTHING that they asked you 900 questions a day? Traditional schooling snuffs out that curiosity. Fun-Schooling nurtures it.

Bring back the wonder, the joy, the curiosity. It’s time.