This week someone reported that they were fraudulently charged for several orders of Fun-Schooling Journals. We took a look the flagged orders and it was obviously that someone had placed several different orders for PDFs and then reported the purchases as fraud. It looked very suspicious.
My husband called the woman on the account, to look into it.
She confessed that her daughter did it. The little girl got on the website, and ordered all the Fun-Schooling Journals she could dream of with her mom’s one click PayPal account.
We thought that was quite funny!!!
You know your you are a Fun-Schooler when your kid hijacks your PayPal account to buy Thinking Tree Books!
Kids LOVE Fun-Schooling, and they LOVE our journals! Come to the main Fun-Schooling group on Facebook to learn just how much passion children and parents alike can have about this approach to homeschooling!
What journal has been your child’s favorite so far? Do you have a favorite Mom-School Journal? Tell us about it (them)!
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.
“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.”
We are celebrating 30 years since the day two young teens admitted they were falling in love and agreed it was a lifetime kinda love.
Josh and I were only 15 and 16. It was July 3, 1993.
Today we got out the old letters and read them to each other. Next we loaded ten kids into the van and went to the fire pit where it happened.
We showed the kids a handful of letters from our teen years, and read them some exerts. Josh told the kids the entire love story from his point of view.
After visiting the beautiful wooded campus, at Horizon Christian Fellowship where we began our journey as a couple, we took the kids to Skyline Chili. This was the first restaurant we went to together (though that happened in Cincinnati). Every kid got a hat.
We finished the adventure at Trader Joe’s where we let each kid choose a treat to share during the Fourth of July fireworks.
What a beautiful celebration of the goodness and faithfulness of God.
Saturday, July 8, from 10am-2pm I’m opening up Olive Branch Farm for a Creative Healing Retreat. The Medical Tea Gardens and Permaculture Zones are their peak. Everything is a bit wild, but even the lush “weeds” have vast healing properties and are ready to process.
What is going to happen? I’m going to have one on one time with each person who shows up to explore the specific benefits the plants and teas can have on your wellness, I’ll also spend time with you individually to brainstorm with you and answer questions about homeschooling or family issues that you may want to talk about.
While I’m having one on one time with each individual or couple or parent/child- the whole property and facilities will be set up for you to be creative, to serve, and to relax. Whatever brings you the most joy. What brings you peace and feels therapeutic? Find a couple hours here for that special time… from reading, swimming, painting pottery, helping with gardening and weeding, making jewelry or watercolors. Bring a camera and practice photography. Spend time with the horses…. Lunch will be provided.
The recommended contribution is $50 or 2 hours of volunteering at Olive Branch Farm.
This is for moms with babies, and for parents with children 9+ who can entertain themselves without getting into trouble. The day is not set up for ages 2.5-8.
All ages are welcome at 2:30pm to volunteer and at 4:30 to swim and relax, no more work!
If two parents come with the kids at 2:30-4:30 you may take turns volunteering and watching your kids swim and play.
Parents must watch their own kids in the pool area. Since we are trying to make this a productive day of cleaning and organizing the facilities it will not be helpful if a zillion kids are free-ranging like they do on co-op days.
Do you have a child or teen ages 8+ interested art, music, dance, singing, voice, painting, improve, YouTubing, costumes, piano & acting?
Time: 11am-5pm
The Olive Branch Arts & Acting Camp would be Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for four weeks in a row starting July 18th.
The cost will be $75 per week. If you sign up for all four weeks the final week is free.
Let me know if you have a child ages 8+ that will be joining us! If I get 10 “yes” responses in the next couple days we will launch the camp.
Dates:
July 18-20
July 25-27
August 1-3
August 8-10
Since the camp is organized around a three day project each week, we can only accept participants who can commit to a three day week. Your kids can come for one week or all four.
Just wondering? Do you ever feel like you don’t fit in with other homeschooling families? Why?
For years I felt like I had to put my girls in long skirts to be accepted at our homeschool food co-op. I felt bad that we were just faking the Amish look, but I wanted to show respect to the other families… turns out a bunch of them were dressing their kids in long dresses cause I was…
No more! Let’s just be who were are. It took a while to embrace the idea that homeschooling doesn’t have a dress code… unless PJs count.
I also thought that to be in the homeschool cool-club I had to grind my own grain, milk my own goat, grow my own watermelon and sew my kids clothing. I also noticed that most of my homeschooling friends had four kids… I only had three… then I had seven, now fifteen! It doesn’t matter what your family size is! It’s all good!
As a family we did some of these things just for the joy of it, and for health reasons, but we don’t all have to grind wheat to be friends. Here is the truth… a lot of homeschoolers eat Lucky Charms and go to Wendy’s.
I thought that “good homeschool moms” teach their kids to read at age 4. That worked with Isaac. But most of my kids are reading around age 9. Isaac never learned multiplication facts! Here is the truth, a lot of homeschoolers have kids that struggle with math or reading.
It was a hard lesson to learn that we don’t have to dress, eat, sew, skin rabbits, and have a zoo pass to be good homeschooling moms. Here’s the truth, a lot of homeschoolers shop at Walmart, and don’t always eat organic. Some do, cool.
Here’s another one: Good homeschool moms have clean houses and wake up before the sun. I make my appearance at 9:30am on most days, and my house looks like a work in progress.
Another tough one to swallow was the idea that unschoolers can’t be Christians. What the heck? I was a closet unschooler!
Do you need to “hang up” any of your hang ups? Hang ’em in the comments, and support each other!
Welcome to Fun-Schooling where it’s okay to try, fail, make a mess, focus on self-care, dump the mom guilt, let kids make mistakes, overlook our flaws, be content to not be perfect, give grace, drink a lot of coffee, hide the chocolate, hack homeschooling, and drop your kid’s phone off a bridge. Whatever, since we will never measure up to the imaginary standards can we just have a good time trying???? We ARE enough!
You can read more of my journey to joy and freedom in my book – Windows to Our World. Click the image below to grab it!
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
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!
I think that having a dream for what they want to become is great for any child. I think it builds confidence when we support that dream. With struggling kids, the goal is having parents partnering with them and collaborating together to start something that the child can gradually take over.
I help them experiment with business ideas on a small scale between ages 5-14. It’s been about age 13-15 that my biological kids have developed a vision for their futures and we can help them begin to build towards those.
Isaac was 13 – we invested in tools and training to be a personal chef, about $1000, at 16 he switched to being a media producer, and we invested another $1000 for internship and basic tools. The next year he put his own $6000 into his media business.
Anna wanted to be a baker at 13, we invested about $200 in her muffin business on an island off Croatia. At 15 she decided to be a singer/songwriter- I paid Isaac and Anna each $100 to produce and publish her first song. The rest is History “His Story” – we later collaborated with dozens of professionals to create a stage musical. At age 22, $7.5 million was invested to launch her project. The first series of shows happened in Texas, probably to tour next. Still figuring that out.
At 13 Esther wanted to be a photographer, she continued with that vision, she saved up money for her first nice camera, and we invested over the years, but by the time she was 17 she was financially independent and now makes thousands per week doing what she loves.
Rachel didn’t know what she wanted to do, she focused on helping Anna. At 16 she sparked an interest in oil painting. We funded a trip to Indiana to get lessons from my mom. We bought her the supplies. She’s been building her portfolio and selling her art ever since. Doing commissions, media art, and online sales.
Naomi is 18, we spent $1000 on her first business when she was 14 to launch a dog accessories business. She used that income to grow the business, buy horses, and start breeding high quality golden retrievers.
My adopted kids need more time, Christina started her first business at 17, making crocheted toys. I spent about $500 on supplies and sent her to visit our dear friends in Texas who have a business in crocheting so she could learn all the foundational skills. She has about 32 toys made and is ready to launch a shop soon.
The goal is for each one to be an expert in their field by age 18, and to have an income source to support themselves.
If they need college to further their goals, they can show a great portfolio, and pay for it themselves.
I don’t really want them to go deep in debt over a degree though. Most kids don’t have a chance to develop their skills and become specialized in anything at a young age, because so much time is taken up on irrelevant things.
Ask God for wisdom for each child, and He will guide you. That could mean teaching toward tests, college, careers, missions, homemaking or anything.
Q- Is Fun-Schooling a Full Curriculum? A- Yes and no. Yes because you can easily cover every required subject with our materials- and all of your electives. No because it’s not a traditional curriculum. We aren’t going to tell you what lessons to do on what days. We don’t tell you what specific books to use or how to guide your days.
We have thousands of Fun-Schooling families and everyone’s school looks different.
Some families use a journal or two to cover a specific subject. Others like to use our journals for electives. While other families Fun-School for every subject.
You’ll combine journals with books, podcasts, documentaries, etc. that correspond to your child’s academic levels. This is how you customize and build your curriculum. A huge age range of kids can use the same journal because each child will use it with different materials.
You can even use our journals alongside boxed curriculum and other more traditional materials.
Some journals, such as Spelling, Math, and Grammar, are more sequential. We’ve been sharing a subject-by-subject breakdown with one subject per month on our blog, private group, and Instagram, Facebook page if you want to check those tips and info out.
We also offer curriculum bundles with a suggested lesson plan and everything you need for an entire school year. Students can go up or down a few grade levels and be just fine so if your student sees a bundle that sparks their interest, go for it! https://www.funschooling.com/all-curriculum-bundles
Seven Amazing Continents – Travel Dreams Geography – The Thinking Tree: World Geography & Social Studies The Creative Research Handbook for Library & Internet Based Learning
