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[Podcast #331] A Slew of Practical Hacks for Your Homeschool

Brave Writer Podcast

Ever have one of those homeschool days when your brain feels completely empty?

We’ve been there too. In this Brave Writer podcast episode, we share a long list of practical, creative hacks that can revive your homeschool when energy is low. From painter’s tape timelines and DIY history games to geocaching adventures, urban walking tours, and quick art projects, we explore simple ways to bring curiosity back into learning.

We also talk about:

  • focus tools,
  • seasonal nature activities,
  • and building systems that make everyday homeschooling run smoothly.

If you need fresh inspiration or a reminder of the good ideas you already have, this conversation is for you. Tune in and start your own “good ideas” list today.

Show Notes

Every homeschooling parent eventually encounters it: the moment when ideas disappear.

Maybe life is busy. Maybe the news feels overwhelming. Maybe you are simply tired. Whatever the cause, there are seasons when creative energy feels low and the homeschool day begins to look flat.

One of the best antidotes is surprisingly simple. Start making a list.

When we sat down recently to brainstorm ideas, what began as a short list of practical homeschooling tricks quickly grew into page after page of small strategies that had helped our families over the years. Many were things we had used so often that we forgot they were clever at all.

That exercise reminded us how powerful small ideas can be.

Simple Tools That Unlock Learning

Some of the most effective homeschool tools are incredibly ordinary.

A strip of painter’s tape on the wall can become a history timeline. Add index cards with events, book covers, or drawings and suddenly history stretches across the living room.

A stack of blank index cards can become a homemade history game. Write events on the front, dates on the back, and challenge each other to place them in chronological order. Because kids help create the cards, they remember the information far more easily.

Even a cookie sheet can become a learning tool. Add magnets and it turns into a portable activity tray for car rides, hospital visits, or quiet moments during read-aloud time.

The point is not fancy materials. The point is flexibility.

Let the World Become Your Curriculum

Some of the richest learning happens outside textbooks.

Geocaching, for example, sends families searching for hidden treasures using GPS coordinates. Along the way you learn local geography, landmarks, and bits of community history.

Urban walking tours offer another doorway. Cities are full of stories if we slow down enough to notice them. Old stairways, public murals, historic buildings, and even the names of streets reveal layers of history beneath everyday life.

When children begin to see their own neighborhood as a place with a story, history suddenly becomes real.

Build Rhythms That Support Focus

A homeschool day runs more smoothly when it balances different kinds of energy.

One framework we love divides tasks into four categories:

  • Focus: deep work such as reading or writing
    Fire: medium tasks that create a sense of accomplishment
  • Fast: quick chores or small jobs
  • Fun: playful breaks that restore energy

Children thrive when both concentration and joy have space in the day.

Music can also help guide transitions. A familiar song can signal cleanup time or reading time without constant reminders.

Tiny Rituals Matter

Small rituals often carry the most meaning.

Planting peas in early spring, reading one poem a day, or keeping a sticker reading journal can become anchors in family life. These activities take only minutes, yet they create continuity and delight.

The deeper lesson is this: education does not always require grand plans.

Sometimes it begins with a scrap of tape on the wall, a handful of seeds, or a single good idea written down in a notebook.

To help you put these ideas into action, here’s the full checklist of practical homeschool hacks we discussed:

  • Adhesive whiteboard that sticks to your wall. Lap-sized whiteboards for math & handwriting practice & general doodling. 
  • Painter’s tape for timelines + write events on index cards and tape to wall.
  • Make-your-own Chronology game (this is an actual card game, but we made our own with index cards).
  • Combine geocaching with local geography & history.
  • Watch urban planning videos — you learn so much about how neighborhoods are constructed!
  • A spin on the above idea — put your own area into the YouTube search bar with “buildings” or “urban planning” or other terms. We’ve been learning about specific Portland buildings & landmarks this way. Also: look up the origin of place names in your area. Great local history!
  • Cookie sheet with magnets for car trips with littles (and other uses).
  • Make a FOCUS-FIRE-FAST-FUN grid for triaging tasks.
  • Pencil sharpening! A little thing that makes a big difference: assign pencil sharpening to a weekly time slot. Get a good sharpener. Also — scissors and tape in every room.
  • Create your own bookmarks. Have the kids do wet-on-wet watercolors and then cut into bookmarks. Leave a stash on every bookcase.
  • Take an afternoon to create playlists for yourselves: one for afternoon tidy-up chores, one for instrumental music while reading, one for songs you play to transition between daily activities, etc.
  • Check out Joshua MacNeill’s book: 101 Brain Breaks & Educational Activities.
  • Have a day for choosing the best squishy stuff for playing with during read alouds – what does each kid like best? Beeswax, Sculpey, modeling clay, silly putty, playdough, wiki stix. Make the texture exploration an activity by itself.
  • With spring coming — plant some peas & sweet peas! An old custom in some regions was to plant your peas on St Patrick’s Day. They like cold soil. Cheap, easy activity for rapid payoff.
  • Decorate by cutting out frames from black card stock, stick to clear contact paper, make designs out of pieces of tissue paper. Easy holiday window decor.
  • Look up local foraging groups. Might be able to join a walk & learn about edible plants.
  • Learn about wildlife corridors. Can your yard become one? Some easy ways to assist. Pick one species you’d like to help. Look up its needs: for example, if a butterfly: what host plant is native to your area? What nectar plants attract it? What else might it need – a dish of water with stones for perching on? Or – mason bees. Various birds. Start with a single species and learn how to spot it. Notice who else shows up. A literary tie-in for older kids: Read The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer. 
  • A nice tie in – a poetry anthology like The Wonder of Small Things (edited by James Crews) or Sing a Song of Seasons: A Nature Poem for Each Day of the Year  (Fiona Waters & Frann Preston-Gannon). Consider propping on a bookstand turned to each day’s page.
  • Any seasonal nature book is great to prop open. Like a field guide turned to a bird your kids might encounter. 
  • Make a list of short stories you’d like to discuss with your kids. Keep this on hand for times when you want a short-term literary activity — say, between longer books, or whenever life is filling up with appts/distractions/new baby/etc and you want something self-contained. A good short story immersion can span a single afternoon (but will likely stick with your kids forever).
  • Visual reading journal: Melissa’s daughter chooses a sticker to represent each book. When she finishes a book, she puts the sticker in her notebook with the date, gradually creating a page full of stickers. On the facing page, she writes details about the books. 

You don’t always know how much you know! Make a GOOD IDEAS notebook or Apple Note!

Resources

Connect with Julie

Connect with Melissa

Produced by NOVA

Brave Writer Podcast

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[Podcast #330] Board Games: Let Them Do the Teaching!

Brave Writer Podcast

What if the best critical thinking curriculum is already in your closet?

This week on the Brave Writer podcast, we explore why board games and card games do more than pass the time. From Monopoly and Settlers of Catan to Quiddler, Pandemic, and even Operation, we unpack how games build patience, strategy, communication skills, resource management, and flexible thinking—all through play.

We share personal stories, favorite family games, and one powerful rule: when your child asks to play, say yes.

Ready to rethink learning? Pull out a game tonight and let it do the teaching.

Show Notes

When we think about education, we often picture curriculum guides, lesson plans, and carefully sequenced objectives. But what if one of the most powerful learning tools has been sitting on your shelf all along?

  • Board games.
  • Card games.
  • Dice games.

Games invite children into what philosopher Bernard Suits called “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” And that voluntary part matters. When a child chooses to play, they are already invested. They care. And caring is the gateway to thinking well.

Relaxed Alertness Is the Sweet Spot

In The Brave Learner, we talk about the brain state known as relaxed alertness—a combination of pleasure and meaningful risk. Games create exactly that condition. There’s enough challenge to matter. Enough uncertainty to spark curiosity. Enough safety to try again.

Children learn patience when they wait their turn. They learn deeper patience when they struggle through confusing rules. They learn resilience when they lose and try again.

And here’s the secret: they don’t experience it as “character training.” They experience it as play.

Academic Skills Hide in Plain Sight

Consider Monopoly. Yes, it can be long. Yes, feelings may flare. But it quietly teaches skip counting, making change, budgeting, and resource management.

  • Settlers of Catan introduces strategic allocation and trade.
  • Scrabble builds vocabulary and pattern recognition.
  • Quiddler strengthens spelling awareness.
  • Prime Climb makes prime numbers intuitive.
  • Operation develops fine motor control and body awareness.
  • Mousetrap introduces iteration and engineering logic—especially if you test each step as you build.

Even a simple score sheet in Yahtzee reinforces arithmetic and pencil fluency.

We search endlessly for engaging curriculum. Meanwhile, game designers have already done the hard work of making learning irresistible.

Explore, Explain, Experiment

When you bring home a new game, consider three phases:

  • Explore. Open the box. Examine the pieces. Look at the artwork. Estimate how long learning it will take.
  • Explain. Let one child read and interpret the rules. This builds communication skills and empathy. The explainer needs grace. The listeners need curiosity.
  • Experiment. Play a practice round. Break the rules on purpose. Test edge cases. See what happens. Lower the stakes so learning can rise.

That experimentation step is often skipped. Don’t skip it.

Competitive and Cooperative

Some games pit players against each other. Others, like Pandemic, unite players against the game itself. Both are valuable.

Competitive games teach strategy and sportsmanship. They also teach negotiation, shared problem-solving, and collective victory.

Your family can benefit from both.

The Most Important Rule

Years ago, we heard a simple piece of advice: Whenever a child asks to play a game, drop everything and play.

We tried it. It changed our families.

When children invite us into play, they are inviting connection. They are ready for the lesson. If we delay too often, they eventually stop asking.

Games teach content. They teach skills. But more than that, they build relationship. And relationship is where real learning thrives.

Tonight, instead of adding one more worksheet, pull out a deck of cards.

Let the game do the teaching.

Resources

Connect with Julie

Connect with Melissa

Produced by NOVA

Brave Writer Podcast

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[Podcast #329] Accidental vs. On-Purpose Learning

Brave Writer Podcast

Are you wondering if you’ve done “enough” this year? What if the real question isn’t about subjects completed—but about the atmosphere you’re creating?

Melissa developed a simple framework to help her notice what was filling her children’s days. She called it the “Rule of Six”:

  1. Living Books
  2. Encounters with Beauty
  3. Meaningful Work
  4. Imaginative Play
  5. Big Ideas to Ponder and Discuss
  6. Reflection

This week on the Brave Writer podcast, we revisit this concept as a method of filling our children’s days with living books, beauty, meaningful work, imaginative play, big ideas, and reflection. From accidental learning to on-purpose instruction, we explore how to balance immersion with explicit teaching—so our kids gain both joy and skill.

If you’re feeling that mid-year wobble, this conversation will help you notice what’s thriving, what’s missing, and how to move forward with clarity.

Show Notes

In homeschooling, we often feel pulled between two extremes. On one side, there’s the belief that if children are immersed in rich experiences, learning will unfold naturally. On the other, there’s pressure to replicate school at home—complete with structured lessons and measurable outcomes. The tension between those poles can leave us wondering: Are we doing enough?

Over the years, we’ve come to appreciate a both/and approach.

The Rule of Six: A Framework for a Full Life

Melissa developed what she calls the “Rule of Six” as a way to notice what was shaping her children’s days. It wasn’t a schedule. It wasn’t a curriculum. It was a way of life.

Here are the six elements:

  1. Living Books: Books written by real authors with passion and depth—not dry, committee-written textbooks.
  2. Encounters with Beauty: Art on the walls. Music in the background. Time in nature. Beauty as a daily companion.
  3. Meaningful Work: Work that matters. Caring for the home. Building academic skills. Effort that carries purpose, not just activity.
  4. Imaginative Play: Forts. Backyard soccer. Dress-up. Creative immersion. Space to explore without constant direction.
  5. Big Ideas to Ponder and Discuss: Narration. Conversation. Reflecting on books, experiences, and questions. Talking through what we’re learning.
  6. Reflection: Ending the day with gratitude, prayer, or simple review. Noticing where those other five elements showed up.

This list isn’t meant to create pressure. It’s a tool for noticing. If something feels thin, we can lean into it. If something is thriving, we can celebrate it.

Children Are Always Learning

Children absorb math through board games. They build vocabulary through read-alouds. They develop historical understanding through novels and documentaries. This kind of accidental learning is powerful. It grows out of curiosity, connection, and lived experience.

But some skills do not reliably emerge on their own.

No child accidentally masters long division. Most don’t spontaneously understand revision in writing. Learning to play the cello—or to write a cohesive essay—requires intentional guidance.

The key is not rigid schooling. The key is appropriate support.

Immersion First, Then Instruction

We like to think of it this way: immersion first, then instruction.

When children are saturated in a subject—reading myths, visiting museums, watching films—they eventually want to create something of their own. That’s the moment to offer tools. Show them how structure works. Demonstrate revision. Model technique.

Instruction lands when it has somewhere to land.

Explicit Teaching Without Crushing Courage

Explicit instruction doesn’t have to feel harsh or evaluative.

In writing, we begin with free writing to build fluency. Later, we introduce revision as a craft—moving sentences around, experimenting with order, expanding ideas. These low-stakes strategies build skill without undermining confidence.

The same principle applies everywhere. Appetite makes effort meaningful.

What Is the Goal?

At the heart of this balance is a simple question: What is the goal?

If the goal is merely to check boxes, we miss the deeper opportunity. But if the goal is to build skill, understanding, and agency—so that children can continue growing independently—then both immersion and instruction have their place.

As you reflect on your year, consider this: Where has learning unfolded naturally? Where might a bit of intentional teaching unlock growth?

You don’t have to choose between freedom and focus. The real work of homeschooling lives in the rhythm between the two.

Resources

Connect with Julie

Connect with Melissa

Produced by NOVA

Brave Writer Podcast

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[Podcast #328] A Critical Thinking Bill of Rights

Brave Writer Podcast

What do you—and your kids—have the right to think, question, and say?

This week on the Brave Writer podcast, we unpack a “Critical Thinking Bill of Rights” and apply it to homeschooling life. We explore the pull of group identity, the courage to disagree with leadership, the power of private thoughts, and the freedom to change your mind.

We talk about:

  • fairness in co-ops,
  • resisting performative values,
  • and raising kids who can think for themselves without fear.

If you’ve ever felt pressure to conform or questioned whether you’re “doing homeschool right,” this conversation will steady you.

Join us—and then talk through these rights with your kids.

Show Notes

When we chose homeschooling, we stepped away from the status quo. That decision required thoughtfulness and courage. Yet once outside conventional schooling, many of us feel pressure to find a new authority, a new label, or a new group to anchor us. What if instead we anchored ourselves in a set of rights that protect independent thinking? Here is a Critical Thinking Bill of Rights for homeschool families—ten reminders that safeguard intellectual freedom in our homes.

1. You Have the Right to Your Own Thoughts and Viewpoint

You own your mind. Exposure to a book, speaker, curriculum, or philosophy does not require allegiance to it. You can consider ideas without adopting them wholesale. The same is true for your children. When they disagree with you, they are not necessarily being defiant—they are practicing the skill of thinking independently. If we want adults who can reason, evaluate, and discern, we must allow children to try out their own viewpoints safely at home.

2. You Have the Right to Disagree with Leadership

Authority does not erase your discernment. Whether it’s a co-op director, a curriculum author, or a long-standing homeschool philosophy, you are allowed to question and disagree. Respectful dissent is not disloyalty. In fact, learning how to disagree thoughtfully is one of the most important skills we can model for our kids. Homeschooling invites us to participate in education, not passively submit to it.

3. You Have the Right to Private Thoughts

Not every idea needs immediate public expression. Some thoughts require quiet reflection before they are ready to be shared. There is a difference between secrecy born of shame and privacy born of process. Journaling, thinking time, and internal wrestling are healthy parts of intellectual growth. Our children deserve space to think without fear of premature scrutiny.

4. You Have the Right to Not Know

Homeschooling is filled with uncertainty. We try approaches, adjust rhythms, and learn as we go. It is honest—and healthy—to say, “I don’t know yet.” We are not required to predict outcomes before taking a step. Modeling comfort with uncertainty teaches our children that learning is iterative and that wisdom develops over time.

5. You Have the Right to Change Your Mind

Growth often looks like revision. Interests evolve, needs shift, and philosophies mature. A family that once embraced one educational style may pivot to another. A child who loves one subject deeply may lose interest and move on. Changing your mind is not inconsistency—it is responsiveness to new information and lived experience.

6. You Have the Right to Not Be Defined by the Group That Claims You

Labels can help us find community, but they should never flatten our individuality. You are more than a category. Even within a shared philosophy, families express it differently. No group has the authority to dictate the totality of your identity. You get to define your homeschool in ways that reflect your real life.

7. You Have the Right to Speak Up, Even If Your Voice Falters

Not everyone thinks quickly or speaks confidently in the moment. Some need time. Some need space. Still, every person deserves the opportunity to be heard. In our homes, we can cultivate habits of listening patiently and responding respectfully. Encouraging hesitant voices builds confidence and strengthens the culture of dialogue within our families.

8. You Have the Right to Expect Evidence, Proof, and Consistency

You do not have to accept ideas simply because they are popular or passionately delivered. Asking “Why?” and requesting clarification is a sign of engagement, not rebellion. Healthy critical thinking includes evaluating evidence and noticing whether arguments are internally consistent. We can teach our children to weigh ideas thoughtfully rather than accepting them on authority alone.

9. You Have the Right to Hold People Accountable to Their Stated Values

When leaders, communities, or even parents express certain values, it is reasonable to expect those values to be lived out consistently. Accountability does not require hostility. It simply invites alignment between words and actions. Teaching our children to notice this alignment helps them develop integrity in their own lives as well.

10. You Have the Right to Expect Fairness and Courtesy

Disagreement does not justify disrespect. If a conversation shifts into character attacks or dismissiveness, it is no longer productive. Within homeschool communities—and within our own families—we can insist on fairness and kindness as the baseline for dialogue. Critical thinking flourishes best in environments where people feel safe to speak honestly without fear of humiliation.

Homeschooling is not merely an academic choice. It is a daily practice of thinking, revising, questioning, and growing together. When we honor these ten rights in our homes, we raise not performers who conform, but thinkers who engage the world with clarity and courage.

Resources

Connect with Julie

Connect with Melissa

Produced by NOVA

Brave Writer Podcast

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Critical Thinking Podcast Episodes

Brave Writer Podcast

We’ve talked a lot about critical thinking on the Brave Writer podcast! Here are some past episodes you don’t want to miss.

Raising Critical Thinkers is circling the globe via podcast and news article! If you’re interested in hearing a wide array of thoughts that I’ve shared about the contents of my book, check out some of these delightful interviews.

Brave Writer Podcast

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