Many have asked me, well if you don’t use a box curriculum, what do you do? Well that can look different for us in different seasons and here’s some encouragement. Use your discernment and what works for your family’s goals.
Bible Truth and reading Scripture to get the Word of Yahuah (God) into our hearts will always be our #1 goal. Here’s some tangible ways to fit the joy of Scripture in.
A little back story…… We started homeschooling in 2016 as we were moving into our parents homes temporarily while we built our home. I sold my salon and left my career of 12 years and we pulled my son out of school he’d attended for prek and kindergarten. I thought it would all be temporary. We liked being social and busy locally with sports and social activities. I didn’t realize that this was going to be another step in our journey out of the matrix. I didn’t know I would find out so many things about the school system that we would never return.
Now before everyone gets up in arms, there are well meaning and very loving people in the system, my brother’s wonderful beautiful wife is one of them. Thank Alahym for those willing to go into that situation to make a difference, inspire, and love children. We all have our part wherever He places us and for whatever reason. I know it was by His love, He pulled our family out.
Onto the resources that are maybe more unconventional.
You really have to consider your family’s goals. How do you teach and what are your children’s learning styles? Our family has decided that the Bible is the core, the meat and anything else is extra. So anything that we are doing is always pointing back to Scripture. We really love these hands on studies by Gina at Honeycombnhandiwork. I think we’ve done the Wheat & Tares Parables, Forest, In the Garden, Winter, and Crimson Worm. She includes activities that the children can do and memory verses to meditate on.
For the Love of Homeschooling has mega bundle packs that you can get for $25. It’s a whole bunch of amazing artists and homeschool mommas who come together so you can get a lot of little units as a big one. It’s usually seasonally based. These packs have been an absolute favorite here. There are some packs that we choose to skip if they have holidays or things we disagree with, but for the value, still worth it. Beautifully watercolored and as you can see many hands on things to do.
Campfire curriculums is new for us. We’re working through their photography unit. I love how again they tie in such beautifully illustrated artwork with learning. You’ll learn hands on skills with every single one of these. We’d probably skip the ER one and definitely the holidays, but Natural Medicine and Survive off the Land count me in. I love the Car Maintenance one. That’s something so many don’t know how to do!
We also like Science Youtube channels that talk about creation in a hands on way.
Papa Pepper talks about building a smokehouse, fishing, gardening, plants, storm shelters, identifying snakes
An American Homestead talks about offgrid living and ways to do so
Nature Nate encourages children to get excited to jump into Yahuah’s creation.
We tend to read a lot of books about things we’re interested in. Books that give life accounts. We are very aware that much history has been distorted. Events happen and are real, but the root and cause behind them isn’t what we’ve been told. So we in general have forgone it. The other way we look at history is looking at what could it possibly be. I’ve done posts on chapter books, picture books.
I recently found this incredible Torah observant resource from Scribbles & Scriptures and can’t wait to see what else she comes up with for books! She’s written a few now for younger children & tweens. She has digital or paper copies and is even written them in Spanish. Thanks Brittany!
It has been on our hearts to learn the Biblical Hebrew language. I have so many resources linked in that post and I try to keep it updated with new resources that I find.
Biblical Cosmology and a founded earth approach is important to our family. This is where we spend a lot of time in science, learning creation – the earth, animals, and humans. Yahuah (God’s) intelligent design. I’ve shared a blog post on resources before so head over there to learn more.
Kodesh Homeschool is starting to upload some cool unit study ideas and also some fun math concepts with legos.
We really enjoy unit studies. We like to take an event or subject we are interested in learning more and look it up in articles and videos to try to make sense of it.
As an example, right now my teenage son is interested in the 1800s Mudfloods. He has lots of questions. What was Tartaria? Why are there so many old brick buildings with electricity in America when it was supposedly a frontier? Why were there so many orphans at these massive world fairs? So he enjoys browsing through Jon Levi, My Lunch Break, and There’s No Place Like Home.
In the past, he’s also enjoyed uncovering the mysteries of the Titanic, or was it the sister ship….. and the why behind it all going down.
That’s the joy of homeschooling, to learn about what interests you. To feast on the information you can find for as little or as long as it takes. We don’t need to jump forward to a new topic if we aren’t ready. And we don’t have to waste time learning more about a subject when we’ve gotten our fill of it. We don’t have to worry about doing things according to age or grade level by separating, but coming together as a family and everyone taking in things according to their ability and interest. It is a delight to get to seek out matters, not a burden, when we seek them with a kingdom mindset to esteem the Most High!
