homeschooling - Homeschool With Joy

Every November, the same thing happens. I open my carefully built homeschool schedule, glance at the calendar, and realize the calendar has plans of its own.

Now that my kids are older, things look different but it is no less full of Things We Have to Do and Places We Must Go for it to really feel like the holiday season.

There’s shopping. There are Christmas lights to drive around and admire at the park. There are guests who show up unexpectedly (the good kind of unexpected), and a general feeling that the entire house is leaning toward December.

Not to mention decorating, gift wrapping, food planning, movie watching, and cookie baking!

If you’re looking for a homeschool schedule for the holidays, here’s the short version: you don’t have to fight the season. You can build with it.

I’ve homeschooled for more than fifteen years, and the holidays have taught me more about flexibility than any curriculum ever has.

In this post, I’ll walk through how to fold the season into your lessons, how to lighten the load, when to pause and restart in January, and why making memories gets top billing.

Weave the Season Into Your Homeschool Schedule

The easiest way to homeschool through the holidays is to let the holidays do some of the teaching. Your kids are going to be thinking about pumpkins, cookies, and Christmas trees anyway. You may as well point all that energy at something useful.

Start in the kitchen. Doubling a recipe is fractions with a reward at the end. Following a three-page family recipe is reading comprehension. A pie that collapses is a chemistry lesson, a humility lesson, and (if you’re lucky) still delicious.

🍪Raising Arrows has some fabulous Christmas cookie unit studies!!

Then head to the pumpkin patch. Pumpkins grow on vines, which gives you botany. Guessing a pumpkin’s weight before you haul it to the scale is estimation and math. Coming home with far too many leads to roasted seeds, puree, and a long family conversation about what to do with the rest. (If your patch has already closed for the year, file this under next fall.)

🍂Treehouse School House has some wonderful (and very Charlotte Mason) pumpkin unit study ideas.

Christmas trees make a surprisingly good lesson, too. Why do evergreens stay green? How does a tree farm work? Where did the tradition of hauling a tree indoors come from? One good question and one library trip can fill a week.

🎄You Are an Artist has a marvelous Christmas tree unit study, complete with booklists and an art lesson!

The trick is to let the learning ride along with the activities that you are already going to do instead of turning every outing into a worksheet. Ask good questions in the car, then let the rest of the day be fun. The season is already full of material. You just have to notice it.

Speaking of driving, Classics for Kids has some super-fun Christmas-themed podcasts for those long drives to Grandma’s!

Lighten Your Homeschool Schedule With Holiday Morning Time

Here’s the permission slip you may need: you are allowed to take a break from your regular curriculum. Things can be lighter and less focused for a few weeks, and the world will keep turning.

You have time to get back to things when everyone is ready. It’s easier to take a break and go back than stress over the holidays.

That doesn’t mean your kids stop learning. It means you swap the heavy lifting for something warmer.

My favorite swap is a holiday morning time, in the style of Pam Barnhill’s morning time.

If you’ve never tried it, morning time is a shared block at the start of the day where you gather for a few quiet, rich things together – a poem, a Scripture passage, a song, a read-aloud, maybe a bit of art. For the holidays, you simply give it a seasonal theme: carols, Advent readings, Christmas poetry, a few chapters of a winter classic.

Check out Pam’s amazing morning times!! They have given us such happy memories through the years! This link is for a free morning time from her called Christmas Celebration, but she has lots of other options as well as Advent plans.

Then set out the holiday books. Stack them on the coffee table, tuck a basket by the couch, line a few up on the kitchen counter. Books that are visible get opened. A Christmas stack sitting in plain view invites a read-aloud without a single lesson plan. (Try reading A Christmas Carol and then watch the Muppet version and compare. That is basically a free literature unit in and of itself!)

The result is a school day that looks suspiciously like a cozy morning. That’s the point. You’re still reading, still talking, still learning. You’re just doing it in slippers, with something warm to drink. Hopefully with marshmallows. (I like Dandies vegan ones best!)

Keep it small. Fifteen to thirty minutes of holiday morning time, a stack of good books within arm’s reach, and a relaxed attitude will do more for your homeschool schedule in December than an overstuffed plan you resent by the second week.

Put Gift-Giving on Your Homeschool Schedule as a Budgeting Lesson

Shopping is going to happen. You might as well put it on the schedule and call it math.

Gift-giving is a real-life budgeting lesson, and real life is a better teacher than most textbook pages. Hand each kid a budget and a list of people. Let them price things, compare stores, and figure out what they can actually afford. When the total comes in over budget (it will), they get to practice the very adult skill of deciding what stays and what goes.

Older kids can take it further. Have them track what they spend, add in sales tax, and hunt for a better price on the same item. A handmade gift is a legitimate budget solution, too, and it comes with a built-in craft project.

This also opens up a natural conversation about why we give at all. A store aisle is a surprisingly good place to talk about what makes a gift meaningful – the thought behind it, the cost to the giver, the person on the receiving end.

The lesson also happens at the checkout, over the receipt, and in the car on the way home. Put one shopping trip on your homeschool schedule as an official budgeting field trip and you’ve covered math, life skills, and a little character formation in a single afternoon.

After writing this, I found a homeschool lesson plan for teaching Christmas gift budgeting! Yay the Internet strikes again! You think you have an original idea, lol… And, it’s free!

Pause Your Homeschool Schedule and Pick a January Restart Date

You have two sensible options for the holiday stretch, and neither one involves guilt.

Option one: wrap up before the holidays begin. Look at what’s left in your curriculum and decide what truly needs to be finished. Aim for a clean stopping point, even if that means trimming a few lessons. Ending a unit feels better than abandoning one halfway through.

Option two: pause, then review and resume. Stop where you are, take your time off, and start again on a day you choose in January. Pick that date now. Write it on the calendar. Tell your kids. A restart date turns ‘we’ve fallen off the wagon’ into ‘we’re on a planned break,’ and that’s a big psychological difference.

When you do come back, spend the first few days reviewing before pushing forward. Brains need a ramp, not a cliff.

Whichever option you choose, don’t be afraid to take a significant amount of time off. Hobbits are experts at a well-organized day (breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses – you know the drill), and they also understand that a good rhythm includes plenty of rest and feasting. Your homeschool schedule can, too.

If you want a head start, my free Hobbit Homeschool Schedule gives you a weekly rhythm with a bit of Shire charm, and the free HWJ Planner has calendar pages to mark your break and your restart date.

Let Memories Come First (Your Homeschool Schedule Can Bend a Little)

Here’s how it works in our house: we don’t take off in the summer, but we take off more in the holidays. Unexpected grandparent visits, shopping, Christmas lights, and fun activities all show up at once, and they come first. Making happy memories is the priority, and academics can ride in the back seat for a few weeks.

Academics will always catch up. A short season of lighter learning won’t undo years of reading, writing, and curiosity. Your kids are not going to fall off a cliff because they spent a week at the kitchen counter with flour on their elbows.

And there are plenty of chances to do fun things that are also educational. A drive to see the Christmas lights is a free evening out. A visit with grandparents is oral history waiting to happen – ask them what Christmas looked like when they were growing up, then sit back and listen. A day of shopping is budgeting practice. You don’t have to label any of it as school. It counts anyway.

The Secret Present Problem

Of course, there’s the matter of keeping everyone busy while you handle the festive stuff, like wrapping presents in secret. A little planning helps. Keep a stash of quiet activities within reach: an audiobook and a pile of blankets, a jigsaw puzzle on the table, hand-lettered cards for relatives, a baking project for the older kids, or a Christmas movie. Rotate them so there’s always something to grab, and you can wrap in peace.

I especially love Usborne holiday sticker books for this!!

Here are some of my favorites. Click the picture to see them in my Homeschool with Joy Amazon Storefront.

In Closing…

Here’s what I keep coming back to: a schedule is a tool, not a verdict.

In the holidays, the tool gets to flex a little bit.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 reminds us there is a season for everything under heaven. This is the season for lights, grandparents, flour on the counter, and books stacked where anyone can grab them. Take the time off. Pick your restart date. Let the learning sneak in sideways. Whatever you decide, the goal isn’t a perfect homeschool schedule. It’s a family that still likes being in the same house come January.

Ready to plan it? Grab the free Hobbit Homeschool Schedule for a weekly rhythm with some Shire charm, and the free HWJ Planner to map your break and your January restart. And, if you’d like a post like this in your inbox every Friday, join the email list.

homeschooling

How to Help Your Child Write More Colorful Essays

October 22, 2026October 22, 2026 Jessica Lovett

There’s a particular kind of sentence that makes every homeschool parent wince.

“It was good. I liked it.” Or its cousin: “The dog was nice. He was big. He was nice.”

If you’re hoping to help your child write more colorful essays, you’ve met that sentence. (You may have been that sentence once upon a time, yourself… No judgment.)

The good news is that colorful writing is not a gift handed out at birth. It’s a set of habits, and habits can be taught – gently, playfully, and without a single tear over a blank page.

Here are eight ideas that work for descriptive writing and creative essay writing, whether your child is eight or fifteen. Pick one. Try it this week.

And a quick note: every shoppable resource in this post lives in one place in my Amazon shop, so you don’t have to hunt for links.

1. Give Them Better Words for Colorful Essays

Kids can’t use words they don’t own. A child with a small word bank writes small sentences, and no amount of “try harder” fixes that.

So stock the shelves. I adore a good word-list book for this, and here’s a secret: even though Banish Boring Words! is labeled for 4th-8th grade, it’s a wonderful book full of reproducible word lists that get creative juices flowing.

Older kids and even adults will find something in it.

It is a great way to not only come up with ideas but to get better at spelling, almost accidently!

Once the colors are flowing, How to Write Research Papers and Essays – The Thinking Tree is a step-by-step guide for turning all those vivid ideas into a well-built essay.

• Learn how to write essays and research papers step by step.
• Master paragraph writing for kids in a way that is easy to understand.
• Develop independence through guided practice in academic writing.
• Strengthen skills with activities inspired by a manual for writers of research papers.
• Build confidence by following a writing guide that supports both structure and creativity.
• Work independently with a dyslexia-friendly design.

Then add a writing guide that makes the process feel like play. The Creative Writing Book:

“This fun and inspiring book is packed with activities to help budding writers create characters, dream up stories and discover lots of different ways to write. With lots of space to write in – but no scary blank pages.”

I mean, even professional, experienced adult writers can be scared of those! So, giving kids colorful pages to work with definitely gives them a leg up in that department…

And the Creative Writing Prompts Workbook for Kids, starring Ronny the Frenchie, is a super cute collection of story starters and writing activities that can nudge a reluctant writer into trying.

Here’s how to use word lists without turning them into a worksheet. Pick one list – say, words for walking, or words for weather – and challenge your child to swap every boring verb in a paragraph they’ve already written. “Walked” becomes “trudged,” “tiptoed,” or “marched.” Suddenly the same sentence has a personality.

And yes, I’m going to channel a Jedi Master Obi Wan here: these are not the adjectives you’re looking for.

“Nice,” “good,” “big,” and “fun” are the beige four. Put them on a “retired words” poster and let your child hunt for replacements. It’s a small game with a big payoff.

2. Use Picture Study to Teach Descriptive Writing

Before kids can describe a scene on the page, they have to learn to look. Famous paintings are perfect for this. Van Gogh’s swirling skies and Monet’s hazy gardens give kids something rich to notice, and there’s no wrong answer to “What do you see?”

You don’t have to hunt for art yourself. These free picture studies are ready to go. Start there, and let your child just gaze at the painting for a minute or two in silence.

Then work on describing it. Here’s the key: a younger or newer writer may need to do this out loud, with your help, at first. That’s fine. That’s good, actually. You can ask questions like:

What’s the first thing your eye lands on?
What colors are in the corners?
What sounds might you hear if you stepped inside?

Over time, move toward writing those observations down. Start with three sentences. Then a paragraph. Eventually, a full page that reads like a guided tour of the painting.

You can stretch this idea beyond fine art, too. Choose any picture – from a magazine, a book, or an online photo – and ask your child to explain what’s going on in it.

Then, invite a story: Who is in the scene? What happened right before this moment? What happens next? A few sentences works for younger kids, and a full page suits older ones. For an extra vocabulary boost, pick seasonal or nature scenes, which tend to shake loose words like “frosted,” “tangled,” or “shimmering.”

3. Borrow Imagery from Poetry

A poem is an essay in miniature. A good one packs a whole scene, a feeling, and a handful of surprising word choices into a few lines. That makes poetry some of the best training there is for colorful writing, and it takes about five minutes.

Homeschool Compass has a collection of free poetry printables that are beautiful – watercolor, amazing graphics, very Charlotte Mason. They turn poem time into an event instead of an assignment. Print one, tuck it in a binder or tape it near the table, and let the artwork do some of the heavy lifting.

Here’s a simple way to use them:

Read the poem aloud slowly, twice. Once for introducing, once for exploring the words.
Ask which word made your child see something. Then ask which one made them hear or feel something.
Have your child copy a favorite line in their best handwriting. Copywork lets them feel how the words are put together.
Talk about the illustration. Does the artwork match what the words painted in their head, or something different?

Homeschool Compass also offers free seasonal poetry packs as ebooks: fall, winter, spring, summer, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Download the one that matches the season you’re in, and you’ll have a month of poems that fit right into your read-aloud routine. Fall and Thanksgiving are especially handy right now, and the Christmas pack is worth grabbing before the holiday rush.

Then pair it with picture study. Choose a poem and a painting about the same subject (a garden, a storm, a quiet field) and compare how each one handles it. A painter uses color and brushstrokes, and a poet uses verbs and comparisons.

Finish by asking your child to write two or three sentences of their own about the same subject, borrowing one trick from the poem. Maybe it’s a surprising verb, or a comparison that makes you tilt your head. That one borrowed trick is how colorful essays start.

4. Let Them Talk First with Voice to Text

Some kids have a wonderful story in their heads and a hand that simply can’t keep up. The pencil becomes a bottleneck, and the colorful ideas get squeezed into short, safe sentences.

Enter voice to text. In Google Docs, your child can speak their essay and watch the words appear. It takes the pressure off spelling and handwriting so they can focus on what they want to say. If it isn’t enabled on your account yet, here are Google’s instructions for turning on voice typing.

Here’s how I’d use it in a homeschool day:

Have your child describe a painting, a memory, or a made-up scene out loud.
Let Google Docs capture it.
Read it back together and circle the best phrases.
Edit and add colorful details on a second pass.

Speaking tends to be looser and more vivid than writing. Kids who say, “The storm swallowed the whole sky!” will often type, “It was stormy.”

Voice to text lets you catch the first rainbow sparkle version of their story before it gets edited down to the boring beige stripes version.

5. Play with Story Cards and Character Creation

If your child freezes when you say “write a story,” stop saying it. Hand them a stack of picture cards instead.

I adore the eeBoo Animal Village Create a Story cards. Draw a few, and suddenly there are characters, objects, and settings that have to fit together somehow. The silliest combinations often produce the best writing, because nobody is worried about getting it “right.”

There are 36 cards in the set. The box says ages 3+, but a picture prompt works at any age: older kids can draw two or three cards and spin them into a full story.

Character creation is another gentle way to build both imagination and empathy. Here’s a simple version:

Have your child invent a character with a name, a few personality traits, and a favorite thing to do.
Ask them to write a short story starring that character. What trouble might they stumble into? What adventure is waiting?
Invite them to draw the character, too. Combining art with writing gives kids a second way to notice details – and details are exactly what make essays colorful.

Try drawing a card to pick a character’s problem, then let your child decide how they solve it. You’ll be surprised how quickly “a kid named Max who likes cupcakes” becomes a three-page saga.

6. Journal Daily (and Make It Cute)

Colorful writing is a muscle. It needs regular, low-pressure reps, and a journal is the easiest gym membership there is.

Give each child their own notebook and set aside five to ten minutes a day. That’s it. Offer simple prompts like “What was the best part of today?” or “What made you feel proud?” Let them decorate the pages or sketch alongside their words so it feels like theirs.

A little cuteness goes a long way, especially for kids who need a reason to open the cover.

For the unicorn-loving girl in your house, there’s an eeBoo unicorn journal with sparkle rainbow pencils to match.

For the sciencey kid, there’s a space journal with galaxy pencils to match.

What combination of journal and pens would your child like? Think about what they are interested in right now – be it animals, fantasy, art… You name it and there is probably a journal out there with your kid’s name on it!

Is it a little bit of a bribe? Perhaps. Self-bribery with stationery is a time-honored homeschool tradition, and nobody has ever been harmed by a good pencil.

7. Read Great Books (Yes, Really)

This one isn’t flashy, but it may be the most powerful of all. Read. Children who soak in beautiful language absorb rhythm, imagery, and vocabulary without even trying. Reading is an amazing way to boost creativity.

Some of my favorite choices for building better writers:

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
E.B. White’s wonderful books
Anne of Green Gables
The Secret Garden

Anne alone is practically a masterclass in turning ordinary scenery into something worth stopping for. Read a chapter aloud, then ask your child to find one sentence that made them see something.

If you want a ready-made reading plan, my free curriculum, Journeying Through the Classics, pairs wonderful literature with writing instruction and art projects.

The curriculum also has links to my favorite editions! Find them on the Amazon Store, too.

8. Start Small and Keep It Joyful

The eighth idea isn’t a product or a technique. It’s a posture. Colorful essays grow best in soil that feels safe. If every writing session ends in red ink and sighing, your child will learn to write less – fewer words, fewer risks, fewer colors.

So celebrate one great word. Praise one vivid sentence. Let the rest wait for another day. Description is a skill built across months, and a child who feels brave on the page will take more risks tomorrow.

A great way to edit essays is to use Google Doc suggest mode or make comments. That way, they are automatically something the student can check off and learn from, making the changes in real time, rather than feeling permanently judged by a piece of paper littered in red scathing marks.

Your Next Step

You don’t need all eight ideas. Choose one – maybe a painting and a cup of tea, a poem and a pencil, or a stack of story cards at the kitchen table – and try it this week. Then watch what happens to the adjectives.

Shop it all in one place. Every shoppable resource mentioned in this post – the word-list books, story cards, writing books, journals, and matching pencils – is available in my Amazon shop in one spot. (Add a button or a graphic here linking to the shop.)

If you’d like a reading list that doubles as writing fuel, grab Journeying Through the Classics free! The curriculum also comes with tons of writing help, including hands-on essay examples and walk-through writing guides.

And if you try any of these ideas, I would love to hear what your child came up with.

A big thank-you to Homeschool Compass for sharing such beautiful, free poetry resources with homeschool families. You can also find them on Instagram and Pinterest.

homeschooling

Teaching Your Teen Critical Thinking: Logic, Faith, and the Courage to Engage

September 29, 2026September 30, 2026 Jessica Lovett

We were devoted Christians excitedly driving our kids to hear Richard Dawkins speak.

My kids stared at me from the backseat like I’d suggested we spend the evening at a UFC fight. (I’m a tree-hugging hippie and would never dream of watching actual people fight each other for fun. No, thanks!!)

But we loaded into the car anyway, showed out tickets at the door, and planted ourselves in a room full of people who believed fundamentally differently than we do.

Why would Christians rush to hear the world’s most famous atheist?

Because we want our kids to live without fear.

We want them to hear all sorts of beliefs. To wrestle with deep ideas. To think for themselves instead of inheriting their convictions like hand-me-down clothes that don’t quite fit. We don’t want them absorbing worldviews from TikTok algorithms (not that they’re allowed on TikTok, but as a principle) or parroting whatever they heard last from a persuasive friend.

We want them armed – intellectually, spiritually, and logically – to engage with a world that will absolutely try to convince them of things that aren’t true.

In other words, we want them to think.

Besides, if we actually, truly believe what we say we do, why is it scary for others to have different opinions?

Spoiler alert: It’s not!

And one of my kids proved that night that the investment had already started paying dividends.

Why Do We Train Them in Swords (If They’re Only Going to Get Dusty in a Corner)

Here’s what happened: Dawkins took the stage. He made his arguments. He appealed to emotion. He was demeaning to college students who asked him genuine questions. And my daughter – sitting there at that event – watched it all with the clarity of someone who had been trained to see it.

She leaned over and whispered: “That’s his best argument? I thought it would be harder than that…”

_{For Logic!}

She could spot the logical fallacies. She could see the appeals to emotion masquerading as reason. She understood that his tone – that intellectual superiority – was actually a rhetorical move, not proof of a stronger position. And because she could see those things, she wasn’t afraid.

Any mystery was gone. In its place: confidence in what she actually believed.

This is what critical thinking does. It takes the veil off.

Most homeschooling culture tells you to protect your kids. Build a fence. Keep them in the bubble. Guard them from dangerous ideas.

However, I’m telling you something different: equip them.

Train them in the swords of logic. Teach them to see emotional appeals. Show them how arguments actually work. Let them practice on ideas – safe ideas, in your home – so that when they encounter real opposition in the world, they’re not shocked. They’re not afraid. They’re ready.

Because here’s the thing about critical thinking – it’s not some abstract academic skill. It’s survival equipment for people who want to stay true to what they believe while engaging honestly with people who believe differently. It’s the antidote to both closed-mindedness and naive gullibility.

Faith is Logical (And Wonder Matters Too)

Before we talk about how to teach critical thinking, we need to talk about why.

Faith is logical. Let that sink in.

Not faith-as-blind-leap. Not faith-as-wishful-thinking. But faith as the most rational response to the evidence of God’s character, God’s Word, God’s redemptive work in history. When you’re teaching your kids to think logically – to follow evidence, to spot emotional manipulation, to question bad reasoning – you’re not undermining faith. You’re building the intellectual foundation for it.

At the same time, critical thinking without wonder is just cynicism wearing a thinking cap.

So let’s set the record straight. Faith is not the opposite of reason. The opposite of faith is unbelief. And reason is not the opposite of faith. The opposite of reason is irrationality. Do some Christians have irrational faith? Sure. Do some skeptics have unreasonable unbelief? You bet. It works both ways. -Greg Koukl

You want to raise kids who can spot a logical fallacy in a Target toy advertisement (yes, our little ones could do this – “They’re trying to appeal to my emotion!” they’d announce in the store). But you also want kids who can look at a starry night and feel genuine awe. Who can read a great story and be swept up in it without immediately dissecting the narrative structure. Who can ask questions without needing answers right away.

This is the scaffolding: logical thinking underneath, with room for wonder and curiosity and genuine pursuit of truth on top. Faith makes sense of it all. Logic is the tool. Wonder is the fuel.

What This Actually Looks Like: The Resources That Work

So how do you actually teach this? Not as a separate subject – “Logic Class on Tuesday!” – but as a living, breathing part of how your family engages with ideas?

Note that for any of the resources I list, it is up to you as the parent to determine the maturity level of your child and if they are ready for it! Some of these resources talk about some tricky and difficult topics.

Start with Greg Koukl and Stand to Reason University.

If you’re going to learn how to teach critical thinking (and how to model it), Koukl’s work is non-negotiable. His free course “Truth is Not Ice Cream” is the perfect entry point – it’s designed to help teens understand that truth is objective, that not all beliefs are equally valid, and that reasoning matters.

Then move to Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions (10th Anniversary Edition). This book teaches your kids (and you) how to engage respectfully with people who believe differently. It’s not about “winning” arguments. It’s about asking good questions, listening carefully, and understanding what someone actually believes before you try to respond to it. This is the difference between arguing with someone and arguing at them. (There’s also a Tactics Study Guide with Streaming Video if your teen learns better with supplemental material. There are lots of his talks and Tactics overviews on YouTube, but I recommend actually doing the class in order. It’s worth it!)

The Fallacy Detective books give kids concrete practice spotting logical fallacies. The Fallacy Detective: Thirty-Eight Lessons on How to Recognize Bad Reasoning is the workbook – your teen reads scenarios, identifies the fallacy being committed (ad hominem, appeal to emotion, straw man, etc.), and understands why it doesn’t work logically. This is the hands-on training. The practice rounds before the real match.

Pair it with The Thinking Toolbox: Thirty-Five Lessons That Will Build Your Reasoning Skills to deepen the skill. We did it once when our kids were veeery little so they idea seeds would be planted in their brains and once again when they were older, in middle school. They referenced it in high school when they wanted to brush off memories and commit it to heart.

Cold Case for Kids works differently. Cold-Case Christianity for Kids: Investigate Jesus with a Real Detective by J. Warner Wallace presents mysteries where kids have to gather evidence, consider suspects, and follow the logical chain to a conclusion. It’s critical thinking in narrative form – kids are so engaged in solving the mystery that they don’t realize they’re practicing how to evaluate evidence and line up facts logically. By the time they finish, they’ve internalized the process.

(Wallace also has God’s Crime Scene for Kids and Forensic Faith for Kids that build on this framework.) I adore his work and have seen him in person many times. It is never enough – I could listen to him talk all day.

And honestly? Your family conversations are the real classroom.

When your kid comes home and tells you about something a friend said that doesn’t make sense, that’s your moment. “Why doesn’t that make sense to you? What evidence would change your mind? Is that person appealing to your emotions or giving you facts?” These questions – asked with genuine curiosity, not condescension – are how critical thinking becomes native to the way your kid thinks.

One more resource to bookmark: Lee Strobel’s Case for a Creator for Kids combines apologetics with accessible explanations of how evidence supports faith. It’s detective work for the soul.

Oh! And, Natasha Crain talks about lots of ways to engage kids in critical thinking, one of which is using memes. Get a popular meme poking fun of religion and talk about where it is going wrong logically.

Red Pen Logic with the wonderful Tim Barnett is another great way to confidently engage in the culture. You can find his work on YouTube and Instagram.

The Dawkins Effect: What Happens When They’re Ready

My daughter left that event changed. Not shaken in her faith – strengthened by it.

She’d seen the greatest intellectual opponent of Christianity in action, and she’d recognized that his arguments had logical problems. His rhetorical moves were techniques, not truth. His intellectual superiority was a persona, not proof.

All because he has made tons of money and sold millions of books doesn’t mean he is correct.

Because she’d been trained to see those things, she wasn’t afraid of him. She wasn’t defensive. She was… curious. Clear-headed. Confident.

God is bigger than our fears. Jesus can handle our doubts.

I sometimes feel that Christians think that not only must they build protective bubbles around their own kids, but they try to do it about God. Christians feel that if they really looked deeply into the “other side,” that their faith would be weakened.

I ask, do you really believe in Jesus, then???? Honestly?

Confidence is what you’re building toward. Not kids who are so locked in their beliefs that they can’t hear anyone else. Not kids so uncertain that they absorb whatever sounds smartest. But kids who can think, who understand how arguments actually work, who can engage with hard ideas without losing their footing.

We want kids to think on their own two feet. Since God created those two feet, logic inevitable points to Him.

Why do we train them in how to use swords if they’re only going to get dusty in a corner?

We don’t. We equip them for the caves of dragons. We teach them to think so they can navigate a world that’s absolutely full of people trying to convince them of things – some true, some false, most of it wrapped in emotional appeals and rhetorical sleight of hand.

And then we let them go. Not with fear, but with confidence. Not with a closed mind, but with a trained one.

That’s what critical thinking is really for.

Start Here

If you’re ready to begin building this with your family, start with one resource. Go through Truth is Not Ice Cream together, and explore the other STR University courses (they are free!). Get a copy of The Fallacy Detective and work through it with your teen. Pick up Tactics and use it as a conversation starter about how to engage respectfully with people who believe differently.

Most importantly: model it yourself. Let your kids see you change your mind when presented with better evidence. Let them hear you admit when an argument doesn’t hold up. Ask them good questions about what they believe and why.

Critical thinking isn’t a subject. It’s a way of being in the world – one where truth matters, where evidence counts, and where faith and reason aren’t enemies but allies.

And your kids are more ready for it than you might think.

Category: homeschooling

Homeschool Schedule for the Holidays (Lighter, Not Lazy)