So when I tell you I launched one anyway – from inside a clothes closet with a microphone and approximately zero regrets – you’re probably wondering why. Fair question!
Here’s my honest answer: because I kept looking for the podcast I wanted to listen to, and it didn’t exist. And I’m stubborn enough to just make it myself.
That’s the origin story of the Homeschool with Joy Podcast. No dramatic calling. No business pivot. Just a homeschool mom with a love of books, lots of ideas about how to make homeschooling less boring and more fun, and a serious Celestial Seasonings tea addiction deciding that the gap needed filling.
What You’re NOT Going to Find Here
Let me be direct about what this podcast isn’t, because I think that matters just as much as what it is.
It’s not a product pitch with a conversation wrapper. You know the kind – twenty minutes of “authentic sharing” that leads inevitably to a curriculum you can buy for three easy payments. That’s not what this is.
So many podcasts are just shells trying to sell you something and I’m not going to waste my time listening to – or creating! – such a podcast.
It’s not a guilt-delivery system disguised as encouragement. There’s a whole genre of homeschool content that makes you feel like you’re failing before you’ve even hit play. Hard pass.
I don’t want to hear about all the ways I should have been doing something and have been failing this whole time, just because I’m not homeschooling Your Way.
It’s not chit-chat. Nothing against chit-chat – but I respect your time too much to fill twenty minutes with the conversational equivalent of styrofoam peanuts. INTJs like myself don’t do that – or listen to that.
And, it’s definitely not a one-size-fits-all approach telling you that your homeschool needs to look like someone else’s. (More on that in a minute.)
What the Homeschool with Joy Podcast Actually Is
Every week, you’ll get practical, low-prep ideas you can actually use – the kind that don’t require a crafting budget or a Pinterest-perfect home.
You’ll find free curricula, clean movie lists, book recommendations, ideas to try on for size, and resources that don’t cost a fortune. Because homeschooling already costs enough, and the best learning often costs nothing at all.
You’ll get encouragement from someone who has been in the trenches. I’ve been homeschooling long enough to have made most of the mistakes already. You’re welcome to learn from them.
And you’ll get a perspective that isn’t trying to sell you a lifestyle. Your homeschool doesn’t need to look like mine. Or your co-op friend’s. Or the one with the beautiful Instagram feed and the color-coded bookshelves. (Though I won’t pretend I don’t have organized bookshelves based on my own brain’s organization – I absolutely do, it’s a whole project I did – but they aren’t color-coded!)
Why Your Homeschool Doesn’t Need to Look Like Anyone Else’s
This is the part I care about most.
One of the most corrosive things in the homeschool world is comparison. Not the friendly, oh-that’s-a-great-idea kind. The spiral kind. The kind where you spend forty-five minutes on someone’s blog feeling increasingly inadequate about your perfectly good homeschool.
Every family is different. Every kid is different. The best homeschool for your child is the one that fits your child – not the one that photographs well or wins curriculum awards or gets approving nods from the co-op moms.
You are enough. Your instincts are worth trusting. And you deserve resources that help you build your vision, not someone else’s.
And, while we don’t want to copy-cat one another’s homeschool planets, we do need community! We need inspiration! We need to get ideas! We need to know the pitfalls that others have made along the way so that we can avoid them.
That’s what this podcast is trying to be. A weekly pocket full of joy – practical, encouraging, and actually useful.
Listen Now
Episode 1 is live on Spotify and at Homeschool with Joy. It’s the one where I explain all of this in my own voice, from my closet recording studio to hopefully muffle out kid-noises in the background, with genuine enthusiasm and zero scripted cheerfulness. I try to keep every episode at 5 minutes or less.
A No-Guilt Guide to Screen Time in Your Homeschool
Someone recently asked me if I feel guilty letting my kids use a screen during school time. I had Spotify playing, a graphic I was designing open on my laptop, and a Google Meet music lesson coming up in twenty minutes. So.
I made another cup of coffee and thought: we have to talk about this.
Because here’s the truth: I pay my property taxes online. I Google Meet my kids’ music lessons and video call family I love. I have Spotify running on continuous loop because, frankly, I would be a terrible Luddite and silence is not my friend. I design graphics, use the internet to plan field trips, and I’ve spent a genuinely happy afternoon setting up protected networks for my kids. [see this post] As I’m trying this, I hear my daughter doing an algebra lesson video, coordinating with her on-paper curriculum, but the video explainer is online, nonetheless.
I check the weather to see if we’ll get drenched by unpredictable Texas rain before we even make it out of the car at our destination.
The screen is not the enemy.
And I am, as Captain Jack Sparrow would say, more of a guidelines person than a rigidly follow all the rules kinda person.
Therefore, I am the last one who should be handing you another rigid set of rules — so I won’t. What I will give you is a framework.
But I also know what it looks like when a child is being used by a screen instead of using it. You’ve seen it. The glazed-over eyes. The short fuse when you say it’s time to stop, like a puppy who doesn’t want to give you the ball to fetch again. The forty-five minutes that vanished into some autoplay abyss while the sun was outside just waiting.
So I want to offer you something today. Not a rigid screen-free manifesto. Not a guilt trip. Just a simple framework I’ve started using in our home that has completely changed the conversation.
I call it the Tool vs. Teaser Test.
What Does “Screen-Free” Actually Mean in Real Life?
Let’s clear something up right away, because the phrase “screen-free homeschooling” can send a mom into a spiral of anxiety faster than a surprise co-op cancellation via text, halfway to the building.
Digital intentionality — not digital elimination — is the real goal. In 2026, that distinction matters more than ever. The research on active versus passive screen time is pretty clear: what your child does on a screen matters far more than how long they’re on it.
A child who spends thirty minutes designing a birthday card for her grandmother on a creative platform is building artistic skills, practicing decision-making, and creating something with genuine meaning. A child who spends thirty minutes clicking a repetitive mobile game is… well. Just clicking buttons.
Same device. Completely different experience.
The goal isn’t a screen-free life. It’s a life where you are the boss of the machine — not the other way around.
This is your permission slip, friend. You are allowed to use technology. You are allowed to let your kids use technology. The question worth asking isn’t “how much?” — it’s “to what end?”
The Tool vs. Teaser Framework
I started thinking about this the day my daughter asked to use the computer. I was about to say yes automatically — and then I stopped and thought about why she wanted it. Was she going somewhere intentional, or just… drifting?
That moment gave me the framework. Every screen interaction in our home now falls into one of two categories.
🛠️ It’s a Tool if…
It has a “done” point. You get on, accomplish the task, and get off. The bill is paid. The email is sent. The design is exported. There’s a finish line.
It creates something real. Your child is making a shirt design, writing a story, composing music, or building a presentation. They are producing, not just consuming.
It solves a specific problem. You’re using a plant identification app to figure out what’s growing in the backyard. You’re doing the taxes on Turbotax (which I did yesterday, blarg). There’s a clear reason.
It builds genuine connection. A video call with a grandparent. A shared apologetics podcast listened to with a child. A collaborative project done together. The screen is a bridge to something real, not a destination.
The brain is “on.” The child is engaged, making choices, figuring something out. There’s a spark of curiosity or effort there — you can see it on their face.
🎢 It’s a Teaser if…
The scroll never ends. If there’s no natural stopping point built into the app — autoplay, infinite feed, “just one more level” — it’s designed to hold attention, not serve it.
It’s running from boredom, not toward something. “I’m bored” is a checking out of life and can be a habit! Downtime is where creativity can live! Using a screen to fill every quiet moment short-circuits that beautiful, productive discomfort where ideas happen.
The zombie stare appears. Minimal blinking. Slight mouth-breathing. High irritability when interrupted. If you recognize this, you recognize a Teaser.
The digital world is the destination. Not a tool to get somewhere — just a place to exist, passively, while real life waits outside.
“Are we using this as a tool to create something — or are we just looking for a teaser because we’re bored?”
That question has become something like a household phrase around here. It sounds simple, but it has opened up some genuinely wonderful conversations about purpose, creativity, and what we actually want to do with our time.
Because I am, above all things, a practical person who knows you need something to actually do with this framework, here are three ideas to get you started. All of them use screens. All of them are solidly in Tool territory.
1. Design Something Real
Let your child design a T-shirt, a birthday card, a poster for their bedroom door, or a logo for an imaginary business. Or make a real business happen! Free creative platforms are incredibly robust these days, and the skills involved — layout, color theory, typography, decision-making — are legitimately educational. I recommend using Canva, where you can design and print all in one program. When the design is done, print it or save it. Done point achieved.
2. The Grandparent Interview
Hand a child a device with a voice memo app and a list of five questions. Send them to call, video chat, or voice-message a grandparent, elderly neighbor, or family friend. Ask about their childhood. Their favorite memory. What the world looked like when they were young. What it was like to wait a week to know what happens next in a favorite show!
This is oral history. This is connection. This is a Tool doing exactly what it should be doing — building a bridge between generations.
3. The Backyard Field Guide
For my Texas mamas especially: take a plant or bird identification app outside. Spend twenty minutes in the backyard identifying what’s actually growing and living there. Look it up. Write it down. Sketch it if you want.
You’ve just covered nature study, research skills, and — depending on how you document it — writing. The screen was a tool. The learning happened in the sunshine.
The Tool vs. Teaser Checklist
Before the screen comes out — for you or for the kids — run through these five questions. You don’t need all five to be “yes” for something to count as a Tool. But they’ll help you feel it out.
Does it have a specific goal? “I’m going to design a shirt for my sister’s birthday” is a goal. “I’m just going to look at YouTube until dinner” is not.
Is it active or passive? Is the child making choices, creating, solving? Or leaning back while the algorithm serves up the next thing?
Is there a “done” point? When the email is sent, the bill is paid, the design is exported — the screen goes away. If there’s no natural end, that’s your signal.
What’s the brain state? Focused and curious, or glazed and irritable? You’ll know the difference the moment you look at their face.
Does it lead to real-world action? “I found a cool bird on this app — let’s go look for it in the backyard!” The digital world should be a bridge, not the destination.
If it hits 3 out of 5 on the Tool side, give yourself a permission slip. If it’s all Teaser — it might be time to close the laptop and go find some real-life pinecones.
If You Want to Go Deeper
I am, at my core, a reader. So when I started thinking seriously about this topic, I went to the books. These three have shaped my thinking more than almost anything else I’ve encountered on screens and kids — and I recommend them wholeheartedly. Not to scare you, but to equip you.
This one is serious and worth every page. Kardaras makes a compelling, research-backed case for why screens affect developing brains differently than we might expect. It’s not alarmist — it’s honest. And honestly, it’s what first made me start asking “tool or teaser?” in the first place.
Reinke writes from a thoughtful, faith-based perspective and asks questions I hadn’t thought to ask about my own phone habits — not just my kids’. This one is quieter and more reflective than Kardaras, and I found myself underlining almost every other page.
Dr. Dunckley is a child psychiatrist, and this book is the most practical of the three. If you’ve ever watched your child spiral after too much screen time and wondered what on earth just happened neurologically — this book will explain it clearly and give you an actual plan. Remarkable.
Note: These are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. These are books I own, have actually read, and genuinely love.
The Bottom Line
Picasso once said that art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. I think about that a lot when I watch my kids create — with paintbrushes, with clay, with a design app, with their voices. The medium matters less than the making.
Screens are not the enemy of a joyful, creative homeschool life. Mindlessness is. Passivity is. The slow drift into consumption without intention is.
But you? You are paying attention. You asked the question. You’re thinking about this! That’s huge!
As in all my posts, there may be affiliate links. However, ClearPlay et. all did not sponsor or pay for this post in any way – I just love the services.
🔒 Want more practical homeschool tools? Subscribe to get free resources including 700+ pages of high school literature curriculum, schedule templates, music playlists, Squishmallow activities, and weekly tips for protecting your homeschool peace! Get free resources →
As parents, one of our main jobs is to protect our family. We protect our kids from germs and sickness to the best of our ability by cleaning the house, teaching them to wash their hands when they get home from being out and about, teaching them about hygiene, etc. We protect them from physical dangers by telling them not to touch the stove and showing them why, by telling them not to talk to strangers, etc.
Just the basics!
One often neglected place where we don’t remember to protect our kids to the best of our abilities is online.
Why Even Good Websites Aren’t Safe
I remember going on a popular homeschool blog to load our morning time plans when the kids were little. Unbeknownst to me, it had been hacked! There were *ahem* super bad images plastered there on the page! I quickly turned it to a different tab, glad that my kids didn’t see.
Even if we are going to decidedly Good Things online, we cannot be too careful. Decidedly joy-killing stuff when we should be filling our kids with joy.
Yet, there are simple steps you can take to protect your family from things and fortify your home.
As a Millennial parent, when computers and the internet were new, it all felt innocent and exciting. Napster let you record movie quotes to play on your Tracfone answering machine to give friends a laugh! MySpace let you post silly personality quizzes to see which ‘N Sync boy you “were,” and the like. The LOLCats came around and we all hadz cheezeburgerz. We tend to see the internet as something fun, irreverent, and silly, inhabited by friendly nerds. That feeling stuck with me, rubber stamping how I feel about the internet in general, and is hard to shake sometimes.
If I nerded you out and you don’t know what a Napster is, I’m sorry. Kind of!
Point being, as parents, we expect that if we teach our kids that Bad is Bad, that they will avoid it online. However, we are not counting on the fact that even if they are not actively seeking evil online, it is seeking them.
Router-Level Internet Filtering: The Protection You Actually Need
CleanBrowsing is one of the best tools out there! Many times, non-techie parents make the mistake of thinking they installed a browser extension to keep ads or junk off, so therefore they are protected. This is not the case.
Browser extensions are finicky at best and easy to remove, at worst. They get removed accidentally with updates. They turn themselves off when you need them. They don’t have the coverage you expect them to have. And, in addition, they are likely to steal your browsing data and sell it – not fun.
Plus, you forget which computers you added extension protection to… Or get a new gadget in the house and forget to sync it. Too complicated and too unreliable.
CleanBrowsing protects at the router level. For those of you who are not extreme Star Trek nerds, the internet comes into your house from an ISP (Internet Service Provider) like Suddenlink, Optimum, etc. to your modem. The modem connects to a router.
The router is like a sun that shoots sunrays of internet light to all your gadgets in the house.
CleanBrowsing acts like sunscreen, going into the router and making sure that all gadgets connected to the router get filtered even before that internet goes to your iPad, etc. It is easier to lockdown, control, monitor, and is much more simple to operate than juggling all those filters on separate gadgets.
For gadgets with data plans or hotspot capability, CleanBrowsing has an app that you can add directly to those devices to make sure they are covered with your plan on the go!
Before you worry about it, yes, they have a free plan! You can have a paid plan that is very reasonable in which you can customize things. I’ve customized blocks on various providers that like to make popup ads on our Roku, which is nice, but not super necessary.
Layering Your Family’s Online Protection
In addition to CleanBrowsing, we use Nighthawk Parental Controls on our router to control times and what gadgets are actually accessing our internet, as well as Google Family Link, for safe searching and app controls. Just for good measure, we also use Qustodio on some devices!
The main thing you should have is something like CleanBrowsing to protect not only from pornography (whether intentional or inadvertent in things like hacked sites, ads, etc.) but also just from junk hitting your computer.
The amount of random sites lagging onto your browsing would astound you. Cut those off!
Movie Filtering for Family Movie Night: VidAngel and ClearPlay
In addition to that, we use VidAngel and ClearPlay for movies. These two apps allow you to remove language, inappropriate scenes, violence, and such from movies. The cuts are at your discretion. Many times, you can’t even notice the cuts in the movies!
Some people feel that kids need to be exposed to bad language and violence in media so that they can be ready for Real Life as Adults.
I’m strongly opposed to this.
As an Adult in Real Life, I don’t go around hearing tons of cursing or having random acts of violence popping up in my path on a daily basis. Again, I don’t shop at Walmart! But… (Ok, that’s a joke…)
Besides, as adults, we cultivate the life we want to live. If your ideal life doesn’t have bad language in it, you are in charge of that. You can take steps to avoid it as much as possible.
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.” ~Henry David Thoreau
If you want a simple life surrounded by daily Bible reading and Jesus-centric music, do it. Joy will follow.
Watching movies with cursing puts the words in your brain and makes you more readily apt to use them, either verbally or in your brain. It also stunts your vocabulary and makes you sound less intelligent.
My husband and I routinely ClearPlay and VidAngel things we want to watch, even on our own. Yes, without the kids around!
Before you wonder, but why watch things that need to be censored at all – that is a fair point, but there are some amazing movies – I was a Theatre/Communication double major with English Literature and also took extensive film studies classes in grad. school, give me a break here – that are amazing art but don’t need a few extra scenes or words that are added on top for no reason.
Due to my background, I’m not talking about being Amish or prudish. I’m the first to tell you that I’d rather go without lots and lots of things then lose my Spotify plan! But, we can still control our environment in such a way as to cultivate joy in our Spirits.
Marvel movies are a great example. Iron Manis one of my favorite movies of all time and I wanted to show it to the kids. It teaches that caring about others and being self sacrificing (and being really good at science!) can help one to be a better person and beat the odds!
However, I didn’t need the random bad words and dancing bikini chicks there at the beginning, before Tony’s redemption, highlighting his bad boy-ness that he activates hero mode there near the middle of the movie. His snarkiness alone communicates that just fine without them!
And just like that, Boom, Bikini Chicks have Disappeared!
Classic films like ET have tons and tons of language – and insults that I don’t need my little parrots mimicking! You may not remember that, because if like me, you saw it on TV when they used to take these things out, but it is still an amazing movie without it. Same goes for Back to the Future.
Here is what it looks like to use Clearplay, for instance.
Here is the main screen that pops up.
Then you can go more closely into the different blocked areas and see what you want exactly to block.
Yes, it bleeps out words for you, the parent! Isn’t that nice of them?! I thought so…
And for some of us, there are films we saw when we were in high school or so, that we may want to share with a spouse that are brilliant – looking at you, Wes Anderson!! – but have way too many things that we don’t want in our brains anymore. Like millions of repeated bad words, which really don’t even make sense in the context of the sentences they are used in.
My mom once told me that using the same bad word over and over again just makes you sound like you don’t have the imagination to think up a new adjective or word to use. Like, if we replaced a bad word with the word “pink” to describe a pony.
Would you sound smart if you said, “That pink pink pink pinkin’ pinkerty pinkest pink pony!!!”
Right, you would not sound smart. Case in point!
At a certain point, those things become undesirable. I used to have a giant Ignore button in my brain that things wouldn’t register. That is bad! You want your conscience to care. You don’t want to dull your senses. Now, I feel a magnetic revulsion from anything too violent or with too much language.
When my kids were little and all we watched was Mr. Rogers, Wild Kratts, the Wiggles, and the Wonder Pets, my spirit got sensitized again and I don’t want it to go back to the way it was when I was completely fine and dandy with going to Air Force Oneat the movie theatre as a kid.
The way to do that is to watch what you yourself watch.
VidAngel has Psych (which isn’t too violent generally but does have lots of random words popping up!) while ClearPlay has Marvel and more Disney movies.
What we do is have them on a Chrome extension and then send them to our Roku via wireless connection. We don’t have a TV, only a projector, but it is even easier to do if you have a more simple set up. Sometimes for more special effects laden movies, we hook up the HDMI to a laptop since the RAM suffers with heavy CGI.
Protecting Your Family Is Simple
You don’t need to be a tech genius to keep your family safe online. Start with router-level filtering through CleanBrowsing, add movie filtering tools like VidAngel or ClearPlay, and layer on additional parental controls as needed for your family.
The internet doesn’t have to be a scary place.
With a few simple tools, you can create a joyful, protected digital environment where your kids can learn, explore, and grow without stumbling into things that steal their innocence.
If you’d like to create a specialized plan for your home’s internet and media or need help knowing where to start or how to set it up, set up a coaching session with me! I’d love to help you in any way I can.
