Listen to the podcast
Key Takeaways:
- Print magazines are becoming a lost art in today’s digital age, but they offer a tangible and in-person experience that can be enjoyed by moms, kids, and families.
- The Learning Well Journal is a quarterly print magazine that covers four topics: home, homeschool, faith, and family.
- Each issue is themed around a verse in scripture and contains a mix of practical advice, inspirational articles, and fun projects.
- The Learning Well Journal’s mission is to help moms love their life at home, including homeschooling their kids, taking care of their homes, and growing in their faith lives.
- Persevering through the everyday tasks of homeschooling can be challenging, but it is worth it to see the amazing human beings our children become.
- The Learning Well Journal can be found on Alicia Hutchinson’s website or Instagram page.
Resources:
- Learning Well Journal: https://aliciahutchinson.com/magazine/
- Alicia Hutchinson’s website: https://aliciahutchinson.com/
- Learning Well on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/learningwell/
- Alicia Hutchinson on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aliciashutchinson/
Homeschool magazine podcast transcript
Pam: All of my formative years of working back when I was in college, and then my first few years of teaching were spent making beautiful things in print so that people could be inspired and informed by them. And that’s why I still love a beautiful print magazine. And that’s what we’re talking about on today’s episode of the podcast. Hi everyone. I’m Pam Barnhill, and I have helped thousands of homeschoolers beat burnout, create doable systems, and bring more joy to their homeschool day. Welcome to episode 66 of The 10 Minutes to a Better Homeschool Podcast.
Well, today I am joined by Alicia Hutchinson, a longtime homeschool blogger who decided that she wanted to inspire homeschool moms with a quarterly print magazine. And so that is exactly what we’re going to be talking about.
Now, before I get on with this conversation with Alicia, I would like to invite you to our website @ freehomeschoolplanner.com to download our free homeschool planning pages. These dozen homeschool planning pages are the big picture planning pages that I use each and every year to plan my homeschool for the following school year. You are going to really enjoy digging in deep with these, creating a vision, looking at some goals, and getting your schedule ready, all prepared and laid out for your school year. So those are @ freehomeschoolplanner.com. And now on with the interview.
Pam: Alicia Hutchinson is the founder of Learning Well Community and Learning Well Journal. She has been homeschooling her four children since 2008. She lives in Minnesota with her husband, her kids, and one cat.
Pam: Alicia, welcome to the podcast.
Alicia: Hey, Pam, thanks for having me.
Pam: Well, I am so excited to have you on because you may not know this, but my background is in print journalism, so I worked in newspapers, and then I was a yearbook advisor for like seven years. And so things in print and the smell of ink on paper, that is so cool to me. So I’m so excited to talk to you about something that not a lot of people are doing anymore, and that is a print homeschooling magazine. So tell me about the Learning Well Journal, what’s it all about?
Alicia: Yeah, well, it’s a twofold mission. I feel that I have with this project. I, like you have always loved print. I love holding things in my hand. I feel like it’s kind of becoming a lost art of a, you know, a bit like, it’s just everything is so digital these days that, not only that, but I do feel like we’re way too much in our screens, in our phones, in our devices all the time.
So I feel like any way that I can encourage moms, kids, families to do things that are more in-person and you know, tangible in your hand type of things, that’s kind of my mission. But secondly, I’ve been blogging for a long time. I’ve been blogging for about as long as I’ve been homeschooling. And so, you know, I’ve been encouraging or trying to encourage moms for a really long time in their homeschooling journey.
Alicia: So it’s, it’s a project that kind of pairs those two things. And, you know, my purpose with the magazine is to help moms really love their life at home, when with their kids homeschooling their kids, taking care of their homes in their faith lives and all that, that involves kind of all bundled up into one product or item.
Pam: Okay. So give us some of the nitty-gritties about the Learning Well Journal. So if I were a subscriber, what would I get?
Alicia: So we have four topics that we cover, home, homeschool, faith, and family. So I like talking about, I, I love home stuff. I love talking about cleaning schedules and how to keep your home organized and decorating and baking and, you know, menu planning and all of that stuff.
And as a homeschool mom, we kind of have to do all of that stuff. And obviously, homeschooling is ha has been a huge part of my life forever, and it’s becoming, well, not forever, but you know, a long time. It feels like it’s, It feels like forever in a good way, in the best way. So, and it’s becoming more and more popular and you know, in our family,
I think that, you know, that includes not only just our life with our husbands, but you know, our extended family and doing things all together. And then our faith life is the most important, right. And how we keep growing in that and how we keep, you know, kind of becoming refined and sanctified and in a little bit of a way, just, you know, that scripture about how iron sharpens iron.
And that’s kind of what I’m hoping to do with the magazine.
Pam: Oh, I love it. I love it. So four topics there, and then the magazine comes out four times a year. It’s quarterly.
Alicia: Yes. So it’s seasonal, but then each quarter we have a theme. So we base each issue around a verse in scripture. So we’ve had issues on discipline and resourcefulness and hospitality and diligence. So those are some of the topics. And then each one of those topics, we have a scripture that we kind of base the whole thing around, the whole issue around.
Alicia: And then we add in just seasonal fun things too. So for the most recent issue for spring, we’re talking all about resourcefulness, and we are theming it around that scripture in Luke where it talks about too, if you are fear given much, you are expected much. And anyway, so that’s what this one is based around. But we also throw in a lot of stuff on Easter and, you know,
fun projects like mayday baskets and stuff for spring. So it’s seasonal, but it’s also themed around a verse in scripture.
Pam: So it sounds like it’s a really good mix of kind of practical advice, practical homeschooling advice, and also fun projects and inspirational articles as well.
Alicia: Yes, because I mean, I think we’ve all experienced that where you get a resource that you’re really excited about that is really beautiful, or it looks really good and you know, like the shiny curriculum from the outside.
Alicia: But then when you get going with it, it’s like, well, this isn’t really helpful to me. This is more of an idea than actually applicable to my life. So that’s what I wanted to try to avoid. I wanted something that looked beautiful, but also was extremely practical for the, for, you know, just for the everyday homeschool mom that just wants to enjoy her life with her kids at home and needs some help along the way like we all do.
Pam: Well, with this platform, with this learning well journal, and then you’ve had the Learning Well community for years, such a great community of homeschoolers. If there was one thing that you could just really convey to homeschool moms, what do you want them to know?
Alicia: That’s honestly such an easy question, Pam. And I know, you know, when you have older kids, you can kind of see the forest for the trees a little bit better. Then I feel like when you have the toddler baby years, when you’re thinking, what on earth am I doing with my life?
Alicia: As our kids get older and you see them grow into, you know, these amazing human beings that, you know, for the longest time, you do the everyday stuff, you do, you know, the training and the memorizing and the spelling tests and the, you know, teaching them how to do chores around the house and all of these things.
Alicia: And it just seems so tedious and monotonous so much of the time. But then as they’re getting older, and at this point, I have one that’s my oldest has graduated, he’s almost 21, and my second son is a junior, and then I have a 14 and a nine year old. But as they get older, it kind of all starts coming into focus.
Alicia: And you can see like, not that it’s me, it’s not, it’s not me, because there’s, you know, there’s it, it’s not just me like, God had a lot to do with this, but I, you see kind of the, the people that they’re becoming, the things that they’ve learned in your school over all of these years, and you see that they’re capable.
Alicia: You see that they’re employable. You see that, you know, all of these like amazing traits of our kids that have just kind of all come into focus at one time as they’re kind of becoming adults. And it just finally hits you. Like, oh my gosh, it is so, so worth it.
Pam: Yeah. All of these, like all these things that kind of make us cry, like, oh my gosh, am I doing a good enough job? Am I doing this enough? Am I, you know, do I have all the right credits in high school? And all of these little nitty gritty things that we get in the weeds about, but it just finally kind of comes into focus and you just see like,
Alicia: these are amazing human beings, and I am just so blessed to have been able to be their mom and have this time with them. And it just makes it all worth it. All worth it.
Pam: I love it. And what the other thing I hear you saying besides it’s all worth it, like if you’re faithful and you show up and do the work, then it does turn out okay in the end. And so I love that. Love that so much.
Pam: Well, Alicia, if moms are looking for more encouragement and practical advice and a beautiful print package that they can hold in their hands, where can they find the Learning Well Journal?
Alicia: Yeah, so they can just go to my website. It’s just my name, AliciaHutchinson.com. And to find that page, it’s AliciaHutchinson.com/magazine, and they can also find me on Instagram at Learning Well, or my personal page, which I’m pretty active at over there is at over at Alicia’s.
Pam: All right. All of those places. And we’ll link ’em all for you in the show notes to this episode of the podcast so you can get your hands on your very own copy. Thanks so much, Alicia.
Alicia: Thanks, Pam.
Pam: And there you have it. Now, if you would like links to any of the resources that Alicia and I chatted about today, including a link to subscribe to the Learning Well Journal, you can find that all on the show notes for this episode of the podcast. That’s at PamBarnhill.com/TMBH66.
Pam: Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. If you have left a rating or review for the 10 Minutes to a Better Homeschool podcast in your favorite podcast app, believe it or not, the ratings and reviews that you leave actually help the podcast apps know to push out the podcast to more new listeners. So we thank you so very much if you’ve taken the time to do that.
Pam: And if you haven’t and you happen to be over there, we would really appreciate the reviews. Now I will be back again next week. I will be back again to talk about why more and more moms’ families really are choosing to homeschool their kids. So come back and join me next week. Until then, keep on homeschooling.
- How to Transform Math Lessons without Changing your Curriculum with Denise Gaskins - April 26, 2024
- Homeschooling Boys with Durenda Wilson - April 12, 2024
- What About Lab Sciences? with Dr. Moon - March 29, 2024
Leave a Rating or Review
Doing so helps me get the word out about the podcast. iTunes bases their search results on positive ratings, so it really is a blessing — and it’s easy!
- Click on this link to go to the podcast main page.
- Click on Listen on Apple Podcasts under the podcast name.
- Once your iTunes has launched and you are on the podcast page, click on Ratings and Review under the podcast name. There you can leave either or both!