Why We Started This Site
It started with a question our then-nine-year-old asked at the dinner table: "Why does money exist?" We looked at each other. We knew the general answer, but we realized pretty quickly that we didn't know how to explain it in a way that would actually mean something to a kid.
That was the moment we started paying attention to a gap we'd been ignoring. Our kids were in school — a good school, actually — but the things we cared about most were simply not on the curriculum. Not economics. Not individual rights. Not how free markets work or why personal responsibility matters or what the Constitution was actually trying to protect. Nothing about entrepreneurship. Nothing about what made America unusual in history — and why those ideas are worth understanding.
We weren't looking to be political about it. We just wanted our kids to understand how the world works. And we realized pretty fast that if we were going to teach them these things, we were going to have to figure it out ourselves.
How We Found the Tuttle Twins
A friend in our homeschool co-op mentioned the Tuttle Twins at a park meetup. We were skeptical at first — we'd seen plenty of educational books that looked great in theory and put kids to sleep in practice. But we ordered a couple of titles anyway.
Our kids read them that same evening. Both of them. Voluntarily.
By the next morning, our daughter was explaining supply and demand to her younger brother using the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter as an example. Our son was asking why the government couldn't just "make more money" to solve poverty. These were real conversations — the kind you hope to have but can't always force. The books had sparked them without any effort on our part.
We've since gone through the whole series. And we've watched our kids go from politely tolerating economics discussions to actually bringing them up on their own. The Tuttle Twins didn't just teach concepts — they gave our kids a framework for thinking about the world that has stuck.
"Our daughter was explaining supply and demand to her younger brother using the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter. These were real conversations — the kind you hope to have but can't force."
Why We Built This Site
After we started sharing what we'd found with other parents — at co-ops, in Facebook groups, at church, at the park — we kept getting the same question: "Where do I start?"
There was no single place that answered that honestly. There were affiliate sites that just listed books with generic descriptions. There were ideological sites that felt more like advocacy than genuine help. And there were forums full of well-meaning recommendations that scattered in every direction.
So we built Teach Real Principles to be the resource we wished had existed when we were starting out. Every review you'll find here is based on books we've actually read with our own kids. Every recommendation reflects something we've genuinely tried and found valuable. We don't include things just because they're popular, and we don't hide our opinions to avoid controversy.
This site runs on affiliate commissions — primarily from the Tuttle Twins store and Amazon. We're transparent about that because we believe you deserve to know. But the commissions follow the recommendations, not the other way around. We've passed on promoting plenty of products that didn't clear our bar.
