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Homeschool 101: The What, Why and How! {Episode 35}
113 Plays5 years ago
We get asked about homeschooling almost more than anything else! Today we're answering some basic questions about why we homeschool, what that looks like and some of the pros and cons of educating our children at home!.W
hether you're just curious or have felt the nudge to homeschool yourself, we hope you love this episode!
Bonnie's Homeschool Blog Posts:
Homeschool: How do You Know if it's Right for You?
Our Daily Homeschool Schedule
The Biggest Gift of Homeschooling
Homeschool Tracker
Tapestry of Grace
The Good and the Beautiful
Homeschool.com Methods
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction: Meet Bonnie and Audrey
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumber the Podcast. I'm Bonnie. And I'm Audrey. And we're homeschooling moms to a combined total of 18 children. We know firsthand that motherhood is full of crazy chaos and overwhelming obligations, but it should also be full of love and laughter. Regardless of where you are on your journey, come join us as we work together to find joy in the chaos of motherhood.
Homeschooling Basics & FAQs
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 35. Today we're going to do a fun little episode we like to call homeschooling 101 because we get lots of questions about homeschooling, about how we started, what it looks like, and we're going to answer some of your most common questions, whether you're curious or looking into it yourself. So we're really excited about this one.
00:00:49
Speaker
All right, let's start off by reading a review. But we also wanted to say that we got asked about leaving reviews. If you're not on iTunes or if you've already left a review, other ways that you can help out. And we really appreciate people looking for other ways to spread the word. So other ways, yes, you can leave more than one review on iTunes. If you've already done that, you can maybe just
00:01:11
Speaker
reference which episode you're talking about or something specifically that you enjoyed from that episode. And then other ways that you can let people know about the podcast is tell your friends. And you can take a screenshot when you're listening and post that on Instagram or Facebook or, I don't know, email, whatever you want to do to help us out. We really appreciate everybody talking about the podcast. Yeah, totally.
Listener Reviews and Feedback
00:01:36
Speaker
Okay, and now I'm going to read a review from iTunes. This is from Pitt with Belle and it says, such a great listen. I am loving this new podcast. I've already recommended it many times. It's a great reminder for moms that we're not perfect, but we're trying our best and that's perfect. Thumbs up, emoji. Oh, that's so sweet. I love that one.
00:01:58
Speaker
Thank you so much for leaving that.
Motherhood Challenges: A Listener's Story
00:02:00
Speaker
And that leads us into a crazy mom moment. Most of the time when we share one of these, you guys, it's because they're hilarious and we want to connect through the hilarity of motherhood, even when we're drowning in bodily fluids. But today's is a little traumatic, but I still wanted to share because it is just a crazy mom moment. I can't believe she survived this. So this is from paraberrylane.blog on Instagram. She says, here's my story to share.
00:02:23
Speaker
After my twins had just turned one, we had a lot of snow and were basically snowed in for a week. I had cabin fever and talked to my husband into loading up the kids and going to the mall just to get out of the house so I wouldn't lose my mind. I wanted to take our caboose wagon which didn't fit in the car with three car seats so he drove his truck with that in the back.
00:02:39
Speaker
We pulled up to the mall and parked. I got one kid out of the car and put in the wagon. While I was getting the other one out, someone was trying to pull in next to me. So I shut the door. The car was locked with one kid in the car with the keys and one kid out. It was below zero degrees. It was tragic. My husband was of course upset since the spare keys were at home. So he took our oldest in the truck with him and I was left standing in the cold holding a baby while one baby was locked in the car screaming bloody murder.
00:03:06
Speaker
I couldn't send the twin that was out of the car with him because he had a small truck at the time with no rear-facing car seat. Eventually, a car pulled up to check on me, the random lady standing in the mall parking lot holding a baby below freezing temperatures. They ended up letting us warm up a bit in their car while we rolled the window down so the one in the car could still see us. Most traumatic event ever.
00:03:29
Speaker
And then she follows it up by saying closely followed by the second time this almost exact event occurred a year later, except no one was around to bring spare keys. I had to call a tow service to come pick the lock. That is so awful. I'm so sorry. And in the cold, like, that's my worst fear because here we don't have cold, but we have extreme heat temperatures. So if a kid gets stuck in the car, it's like life or death. In fact, they, they ask you to just call 911. If your car kid ever gets stuck in the,
00:03:59
Speaker
in the car in the summer temperatures because it can get like 20, 30, 40 degrees hotter inside your car than it is outside. And that's like certain death. So I know that trauma that's so stressful. I'm glad it worked out. Hey, do you know that she is one of the people that listen to her podcast that I have met in real life? Oh, really? That's exciting. Yeah. Yeah. We live about an hour apart. So I love her. Yeah. Oh, that's really fun. That's really fun. Cool. Lucky you guys. Yeah.
Purpose of the Podcast: Clarifying Intentions
00:04:28
Speaker
Okay, so this isn't an episode to convince you how to homeschool. We're just going to answer questions that we get a lot about homeschooling because, as you imagine, homeschooling nine kids engenders a lot of questions. So we're going to answer some questions, Homeschooling 101. And Bonnie, at a later time, are we going to dive into different subjects?
00:04:50
Speaker
You know, I think that we are totally willing to talk more about homeschooling if the desire is there. So if you want to hear more about homeschooling or specific topics, extracurriculars, how we manage to get kids to all their events when we have kids at home, anything else that you'd like us to dive deep on, we're happy to do that. Just send us an email or mention it in a review. We can plan for that as well.
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I outnumbered the podcast at gmail.com. And the other thing I wanted to say is that every single homeschool looks different because every home is different and every family is different. So like if we share something that works for us, Mary may not work for anybody else because every single homeschool looks different.
00:05:33
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And that reminds me of what Rachel Kovac said in her episode. I'll let Audrey tell you what number that is. Well, I'm telling you this, but she said that we homeschool and focus, we make our family culture look a specific way because those are our strengths, right? She mentioned poetry for her was one of her strengths. She wanted her kids to learn.
00:05:51
Speaker
And so if you see someone else doing something that you really admire, sure, you can incorporate that. We can't do everything, but it's important to realize that we just make important whatever our strengths are so we can kind of teach our kids the best we know how. Absolutely. Episode 26. That's a good one. Go listen. Okay.
00:06:08
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah. And this episode is mostly just to help satisfy curiosity about homeschool and also help anyone take the leap who might be feeling inspired to do it, but by no means are we trying to convince anyone who's happy with another educational
Socialization in Homeschooling
00:06:21
Speaker
scenario. This is just kind of an FYI. Okay. So we're going to talk about why, what, and how, and pros and cons of each of our homeschools, right?
00:06:32
Speaker
Okay, so why to homeschool? One of the most common questions we get asked when people find out we homeschool is, what about socialization? Do you guys get that question? Oh my gosh, it's hilarious how that's the number one question we get. Not anything about education. Yeah, I don't, I don't distrust that you can educate your child, but can you socialize them?
00:06:54
Speaker
Yeah, so actually socialization is one of the reasons that we do homeschool our kids. It's a good reason to homeschool. Homeschool kids can socialize with
00:07:05
Speaker
all age groups, not just a group of kids their own age. So my kids interact with younger kids and older kids and adults and the very old and the very young, and they socialize across the entire spectrum. And my kids are very well socialized among their own age group because of groups they're in, but also
00:07:27
Speaker
across every age group. And for some of the reasons we're going to get into later about time, they have more time to socialize with other people outside their own age group.
00:07:39
Speaker
in our opinion, socialization is one reason we're homeschooling because they are better socialized in our opinion. I have to share something along those lines. When we first started homeschooling, I was still really iffy about it. I don't know, is this the right decision kind of thing? And we went to a homeschool convention and during one of the hours they had a panel of teenage homeschoolers
00:08:03
Speaker
who we were allowed to ask any questions to, which I thought was awesome because I thought, okay, this is the fruit of the labors, right? This is like how these kids turn out. I want to grill these kids and find out what they've learned. And a lot of that socialization aspect, are they awkward? Can they have a conversation with people, et cetera?
00:08:19
Speaker
Because I was also brainwashed into thinking if you don't go to public school, you don't know how to talk to people. But seeing these kids up there, there was probably seven or eight kids. The way they looked all... And this was a room full of adults asking them questions. The way they looked adults in the eye and answered with confidence and joked around with each other, but were respectful. I was blown away.
00:08:39
Speaker
I thought, if my kids are going to turn out like that, sign me up. Where do I sign? This sounds awesome. And so I think just the proof is in the pudding. If you are thinking about homeschooling and you could expose yourself to some of the kids who have come out of your community as homeschoolers, that might give you the confidence to go forward. That really helped me. Yeah, absolutely. I 100% agree that
00:09:00
Speaker
Um, two things here. If you're thinking about homeschooling, go to a homeschool convention. It will be a very good eye opener for you. And the second thing I, um, when people ask me, what about socialization? I turn it around and I ask them, well, are you happy with the socialization your child is getting in public school? And you know what? The answer is almost always no. They tell me about bullies. They tell me about shy kids. They tell me about, you know, all these things are unhappy with about public school socialization.
00:09:30
Speaker
And I'm just like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Pros and cons to every scenario for
Advantages of Homeschooling
00:09:35
Speaker
sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So, so that is a good reason why we homeschool. Um, the second reason we homeschool is a quality time. So, um, when I was going to, um, school college for my, my elementary ed training,
00:09:53
Speaker
They broke it down for us in minutes and seconds. And they said, in a public school classroom, at the third grade level, the teacher, as a teacher, you will get 15 minutes per day to spend on direct instruction. The rest of the time will be interruptions and transitions and one-on-one time with kids and so on and so forth. So make good use of your time. The time that you will get to spend one-on-one with each kid per day
00:10:21
Speaker
is in a third grade classroom of 30 students is 10 seconds. So make good use of it. Yeah. So at that time I started asking myself why then would I send my kids to a public school if that's the very limited amount of
00:10:41
Speaker
time that they would get in instruction. So yeah, the joke I tell people is that I give my kids at least 16 minutes a day and then they're getting at least a quality public school education. Winning! No, but we spend way more than 16 minutes a day on homeschooling and I think it shows in the fruit of where our kids are. Another reason we homeschool is we get to choose the curriculum and this is pretty important to us because
00:11:10
Speaker
we have some definite opinions about things we want our kids to learn and philosophies we want our kids to believe or be exposed to. And so the choice getting to choose the curriculum is a definite huge reason that we homeschool. And then the last reason that I'm going to mention here about why we homeschool is freedom of thought. And we expose our kids to a lot of different ideas and a lot of different thoughts and a lot of
00:11:39
Speaker
different issues and both sides of the issue. And we go through all these things with them and we feel like we're giving our kids, we're not presenting them a right or a wrong, but we are giving them, I just see a lot more freedom in the way that my kids think outside of a public school institution. So that is one reason why we homeschool.
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah, I love all those. I love all those, especially the freedom of thought. It's getting a little sketchier out there as far as people being allowed to have an opinion and voice it freely, right? Especially in advanced education.
00:12:20
Speaker
You know, colleges are like either liberal or conservative colleges. And if you bring up points of view that do not kind of align with the college's point of view or the professor's point of view, then you're shut down and mocked and called a bigot or whatever. And I just think, is this a sort of, you know, open conversation we want to teach our kids to have that, well, sure, you can talk openly, but only if it agrees with me or else I'm going to call you names. I just think that's really silly. And that's really bothered me for a while too. That's definitely something that I'm excited to teach my kids how to do.
00:12:51
Speaker
Yeah, you know what's interesting? Just a little example of this is my son this semester signed up for his classes on the college campus and he went to the first day of all the classes and he made the decision to
00:13:04
Speaker
drop one class and take it from a different professor instead because he could tell from the first day of being in class with that professor that he was not going to be allowed freedom of thought, freedom of thought, and freedom of expression in that class. I was really proud of him.
00:13:23
Speaker
His thoughts and opinions and ideas and the freedom to express them mattered more to him than being in a certain class or getting a grade or whatever. So I was really excited to see that come out of him at the college level.
00:13:38
Speaker
Yeah. And at such a relatively young age, he's able to look at someone and say, he's not going to be able to appreciate both sides of the story. And I want to find someone who can and can help me. And isn't that the whole point of freedom is that we can hear both sides of a debate and respectfully and with an educated mind, make that decision one way or the other instead of just shutting people down. That's kind of what I want to teach my kids as well. I love that.
00:14:03
Speaker
Yeah. So just off air a minute ago, Audrey and I were expressing concern over a bill we're seeing in California that's mandating some vaccines or else kids can't go to school. So there's all these things popping up now that make the public school system
00:14:19
Speaker
a little bit trickier of a scene to navigate. And if we don't fall in line with all the requirements that the government's asking of us or any number of things that we don't like, the sex ed program or anything else that they're mandated to teach in the public schools, we might be looking into homeschooling. And the interesting thing to me is our why really had nothing to do with
00:14:41
Speaker
the curricula in the public schools or even government regulations or anything like that. Our family personally just felt really inspired to do it. This was 10 years ago. But since then, I've just seen all these other blessings come out of it, namely a lot of the things that you've said, Audrey, and we'll talk a little bit more about the pros that we've seen.
00:15:01
Speaker
later on, but I'm really grateful that we came to that decision. So like I said, our main why was just that we felt led to it, and we've since been able to see a lot of benefits.
Homeschooling Myths & Realities
00:15:10
Speaker
Now, I'm not going to say it's all sunshine and roses, because there's definitely some things that I'm like, oh, my kids were in school, this wouldn't be an issue, or someone else is teaching my kid, this wouldn't be an issue. So like we say, there's really pros and cons to everything, but I really feel like the pros to homeschooling have outweighed the cons. Another one of our personal reasons, you talked about freedom of thought.
00:15:30
Speaker
One thing that I noticed in college, so I went to a private religious college, one thing that was so cool to me was to go into a seemingly secular course, history or biology or something, and have it be taught to me in the realm of a religious upbringing.
00:15:45
Speaker
So it was, you know, biology was taught in the realm of a biblical understanding. And what I loved about that was that it was combining all my knowledge, right? Like I had this knowledge at church and this knowledge at school, but I had never really concretely connected the two. Does that make sense? And so when I went to these classes, I was like, whoa,
00:16:05
Speaker
Yeah, here they're making sense of both my worlds and they're connecting the two. And what I love about homeschooling is that we're able to do that at a very young age. We can talk about history and say, do you see God's hand in this act or do you see how this worked out, et cetera, et cetera? So that's what I really loved about teaching my kids at home. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. I totally loved learning biology when I was learning it with my kids at home with a Christian perspective as opposed to the
00:16:31
Speaker
very secular way that I was taught biology in high school. It was like I could open my mind and combine all these different things that were going on together and make connections. Yeah. You didn't have to compartmentalize all your beliefs anymore. There wasn't like history over here, biology over here, God over here. You could combine them all, which is pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. So now we're going to go on to what. What homeschooling looks like at our houses as opposed to what people think.
00:17:00
Speaker
I mean, people think a lot of different things about what our homeschool looks like or should look like. And in fact, we have probably polar opposite family expectations on both sides of our family. One side thinks that we ought to be sitting at desks and having a bell ring.
00:17:20
Speaker
between course subjects.
Creating Adaptable Learning Environments
00:17:24
Speaker
And the other side thinks that any sitting we do and sit down with books and pencils and papers is just hindering the child's mind and they should be allowed to run wild and free all day long. So we've had to make our own path and our homeschool is something in between sitting at desks and running wild and free all day.
00:17:48
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely feel the same way. Ours is definitely somewhere in between. We actually did in this new house. We built a quote unquote school room is what we call it, but really we don't do a lot of school in there because I didn't want my kids to just feel like they were stuck at a desk. In fact, if I could change anything about what we did is we put too many desk areas and not enough couch areas. But really we do homeschool everywhere. So we read aloud in bedrooms and in the living room.
00:18:16
Speaker
wherever's comfortable. Yesterday, my kids were in the school room doing a bunch of coloring and crafts while I was reading aloud to them. We have a laptop so kids can do their online learning wherever they want to move it. We have this little separate guest house where they've been working.
00:18:32
Speaker
together so they can get some quiet from the little kids just you name it really anywhere anywhere goes and I love that reminder to Make sure that homeschool is that you're not trying to make homeschool look like public school So that's probably the biggest misconception and maybe even those harmful Misconception for new homeschoolers is that your school at home has to look like school at school and if you think about it
00:18:56
Speaker
The way school is designed at a public school is to help move masses of kids through this curriculum, right? Whereas at home, it can be much more personal one-on-one, so it really shouldn't look anything like public school. They've structured things that way in order to keep the chaos to a minimum and keep control, but at home, things can be definitely a lot more comfortable, a lot looser.
00:19:18
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. We homeschool all over the place too. Sometimes we take a blanket outside in the grass if it's a nice day and read our science out there. But we do have a homeschool room set up as well. And the other day, we just started homeschooling this week. And the other day I had finished setting it up and my husband walked in after work and he says, hey, this looks like a conference room in here.
00:19:42
Speaker
You didn't say, hey, it looks like a school room. We have a big, huge chalkboard on the wall in that room. And we have a long six-foot table with chairs around it so that I can work with a couple kids at the same time. And it's a good place for all the supplies to have a home in that room so that if they've lost something,
00:20:01
Speaker
That's the first place to start looking anyway. Yeah. And there's a computer desk in there. Um, yeah. So, um, but then my older kids, like if I'm working, usually I'll be working in there in the morning with the younger kids and the older kids will take their stuff and go somewhere where they can have quiet, um, and work on their own stuff without listening to the ABCs in the background or whatever.
00:20:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's so great. Yeah. In fact, for us here in Arizona, it's always really hot when we start school, but around early October is when we start doing everything outside because we're just dying to go outside once the heat dissipates and it's just beautiful and breezy and that's like our spring.
00:20:37
Speaker
Okay, so moving on to how we homeschool and like we could spend hours talking about this and we will if you guys have interest in the future. But just some general stuff about how we homeschool. So the motto of our homeschool is learning to learn. And that is our sole purpose in educating our children is to teach them how to learn. And this, because this skill will take them through the rest of their lives. If they know how to learn,
00:21:07
Speaker
The world is their oyster. There's nothing they can't do, right? Yeah, yeah. So with that in mind, we start by teaching them how to read. And once they can read, that's huge. But we also teach them how to study and lots of other skills too. But keeping in mind the main motto of our school, learning to learn.
00:21:26
Speaker
I love that so much because I really feel like that's what I'm teaching my kids as well, or at least what I'm attempting to teach them.
High School Homeschooling Challenges
00:21:32
Speaker
You know, one of my big hang ups at the beginning of homeschool was, am I enough? Like, do I know enough? Do I have enough resources? Do I have enough patience, et cetera, et cetera? But in the end, I realized, wait a minute, I'm not the one, like you can't give someone an education. I hate that term. Well, I'm gonna give them an education. Or, you know, a person has to educate themselves. And so really all I can do is facilitate my kids,
00:21:57
Speaker
and teach them how to learn so that when they become passionate about something or they realize there's a hole in their education somewhere, they can go out and get it. And that's one of the things, we're gonna share a couple of links here at the bottom. I have a couple of blog posts I've written about this because we've had questions in the past, but one of them is kind of helping moms get the courage to homeschool if they feel so inspired. And that's one of the things I talk about, how scary it can be to take on your kid's education on your own. But number one, you could do it because all you're doing is teaching them how to learn, right, if you think about it that way.
00:22:26
Speaker
And number two, it's really important that your child take responsibility for his own education. I feel like most of us didn't get that until college. Yeah, absolutely. And so my kids, now a lot of kids really, a lot of people really have trepidation when they think about homeschooling at the high school level. And some of that is because
00:22:48
Speaker
Let's face it, sometimes kids get more advanced than their parents. So how do you teach somebody who knows more than you, right?
Organizing Schedules and Resources
00:22:56
Speaker
But since I've taught my kids how to learn, then all I have to do is supply them with the resources and they can teach themselves a subject. So all of my three oldest are all more advanced than me.
00:23:12
Speaker
as far as knowledge goes, in science and math. I never took the level of math and science that they are doing. And how can I teach it to them? I know. I think it's so awesome that they're smarter than me. They're better than me. And still, I'm their quote unquote teacher because I'm supplying them the resources and the schedule. But they are really teaching themselves. And that's golden right there.
00:23:40
Speaker
Oh, yeah, it's so amazing to see your kids get better than you at something, you know, I just love it. I think it's so great. It's so great. Yeah.
00:23:49
Speaker
So one resource that we use is Homeschool Tracker and because I have nine kids, I definitely have to keep everybody or make everybody a schedule. I don't hold them to the schedule through the day. Okay, it's 9.15 and now you need to switch to this subject or whatever because that's one of the beauties of homeschooling is that you can stick with a subject until you're done with it if you need to. But I do set up a schedule for the whole year
00:24:15
Speaker
so that I make sure that they get all their subjects in a day and in a week. They touch all the areas that I need them to be learning and studying. And then also I do make up a daily schedule because we have two laptops and they have to be split among, well, there's really only five, five
00:24:38
Speaker
to six kids that are using the laptops. So I do schedule them a math hour or a Rosetta Stone Spanish half an hour or whatever. So that if there's a question of he's on the computer, I couldn't do my math because she was on the computer, which is like, you hear that a lot. Yeah, I've never heard that before. I was patiently waiting. She just never finished. Yeah.
00:25:05
Speaker
So that if it does come up and it's contested, then, oh, you know, it's so-and-so's time on the computer and you'll have to try to finish your math later after everyone is done with their time. Yeah. So I do make them daily schedules and weekly schedules, and then we have daily check-ins. So at lunchtime, I look at their schedule and see what progress they made. Just make sure they're on track, that they've checked off the boxes they're supposed to do, or they give me a reason why they haven't.
00:25:29
Speaker
Um, and then, you know, at the end of the day, also at our afternoon short time, I also have a check in and say, okay, where are you? What did you get done? What are you still working on? Can you carry it over tomorrow? Do you need to, you know, spend some more time this afternoon and that kind of thing. So, um, homeschool tracker is one thing that helps me keep my sanity.
00:25:48
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, we do similar things. We just started school, you know, about a month ago here. So that's fresh in my mind. We do a like a yearly, everybody has a spreadsheet, you know, where we talk about their yearly goals, and then we break it down.
00:26:02
Speaker
know kind of by semester or month depending on the subject and same thing the daily schedule so they know what they're supposed to be doing what days etc and you can really get as as specific or as loose about this as you want whatever lends itself well to your personality. Audrey and I have both mentioned we're very
00:26:19
Speaker
detail oriented kind of control freakish. So we like to have things down so we know exactly what's expected and that really helps a lot of kids too.
Exploring Homeschooling Methods
00:26:28
Speaker
But yeah, that's the brilliance of homeschooling is you can really do it however works best for you and your kids. So when I talk about the how, I want to just throw something out there that a lot of people don't realize when they first start homeschooling is that they're like
00:26:41
Speaker
dozens of different paradigms that you can choose from. So I'm not talking curricula. I'm talking specific mind frames that you can pick from in order to structure your homeschooling realm. So what I mean is like unschooling versus Waldorf versus Charlotte Mason, et cetera. So if any of those sound familiar, it just means what the learning looks like, basically. So I'm not going to get into detail about any of these, but I will share a website that I love and I send all my
00:27:10
Speaker
interested friends and homeschooling there. It's homeschool.com. And at the top of the website, there's a big menu bar under the getting started guide. There's a button that says homeschool methods and learning styles. That's where I always send people to start. So you can just kind of get an idea of what's out there. You could say, oh, that won't work for my kid because he needs structure. Well, guess what?
00:27:30
Speaker
There's a really structured approach to homeschooling you can pick, or that's not going to work for my kid because he hates structure. Well, guess what? You can do something different. That's a great place to start. You can click through all these different, like I say, I like to call them paradigms of homeschooling and choose one that you think would work best for your family. So that's the great part about that. We have, just out of curiosity, we've done a couple of these.
00:27:54
Speaker
We kind of change back and forth here and there. But Charlotte Mason has always been interesting to me. The nurtured heart approach. I don't know if you've heard of that. Just a lot of different resources. And that's the wonderful thing is as my family changes, I can do pretty much whatever sounds good to us. So good place. Yeah. And different kids excel. Like you were saying, different kids excel at different paradigms. Exactly. Yeah.
00:28:16
Speaker
But we stick pretty closely to a classical education, just if you're looking to see what our paradigm is. Yeah, that's a great place to start. And also, I will put one more plug in here, too. If you are interested in homeschooling and you decide to take the plunge, there's one piece of advice that I love and I've heard over and over is to make sure that there's a bit of a detox period for your kids. Have you ever heard that, Audrey?
00:28:40
Speaker
No, but I think I haven't heard the term used, but I definitely get the idea. You probably know what I'm talking about, right? Yeah. Yeah. If your kids have been in public or private school and they've been used to getting up at a certain time and doing what's required of them day in and day out, it can be really beneficial to just take
00:28:56
Speaker
a month, two months, a semester, a year, whatever you think your family needs, and just relax. It doesn't mean just play video games all day long, but it means just read books together, just go on walks together, go to the zoo together. All these really learning rich
00:29:14
Speaker
experiences that have nothing to do with a pen and paper can be really beneficial to kind of help a kid's mind break out of that mold of, oh, I have to do it this way and I have to do what the teacher wants, you know, and then it can be a little bit easier for them to ease back into, you know, homeschooling your way. Anyway, I just love that piece of advice. I thought I'd share that. Yeah, that's awesome. Hey, one thing I wanted to say is I think as you homeschool, the longer you do it, the easier it gets. Yes.
00:29:41
Speaker
And that seems counterintuitive because, you know, you're getting into more in-depth and harder subjects. But especially if you're doing kids like, you know, I say I spend some time, you know, preparing for the year. Well, I don't make up a new schedule for my kids every year. I look and see what, okay, so this, you know, so-and-so is going to be at eighth grade level. What did my other kids do in eighth grade level? And which of those can I pick and choose from? And how, what works, you know, what works, what's going to work for this kid?
00:30:11
Speaker
and would this schedule work and would these subjects and materials work and so on. So it gets easier because you are more familiar with it, but also they are more familiar with being in a homeschool setting. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree with that. Not only do you, you tend to be a little bit more relaxed with yourself too, not, not so high pressure. And then also your kids know what to expect. And once you've had one or two kids go through, you know,
00:30:39
Speaker
elementary, ed, age, et cetera, then when you have other kids coming up, you go, oh, this works for someone, so we'll try this. Oh, that doesn't work for you. You know what I mean? And the curve balls don't mess you up quite so much.
Family Curriculum Strategies
00:30:48
Speaker
It's just experience. Yeah. So now we're going to share some pros and cons for each of our families. One huge pro for us is that we're using a curriculum. Our main curriculum is called Tapestry of Grace.
00:31:00
Speaker
and it is our history and literature and you can use the writing curriculum that comes with that as well and add on math and science and anything else you want. The thing that we love about this history curriculum
00:31:14
Speaker
is that all of our kids can be on the same era in history. So we're basically all studying the same history and literature, but at a deeper level or at a surface level, depending on their age. But it makes for such good family conversations. One kid isn't studying the Vietnam War and one kid is studying
00:31:36
Speaker
the building of the great wall of China, they're all at the same point in history. And so they know a little bit like even the youngest can contribute a little bit to a conversation around the table. And that's something that we love is being able to have the same knowledge or be at the same place in history. So that's a huge pro for us that we wouldn't get if our kids were in nine different grades in public school.
00:32:02
Speaker
Yeah, we've done a similar thing and I like that for the reasons you said. And another one is if older kids have maybe slacked off a little bit in the past, if you do it in a cycle, you keep coming back to it and they can learn from each other. So if in eighth grade the kid's like, oh, I don't really remember ancient civilizations. Well, we're back at it. And you can learn from your siblings who are learning different, who are picking up different things from the same period in history. I love that as well.
00:32:26
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. They don't get U.S. history once. They get it four times. So each time at a deeper level. And yeah, that's that. We really enjoy that. OK, so another pro for our family is that we're really, really close. And I'm not saying that kids that are in public school or private school can't be very close, but I think it just is going back to time is the amount of time that we spend together. We we just spend a lot of time together. And so we're very close.
00:32:55
Speaker
And I think that's been a huge pro for us of homeschooling. I mentioned the discussions that we can have because we're on the same era in history, but also just going back to that idea of freedom of thought. That is a, it allows some pretty deep discussions on a wide variety of topics for our family. We can discuss a lot of different things and have a lot of different angles and somebody will,
00:33:25
Speaker
have a point of view that somebody else doesn't have. And the discussions, I know we have older kids, but they're just getting so good around the table at our house. Yeah. Yeah. That's been so fun for me too. Okay. Another definite pro for us is flexible vacations. So we don't have to plan a vacation for, you know, when the kids are on spring break or something.
00:33:47
Speaker
Um, or we, we plan a vacation for when everybody else is in school. So we can have, you know, the beach to our south or Disney world or whatever. Um, flexible vacations is definitely a huge, huge benefit for us.
00:34:03
Speaker
Um, early graduation has been a huge pro for our family on homeschooling. Um, I know that we talked about this a little bit. Wasn't it in our Q and a episode Bonnie, you can look that number up. Okay. Um, so our kids are two oldest have graduated from our, our homeschool and they, um, Oh, you know, I think we talked about this and how to afford kids too. They, um, spent a couple of years working.
00:34:30
Speaker
and traveling and doing some apprenticeship and learning trade, a trade and skills and earning college credit. So being able to graduate early, not that public school kids can't graduate early, but we geared their whole homeschool experience around this idea of them graduating early.
Flexible Schedules and Advanced Learning
00:34:48
Speaker
And it's really, really been a neat experience for them as well.
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah, we're planning on doing the same thing and I'm really excited about that. FY the FAQ episode is 14 and the how to afford kids is 25. But yeah, I love that idea and being able to plan it way ahead of time. Like, okay, if we start college classes when you're 15 or 16, then you should be able to get your associates by the time you leave home or something like that. It's wonderful to be able to plan a little bit ahead. Yes, absolutely. And then one last pro for us on homeschooling is our kids are pretty, they excel and are pretty advanced in
00:35:21
Speaker
Um, all of their subjects or their favorite subject. I always tell my kids, you can do as many lessons in math as you want. If math happens to be like candy for them, you can do as many lessons in math as you want, as long as you don't fall behind in any other subjects. So I'll have a kid that's like, you know, four or five, six years ahead in math, just because they love it and they're not behind, not falling behind in anything else. And, you know, or maybe writing is their thing or, or whatever. Um, and so one thing.
00:35:51
Speaker
I suppose this could be considered a con, is people ask my kids, what grade are you in? And they're like, mom, what grade am I in? Happens every time. And I'm like, oh, my kids look really dumb when they ask that. Oh, your 12-year-old doesn't even know what grade he's in. And I'm like, well, to be fair, I don't either. Like, well, your birthday's in August, so maybe. I don't have to count it every time. Yeah.
00:36:15
Speaker
And everybody's like, and you're homeschooling your kids and you have this on your fingers. But seriously, my kids are all over the place. They're not in any one grade. They're all over the place. They're in every grade because of their different interests. They're not behind in any grade, but they're just all over the place. And that's okay. That's a pro, a definite advantage of homeschooling for us.
00:36:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, I have to concur with every single pro you listed. But honestly, when people ask me what my favorite part of homeschooling, I honestly always answer with just time. I think time just in general. And I really feel like time plays into every one of those pros that you talked about, right?
00:36:57
Speaker
So being close knit as a family comes from spending time together. I mean, there's lots of fights too, but guess what? We work them out. Having discussions together comes from lots of meal times together, lots of drives together, hanging out around the house together, vacations, graduation early, et cetera, excelling in subjects because they have more time to spend on them. And the other thing I was going to mention is when we were talking about our, when we were doing our episode on mom intuition, I think I mentioned that
00:37:28
Speaker
The more time you spend with your kids, the easier it is to pick up on things that might be going wrong or even going well, right? If we want to really connect with our kids and understand what they're struggling with, we have to spend time with them. And in building businesses too, me personally, I love having side hustles and things that I do for myself.
00:37:45
Speaker
But I think I'd feel extra guilty if my kids were gone at school and then I spent any time, you know, afterwards doing it. I would feel like anytime they were home, I'd have to spend with them all the time. Whereas now they're home all the time. So it's like, well, I can take a call right now and I'll spend the afternoon together. Or tomorrow I'll spend the morning together and I'll do my stuff in the afternoon, et cetera. So I just, I just love the benefit of time again. Can also be a con. Sometimes I'm like, if only I could get rid of you people. You're driving me crazy today.
00:38:14
Speaker
The episode on Mother's Intuition is episode 27. I totally agree about time. In fact, I'm going to talk about it a little bit more when we talk about the biggest blessing of homeschooling. Okay. Just to mention a couple of cons other than what I've already mentioned.
00:38:32
Speaker
Like I said, sometimes being around each other a lot is really frustrating, and sometimes I really do stress out about what they're getting and what they're not getting. I feel like if they went and got an education somewhere else and it turned out to be a crappy one, I could just blame the system, but in this situation, I can only blame myself.
00:38:52
Speaker
So that's kind of a tough con for me. But then again, when I focus on the fact that it's my children's responsibility to get their own education, and I make sure that I communicate that, then there really shouldn't be any blame. It should just be this is how we're doing it. And it's, you know, it's up to you to get the best education you can get. Yeah, that's really, that's really just the main thing for me is just the stress in in that responsibility.
00:39:15
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I agree. Sometimes the responsibility is overwhelming. But like I said at the beginning, if you go to a homeschool convention and see all the resources and all the curriculum that is out there to help you, like I was mentioning, my kids are more advanced than me.
00:39:32
Speaker
than I ever got in math and science or I'm learning right alongside of them in math and science. That's okay because people that are smarter than me and smarter than them have written the math and science books and curriculums that we're using. So, yay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I will just interject there. A pro that I didn't mention is
00:39:54
Speaker
for your kids to be able to learn from people outside of the family and outside of just the local school district and those teachers. For example, we like to look at the education of the founding fathers as kind of an ultimate example of the classical education. They read classics, they write papers on it, and then they have
00:40:14
Speaker
like a mentor that they go to and they discuss these really difficult topics with. And that mentor probably shouldn't be the mother. Like it should be someone out in the community or a grandfather or a neighbor or something. I love that opportunity. So while it can be a little bit more work to try to find something like that, the potential of them being able to learn from these great, great minds around you is so cool.
00:40:34
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I think my husband plays, fills that role a lot for our kids because he doesn't, he's not involved very much in the day-to-day homeschooling, but he is the person that they go to. Like he's, you know, more advanced than them in math and science, you know, so if they need help, I'm like, go ask your dad. Or he's also a very good ideas person. And so, you know, they go and bounce some ideas off of him. And, and yeah, I think he feels that one of those,
00:41:04
Speaker
mentoring roles for our kids, definitely. Yeah, my husband is a history genius. He remembers everything. I'm like, you know, even without mom brain, I wouldn't stand a chance of measuring up to his memory. But as it is, it's like, oh, you're gonna have to take the reins, buddy. Remember everything for me. Yeah. Okay, so two cons I'll mention for our family is that I feel like
00:41:27
Speaker
A lot of homeschoolers are misunderstood because there are a lot of wrong ideas and misconceptions about what homeschooling is and how homeschooling works and all that. I do feel misunderstood. I also feel like a lot of people are missing out on just the beauty of our family and my kids and their education because, oh, fill in the blank, they're afraid of what homeschool is.
00:41:57
Speaker
they score in homeschool or they have some sort of misunderstanding about it and they're just not getting involved or not finding out. And so, yeah, I think one of the cons of homeschooling is everybody doesn't understand what you're doing and why. Right. Yeah, that's a good point. Another thing that can be seen as a con for us is that all of our kids' education and supplies
00:42:19
Speaker
materials, curriculum, it all comes out of our pocket. So we don't get government assistance to homeschool. We get a little tiny bit of a tax break now in our state, but that's a relatively new thing. Our local school district is a very awesome school district. They're one of the best in the nation. That's not why we're homeschooling, but they spend $17,000 per child in this school.
00:42:47
Speaker
That's what they get for you. And how many times- The only one was like half that, right? I know. I know. How many times if I had half that per kid, boy, the daughter that wants to go see Pompeii, we'd be there. Field trip coming up. Yeah, that'd be great. So then I feel like you were talking about the
00:43:10
Speaker
pro of quality time. I feel like that's the biggest blessing for our family as well. And I have this little analogy that my husband shared with me years ago that really just kind of sums it up. So it's the freedom versus security analogy. And if you live in a maximum security prison, you have all your needs supplied. You don't have to wonder where your next meal is coming from. You don't have to wonder if you'll be safe. You're taken care of, you're protected, your health care, all of that.
00:43:40
Speaker
you have complete security, but you have zero freedom in a maximum security facility. So the opposite of that is if you are out living in the woods with no
00:43:56
Speaker
strings attached, you have ultimate freedom and you have zero security. You don't know where your next meal is coming from. You don't know if you're going to be able to health care or whatever. So those are the two opposite extremes, freedom versus security. And for our homeschooling model, we have chosen freedom. So we have freedom of time, freedom of thought, freedom of curriculum. Really, it's all, homeschool for us is all about freedom.
Trusting Instincts in Educational Choices
00:44:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's the biggest blessing is that we have zero security as far as homeschooling goes, but all the freedom. And I just love that analogy as far as homeschooling goes. That's why we've chosen. That's why we're doing what we're doing. Yeah. I really love that as well. And to realize that every time
00:44:43
Speaker
You make a choice that you feel will benefit your family. Oftentimes, it's scary and it's really overwhelming and you think, how am I ever going to do this? But like we mentioned in the mom intuition, where there's a will, there's a way. If you feel like this is the choice for your family, you can make it work. I promise, it doesn't matter if you have a second grade education. There is so much out there between Google and YouTube.
00:45:04
Speaker
even just the free stuff on the internet, you can get an excellent education. Khan Academy, all these amazing resources that are free. It's so cool. I mean, really, none of us has an excuse to be ignorant anymore. And the things that I've learned alongside my kids, it's saying that I'm ignorant.
00:45:20
Speaker
too ignorant to teach my kids is really kind of a cop out because I can learn just right along with them. And it's, and it's wonderful. You know, the other day my, my 14 year old was like, geez, mom, how come you don't know this stuff? I was like, well, it's been 25 years since I've done that, but I'll learn right along with you. And it's been great. And I can show him a different way to do things. And he learns a different way and we teach each other and it's awesome. I really liked that analogy. Thanks. Yeah. Yep. So like we don't think homeschooling is for every family, but we definitely think it's a hundred percent the right choice for our family.
00:45:48
Speaker
Yes, agreed. And that's what we want to leave you guys with is the confidence and knowledge that you know what's best for your children.
Conclusion: Listener Engagement and Interaction
00:45:55
Speaker
And if this feels like the right path, do it. We know you can do it. And if it doesn't, great. You keep doing what you're doing and what is working for your family. And that is the biggest takeaway is you're the best parent for your kids and good luck in whatever path you choose.
00:46:10
Speaker
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you've enjoyed this episode, we'd be so grateful if you'd leave us a written review on iTunes. If you have any questions or ideas for future episodes, you can reach us at outnumberthepodcastatgmail.com and find us on Instagram at outnumberthepodcast. See you next week. Did you lose me? Yeah, I'm here. Can you hear me?
00:46:41
Speaker
Oh, you can hear me? Yes. Can you hear me? Curses. Which one of us needs to look out? I don't see any lines on any bumps on your line either. You're flat lining. Come back to me, Audrey.