Dyslexia, auditory processing disorder, dysgraphia, dyscalculia - when faced with multiple learning challenges, homeschooling might seem daunting. Yet for Erin Cox, these diagnoses became the catalyst for an extraordinary educational journey spanning 14 years and culminating in the creation of a curriculum company that serves thousands of families.
In this illuminating conversation, Erin shares how her daughter who specialists said might "never learn to read" flourished through personalized homeschool instruction. Her approach - setting 15-minute timers to prevent frustration, incorporating movement through hopscotch sight words, and celebrating small victories - demonstrates how home education allows for the adaptation no traditional classroom could provide. "When you have dyslexia, it tends to take seven times longer to remember something than it does a neurotypical child," Erin explains, underscoring why the consistent, patient attention of homeschooling proved transformative.
The discussion takes a fascinating turn when Erin clarifies the misunderstood relationship between Charlotte Mason and classical education philosophies. As founder of Gentle Classical Press, she articulates how these approaches aren't opposing methods but complementary traditions that both emphasize virtue formation and living books. "Charlotte Mason was a classical educator," she notes, dispelling common misconceptions perpetuated by curriculum marketing.
Whether you're teaching a child with learning differences, considering homeschooling for the first time, or simply curious about educational philosophies, this episode offers practical wisdom and encouraging perspective. Erin's parting advice resonates with both seasoned and prospective homeschoolers alike: "You know your child better than anyone else... don't try to figure everything out in advance. Just do the next right thing."
Ready to explore Gentle Classical Press or connect with Erin? Visit their website where you can download complete teacher's guides for free before investing in any curriculum. If you found value in this episode, please consider supporting the podcast through the tip link in the description or by sharing with other homeschool families.
Erin is a veteran homeschooling mama to two graduates and two sweet little ones. She runs The Gentle + Classical Press and Good Oaks Farm from her family home in central Alabama alongside her amazing husband Danny. Erin's favorite things include dating her husband, learning about learning, embroidery, breadmaking, and all the books.
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This could mean life or death in some cases!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool
How-To.
I'm Cheryl and I invite you tojoin me on my quest to find out
why are people homeschooling,how do you do it, how does it
differ from region to region,and should I homeschool my kids?
Stick with me as I interviewhomeschooling families across
the country to unfold theanswers to each of these
(00:26):
questions week by week.
Welcome, and with us today Ihave Erin Cox from Alabama.
Hi, erin Cheryl, thank you forhaving me.
Thanks for being here.
This is so exciting.
You're in Alabama.
How many kids do you have?
We?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
have four.
We have a big range of ages.
So my oldest will turn 21 thisyear and we have an 18 year old
and then a nine and eight yearold.
So we have kind of spreadacross a big age gap.
So I had like newborns when Ihad high schoolers at the same
time.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
That's fun, though, like I only have the four year
age gap, but I like having alittle bit of space, and my
sister and I also had a sevenyear age gap.
It was kind of cool, cause Idon't know you just there's a
division there of likeresponsibilities and friends,
but you also are everyone's sohelpful yeah.
I, she did zip my lip in herjacket one time, but um so
(01:24):
that's fun though.
So have you been homeschoolingthe whole time?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Or, just more recently, Just the whole time I
started homeschooling my girl.
So I have two girls and twoboys.
So I just refer to them as thegirls and the boys because
they're like our batches ofchildren, like we had two in our
20s and we were like we're done, you know when we turn 40,
they'll be out of the house andyou know, cause 40 is old and
you don't want to have kids atthe house.
(01:48):
Still, you know, when you'rethat age, that was my 20 year
old brain.
And then we got into ourthirties and we were like, wait,
40 is not that old and this isgoing by really quickly.
So that's why we had that bignine year gap in the middle.
Um, and so then we have ourboys.
But when my girls were in secondgrade and would be would have
(02:10):
been preschool, I pulled mypreschooler out of preschool
just to like I wasn't working atthe time, so I brought her home
from that and we were doinghomeschool and, and so then my
older daughter was like, well, Iwant to do that too, cause that
looks more fun than what I doin school.
And so we, we kind of played atit over.
(02:31):
She had like a three weekChristmas break and we just
tried that out and we loved itso much and I was like we're not
, we're not going back.
And so, aside from a briefstint when I was pregnant with
my fourth child, we've beenhomeschooling, for this is our
14th year, so what about?
Speaker 1 (02:50):
well, it's first.
It's funny that you said like,oh, we decided, you know, later
on to have more kids, cause Ifeel like most people they hear
that story and they're like, ohso, two different marriages
Cause that's when people havethat big age gap.
But I was like, well, I ask,I'm pretty open in what I'll ask
people, but I was like that's alittle too far.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
But no, he actually like had a vasectomy and we had
it reversed to have morechildren.
Yeah, so, it was like I wasinstantaneously pregnant.
It was one of those like verysuccessful surgeries.
The fourth kid wasn't evenplanned, so that's how
successful it was.
But yeah, people ask all thetime like why did you?
you know, because it is unusualto have like a big gap because
(03:31):
the girls are two years apartand the boys are 15 months apart
.
I found out I was pregnant withmy fourth when my older son was
six months old.
So that was you know.
That was a surprise, but it wasa good one.
Obviously, now we're done,we're totally done.
We're 43.
We're grandparents, we'retotally at the baby game.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Wow, yeah, oh, my goodness, I'm 41.
I can't imagine being but like,yeah, when you start in your
twenties, that's totallyfeasible, and not like
outlandish oh gosh, time flies,time really flies, gosh, time
flies, time really flies.
It does, and so did.
You said that you're one.
The daughters are the olderones, right?
(04:09):
You said that the one daughterwanted to be homeschooled
because you startedhomeschooling the preschooler.
What about the oldest?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
So that was the two.
So the preschooler was theyounger daughter, and then her
big sister wanted to behomeschooled.
She was in second grade at thetime, okay.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah, cause they have a little bit, a few years
between them too.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Okay, yeah, cause they have a little bit, a few
years between them too.
Okay, yeah, so you really didstart to and it really wasn't
popular.
Then was it?
It was, it was growing.
So I came across homeschoolingin a very unusual way when I was
pregnant with my oldestdaughter.
I remember sitting in hernursery rocking like this big
belly, waiting for her to comeand reading the Charlotte Mason
Companion by Karen Andreola, andto this day I have no idea
(04:51):
where that book came from orlike how it came to be in my
home.
I guess I just saw it at athrift store and picked it up
when I was like thrifting forher nursery and stuff and I
remember reading it and it wasso everything about it, Like I
didn't have a relationship withGod at that point, like I was
not a Christian, was not raisedin a Christian home, so that was
all very like alien to me, andthen I didn't have a very like
(05:14):
warm, loving, affectionate homeand I don't know.
There was just so much about itthat was like completely from
another dimension that I foundit really interesting and it
planted a lot of seeds.
But I was like, well, I'llnever be able to homeschool,
like I was freshly graduatedfrom college and I had a degree
to pay for.
(05:35):
And you know, I had, you knowwas going to be in banking and
finance, that's what my degreewas in.
And so, you know, I just alwaysthought I would be working, and
so I just put all that out of myhead and then I like randomly
quit a job, like I just quit ajob.
It was one of those jobs thatlike, like you just can't even
show up at.
I don't know if you've ever hada job that's so stressful that,
(05:57):
like to show up at it wouldmake you want to cry.
And so, like I would, like Iwas in sales at the time, which
was fine, it was just thisenvironment, and so I would just
sit in my car and cry.
And so one day I just quit, Ijust quit, and then I took her
out of preschool the next day,cause I was like, well, I can't
pay for this and I have to getanother job.
And that's literally where itall, like I just felt like God
(06:18):
started being like you know,this is an opportunity to kind
of play around with this.
And I was like, well, that'sfine, but I can't afford to
homeschool.
Like my husband does not earnenough money for us to get you
know, get by, you know, withoutworking, and um, and his income
doubled in the next month afterthat.
So it was really it very muchfelt like a God thing at that
(06:40):
point and so I just kind of wejust kept praying about it and
just kept going and doing it andreally fell in love with it.
And I mean, the first thingthat we did was we read Little
House on the Prairie andeverything that Laura did we did
too, like we smoked meat andyou know, like I used it for the
spelling words and the grammar,like I just pulled everything
(07:03):
out of there and to me it justfelt like the most organic and
intuitive way to learn was toread amazing stories and then
kind of do what they did toexperience the history side of
things and just kind of learneverything we could from that
one thing.
And so that's kind of how westarted out and I started
reading a lot because I'm a nerdand read about more about
(07:26):
Charlotte Mason.
Obviously that was kind of myfirst introduction, but also
like the well-trained mind, andthen just kind of went from
there and just got obsessed witheducation and my younger
daughter ended up beingdiagnosed as like profoundly
dyslexic and has multiplelearning disabilities.
So in hindsight I recognizedwhy those seeds had been planted
(07:50):
and why we had been called toit.
Like you know, I just thought itwas more fun and less stressful
and I didn't have to goanywhere when it rained and they
loved it.
And but then, at the same time,like recognizing like she could
have never, she would not havethrived in school, and even once
I taught her how to read, wedid school for a month and it
(08:13):
was two weeks into it.
It was just like no, this isnot, this is not for us.
I thought it's supposed to beeasier to not be teaching them.
I thought that this would beless stressful, to not have this
responsibility.
You didn't ask all that, butI'm just running.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
That's funny because I feel like a lot of parents
would be like oh, my child'sdyslexic, so they have to go
into school because theprofessionals will know how to
teach them I'm not capable.
But what you're saying isexactly the opposite.
She would have gotten swallowedup in the 30 kids in the class
and the different tempertantrums going on or behavioral
(08:50):
issues going on, and theywouldn't have necessarily pulled
her out and said hey, she'slearning.
She needs a different way tolearn.
Let's work one-on-one with her.
The resources might not havebeen there for another year, two
years or three years or fouryears, you know if, if they ever
found it, Um, so I really wantpeople to like drill that in to
(09:11):
their minds, that it's notleading up to the professionals
because they could do it.
But their classes are so big.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
They just don't have.
You know, it's not about theteachers not, you know, being
willing to do it, they justdon't have the capacity to do it
and with her there's only somuch a teacher is going to be
able to do with any one singularchild anyway.
And when you have a child thathas auditory processing disorder
(09:39):
, so classroom setting could notbe worse.
For her right Dyslexia, sh shedysgraphia and dyscalculia and
her the her math dyslexia wasprof is was profoundly worse
than her reading and we didn'teven know that for a few years
and she had sensory processingdisorder and stuff.
And so being homeschooling hergave me the opportunity to see
(10:03):
things that I would have neverseen, that a teacher doesn't
have the capacity to see inindividual children and talk to
different therapists and startlike piecing together Like she
did sensory integration therapy.
She did a lot of differenttherapy stuff to kind of like
help her senses work bettertogether, a lot of eye tracking.
She did vision therapylong-term and just kind of that
(10:25):
would have never happened, Idon't think, because I wouldn't
have.
I would have been like they'rehandling it and they're gonna
tell me maybe what to do.
Maybe I need to like listen toher read at home.
But like they're theprofessionals and because I took
ownership of her education, Itook ownership of everything
that I needed to do and could doto help her learn how to read,
(10:47):
because when she was tested theysaid she may never learn how to
read.
I've been trying to teach herthe sounds of the alphabet for
two years with like consistencythat is just out of character
for me, quite honestly, and shestill could tell me seven or
eight letter sounds after twoyears of consistent instruction.
(11:10):
Now, I mean, she's graduatedhigh school and you know if
anyone's listening to this andthey're like that's my kid, like
she's okay, like by the fourthgrade, because of daily therapy,
at home therapy and you know,in different places you know
whatever it seemed like sheneeded, but just like being able
to adapt everything.
(11:32):
Not because the thing aboutdyslexia and all these other you
know, adhd, all this type ofstuff, is that every child with
dyslexia is dyslexic in adifferent way.
Like some of them, the wordsmove around the page, some of
them the words fall off the page, some of them reverse
everything and some of them,like for my children, have
(11:52):
extraordinarily poor workingmemories.
So when you come to like, youknow you need to sound out each
of the letters.
You have to remember that firstsound by the time you get to
the last sound to be able to goback and say what it was.
And a three-letter word.
They've forgotten that firstsound by the time you get to the
last sound to be able to goback and say what it was.
And a three-letter word.
They've forgotten that firstsound.
And so every day was startingfrom scratch every day.
And then somewhere around thefourth grade, something just
(12:15):
clicked and she all the laborthat had happened up until that
point just finally came togetherand she started reading
fluently.
And, you know, was a horriblespeller, but I didn't care
because she could read.
But then, you know, liketexting and playing Minecraft
games and stuff online like thatironed out her spelling skills,
ironically and anyway, like,and now she has stuff like
(12:38):
ChatGPT to help.
You know, if she needs toexpress her idea, she'd kind of
say it and it has like badpunctuation because she can't
remember all the rules, butit'll fix it and she's able to
communicate effectively in thatway and she has the intelligence
to use the tools that are there.
So I mean, there's just so manythings.
And I did put her in school fora month, like I said, and the
(13:00):
real problems there were socialtype things that like when I put
her in school I was terrifiedshe was going to be behind and
that it was all of my fault,right, like I like maybe I
should have already put her inschool, like I really didn't
know what I was doing.
I was just like doingeverything as hard as I could
and investing as much in hereducation as I could, but what
(13:20):
if I was messing her up?
What if it was all my fault inthe first place?
Right, and so I was just kindof lived in this constant like
terror, of that tension, becauseI just didn't know.
I mean, she had doctors andstuff, but it was still.
You know you, you just don'tknow.
There's a lot of fear, a lot offear, especially when you're
homeschooling your first kid ortwo and she was the first one I
taught to read too, like myother daughter learned to read
in school, so like that was theworst experience possible for me
(13:45):
to have any kind of confidence.
And um, and so when she was inschool she had like the, the
social problems that she hadwere.
So the stress that caused melike I had worried about her
academically but I didn't losesleep at night.
But when she was in school Istarted losing sleep at night
because of the things that werebeing said.
And then was in school, Istarted losing sleep at night
because of the things that werebeing said.
(14:05):
And then in the information Idon't know, she's in the fourth
grade but it was like it wasgross.
I mean it was terrible and shewas in a really good school and
it was just, and this was likebefore.
I mean she's 18 now, so thiswas before.
Fourth graders had, like, cellphones and stuff too.
So anyway it was just reallyrough and um, and at the end of
that month I was she, we haddetermined that there was no way
(14:29):
that she could sit in aclassroom and ever learn
anything because all she did washear everybody around her and
not she couldn't hear theteacher, she couldn't focus,
she's got ADHD and all that.
So anyway it was very affirmingto me, like every fear that I
had about failing my child withlearning disabilities was put
completely away when I put herin school, because it just
(14:52):
showed me first of all, shetested on grade level and they
told me that if they hadevaluated her for dyslexia at
that point in her life, theywouldn't have diagnosed her with
it.
So that's how far we came from.
Her not ever learning to readwas what we were told to
wouldn't even get the diagnosisin the fourth grade.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Hey everyone.
This is Cheryl.
I want to thank you so much forchecking out the podcast.
I'm going to keep this shortand sweet because I know your
time is valuable.
I want to ask you a seriousquestion Do your kids know what
to do to actually save theirlife in an emergency?
The most important thing we cantalk to our kids about is
knowing their first and lastname, knowing mom and dad's
first and last name, mom's phonenumber, dad's phone number,
(15:33):
their address, what to do ifthey get lost, what to do if
someone who's watching them hasa heart attack, a stroke, an
accident where they fall andyour child needs to get help.
We live in a world where there'sno landline phones anymore,
basically, and cell phones a lot.
Does your child know how tocall 911 from a locked cell
phone?
It is absolutely possible, andmy book demonstrates how to do
(15:56):
that, whether it's an android,whether it's an iphone and, most
importantly, it starts theconversation, because I was
going through homeschoolingcurriculum with my kids,
realizing that, gee, maybe theyskim over this stuff, but they
don't get into depth, so mychild's not going to remember
this should an accident occur,right?
I asked a couple of teacherswhat they do in school and they
(16:17):
said they really don't doanything either other than talk
about what to do in a fireduring the month of October fire
prevention month.
So I wrote a book because thisis near and dear to my heart.
I have had multiple friendsthat have lost kids in tragedies
and I don't wanna see it happenagain if it doesn't have to.
We were at the fair over thesummer and the first thing I
said to my son when we walkedthrough that gate was "'What's
(16:40):
my first and last name?
"'what is your first and lastname?
What is your first and lastname and what is my phone number
?
And if you get lost, what areyou going to do?
You can get my book on Amazonand I will put the link in my
show's description Again.
It's called let's TalkEmergencies and I really hope
you'll check it out becausethere's just no need to be
scared when you can chooseprepared.
What did you guys use forcurriculum?
(17:02):
We used everything.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
What did you guys use for?
Speaker 1 (17:03):
curriculum.
We used everything.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Everything.
I just threw it at the wall.
It was just we very much.
It was very adaptive.
It was like, okay, what's thenext right thing to do?
Like what's the next rightthing to do.
So I just studied her and reallyjust dove into learning
everything that I could abouthow children learn how to read,
especially if they have auditoryprocessing disorder and ADHD
and poor working memory.
(17:24):
So we did little therapy things.
Online there's different appsand games to kind of help with
your working memory and helpwith your auditory discernment,
and so we were doing thosethings and doing vision therapy.
So we were doing a lot becauseto me the dyslexia was just like
a symptom of some processesthat weren't working properly
Right, and so that was like theacademic diagnosis for physical
(17:49):
processes that were not workingcorrectly.
So really the solution for thedyslexia was to fix the
processes that weren't workingin congruence like they were
supposed to.
And, um, and her eyes were a bigpart of it an auditory
processing disorder If your eyeslike aren't, you know,
converging where they'resupposed to, and so things are a
little blurry because theycan't do it and glasses don't
(18:11):
fix that, and then auditoryprocessing is like your eyes and
your ears kind of aren'tworking at the same time is how
the sensory processing part ofit works.
So how can you remember whatthat shape sounds like if you
can't look at it and think aboutwhat it looks like at the same
time that you're hearing what itsounds like?
Like for her to listen to mewhen I'd speak to her, she would
(18:32):
look at the floor, she wouldhave to shut off her vision to
hear what I was saying, and so Imean I would.
It's not a good joke, it's abad joke, but I would call her
like my little Helen Keller,just a little bit, because she
couldn't hear me and see me atthe same time.
And so then you can't have avisual understanding of what's
making that sound and it wouldnever make it in, it would never
(18:53):
like stick all the way.
And so like, as far ascurriculum we finally landed on
predominantly that all aboutreading is really the go-to.
I mean, it's what we likebroadly recommend.
I think there are other goodthings out there.
Logic of English has changedsince I tried it years ago and
I'm hearing really good thingsabout it.
(19:14):
But what I've noticed with myother son because I've got
another one with dyslexiathey're not as profoundly as her
and he doesn't have likeauditory processing disorder and
stuff, but just a bad workingmemory.
Is that like at a certain point, even with all about reading,
like there's just too many rules?
Like there's a lot of rules inthat Orton-Gillingham method of
reading and that's fine to beginwith, but then at a certain
(19:35):
point, like you've got too manydance around in your head, you
can't, and so really it justcomes down to when you have
dyslexia.
It tends to take you seventimes longer to remember
something than it does aneurotypical child.
So like, for example, when myoldest daughter was in school,
she would learn 10 sight wordsor 15 sight words a week and she
would know them by Wednesdayand then I was teaching this
(19:57):
child and we would work on 10sight words for three months
before she would be able toremember them.
Yeah, so it was just like justthe consistency and the
persistence and like with my son, just we don't need rules
anymore.
At the point he's at now, it'sjust reading and reading, and
reading and reading, because themore he reads, the more the
(20:18):
code starts to make a little bitmore sense, and it just takes
that seven times as long.
And I mean it's been true withboth of them.
I just think that's veryinteresting.
But it's like there's a.
The Berlin wall is in there andwe got to break through it, but
once it gets there, it's there.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Now, how did you work out, like, how much time you
actually invested each day inworking on this stuff?
Because it's easy, especiallywhen they're that young, to get
burnout and to get, like youknow, a hate of reading.
Because it's easy, especiallywhen they're that young, to get
burnout and to get, like youknow, a hate of reading because
it's so stressful.
Did you, were you aware of,like, how much time you were
(20:53):
trying to put in and then notoverdo it?
Cause, like a lot ofhomeschoolers, we have to
replicate school and make iteight hours, five days a week,
and then that's really not thepoint, right?
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Well, well, I never struggled too much with having
like an eight-hour school day,um, especially my girls were
well, even now with the boys,like I never.
I never struggled too much withwanting to do school at home.
Now I have had to break out ofthe idea of like test scores or
grades, things like that, um andand having different because
they're all asynchronous.
You know, like homeschool kidsare never on one grade in any
(21:26):
way and you just have to finallyget used to the fact that, like
my eight-year-old's, in secondgrade he reads.
Maybe on third grade he's doingfourth grade math, but then his
spelling's like kindergarten,but also he knows high school
history and you know likethey're all kind of like that.
So I was never too caught upwith that.
But I will say that she has avery short attention span.
(21:47):
These kiddos that kind of likehave these learning differences.
We call them neuro-spicy aroundhere.
We're all our own littleversion of neuro-spicy in this
house.
And so my husband he's justnormal sitting up in the middle
of all the crazies and um and Ifeel like her attention span
being so short, demanded that Inot make the mistake of trying
(22:11):
to do too much, so we would dothings like a lot of it was
physical, like doing sight words.
You know she would do hopscotchwhen she landed on the word she
needed to read it, like soeverything.
We would go outside and wewould ride it with chalk.
We then we would wash it offwith a sponge, like we would do
everything as likekinesthetically as possible.
That way she was moving andlearning that way, and I had,
(22:32):
like you know, the little wiggleballs and all that kind of
stuff.
So I didn't have.
I learned not to expect her tosit still.
I sit still to think, and ifI'm moving it means I'm not
thinking or listening to you.
Still to think, and if I'mmoving it means I'm not thinking
or listening to you.
And I had to learn that thatwas the opposite for her and her
moving meant she was listeningbetter.
And then we would just settimers.
(22:54):
I'm a big fan of timers when itcomes to reading instruction,
especially with children withlearning differences, because
whatever attitude you leave alesson with is the mindset and
the attitude you'll enter thatlesson the next time.
So, if you end in tears andfrustration, you're bringing
(23:14):
that energy into the next timeyou sit down to do that reading
lesson.
And so if my child can read for20 minutes before they start to
break down, I'm setting a timerfor 15.
And no matter where we are inthe lesson, no matter if we're
happy, sad, whatever, it's goinggreat.
When the timer goes off, thatlesson's over with.
Hopefully we've ended in apositive way.
If things have gone downhill,I'm going to give them easy work
(23:38):
that I know they can do, likeI'm going to give them, like
here's, five flashcards that Iknow they can have some
confidence and do it and getthem to read those.
That way they walk away withthat feeling of accomplishment
and satisfaction so that theybring that into the next time
that we sit down.
So I would just do with her too.
We had a little bit of therapythat almost felt like play, so
(23:58):
that wasn't too big of a deal,but we would have two reading
sessions a day for 15 minutes.
And I've done the same with myson.
Like we have his instructionaltime which is at at that
fruitful frustration like he's.
It's hard, but he's like he cando it.
That's 15 minutes, and then inthe second half of the day he
reads to my husband, well belowhis level, for 15 minutes and
(24:20):
that's just to practice fluencyand get like a little bit more.
You know natural sounding inhis reading and stuff.
I love that.
I don't think there's a lot ofstuff, you don't need a timer.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
but when you think about the classroom, how many
kids are getting that time toread one-on-one with an adult?
And we know that it probablydoes.
I mean, I don't know, maybe alot of households are reading
with their kids at night, but Idon't.
I didn't grow up in one ofthose.
We had two working parents andI don't ever remember my parents
reading a book with me.
(24:50):
I don't think their parents didit with them.
It just didn't fall down theline.
And so when I think aboutparents working and kids in
their, you know, before care,after care, sports, dinner on
the table and everyone needs toget homework done and everyone
needs to get a bath or whatnot,when is the time to sit and read
together, Like that, 15 minutesof just read to dad or read to
(25:11):
mom, it probably doesn't happenin most households.
I mean, we homeschool and it'shard to even say like, yeah,
okay, we got to pull out a book.
Now, guys, Come on.
So yeah, when you just thinkabout how much that's doing for
them.
I mean, right there, anybodywho's having like anxiety about
homeschooling their kids I wasthinking about this today Don't
(25:32):
compare what you do to thehomeschool moms.
You know that you know, or thatare on Instagram, compared to
what they would be in theclassroom, I don't know, but I
was going to post that.
But then I'm like, oh, itsounds kind of mean too for
anybody, that whose kids do goto school.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
I've always said it kind of the opposite, in that,
like you cannot compare them toa system that you've opted out
of, but you can compare them tothe benefits of like what their
day-to-day life would be like.
My daughter had an IEP when shewas at school and that meant
she got 15 minutes ofinstruction three times a week
(26:09):
independently.
15 minutes three times a weekand that was it, and so the rest
of the time that she was thereit was just babysitting her.
She was not learning anything.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Such a good word for it.
You're so right.
Yeah, so I was thinking aboutthat today and it really is.
Just when you're in the rush ofthe day even homeschooling and
you just feel like, oh my God,did we even sit down and do that
?
Even just 15 minutes, thatcounts for so much.
And when they're little,there's just I love what you
(26:41):
said about doing the hopscotchthere are things that we just
can do to play with the kids, oryou know, I remember and I
don't I'm not super creative, soI but when I see something, I
do try to replicate it as bestas I can.
And I remember, I think,Lindsay from the Treehouse
Schoolhouse.
She had told me just putletters on rocks with paint and
hide them in a big sand pile andhave them go excavate, and then
(27:04):
, when they find all the rocks,have them, put them in order in
the alphabet.
And I'm like that's genius.
I still don't think we've foundall the rocks and it's been two
years, but it was fun while wedid it, Painting it and finding
them.
So I love that I have morequestions for you too.
But the one off the top of myhead you said that you went to
(27:27):
school for banking and finance.
How did you ever get creativeand finding all these creative
ways to do the hopscotch withthe words?
Where did you go for thoseresources?
Speaker 2 (27:40):
So that's interesting .
I was a banking and financemajor because I had really no
guidance whatsoever and I wentto college for no good reason
because that was what you weresupposed to do, right, and I
knew I wanted to make money.
That was I wanted to make moneyand I took a lot of different
classes and I changed my majorlike 47 times, which wasted a
(28:02):
lot of money.
And those were the hardestclasses I took and that's why I
decided I wanted that to be mymajor.
Like 47 times, which wasted alot of money, and those were the
hardest classes I took andthat's why I decided I wanted
that to be my major.
Just because I like a challenge, like I was like this is
interesting, I want to, you know, feel like this is hard so that
I just that's what I did andI've not used it a day in my
life.
I graduated from college andgot a job as a graphic designer.
(28:22):
Like not a day did I even applyto work in the industry that I
have a degree in which just saysa lot about college and you
know I can get all into that.
But I've always been creativeand I would use Pinterest a lot.
Like Pinterest used to behomeschool mom heaven and then
(28:45):
it got kind of sketchy there fora little bit for me.
But now it feels like it'shaving a little bit of
resurgence because Googledoesn't find stuff anymore.
Like I can't stand even tryingto Google anything.
So I have started actuallygetting back on Pinterest and
there are so many brilliantideas and that's what I would do
.
I'd be like you know ways tolearn the letters without
(29:07):
sitting down just studying themand just you know all these
different brilliant moms puttingtheir ideas on their blogs back
in the day, and I guess peoplelike now it's all reels and
YouTube videos and stuff, but Idon't like, I'm not even on
social.
Well, I have a social media andthere are people there and
somebody manages it, but I don'tget on social media and scroll
through and all that.
(29:28):
So I don't know.
I guess that's probably wherethe good ideas are now instead
of Pinterest.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Well, and even chat GPT you were talking about your
daughter using it before.
That's great for it too.
Like I, I did a reel where Isaid like hey, do you want to do
a springtime unit study?
And I, you know, recorded metalking into chat GPT.
Like I have a two year old, asix year old, you know.
He's crazy active and she justfollows along and they like mud
(29:58):
and all this stuff and it madelike a two week unit study for
springtime, you know,incorporating different things.
We can watch books from thelibrary to take out different
activities to do outside.
So I have that actually on myInstagram page when you click
the link.
But yeah, it's never beeneasier to homeschool.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
But also it's never been more overwhelming.
Yeah, I talked to a friend theother day and it was just kind
of this like she beganhomeschooling after like COVID,
right.
And so even when I look, thinkback to the first couple of
years that I was a homeschoolerlike that was over a decade ago.
That feels like so long ago,because the world has changed so
(30:43):
much and there are all thesereally amazing and creative
ideas, but it's almost likegluttonous the amount of it.
You know what I mean.
You almost need chat GPT justto give you the plan so that you
don't have to sort through allof the brilliant anime, because
there's so many good curriculumoptions and there's so many, you
know, in in many areas youcan't throw a stick without
(31:05):
hitting a co-op or a play date,or you know what I mean.
Like there's a lot of stuff todo because there's so many
people homeschooling, which Ithink is phenomenal, but it is a
little overwhelming to getstarted now because you know
it's like what?
What philosophy do I want tohave and does it really matter?
And how do I decide thesethings?
And so sometimes you mightovercommit to different
activities or you're like, oh,my kids aren't getting
(31:27):
socialized, I have to do morestuff, and there's just all
these voices, and a lot of thevoices on social media are very
not all of them.
There are a lot of like greatgracious accounts, but some of
them are very like stronglyopinionated.
They're very young to have suchpassionate opinions about it.
It's like you know your oldestchild's seven.
What are you talking about?
Like calm down.
(31:48):
I mean, you can have an opinionwith your seven.
Please don't state it as if itis a proven fact, because you've
done it for two weeks with yourseven-year-old.
Like you know.
Anyway, I just always havingadult children and having gone
through the teenage years andgone through some hard times in
the teenage years, I'm just verykeenly aware of like eating
(32:09):
your words, and so most of mywords that I thought about
things were not recorded on areel to live into perpetuity,
unlike what some of these sweetladies are saying.
They're going to look back in10 years and be like, oh no, I
can't listen to these things.
But anyway, I mean, I love theopportunity that's there, but it
is.
I feel like there's a lot.
(32:30):
There's a lot of opinions andmethods and strong kind of like
ungracious opinions in some waythat kind of make you like, feel
like either you're not doingenough or you're missing out or
you know I'm doing it wrong,like all that kind of stuff, and
it can just create a lot of Idon't know.
I feel like uncertainty andthat in doubt.
That's what we deal with, likefrom a customer service
(32:52):
standpoint.
Most of our customers coming inare preschool and kindergarten.
They're the new moms that aregetting started and they're like
I have no idea what to do.
There's 5,000 differentcurricula, and just do the next
right thing.
That's just all you can do.
You're not going to iron it outperfectly, and that's okay.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Yeah, so tell us about your business and how you
even got into it.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Sure, so the name of it is the Gentle and Classical
Press and we are, I guess, likea little bit the odd kids out,
because anyone that's been ahomeschooling for very long,
I'll just say that, will havenoticed that there is some
staunch and passionate opinionsabout classical education and
(33:34):
also Charlotte Mason educationand they're kind of like a lot
of people think they're verysimilar but some people would
say, oh, they're not the same atall and you could never say
that they're similar and so theyhave their little camps or
whatever.
And so I was seeing that online, I was seeing that like in
Facebook groups and in thecompanies, right, like things
are very classical, you know,doing our Latin and our logic,
(33:57):
and they're in a pretty graphicto be seen anywhere or a very
Charlotte Mason nature study andartist study and narrations and
all these types of like verybeautiful, you know.
And then this seems like great,but also like maybe a little
harsh, and it just seemed likethat it would work if they were
together.
And I filmed through my ownpersonal life, like being in a
(34:17):
co-op and all that kind of stuff, that almost every mom that I
knew that considered themselvesto be a classical educator used
a lot of Charlotte Mason'sprinciples and a lot of the
Charlotte Mason mamas used a lotof classical education type
philosophy and and differentthings.
And so I was like, okay, eventhough that the, the companies,
seem to be like completelyseparated, everybody that I
(34:39):
actually know blends, blends itwith some unit studies and
different things thrown in, andand that was me.
And so I just never could findexactly what I wanted, because
there was like these staunt,like these camps or whatever.
And so when my boys were prettyyoung, I had the.
You know, I had the advantageof having a nine-year gap
(35:00):
between kid two and kid three,and that gave me a lot of time
to think right, like, oh, if Iever got to go through these
ages again, what would I dodifferently?
And so then when I had my boys,I knew that the time went very
quickly, and so I developed thislittle outline like preschool
and you know, charlotte Mason,people that are hardcore would
(35:20):
be like don't do anything beforeage six, no matter what, you
know.
And I was like, well, I am, Iam going to do stuff before age
six because they want to and Iwant to, but it wasn't that.
I wanted them to sit down andknow their ABCs and write their
names and their letters.
I wanted to go ahead and startwriting scripture on their heart
as early as I could.
(35:40):
I wanted them to have littlecatechisms.
We're not Catholic, but that'sa beautiful tradition, that's
known in the Catholic tradition,and so little you know who is
God and who made everything andall those things.
And I wanted to focus oncharacter development and so,
(36:00):
and sure, like, yes, you know,letter of the week or whatever,
like that was fine.
But that was never my intentionand I couldn't find anything,
even though the books I wasreading about classical
education, like norms andnobility and the liberal arts
tradition and everything theytalked about the core purpose of
classical education being aboutthe development of virtue, like
to love what is lovely and todwell on what is good, and and
(36:21):
that your mind be set uponvirtuous things to propel you
toward right action.
And so I was like, where's?
Where's the virtue training,where's the scripture, where's
the catechism, where's thesethings that we want our kids to
kind of like, have on theirhearts from an early age?
And I just, I just couldn'tfind it, especially in a
preschool program.
And so I just pulled togetherwhat I wanted them to do.
(36:44):
And the reason I felt like itneeded to be a program was
because I was very busy and Ihad not slept in years and I've
been pregnant for two yearsstraight and I knew that if I
wasn't being intentional aboutit then those years were just
going to fly by Like I had theperspective of how fast it all
went and I didn't want to losethose opportunities of sowing
(37:05):
those seeds and spending thosetimes together.
And so I made a little likelittle memory statement cards
that were all cute andeverything and it had their
little Bible verses and theircatechisms and stuff and I
shared the kind of the outlineof it on my blog for free,
because at that point sevenpeople a month came to my blog
(37:26):
and those were all familymembers and bots.
So my friend was like, hey, whydon't you make this like one of
those lead magnets on your blog?
And this is like seven yearsago and maybe people will sign
up for your email list orwhatever.
And I had 10,000 peopledownload it in the first two
months and I was like, well,apparently I've like kind of hit
on something here thegentleness of the Charlotte
(37:48):
Mason with the longstandingtradition and the virtue focus
of classical education togetherand they want it in a you know,
not to make Charlotte Mason rollover in her grave but they want
it in a way that is a system.
She, you know, was like don'tmake education a system, it's
philosophy.
And I very much agree with that.
Like you got to have a setphilosophy of education, because
(38:10):
when you do it makes educationnot overwhelming anymore because
you have confidence.
No-transcript, and so that'swhere our preschool came from
(38:35):
was just the idea of mama'stired, but she knows these days
are precious and she wants to beintentional about her time.
And so, you know, we've had asecond edition since then.
That's like way much improved,based on lots of feedback from
customers and our own experiencewith using it.
And so once we got done withpreschool, we were like, hey, we
want the next thing and hey, wewant the next thing.
(38:57):
And so just kind of likedeveloping our own brand of
things that you know.
Take even unit studies we have,like these on mission, cultural
unit studies where you, you know, do a country at a time.
You're learning their historyand you're reading their
literature and you're learningabout their music and all of
those things all together, butyou're immersing yourself in the
people, which is how you learngeography.
(39:19):
Because, like, learning aboutpeople without learning about
their geography means you don'tunderstand them, because you
can't understand their history.
And learning about geographywithout learning about the
people like doesn't even matterbecause God made the world, put
people on it, like, so mountaindoesn't matter if we don't know
about people that live on themountain and so anyway.
So that's kind of like our likewhere we came from and how
(39:43):
things kind of developed overtime.
And I continue to be a geek andread everything that I can.
I am prayerfully and hopefullygoing to start working on my
master's degree in classicaleducation, hopefully next fall,
and in the meantime I'm takingcourses through the Charlotte
Mason Institute.
(40:04):
Have you heard of them?
Before CMI?
They have the Albury curriculum.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
No, I didn't know.
They had an institute.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yeah.
So they have these greatcourses for moms that are super
affordable to learn about theCharlotte Mason philosophy of
education, and you know they dothem during the summer and all
year long.
But they have like certificatesthat you can kind of earn,
because sometimes you feel likeyou need a little something
right.
You know you want to sit atsomeone else's feet and help
them or have them help youbetter understand what you're
(40:31):
doing, and I have a certificate,so it's not a teaching
certificate but I kind of knowwhat I'm doing.
I feel like that helps whenyou're struggling with
confidence about getting outsidethe school system and
everything.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
You guys know I am a big fan of the Tuttle Twins.
I had Connor Boyack, the writerof these books, on episode 24.
I reached out to his companyasking to let me be an affiliate
because I strongly believe intheir books and their message.
In the H5-11 book series, whichI read to my son all the time I
mean, he actually asks us toread these books with him.
Book five, road to Serfdom,talks about what happens to a
(41:06):
local town with local businesseswhen corporations start moving
in.
Book six, the Golden Rule,talks all about Ethan and
Emily's experience at summercamp through a series of
cheating and manipulation oncertain races that they're
required to complete.
It talks about how the goldenrule of treating others how we
want to be treated ourselves ishow we all should be conducting
(41:28):
our lives.
Education Vacation talks aboutJohn Taylor Gatto and the
creation of the school systemand what it was actually
intended to do, which you get tolearn about by following Ethan
and Emily on a trip to Europe.
And book 11, the Messed UpMarket, takes you through the
journey of kids trying to createsmall businesses as they learn
all the laws and rules thatgovernment has put in place to
(41:52):
actually make it very difficultfor them.
You learn all about interestsavings versus borrowing, low
interest rates versus highinterest rates and supply and
demand, and these are just someof the books in that series.
Use the link in my show'sdescription or at the
homeschoolhowtocom under thelistener discounts page.
I also want to let you knowabout some other books that the
Tuttle Twins have out America'sHistory, volume 1 and 2, which
(42:15):
teaches all about the inspiringideas of America's founding
without the bias and hiddenagendas that's found in other
history books for kids and mostlikely in the schools.
There's also books on how toidentify fallacies, modern day
villains all stuff that we wantto be talking to our kids about.
Whether you homeschool or not,these books bring up important
(42:36):
discussions that we should behaving with our children.
Use the link in my show'sdescription or like, like I said
, at the homeschoolhowtocomunder listener discounts.
I hear more about the CharlotteMason.
I think she's definitely likethe staple of the homeschool and
my understanding is you knowthe living books, which is, you
(42:57):
know books that have that leaveyou feeling something you know
not, not just okay, here's somewords on a page, but that really
had a message.
You know whether the kid pickedit up or not, but it had
something there.
Um, and also people who were,for instance, we were reading
like the Rachel Rachel Carsonone.
I think that would be like agood example of showing who she
(43:18):
was.
But in a children's book, um,you know her impact on on
education and nature, um,putting nature in education.
Actually I get her confusedwith Anna Comstock, but I think
we have both library books rightnow and they're both good and
they're both Charlotte Mason.
They are both worth reading,especially in springtime.
But, um, yeah, and then the Iand then I've interviewed a few
(43:41):
people that do the classical andI've listened to the song, like
the 12 minute song about thetimeline of history, and is that
kind of throughout, like themusic throughout.
I know, like you mentioned theLatin, but it seems overwhelming
, so I haven't actually dived into classical myself with my son
.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
I'm pretty passionate about the subject.
I actually just sent an emailout and posted a very most
recent blog post.
It's discerning the differencebetween classical conversations,
the curriculum, and classicaleducation.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Yeah, I didn't know there was a difference.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Yeah, see, there are so many people that didn't know
there was a difference.
Yeah, see, there are so manypeople that don't know there's a
difference.
And so I actually realized thiswas a problem, because I had a
sweet friend.
We were at a birthday party acouple of weeks ago and we were
talking about educationalphilosophies and she goes well,
classical education andCharlotte Mason are the complete
opposites of each other and youcan't like both of them.
(44:40):
And she's like a new friend, soshe really doesn't even know
what I do or what kind of likegeek I am about these things.
And but a good friend of minewas standing beside me and she
looked at me and then she lookedat her.
It's like, how are you going toanswer that?
And I was like, why do youthink that?
You know?
I wanted to get like behind herlogic there.
And she was like startedtalking about classical
conversations, and so the blogpost that I just wrote really
(45:04):
just talked about, okay, soclassical conversations is a
brand of homeschool curriculumlike Memoria Press or Classical
Academic Press or even theGentle and Classical Press that
has like classical underpinnings.
They are seeking to implement aclassical education as they
have interpreted it, okay, andso classical education has been
(45:26):
around for hundreds and hundredsand hundreds and hundreds of
years, since antiquity, and itis a philosophy of education
that is wholly different thanclassical conversations.
Now, is classical conversationsa path toward a type of
classical education?
Yes, it is, but it is notclassical education.
(45:48):
So there was a, there was a, anessay written by the author
Dorothy Sayers.
She wrote this in like 1947.
And if anybody knows anythingabout Dorothy Sayers, she's an
incredibly talented writer.
She was not an educator, it wasreally just a thought
experiment.
It was like she was justsharing some ideas.
She'd been thinking aboutclassical education and she'd
(46:09):
read some this thing and thisthing, and she just wrote this
essay because it was just on hermind.
And she compared the threedisciplines of the trivium.
So you know, we've got sevenliberal arts.
I'm not going to get too deepin this.
I promise you got your sevenliberal arts, so you got your
trivium and your quadrivium.
So you've heard grammar, logicand rhetoric, right?
Okay, those are the threedisciplines of the trivium and
(46:33):
they are not developmentalstages.
So what Dorothy Sayers did inher thing was kind of like lay
those ideas upon developmentalstages Like, oh well, little
kids are like sponges, theyremember all the little pieces
of things.
So that's like the grammarstage.
And then your middle schoolersare argumentative and they're
really thinking and workingthings out.
So that's your logic stage.
(46:54):
But then your high schoolersthey're getting to where they
can articulate a little bitbetter, they can argue their,
their points and things.
They could follow through withthose thoughts.
So that's the rhetoric stageand she just it's a beautiful
essay and it was brilliant andit had a lot of really cool
ideas.
But it was written in 1947 whenclassical education and the
trivium itself has been existedfor like I don't know since
(47:17):
before Christ really.
And so since, like Aristotleand Socrates and all those guys
and really kind of what that didwas, there were, you know, a
couple of different companiesthat took that kind of platform
and they created a curriculumout of it.
And so in classicalconversations in the early years
you do a lot of memorization ofthese statements that have
(47:38):
their pegs is how they use theterm.
So you have like dates andnames and all those types of
things and things they wrotetheir program like from the top
down.
So what they have youmemorizing in the grammar years
is designed to help you handlethe rigor of the middle school,
their challenge programs, theirupper level programs, the logic
(47:59):
and the rhetoric stages, whichis also very smart.
But there are different things,like traditionally there would
be a lot of books in classicaleducation, there would be the
great conversation, and whilethey may like encourage people
to read books all the time, it'snot a part of their curriculum.
Their curriculum for elementaryis memorization of stuff and so
(48:23):
when people have exposure toclassical conversation and they
see that there's memorizationwithout maybe a prepared book
list or like a context for that,right, Like you know, this is
not one of their statements.
Columbus sailed the ocean bluein 1492, right, like that's, you
know, a handy thing for ourkids to remember.
But in classical education andin a Charlotte Mason education,
(48:44):
we are learning thatcontextually.
So we are learning aboutColumbus and when he sailed and
on the ships, because we'regoing to read some amazing
stories about that and it'sgoing to tell us all about
Columbus's trip and why he wentand his experiences there, and
maybe we take it from hisworldview, some of his diaries,
and then maybe from the nativesworldview, and that's a
(49:07):
classical education.
And so not to say, you know,people will listen to this, I'll
get hated on for saying likebut CC is classical, but it's a.
So classical education is agarden is how I put it in the
thing, and classicalconversations is a path in that
garden.
But there are a lot of paths inthe garden and Charlotte Mason
was a classical educator.
(49:29):
She read and quoted broadlyfrom people like Aristotle and
Milton and people like that whohad, like you know, that they
were the fathers of classicaleducation and she even, you know
, later on, does Latin andthings like that.
So just I can talk about thatfor like a whole podcast by
(49:50):
itself.
But I just want to clarify toanybody that's listening that if
you have experiences withclassical conversations and for
any reason whatsoever, you'relike that's not for me, that
does not mean that classicaleducation is not for you or that
it's the opposite of CharlotteMason is not for you or that
it's the opposite of CharlotteMason.
Just throwing that out there.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
That's so interesting .
No, I love that because thatdoes make a lot of sense.
And I always saw.
I mean, I've talked to over ahundred homeschooling families
and that distinction was never,you know, made to me.
So that is.
I think most people don'trealize that.
So, whoever the marketingstrategist is for classical
(50:31):
conversations, you're doing goodat your job because you've got
the monopoly on it.
No, but that's so cool.
Yeah, all right.
So so if people want to diveinto your curriculum, you
actually mix the Charlotte Masonwith a classical education, the
authentic being of it, and itreally I love that.
(50:55):
When you were saying aboutColumbus and reading books about
him and then reading theperspective of the natives, I
mean that is just like whatevery conspiracy theorist is
like.
Yes, can we just see one moreperspective?
Because school only gives you,you know, this is.
And then Columbus, you know,landed in Boston, it's like, or
(51:15):
wherever they say.
But it's like, oh well, no, ifyou, if you actually look a
little further, he didn't reallyland, right, right, he didn't
land in the United States.
Part Um wasn't like Bermuda orsomething, or yeah.
So um, it's where the Dominican.
Republic is Okay.
So you know that's what we'reall thinking like.
Well, if we had anotherperspective, we might be able to
(51:38):
see a couple of different sides, and I mean that's that's like
what we want to teach you.
And I know that's like with theTuttle twins books too.
It's like trying to showdifferent perspectives of it,
and I think that's a huge reasonwhy people want to get their
kids out of the school systemtoo.
I mean, I know it's the thesocial aspect because of what's
going on in the schools and whatthey're teaching, but it's like
only having that one, the oneway it's got to be, and you
(52:00):
can't question it.
Like, oh, whoever wrote thistextbook was the genius.
They know everything.
We have to follow it.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
They know everything we have to follow it.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
They know everything.
Yes, yeah, that's huge.
I love that.
So I'm going to put links toyour curriculum in the show's
description so people want tocheck it out.
They can do that.
And then do you want to tellpeople right now, even just as
they're listening, where theycould follow you or find your
curriculum?
Speaker 2 (52:22):
Sure.
So if you just Google theGentle Classical Press or shop
Gentle Classical Press, ourteacher's guides are completely
free, even still.
You know I talked about givingthat preschool away back in the
day.
But our preschool, our primer,which is our kindergarten
sequence, one which we get intoColumbus and we have, we have
memorization for families thatwant memorization.
(52:43):
We like memorization.
It helps with kids that havelike any kind of memory issues
or stuff, so we use it almosttherapeutically in our home.
But then books, lots of books,amazing books, copy work and
narration, and we have natureprograms as well, agricultural
science.
We have a lot of stuff outthere and you can download the
(53:04):
complete teacher's guide forfree.
So you know whether ourphilosophy of education and what
we're going to be covering thatyear is a good fit for your
family, because nothing stinksbetter more than getting
curriculum and being like thiswas not what I thought it was
going to be like.
We want you to know before youorder it and get it.
So, yeah, shop gentleclassicalcom and you'll see like
(53:28):
free teacher's guides rightthere at the top.
You just put your email in andthere's a whole page.
Just download all of them andhappy reading.
Speaker 1 (53:36):
Oh, that's so awesome .
Thank you for that.
So I'll put links to everythingin the show's description.
And then what would you justkind of like to round out the
hour on, Like tell that mom ordad that has a kid in school, or
about to enroll them, but mightwant to homeschool?
But it's also a littleterrifying and you know, some
(53:58):
people might be walking awayfrom the, the, the degree kind
of that they are still going tobe paying for for a few more
years, Um, and maybe that jobisn't exactly what they're going
to be doing If they decide tohomeschool.
What would you kind of say tothat?
Speaker 2 (54:12):
I usually tell people that everything that their
child has learned so far, thatthey've taught them they just
didn't realize it.
They had this classificationsystem in their mind of this is
parent teaching and theneverything past this is teacher
teaching.
And it's just not true.
You know your child better thananyone else.
You can teach them well.
(54:33):
And look, even if you can'tteach them well, because maybe
at some point there's apersonality conflict or
something and you're kind ofworried about that type of stuff
, there are so many communitiesavailable, there are online
classes, there are tutors, thereare amazing resources, no
matter what the path is.
So really do not try to figureeverything out in advance, like,
(54:54):
especially if your child's inelementary school.
It's a long road, like it doesgo by fast, but I mean you have
a lot of days between now andwhen they graduate and you'll
have more good days than badwhen they're at home.
I just almost guarantee it andyou just need to do like the
next right thing.
So just kind of obey, like whatyou believe the next right
(55:15):
thing is.
And as a Christian, I believelike God has a calling on our
lives to like for us to homeeducate our children, and so I
always tell people, like hedoesn't call you into it and
then abandon you right.
Like you have this Holy Spiritin your life and so obey that
first step and he's going to bethere.
He's going to help you find thegroup, the community, the
curriculum, the class.
Like he's going to help youwith all of that stuff.
(55:37):
You just have to trust and obey.
I think there's a hymn that'snamed that trust and obey and
then he'll work out everythingelse.
And it's really.
It's messy at times and thebeautiful moments that you see
on Instagram that's just some ofthe moments that happen, and
there are other moments that arenot pretty like that.
That's, most of the momentsaren't beautiful and worthy of a
(55:57):
photo, but they're all stillgood and it's really holy,
sanctifying work that will makeyou and your child better for it
.
You just have to like trust andobey at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (56:09):
Oh, thank you so much .
I and I agree too, I'm we'vebeen going over like trying to
learn how to read for mysix-year-old and it was try this
curriculum, try that curriculum.
And we actually landed on.
What we're doing now is readinghorizons, and it's online, but
it's that.
I'm like you know, it's okay, Iwe're.
It's something that he does notfight me on.
(56:31):
And when you were talking beforeabout quitting before it gets
to that rough hour, and he saidto me today well, mom, it's been
20 minutes, so I'm moving on tosomething else and I thought,
well, you're not frustrated yet.
You should maybe sit back downand keep going, get more of that
until you're frustrated.
And it's like what you saidclicked so much.
(56:52):
Oh, and you said one more thingtoo that I loved.
I just wanted to bring upbefore we close.
You said something about whenyour kid was in school, or if
your daughter was in school, youwould be waiting for the school
to tell you that something waswrong or that something needed
to happen or that you needed togo forward.
And I've been thinking aboutthat for the last hour, like
(57:15):
isn't that so funny that youknow, we just we send them into
this system and we wait forsomeone to tell us, like, what's
next for our kid, like we can'tmanage to do that on our own
but we absolutely can.
Speaker 2 (57:24):
Yeah, we're handing over ownership of their
academics and a lot of times,their character development and
we're handing over ownership oftheir academics and a lot of
times, their characterdevelopment and we're handing
over ownership.
And it may be for eight hours aday and obviously they don't
have ownership for real of yourchildren.
But like when you, when you areputting them in school, you're
like, ok, that's, that's theirthing, like I'm going to do the
(57:46):
rest of the stuff, but that'stheir thing.
And a lot of times you just youstuff, but that's their thing.
And a lot of times you just youwouldn't because that's their
job, you just wouldn't take iton unless they told you to right
, like you're not going to diguntil you recognize there's a
problem for real.
And then mama instincts kick inlike okay, I've got to fix this
.
But it would have gone on, likeI recognize there was a problem
(58:07):
in kindergarten and I guaranteeshe would have been first or
second grade before it reallywould have come up at in a
school setting if she was therethe whole time.
So, um, anyway, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (58:18):
Yeah, I think that's important, that's exactly why I
wrote, I wrote the children'sbook that I did the let's talk
emergencies Cause I was like, ohgee, what am I supposed to be
teaching you about this stuff?
At you know, four or five yearsold, six, seven, eight, nine
years old?
Like we're supposed to be goingover what now?
And you know, talking to policeofficers and teachers and what
(58:39):
are you guys going over and whatdo they need to know?
And it was like there's thishuge gap.
Parents think that, yes, I handyou over and everything's
covered other than dinner andhanging out on the weekends and
making sure your homework's done.
But it's like and then teachersare like we're not going to
teach your kid your phone number, that's your job, you're the
adult.
But there's no meeting of theteacher and the parent at the
(59:01):
beginning of the year sayingthis is what I'm going to do and
this is what you're expected todo.
You know, we all kind of likethrow the hands up.
So yeah, that's why I and Ilove that you kind of took it
upon yourself to like, oh,there's not a curriculum, I'm
going to create one andobviously there is a need for it
.
So that is awesome.
Kudos to you.
You had the banking and financedegree.
(59:21):
You didn't use that, but itdefinitely went towards
something wonderful, so that'sawesome.
Thank you so much for joining metoday.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for tuning into thisweek's episode of the homeschool
how to.
If you've enjoyed what youheard and you'd like to
contribute to the show, pleaseconsider leaving a small tip
(59:42):
using the link in my show'sdescription.
Or, if you'd rather, please usethe link in the description to
share this podcast with a friendor on your favorite homeschool
group Facebook page.
Any effort to help us keep thepodcast going is greatly
appreciated.
Thank you for tuning in and foryour love of the next
generation.
Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool
How-To.
I'm Cheryl and I invite you tojoin me on my quest to find out
why are people homeschooling,how do you do it, how does it
differ from region to region,and should I homeschool my kids?
Stick with me as I interviewhomeschooling families across
the country to unfold theanswers to each of these
(00:26):
questions week by week.
Welcome, and with us today Ihave Erin Cox from Alabama.
Hi, erin Cheryl, thank you forhaving me.
Thanks for being here.
This is so exciting.
You're in Alabama.
How many kids do you have?
We?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
have four.
We have a big range of ages.
So my oldest will turn 21 thisyear and we have an 18 year old
and then a nine and eight yearold.
So we have kind of spreadacross a big age gap.
So I had like newborns when Ihad high schoolers at the same
time.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
That's fun, though, like I only have the four year
age gap, but I like having alittle bit of space, and my
sister and I also had a sevenyear age gap.
It was kind of cool, cause Idon't know you just there's a
division there of likeresponsibilities and friends,
but you also are everyone's sohelpful yeah.
I, she did zip my lip in herjacket one time, but um so
(01:24):
that's fun though.
So have you been homeschoolingthe whole time?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Or, just more recently, Just the whole time I
started homeschooling my girl.
So I have two girls and twoboys.
So I just refer to them as thegirls and the boys because
they're like our batches ofchildren, like we had two in our
20s and we were like we're done, you know when we turn 40,
they'll be out of the house andyou know, cause 40 is old and
you don't want to have kids atthe house.
(01:48):
Still, you know, when you'rethat age, that was my 20 year
old brain.
And then we got into ourthirties and we were like, wait,
40 is not that old and this isgoing by really quickly.
So that's why we had that bignine year gap in the middle.
Um, and so then we have ourboys.
But when my girls were in secondgrade and would be would have
(02:10):
been preschool, I pulled mypreschooler out of preschool
just to like I wasn't working atthe time, so I brought her home
from that and we were doinghomeschool and, and so then my
older daughter was like, well, Iwant to do that too, cause that
looks more fun than what I doin school.
And so we, we kind of played atit over.
(02:31):
She had like a three weekChristmas break and we just
tried that out and we loved itso much and I was like we're not
, we're not going back.
And so, aside from a briefstint when I was pregnant with
my fourth child, we've beenhomeschooling, for this is our
14th year, so what about?
Speaker 1 (02:50):
well, it's first.
It's funny that you said like,oh, we decided, you know, later
on to have more kids, cause Ifeel like most people they hear
that story and they're like, ohso, two different marriages
Cause that's when people havethat big age gap.
But I was like, well, I ask,I'm pretty open in what I'll ask
people, but I was like that's alittle too far.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
But no, he actually like had a vasectomy and we had
it reversed to have morechildren.
Yeah, so, it was like I wasinstantaneously pregnant.
It was one of those like verysuccessful surgeries.
The fourth kid wasn't evenplanned, so that's how
successful it was.
But yeah, people ask all thetime like why did you?
you know, because it is unusualto have like a big gap because
(03:31):
the girls are two years apartand the boys are 15 months apart
.
I found out I was pregnant withmy fourth when my older son was
six months old.
So that was you know.
That was a surprise, but it wasa good one.
Obviously, now we're done,we're totally done.
We're 43.
We're grandparents, we'retotally at the baby game.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Wow, yeah, oh, my goodness, I'm 41.
I can't imagine being but like,yeah, when you start in your
twenties, that's totallyfeasible, and not like
outlandish oh gosh, time flies,time really flies, gosh, time
flies, time really flies.
It does, and so did.
You said that you're one.
The daughters are the olderones, right?
(04:09):
You said that the one daughterwanted to be homeschooled
because you startedhomeschooling the preschooler.
What about the oldest?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
So that was the two.
So the preschooler was theyounger daughter, and then her
big sister wanted to behomeschooled.
She was in second grade at thetime, okay.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah, cause they have a little bit, a few years
between them too.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Okay, yeah, cause they have a little bit, a few
years between them too.
Okay, yeah, so you really didstart to and it really wasn't
popular.
Then was it?
It was, it was growing.
So I came across homeschoolingin a very unusual way when I was
pregnant with my oldestdaughter.
I remember sitting in hernursery rocking like this big
belly, waiting for her to comeand reading the Charlotte Mason
Companion by Karen Andreola, andto this day I have no idea
(04:51):
where that book came from orlike how it came to be in my
home.
I guess I just saw it at athrift store and picked it up
when I was like thrifting forher nursery and stuff and I
remember reading it and it wasso everything about it, Like I
didn't have a relationship withGod at that point, like I was
not a Christian, was not raisedin a Christian home, so that was
all very like alien to me, andthen I didn't have a very like
(05:14):
warm, loving, affectionate homeand I don't know.
There was just so much about itthat was like completely from
another dimension that I foundit really interesting and it
planted a lot of seeds.
But I was like, well, I'llnever be able to homeschool,
like I was freshly graduatedfrom college and I had a degree
to pay for.
(05:35):
And you know, I had, you knowwas going to be in banking and
finance, that's what my degreewas in.
And so, you know, I just alwaysthought I would be working, and
so I just put all that out of myhead and then I like randomly
quit a job, like I just quit ajob.
It was one of those jobs thatlike, like you just can't even
show up at.
I don't know if you've ever hada job that's so stressful that,
(05:57):
like to show up at it wouldmake you want to cry.
And so, like I would, like Iwas in sales at the time, which
was fine, it was just thisenvironment, and so I would just
sit in my car and cry.
And so one day I just quit, Ijust quit, and then I took her
out of preschool the next day,cause I was like, well, I can't
pay for this and I have to getanother job.
And that's literally where itall, like I just felt like God
(06:18):
started being like you know,this is an opportunity to kind
of play around with this.
And I was like, well, that'sfine, but I can't afford to
homeschool.
Like my husband does not earnenough money for us to get you
know, get by, you know, withoutworking, and um, and his income
doubled in the next month afterthat.
So it was really it very muchfelt like a God thing at that
(06:40):
point and so I just kind of wejust kept praying about it and
just kept going and doing it andreally fell in love with it.
And I mean, the first thingthat we did was we read Little
House on the Prairie andeverything that Laura did we did
too, like we smoked meat andyou know, like I used it for the
spelling words and the grammar,like I just pulled everything
(07:03):
out of there and to me it justfelt like the most organic and
intuitive way to learn was toread amazing stories and then
kind of do what they did toexperience the history side of
things and just kind of learneverything we could from that
one thing.
And so that's kind of how westarted out and I started
reading a lot because I'm a nerdand read about more about
(07:26):
Charlotte Mason.
Obviously that was kind of myfirst introduction, but also
like the well-trained mind, andthen just kind of went from
there and just got obsessed witheducation and my younger
daughter ended up beingdiagnosed as like profoundly
dyslexic and has multiplelearning disabilities.
So in hindsight I recognizedwhy those seeds had been planted
(07:50):
and why we had been called toit.
Like you know, I just thought itwas more fun and less stressful
and I didn't have to goanywhere when it rained and they
loved it.
And but then, at the same time,like recognizing like she could
have never, she would not havethrived in school, and even once
I taught her how to read, wedid school for a month and it
(08:13):
was two weeks into it.
It was just like no, this isnot, this is not for us.
I thought it's supposed to beeasier to not be teaching them.
I thought that this would beless stressful, to not have this
responsibility.
You didn't ask all that, butI'm just running.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
That's funny because I feel like a lot of parents
would be like oh, my child'sdyslexic, so they have to go
into school because theprofessionals will know how to
teach them I'm not capable.
But what you're saying isexactly the opposite.
She would have gotten swallowedup in the 30 kids in the class
and the different tempertantrums going on or behavioral
(08:50):
issues going on, and theywouldn't have necessarily pulled
her out and said hey, she'slearning.
She needs a different way tolearn.
Let's work one-on-one with her.
The resources might not havebeen there for another year, two
years or three years or fouryears, you know if, if they ever
found it, Um, so I really wantpeople to like drill that in to
(09:11):
their minds, that it's notleading up to the professionals
because they could do it.
But their classes are so big.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
They just don't have.
You know, it's not about theteachers not, you know, being
willing to do it, they justdon't have the capacity to do it
and with her there's only somuch a teacher is going to be
able to do with any one singularchild anyway.
And when you have a child thathas auditory processing disorder
(09:39):
, so classroom setting could notbe worse.
For her right Dyslexia, sh shedysgraphia and dyscalculia and
her the her math dyslexia wasprof is was profoundly worse
than her reading and we didn'teven know that for a few years
and she had sensory processingdisorder and stuff.
And so being homeschooling hergave me the opportunity to see
(10:03):
things that I would have neverseen, that a teacher doesn't
have the capacity to see inindividual children and talk to
different therapists and startlike piecing together Like she
did sensory integration therapy.
She did a lot of differenttherapy stuff to kind of like
help her senses work bettertogether, a lot of eye tracking.
She did vision therapylong-term and just kind of that
(10:25):
would have never happened, Idon't think, because I wouldn't
have.
I would have been like they'rehandling it and they're gonna
tell me maybe what to do.
Maybe I need to like listen toher read at home.
But like they're theprofessionals and because I took
ownership of her education, Itook ownership of everything
that I needed to do and could doto help her learn how to read,
(10:47):
because when she was tested theysaid she may never learn how to
read.
I've been trying to teach herthe sounds of the alphabet for
two years with like consistencythat is just out of character
for me, quite honestly, and shestill could tell me seven or
eight letter sounds after twoyears of consistent instruction.
(11:10):
Now, I mean, she's graduatedhigh school and you know if
anyone's listening to this andthey're like that's my kid, like
she's okay, like by the fourthgrade, because of daily therapy,
at home therapy and you know,in different places you know
whatever it seemed like sheneeded, but just like being able
to adapt everything.
(11:32):
Not because the thing aboutdyslexia and all these other you
know, adhd, all this type ofstuff, is that every child with
dyslexia is dyslexic in adifferent way.
Like some of them, the wordsmove around the page, some of
them the words fall off the page, some of them reverse
everything and some of them,like for my children, have
(11:52):
extraordinarily poor workingmemories.
So when you come to like, youknow you need to sound out each
of the letters.
You have to remember that firstsound by the time you get to
the last sound to be able to goback and say what it was.
And a three-letter word.
They've forgotten that firstsound by the time you get to the
last sound to be able to goback and say what it was.
And a three-letter word.
They've forgotten that firstsound.
And so every day was startingfrom scratch every day.
And then somewhere around thefourth grade, something just
(12:15):
clicked and she all the laborthat had happened up until that
point just finally came togetherand she started reading
fluently.
And, you know, was a horriblespeller, but I didn't care
because she could read.
But then, you know, liketexting and playing Minecraft
games and stuff online like thatironed out her spelling skills,
ironically and anyway, like,and now she has stuff like
(12:38):
ChatGPT to help.
You know, if she needs toexpress her idea, she'd kind of
say it and it has like badpunctuation because she can't
remember all the rules, butit'll fix it and she's able to
communicate effectively in thatway and she has the intelligence
to use the tools that are there.
So I mean, there's just so manythings.
And I did put her in school fora month, like I said, and the
(13:00):
real problems there were socialtype things that like when I put
her in school I was terrifiedshe was going to be behind and
that it was all of my fault,right, like I like maybe I
should have already put her inschool, like I really didn't
know what I was doing.
I was just like doingeverything as hard as I could
and investing as much in hereducation as I could, but what
(13:20):
if I was messing her up?
What if it was all my fault inthe first place?
Right, and so I was just kindof lived in this constant like
terror, of that tension, becauseI just didn't know.
I mean, she had doctors andstuff, but it was still.
You know you, you just don'tknow.
There's a lot of fear, a lot offear, especially when you're
homeschooling your first kid ortwo and she was the first one I
taught to read too, like myother daughter learned to read
in school, so like that was theworst experience possible for me
(13:45):
to have any kind of confidence.
And um, and so when she was inschool she had like the, the
social problems that she hadwere.
So the stress that caused melike I had worried about her
academically but I didn't losesleep at night.
But when she was in school Istarted losing sleep at night
because of the things that werebeing said.
And then was in school, Istarted losing sleep at night
because of the things that werebeing said.
(14:05):
And then in the information Idon't know, she's in the fourth
grade but it was like it wasgross.
I mean it was terrible and shewas in a really good school and
it was just, and this was likebefore.
I mean she's 18 now, so thiswas before.
Fourth graders had, like, cellphones and stuff too.
So anyway it was just reallyrough and um, and at the end of
that month I was she, we haddetermined that there was no way
(14:29):
that she could sit in aclassroom and ever learn
anything because all she did washear everybody around her and
not she couldn't hear theteacher, she couldn't focus,
she's got ADHD and all that.
So anyway it was very affirmingto me, like every fear that I
had about failing my child withlearning disabilities was put
completely away when I put herin school, because it just
(14:52):
showed me first of all, shetested on grade level and they
told me that if they hadevaluated her for dyslexia at
that point in her life, theywouldn't have diagnosed her with
it.
So that's how far we came from.
Her not ever learning to readwas what we were told to
wouldn't even get the diagnosisin the fourth grade.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Hey everyone.
This is Cheryl.
I want to thank you so much forchecking out the podcast.
I'm going to keep this shortand sweet because I know your
time is valuable.
I want to ask you a seriousquestion Do your kids know what
to do to actually save theirlife in an emergency?
The most important thing we cantalk to our kids about is
knowing their first and lastname, knowing mom and dad's
first and last name, mom's phonenumber, dad's phone number,
(15:33):
their address, what to do ifthey get lost, what to do if
someone who's watching them hasa heart attack, a stroke, an
accident where they fall andyour child needs to get help.
We live in a world where there'sno landline phones anymore,
basically, and cell phones a lot.
Does your child know how tocall 911 from a locked cell
phone?
It is absolutely possible, andmy book demonstrates how to do
(15:56):
that, whether it's an android,whether it's an iphone and, most
importantly, it starts theconversation, because I was
going through homeschoolingcurriculum with my kids,
realizing that, gee, maybe theyskim over this stuff, but they
don't get into depth, so mychild's not going to remember
this should an accident occur,right?
I asked a couple of teacherswhat they do in school and they
(16:17):
said they really don't doanything either other than talk
about what to do in a fireduring the month of October fire
prevention month.
So I wrote a book because thisis near and dear to my heart.
I have had multiple friendsthat have lost kids in tragedies
and I don't wanna see it happenagain if it doesn't have to.
We were at the fair over thesummer and the first thing I
said to my son when we walkedthrough that gate was "'What's
(16:40):
my first and last name?
"'what is your first and lastname?
What is your first and lastname and what is my phone number
?
And if you get lost, what areyou going to do?
You can get my book on Amazonand I will put the link in my
show's description Again.
It's called let's TalkEmergencies and I really hope
you'll check it out becausethere's just no need to be
scared when you can chooseprepared.
What did you guys use forcurriculum?
(17:02):
We used everything.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
What did you guys use for?
Speaker 1 (17:03):
curriculum.
We used everything.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Everything.
I just threw it at the wall.
It was just we very much.
It was very adaptive.
It was like, okay, what's thenext right thing to do?
Like what's the next rightthing to do.
So I just studied her and reallyjust dove into learning
everything that I could abouthow children learn how to read,
especially if they have auditoryprocessing disorder and ADHD
and poor working memory.
(17:24):
So we did little therapy things.
Online there's different appsand games to kind of help with
your working memory and helpwith your auditory discernment,
and so we were doing thosethings and doing vision therapy.
So we were doing a lot becauseto me the dyslexia was just like
a symptom of some processesthat weren't working properly
Right, and so that was like theacademic diagnosis for physical
(17:49):
processes that were not workingcorrectly.
So really the solution for thedyslexia was to fix the
processes that weren't workingin congruence like they were
supposed to.
And, um, and her eyes were a bigpart of it an auditory
processing disorder If your eyeslike aren't, you know,
converging where they'resupposed to, and so things are a
little blurry because theycan't do it and glasses don't
(18:11):
fix that, and then auditoryprocessing is like your eyes and
your ears kind of aren'tworking at the same time is how
the sensory processing part ofit works.
So how can you remember whatthat shape sounds like if you
can't look at it and think aboutwhat it looks like at the same
time that you're hearing what itsounds like?
Like for her to listen to mewhen I'd speak to her, she would
(18:32):
look at the floor, she wouldhave to shut off her vision to
hear what I was saying, and so Imean I would.
It's not a good joke, it's abad joke, but I would call her
like my little Helen Keller,just a little bit, because she
couldn't hear me and see me atthe same time.
And so then you can't have avisual understanding of what's
making that sound and it wouldnever make it in, it would never
(18:53):
like stick all the way.
And so like, as far ascurriculum we finally landed on
predominantly that all aboutreading is really the go-to.
I mean, it's what we likebroadly recommend.
I think there are other goodthings out there.
Logic of English has changedsince I tried it years ago and
I'm hearing really good thingsabout it.
(19:14):
But what I've noticed with myother son because I've got
another one with dyslexiathey're not as profoundly as her
and he doesn't have likeauditory processing disorder and
stuff, but just a bad workingmemory.
Is that like at a certain point, even with all about reading,
like there's just too many rules?
Like there's a lot of rules inthat Orton-Gillingham method of
reading and that's fine to beginwith, but then at a certain
(19:35):
point, like you've got too manydance around in your head, you
can't, and so really it justcomes down to when you have
dyslexia.
It tends to take you seventimes longer to remember
something than it does aneurotypical child.
So like, for example, when myoldest daughter was in school,
she would learn 10 sight wordsor 15 sight words a week and she
would know them by Wednesdayand then I was teaching this
(19:57):
child and we would work on 10sight words for three months
before she would be able toremember them.
Yeah, so it was just like justthe consistency and the
persistence and like with my son, just we don't need rules
anymore.
At the point he's at now, it'sjust reading and reading, and
reading and reading, because themore he reads, the more the
(20:18):
code starts to make a little bitmore sense, and it just takes
that seven times as long.
And I mean it's been true withboth of them.
I just think that's veryinteresting.
But it's like there's a.
The Berlin wall is in there andwe got to break through it, but
once it gets there, it's there.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Now, how did you work out, like, how much time you
actually invested each day inworking on this stuff?
Because it's easy, especiallywhen they're that young, to get
burnout and to get, like youknow, a hate of reading.
Because it's easy, especiallywhen they're that young, to get
burnout and to get, like youknow, a hate of reading because
it's so stressful.
Did you, were you aware of,like, how much time you were
(20:53):
trying to put in and then notoverdo it?
Cause, like a lot ofhomeschoolers, we have to
replicate school and make iteight hours, five days a week,
and then that's really not thepoint, right?
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Well, well, I never struggled too much with having
like an eight-hour school day,um, especially my girls were
well, even now with the boys,like I never.
I never struggled too much withwanting to do school at home.
Now I have had to break out ofthe idea of like test scores or
grades, things like that, um andand having different because
they're all asynchronous.
You know, like homeschool kidsare never on one grade in any
(21:26):
way and you just have to finallyget used to the fact that, like
my eight-year-old's, in secondgrade he reads.
Maybe on third grade he's doingfourth grade math, but then his
spelling's like kindergarten,but also he knows high school
history and you know likethey're all kind of like that.
So I was never too caught upwith that.
But I will say that she has avery short attention span.
(21:47):
These kiddos that kind of likehave these learning differences.
We call them neuro-spicy aroundhere.
We're all our own littleversion of neuro-spicy in this
house.
And so my husband he's justnormal sitting up in the middle
of all the crazies and um and Ifeel like her attention span
being so short, demanded that Inot make the mistake of trying
(22:11):
to do too much, so we would dothings like a lot of it was
physical, like doing sight words.
You know she would do hopscotchwhen she landed on the word she
needed to read it, like soeverything.
We would go outside and wewould ride it with chalk.
We then we would wash it offwith a sponge, like we would do
everything as likekinesthetically as possible.
That way she was moving andlearning that way, and I had,
(22:32):
like you know, the little wiggleballs and all that kind of
stuff.
So I didn't have.
I learned not to expect her tosit still.
I sit still to think, and ifI'm moving it means I'm not
thinking or listening to you.
Still to think, and if I'mmoving it means I'm not thinking
or listening to you.
And I had to learn that thatwas the opposite for her and her
moving meant she was listeningbetter.
And then we would just settimers.
(22:54):
I'm a big fan of timers when itcomes to reading instruction,
especially with children withlearning differences, because
whatever attitude you leave alesson with is the mindset and
the attitude you'll enter thatlesson the next time.
So, if you end in tears andfrustration, you're bringing
(23:14):
that energy into the next timeyou sit down to do that reading
lesson.
And so if my child can read for20 minutes before they start to
break down, I'm setting a timerfor 15.
And no matter where we are inthe lesson, no matter if we're
happy, sad, whatever, it's goinggreat.
When the timer goes off, thatlesson's over with.
Hopefully we've ended in apositive way.
If things have gone downhill,I'm going to give them easy work
(23:38):
that I know they can do, likeI'm going to give them, like
here's, five flashcards that Iknow they can have some
confidence and do it and getthem to read those.
That way they walk away withthat feeling of accomplishment
and satisfaction so that theybring that into the next time
that we sit down.
So I would just do with her too.
We had a little bit of therapythat almost felt like play, so
(23:58):
that wasn't too big of a deal,but we would have two reading
sessions a day for 15 minutes.
And I've done the same with myson.
Like we have his instructionaltime which is at at that
fruitful frustration like he's.
It's hard, but he's like he cando it.
That's 15 minutes, and then inthe second half of the day he
reads to my husband, well belowhis level, for 15 minutes and
(24:20):
that's just to practice fluencyand get like a little bit more.
You know natural sounding inhis reading and stuff.
I love that.
I don't think there's a lot ofstuff, you don't need a timer.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
but when you think about the classroom, how many
kids are getting that time toread one-on-one with an adult?
And we know that it probablydoes.
I mean, I don't know, maybe alot of households are reading
with their kids at night, but Idon't.
I didn't grow up in one ofthose.
We had two working parents andI don't ever remember my parents
reading a book with me.
(24:50):
I don't think their parents didit with them.
It just didn't fall down theline.
And so when I think aboutparents working and kids in
their, you know, before care,after care, sports, dinner on
the table and everyone needs toget homework done and everyone
needs to get a bath or whatnot,when is the time to sit and read
together, Like that, 15 minutesof just read to dad or read to
(25:11):
mom, it probably doesn't happenin most households.
I mean, we homeschool and it'shard to even say like, yeah,
okay, we got to pull out a book.
Now, guys, Come on.
So yeah, when you just thinkabout how much that's doing for
them.
I mean, right there, anybodywho's having like anxiety about
homeschooling their kids I wasthinking about this today Don't
(25:32):
compare what you do to thehomeschool moms.
You know that you know, or thatare on Instagram, compared to
what they would be in theclassroom, I don't know, but I
was going to post that.
But then I'm like, oh, itsounds kind of mean too for
anybody, that whose kids do goto school.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
I've always said it kind of the opposite, in that,
like you cannot compare them toa system that you've opted out
of, but you can compare them tothe benefits of like what their
day-to-day life would be like.
My daughter had an IEP when shewas at school and that meant
she got 15 minutes ofinstruction three times a week
(26:09):
independently.
15 minutes three times a weekand that was it, and so the rest
of the time that she was thereit was just babysitting her.
She was not learning anything.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Such a good word for it.
You're so right.
Yeah, so I was thinking aboutthat today and it really is.
Just when you're in the rush ofthe day even homeschooling and
you just feel like, oh my God,did we even sit down and do that
?
Even just 15 minutes, thatcounts for so much.
And when they're little,there's just I love what you
(26:41):
said about doing the hopscotchthere are things that we just
can do to play with the kids, oryou know, I remember and I
don't I'm not super creative, soI but when I see something, I
do try to replicate it as bestas I can.
And I remember, I think,Lindsay from the Treehouse
Schoolhouse.
She had told me just putletters on rocks with paint and
hide them in a big sand pile andhave them go excavate, and then
(27:04):
, when they find all the rocks,have them, put them in order in
the alphabet.
And I'm like that's genius.
I still don't think we've foundall the rocks and it's been two
years, but it was fun while wedid it, Painting it and finding
them.
So I love that I have morequestions for you too.
But the one off the top of myhead you said that you went to
(27:27):
school for banking and finance.
How did you ever get creativeand finding all these creative
ways to do the hopscotch withthe words?
Where did you go for thoseresources?
Speaker 2 (27:40):
So that's interesting .
I was a banking and financemajor because I had really no
guidance whatsoever and I wentto college for no good reason
because that was what you weresupposed to do, right, and I
knew I wanted to make money.
That was I wanted to make moneyand I took a lot of different
classes and I changed my majorlike 47 times, which wasted a
(28:02):
lot of money.
And those were the hardestclasses I took and that's why I
decided I wanted that to be mymajor.
Like 47 times, which wasted alot of money, and those were the
hardest classes I took andthat's why I decided I wanted
that to be my major.
Just because I like a challenge, like I was like this is
interesting, I want to, you know, feel like this is hard so that
I just that's what I did andI've not used it a day in my
life.
I graduated from college andgot a job as a graphic designer.
(28:22):
Like not a day did I even applyto work in the industry that I
have a degree in which just saysa lot about college and you
know I can get all into that.
But I've always been creativeand I would use Pinterest a lot.
Like Pinterest used to behomeschool mom heaven and then
(28:45):
it got kind of sketchy there fora little bit for me.
But now it feels like it'shaving a little bit of
resurgence because Googledoesn't find stuff anymore.
Like I can't stand even tryingto Google anything.
So I have started actuallygetting back on Pinterest and
there are so many brilliantideas and that's what I would do
.
I'd be like you know ways tolearn the letters without
(29:07):
sitting down just studying themand just you know all these
different brilliant moms puttingtheir ideas on their blogs back
in the day, and I guess peoplelike now it's all reels and
YouTube videos and stuff, but Idon't like, I'm not even on
social.
Well, I have a social media andthere are people there and
somebody manages it, but I don'tget on social media and scroll
through and all that.
(29:28):
So I don't know.
I guess that's probably wherethe good ideas are now instead
of Pinterest.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Well, and even chat GPT you were talking about your
daughter using it before.
That's great for it too.
Like I, I did a reel where Isaid like hey, do you want to do
a springtime unit study?
And I, you know, recorded metalking into chat GPT.
Like I have a two year old, asix year old, you know.
He's crazy active and she justfollows along and they like mud
(29:58):
and all this stuff and it madelike a two week unit study for
springtime, you know,incorporating different things.
We can watch books from thelibrary to take out different
activities to do outside.
So I have that actually on myInstagram page when you click
the link.
But yeah, it's never beeneasier to homeschool.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
But also it's never been more overwhelming.
Yeah, I talked to a friend theother day and it was just kind
of this like she beganhomeschooling after like COVID,
right.
And so even when I look, thinkback to the first couple of
years that I was a homeschoolerlike that was over a decade ago.
That feels like so long ago,because the world has changed so
(30:43):
much and there are all thesereally amazing and creative
ideas, but it's almost likegluttonous the amount of it.
You know what I mean.
You almost need chat GPT justto give you the plan so that you
don't have to sort through allof the brilliant anime, because
there's so many good curriculumoptions and there's so many, you
know, in in many areas youcan't throw a stick without
(31:05):
hitting a co-op or a play date,or you know what I mean.
Like there's a lot of stuff todo because there's so many
people homeschooling, which Ithink is phenomenal, but it is a
little overwhelming to getstarted now because you know
it's like what?
What philosophy do I want tohave and does it really matter?
And how do I decide thesethings?
And so sometimes you mightovercommit to different
activities or you're like, oh,my kids aren't getting
(31:27):
socialized, I have to do morestuff, and there's just all
these voices, and a lot of thevoices on social media are very
not all of them.
There are a lot of like greatgracious accounts, but some of
them are very like stronglyopinionated.
They're very young to have suchpassionate opinions about it.
It's like you know your oldestchild's seven.
What are you talking about?
Like calm down.
(31:48):
I mean, you can have an opinionwith your seven.
Please don't state it as if itis a proven fact, because you've
done it for two weeks with yourseven-year-old.
Like you know.
Anyway, I just always havingadult children and having gone
through the teenage years andgone through some hard times in
the teenage years, I'm just verykeenly aware of like eating
(32:09):
your words, and so most of mywords that I thought about
things were not recorded on areel to live into perpetuity,
unlike what some of these sweetladies are saying.
They're going to look back in10 years and be like, oh no, I
can't listen to these things.
But anyway, I mean, I love theopportunity that's there, but it
is.
I feel like there's a lot.
(32:30):
There's a lot of opinions andmethods and strong kind of like
ungracious opinions in some waythat kind of make you like, feel
like either you're not doingenough or you're missing out or
you know I'm doing it wrong,like all that kind of stuff, and
it can just create a lot of Idon't know.
I feel like uncertainty andthat in doubt.
That's what we deal with, likefrom a customer service
(32:52):
standpoint.
Most of our customers coming inare preschool and kindergarten.
They're the new moms that aregetting started and they're like
I have no idea what to do.
There's 5,000 differentcurricula, and just do the next
right thing.
That's just all you can do.
You're not going to iron it outperfectly, and that's okay.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Yeah, so tell us about your business and how you
even got into it.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Sure, so the name of it is the Gentle and Classical
Press and we are, I guess, likea little bit the odd kids out,
because anyone that's been ahomeschooling for very long,
I'll just say that, will havenoticed that there is some
staunch and passionate opinionsabout classical education and
(33:34):
also Charlotte Mason educationand they're kind of like a lot
of people think they're verysimilar but some people would
say, oh, they're not the same atall and you could never say
that they're similar and so theyhave their little camps or
whatever.
And so I was seeing that online, I was seeing that like in
Facebook groups and in thecompanies, right, like things
are very classical, you know,doing our Latin and our logic,
(33:57):
and they're in a pretty graphicto be seen anywhere or a very
Charlotte Mason nature study andartist study and narrations and
all these types of like verybeautiful, you know.
And then this seems like great,but also like maybe a little
harsh, and it just seemed likethat it would work if they were
together.
And I filmed through my ownpersonal life, like being in a
(34:17):
co-op and all that kind of stuff, that almost every mom that I
knew that considered themselvesto be a classical educator used
a lot of Charlotte Mason'sprinciples and a lot of the
Charlotte Mason mamas used a lotof classical education type
philosophy and and differentthings.
And so I was like, okay, eventhough that the, the companies,
seem to be like completelyseparated, everybody that I
(34:39):
actually know blends, blends itwith some unit studies and
different things thrown in, andand that was me.
And so I just never could findexactly what I wanted, because
there was like these staunt,like these camps or whatever.
And so when my boys were prettyyoung, I had the.
You know, I had the advantageof having a nine-year gap
(35:00):
between kid two and kid three,and that gave me a lot of time
to think right, like, oh, if Iever got to go through these
ages again, what would I dodifferently?
And so then when I had my boys,I knew that the time went very
quickly, and so I developed thislittle outline like preschool
and you know, charlotte Mason,people that are hardcore would
(35:20):
be like don't do anything beforeage six, no matter what, you
know.
And I was like, well, I am, Iam going to do stuff before age
six because they want to and Iwant to, but it wasn't that.
I wanted them to sit down andknow their ABCs and write their
names and their letters.
I wanted to go ahead and startwriting scripture on their heart
as early as I could.
(35:40):
I wanted them to have littlecatechisms.
We're not Catholic, but that'sa beautiful tradition, that's
known in the Catholic tradition,and so little you know who is
God and who made everything andall those things.
And I wanted to focus oncharacter development and so,
(36:00):
and sure, like, yes, you know,letter of the week or whatever,
like that was fine.
But that was never my intentionand I couldn't find anything,
even though the books I wasreading about classical
education, like norms andnobility and the liberal arts
tradition and everything theytalked about the core purpose of
classical education being aboutthe development of virtue, like
to love what is lovely and todwell on what is good, and and
(36:21):
that your mind be set uponvirtuous things to propel you
toward right action.
And so I was like, where's?
Where's the virtue training,where's the scripture, where's
the catechism, where's thesethings that we want our kids to
kind of like, have on theirhearts from an early age?
And I just, I just couldn'tfind it, especially in a
preschool program.
And so I just pulled togetherwhat I wanted them to do.
(36:44):
And the reason I felt like itneeded to be a program was
because I was very busy and Ihad not slept in years and I've
been pregnant for two yearsstraight and I knew that if I
wasn't being intentional aboutit then those years were just
going to fly by Like I had theperspective of how fast it all
went and I didn't want to losethose opportunities of sowing
(37:05):
those seeds and spending thosetimes together.
And so I made a little likelittle memory statement cards
that were all cute andeverything and it had their
little Bible verses and theircatechisms and stuff and I
shared the kind of the outlineof it on my blog for free,
because at that point sevenpeople a month came to my blog
(37:26):
and those were all familymembers and bots.
So my friend was like, hey, whydon't you make this like one of
those lead magnets on your blog?
And this is like seven yearsago and maybe people will sign
up for your email list orwhatever.
And I had 10,000 peopledownload it in the first two
months and I was like, well,apparently I've like kind of hit
on something here thegentleness of the Charlotte
(37:48):
Mason with the longstandingtradition and the virtue focus
of classical education togetherand they want it in a you know,
not to make Charlotte Mason rollover in her grave but they want
it in a way that is a system.
She, you know, was like don'tmake education a system, it's
philosophy.
And I very much agree with that.
Like you got to have a setphilosophy of education, because
(38:10):
when you do it makes educationnot overwhelming anymore because
you have confidence.
No-transcript, and so that'swhere our preschool came from
(38:35):
was just the idea of mama'stired, but she knows these days
are precious and she wants to beintentional about her time.
And so, you know, we've had asecond edition since then.
That's like way much improved,based on lots of feedback from
customers and our own experiencewith using it.
And so once we got done withpreschool, we were like, hey, we
want the next thing and hey, wewant the next thing.
(38:57):
And so just kind of likedeveloping our own brand of
things that you know.
Take even unit studies we have,like these on mission, cultural
unit studies where you, you know, do a country at a time.
You're learning their historyand you're reading their
literature and you're learningabout their music and all of
those things all together, butyou're immersing yourself in the
people, which is how you learngeography.
(39:19):
Because, like, learning aboutpeople without learning about
their geography means you don'tunderstand them, because you
can't understand their history.
And learning about geographywithout learning about the
people like doesn't even matterbecause God made the world, put
people on it, like, so mountaindoesn't matter if we don't know
about people that live on themountain and so anyway.
So that's kind of like our likewhere we came from and how
(39:43):
things kind of developed overtime.
And I continue to be a geek andread everything that I can.
I am prayerfully and hopefullygoing to start working on my
master's degree in classicaleducation, hopefully next fall,
and in the meantime I'm takingcourses through the Charlotte
Mason Institute.
(40:04):
Have you heard of them?
Before CMI?
They have the Albury curriculum.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
No, I didn't know.
They had an institute.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yeah.
So they have these greatcourses for moms that are super
affordable to learn about theCharlotte Mason philosophy of
education, and you know they dothem during the summer and all
year long.
But they have like certificatesthat you can kind of earn,
because sometimes you feel likeyou need a little something
right.
You know you want to sit atsomeone else's feet and help
them or have them help youbetter understand what you're
(40:31):
doing, and I have a certificate,so it's not a teaching
certificate but I kind of knowwhat I'm doing.
I feel like that helps whenyou're struggling with
confidence about getting outsidethe school system and
everything.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
You guys know I am a big fan of the Tuttle Twins.
I had Connor Boyack, the writerof these books, on episode 24.
I reached out to his companyasking to let me be an affiliate
because I strongly believe intheir books and their message.
In the H5-11 book series, whichI read to my son all the time I
mean, he actually asks us toread these books with him.
Book five, road to Serfdom,talks about what happens to a
(41:06):
local town with local businesseswhen corporations start moving
in.
Book six, the Golden Rule,talks all about Ethan and
Emily's experience at summercamp through a series of
cheating and manipulation oncertain races that they're
required to complete.
It talks about how the goldenrule of treating others how we
want to be treated ourselves ishow we all should be conducting
(41:28):
our lives.
Education Vacation talks aboutJohn Taylor Gatto and the
creation of the school systemand what it was actually
intended to do, which you get tolearn about by following Ethan
and Emily on a trip to Europe.
And book 11, the Messed UpMarket, takes you through the
journey of kids trying to createsmall businesses as they learn
all the laws and rules thatgovernment has put in place to
(41:52):
actually make it very difficultfor them.
You learn all about interestsavings versus borrowing, low
interest rates versus highinterest rates and supply and
demand, and these are just someof the books in that series.
Use the link in my show'sdescription or at the
homeschoolhowtocom under thelistener discounts page.
I also want to let you knowabout some other books that the
Tuttle Twins have out America'sHistory, volume 1 and 2, which
(42:15):
teaches all about the inspiringideas of America's founding
without the bias and hiddenagendas that's found in other
history books for kids and mostlikely in the schools.
There's also books on how toidentify fallacies, modern day
villains all stuff that we wantto be talking to our kids about.
Whether you homeschool or not,these books bring up important
(42:36):
discussions that we should behaving with our children.
Use the link in my show'sdescription or like, like I said
, at the homeschoolhowtocomunder listener discounts.
I hear more about the CharlotteMason.
I think she's definitely likethe staple of the homeschool and
my understanding is you knowthe living books, which is, you
(42:57):
know books that have that leaveyou feeling something you know
not, not just okay, here's somewords on a page, but that really
had a message.
You know whether the kid pickedit up or not, but it had
something there.
Um, and also people who were,for instance, we were reading
like the Rachel Rachel Carsonone.
I think that would be like agood example of showing who she
(43:18):
was.
But in a children's book, um,you know her impact on on
education and nature, um,putting nature in education.
Actually I get her confusedwith Anna Comstock, but I think
we have both library books rightnow and they're both good and
they're both Charlotte Mason.
They are both worth reading,especially in springtime.
But, um, yeah, and then the Iand then I've interviewed a few
(43:41):
people that do the classical andI've listened to the song, like
the 12 minute song about thetimeline of history, and is that
kind of throughout, like themusic throughout.
I know, like you mentioned theLatin, but it seems overwhelming
, so I haven't actually dived into classical myself with my son
.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
I'm pretty passionate about the subject.
I actually just sent an emailout and posted a very most
recent blog post.
It's discerning the differencebetween classical conversations,
the curriculum, and classicaleducation.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Yeah, I didn't know there was a difference.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Yeah, see, there are so many people that didn't know
there was a difference.
Yeah, see, there are so manypeople that don't know there's a
difference.
And so I actually realized thiswas a problem, because I had a
sweet friend.
We were at a birthday party acouple of weeks ago and we were
talking about educationalphilosophies and she goes well,
classical education andCharlotte Mason are the complete
opposites of each other and youcan't like both of them.
(44:40):
And she's like a new friend, soshe really doesn't even know
what I do or what kind of likegeek I am about these things.
And but a good friend of minewas standing beside me and she
looked at me and then she lookedat her.
It's like, how are you going toanswer that?
And I was like, why do youthink that?
You know?
I wanted to get like behind herlogic there.
And she was like startedtalking about classical
conversations, and so the blogpost that I just wrote really
(45:04):
just talked about, okay, soclassical conversations is a
brand of homeschool curriculumlike Memoria Press or Classical
Academic Press or even theGentle and Classical Press that
has like classical underpinnings.
They are seeking to implement aclassical education as they
have interpreted it, okay, andso classical education has been
(45:26):
around for hundreds and hundredsand hundreds and hundreds of
years, since antiquity, and itis a philosophy of education
that is wholly different thanclassical conversations.
Now, is classical conversationsa path toward a type of
classical education?
Yes, it is, but it is notclassical education.
(45:48):
So there was a, there was a, anessay written by the author
Dorothy Sayers.
She wrote this in like 1947.
And if anybody knows anythingabout Dorothy Sayers, she's an
incredibly talented writer.
She was not an educator, it wasreally just a thought
experiment.
It was like she was justsharing some ideas.
She'd been thinking aboutclassical education and she'd
(46:09):
read some this thing and thisthing, and she just wrote this
essay because it was just on hermind.
And she compared the threedisciplines of the trivium.
So you know, we've got sevenliberal arts.
I'm not going to get too deepin this.
I promise you got your sevenliberal arts, so you got your
trivium and your quadrivium.
So you've heard grammar, logicand rhetoric, right?
Okay, those are the threedisciplines of the trivium and
(46:33):
they are not developmentalstages.
So what Dorothy Sayers did inher thing was kind of like lay
those ideas upon developmentalstages Like, oh well, little
kids are like sponges, theyremember all the little pieces
of things.
So that's like the grammarstage.
And then your middle schoolersare argumentative and they're
really thinking and workingthings out.
So that's your logic stage.
(46:54):
But then your high schoolersthey're getting to where they
can articulate a little bitbetter, they can argue their,
their points and things.
They could follow through withthose thoughts.
So that's the rhetoric stageand she just it's a beautiful
essay and it was brilliant andit had a lot of really cool
ideas.
But it was written in 1947 whenclassical education and the
trivium itself has been existedfor like I don't know since
(47:17):
before Christ really.
And so since, like Aristotleand Socrates and all those guys
and really kind of what that didwas, there were, you know, a
couple of different companiesthat took that kind of platform
and they created a curriculumout of it.
And so in classicalconversations in the early years
you do a lot of memorization ofthese statements that have
(47:38):
their pegs is how they use theterm.
So you have like dates andnames and all those types of
things and things they wrotetheir program like from the top
down.
So what they have youmemorizing in the grammar years
is designed to help you handlethe rigor of the middle school,
their challenge programs, theirupper level programs, the logic
(47:59):
and the rhetoric stages, whichis also very smart.
But there are different things,like traditionally there would
be a lot of books in classicaleducation, there would be the
great conversation, and whilethey may like encourage people
to read books all the time, it'snot a part of their curriculum.
Their curriculum for elementaryis memorization of stuff and so
(48:23):
when people have exposure toclassical conversation and they
see that there's memorizationwithout maybe a prepared book
list or like a context for that,right, Like you know, this is
not one of their statements.
Columbus sailed the ocean bluein 1492, right, like that's, you
know, a handy thing for ourkids to remember.
But in classical education andin a Charlotte Mason education,
(48:44):
we are learning thatcontextually.
So we are learning aboutColumbus and when he sailed and
on the ships, because we'regoing to read some amazing
stories about that and it'sgoing to tell us all about
Columbus's trip and why he wentand his experiences there, and
maybe we take it from hisworldview, some of his diaries,
and then maybe from the nativesworldview, and that's a
(49:07):
classical education.
And so not to say, you know,people will listen to this, I'll
get hated on for saying likebut CC is classical, but it's a.
So classical education is agarden is how I put it in the
thing, and classicalconversations is a path in that
garden.
But there are a lot of paths inthe garden and Charlotte Mason
was a classical educator.
(49:29):
She read and quoted broadlyfrom people like Aristotle and
Milton and people like that whohad, like you know, that they
were the fathers of classicaleducation and she even, you know
, later on, does Latin andthings like that.
So just I can talk about thatfor like a whole podcast by
(49:50):
itself.
But I just want to clarify toanybody that's listening that if
you have experiences withclassical conversations and for
any reason whatsoever, you'relike that's not for me, that
does not mean that classicaleducation is not for you or that
it's the opposite of CharlotteMason is not for you or that
it's the opposite of CharlotteMason.
Just throwing that out there.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
That's so interesting .
No, I love that because thatdoes make a lot of sense.
And I always saw.
I mean, I've talked to over ahundred homeschooling families
and that distinction was never,you know, made to me.
So that is.
I think most people don'trealize that.
So, whoever the marketingstrategist is for classical
(50:31):
conversations, you're doing goodat your job because you've got
the monopoly on it.
No, but that's so cool.
Yeah, all right.
So so if people want to diveinto your curriculum, you
actually mix the Charlotte Masonwith a classical education, the
authentic being of it, and itreally I love that.
(50:55):
When you were saying aboutColumbus and reading books about
him and then reading theperspective of the natives, I
mean that is just like whatevery conspiracy theorist is
like.
Yes, can we just see one moreperspective?
Because school only gives you,you know, this is.
And then Columbus, you know,landed in Boston, it's like, or
(51:15):
wherever they say.
But it's like, oh well, no, ifyou, if you actually look a
little further, he didn't reallyland, right, right, he didn't
land in the United States.
Part Um wasn't like Bermuda orsomething, or yeah.
So um, it's where the Dominican.
Republic is Okay.
So you know that's what we'reall thinking like.
Well, if we had anotherperspective, we might be able to
(51:38):
see a couple of different sides, and I mean that's that's like
what we want to teach you.
And I know that's like with theTuttle twins books too.
It's like trying to showdifferent perspectives of it,
and I think that's a huge reasonwhy people want to get their
kids out of the school systemtoo.
I mean, I know it's the thesocial aspect because of what's
going on in the schools and whatthey're teaching, but it's like
only having that one, the oneway it's got to be, and you
(52:00):
can't question it.
Like, oh, whoever wrote thistextbook was the genius.
They know everything.
We have to follow it.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
They know everything we have to follow it.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
They know everything.
Yes, yeah, that's huge.
I love that.
So I'm going to put links toyour curriculum in the show's
description so people want tocheck it out.
They can do that.
And then do you want to tellpeople right now, even just as
they're listening, where theycould follow you or find your
curriculum?
Speaker 2 (52:22):
Sure.
So if you just Google theGentle Classical Press or shop
Gentle Classical Press, ourteacher's guides are completely
free, even still.
You know I talked about givingthat preschool away back in the
day.
But our preschool, our primer,which is our kindergarten
sequence, one which we get intoColumbus and we have, we have
memorization for families thatwant memorization.
(52:43):
We like memorization.
It helps with kids that havelike any kind of memory issues
or stuff, so we use it almosttherapeutically in our home.
But then books, lots of books,amazing books, copy work and
narration, and we have natureprograms as well, agricultural
science.
We have a lot of stuff outthere and you can download the
(53:04):
complete teacher's guide forfree.
So you know whether ourphilosophy of education and what
we're going to be covering thatyear is a good fit for your
family, because nothing stinksbetter more than getting
curriculum and being like thiswas not what I thought it was
going to be like.
We want you to know before youorder it and get it.
So, yeah, shop gentleclassicalcom and you'll see like
(53:28):
free teacher's guides rightthere at the top.
You just put your email in andthere's a whole page.
Just download all of them andhappy reading.
Speaker 1 (53:36):
Oh, that's so awesome .
Thank you for that.
So I'll put links to everythingin the show's description.
And then what would you justkind of like to round out the
hour on, Like tell that mom ordad that has a kid in school, or
about to enroll them, but mightwant to homeschool?
But it's also a littleterrifying and you know, some
(53:58):
people might be walking awayfrom the, the, the degree kind
of that they are still going tobe paying for for a few more
years, Um, and maybe that jobisn't exactly what they're going
to be doing If they decide tohomeschool.
What would you kind of say tothat?
Speaker 2 (54:12):
I usually tell people that everything that their
child has learned so far, thatthey've taught them they just
didn't realize it.
They had this classificationsystem in their mind of this is
parent teaching and theneverything past this is teacher
teaching.
And it's just not true.
You know your child better thananyone else.
You can teach them well.
(54:33):
And look, even if you can'tteach them well, because maybe
at some point there's apersonality conflict or
something and you're kind ofworried about that type of stuff
, there are so many communitiesavailable, there are online
classes, there are tutors, thereare amazing resources, no
matter what the path is.
So really do not try to figureeverything out in advance, like,
(54:54):
especially if your child's inelementary school.
It's a long road, like it doesgo by fast, but I mean you have
a lot of days between now andwhen they graduate and you'll
have more good days than badwhen they're at home.
I just almost guarantee it andyou just need to do like the
next right thing.
So just kind of obey, like whatyou believe the next right
(55:15):
thing is.
And as a Christian, I believelike God has a calling on our
lives to like for us to homeeducate our children, and so I
always tell people, like hedoesn't call you into it and
then abandon you right.
Like you have this Holy Spiritin your life and so obey that
first step and he's going to bethere.
He's going to help you find thegroup, the community, the
curriculum, the class.
Like he's going to help youwith all of that stuff.
(55:37):
You just have to trust and obey.
I think there's a hymn that'snamed that trust and obey and
then he'll work out everythingelse.
And it's really.
It's messy at times and thebeautiful moments that you see
on Instagram that's just some ofthe moments that happen, and
there are other moments that arenot pretty like that.
That's, most of the momentsaren't beautiful and worthy of a
(55:57):
photo, but they're all stillgood and it's really holy,
sanctifying work that will makeyou and your child better for it
.
You just have to like trust andobey at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (56:09):
Oh, thank you so much .
I and I agree too, I'm we'vebeen going over like trying to
learn how to read for mysix-year-old and it was try this
curriculum, try that curriculum.
And we actually landed on.
What we're doing now is readinghorizons, and it's online, but
it's that.
I'm like you know, it's okay, Iwe're.
It's something that he does notfight me on.
(56:31):
And when you were talking beforeabout quitting before it gets
to that rough hour, and he saidto me today well, mom, it's been
20 minutes, so I'm moving on tosomething else and I thought,
well, you're not frustrated yet.
You should maybe sit back downand keep going, get more of that
until you're frustrated.
And it's like what you saidclicked so much.
(56:52):
Oh, and you said one more thingtoo that I loved.
I just wanted to bring upbefore we close.
You said something about whenyour kid was in school, or if
your daughter was in school, youwould be waiting for the school
to tell you that something waswrong or that something needed
to happen or that you needed togo forward.
And I've been thinking aboutthat for the last hour, like
(57:15):
isn't that so funny that youknow, we just we send them into
this system and we wait forsomeone to tell us, like, what's
next for our kid, like we can'tmanage to do that on our own
but we absolutely can.
Speaker 2 (57:24):
Yeah, we're handing over ownership of their
academics and a lot of times,their character development and
we're handing over ownership oftheir academics and a lot of
times, their characterdevelopment and we're handing
over ownership.
And it may be for eight hours aday and obviously they don't
have ownership for real of yourchildren.
But like when you, when you areputting them in school, you're
like, ok, that's, that's theirthing, like I'm going to do the
(57:46):
rest of the stuff, but that'stheir thing.
And a lot of times you just youstuff, but that's their thing.
And a lot of times you just youwouldn't because that's their
job, you just wouldn't take iton unless they told you to right
, like you're not going to diguntil you recognize there's a
problem for real.
And then mama instincts kick inlike okay, I've got to fix this
.
But it would have gone on, likeI recognize there was a problem
(58:07):
in kindergarten and I guaranteeshe would have been first or
second grade before it reallywould have come up at in a
school setting if she was therethe whole time.
So, um, anyway, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (58:18):
Yeah, I think that's important, that's exactly why I
wrote, I wrote the children'sbook that I did the let's talk
emergencies Cause I was like, ohgee, what am I supposed to be
teaching you about this stuff?
At you know, four or five yearsold, six, seven, eight, nine
years old?
Like we're supposed to be goingover what now?
And you know, talking to policeofficers and teachers and what
(58:39):
are you guys going over and whatdo they need to know?
And it was like there's thishuge gap.
Parents think that, yes, I handyou over and everything's
covered other than dinner andhanging out on the weekends and
making sure your homework's done.
But it's like and then teachersare like we're not going to
teach your kid your phone number, that's your job, you're the
adult.
But there's no meeting of theteacher and the parent at the
(59:01):
beginning of the year sayingthis is what I'm going to do and
this is what you're expected todo.
You know, we all kind of likethrow the hands up.
So yeah, that's why I and Ilove that you kind of took it
upon yourself to like, oh,there's not a curriculum, I'm
going to create one andobviously there is a need for it
.
So that is awesome.
Kudos to you.
You had the banking and financedegree.
(59:21):
You didn't use that, but itdefinitely went towards
something wonderful, so that'sawesome.
Thank you so much for joining metoday.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for tuning into thisweek's episode of the homeschool
how to.
If you've enjoyed what youheard and you'd like to
contribute to the show, pleaseconsider leaving a small tip
(59:42):
using the link in my show'sdescription.
Or, if you'd rather, please usethe link in the description to
share this podcast with a friendor on your favorite homeschool
group Facebook page.
Any effort to help us keep thepodcast going is greatly
appreciated.
Thank you for tuning in and foryour love of the next
generation.
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