September 16, 2025 • 33 mins
Wondering how to successfully homeschool kids of different ages without losing your sanity?
This episode of the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast is for you! Host Cindy West sits down with former schoolteacher and homeschool expert Pam Barnhill to explore the ins and outs of multi-age homeschooling.
Learn:
• How to plan family learning with both content and skill-based subjects
• Ways to foster sibling relationships and resolve conflicts during group learning
• Real-life tips for organizing your homeschool schedule, managing toddlers, and encouraging independent learning
• Why multi-age homeschooling can be both efficient and deeply rewarding for your family
Whether you're a new homeschooler or a seasoned pro, Pam’s wisdom and experience will give you the confidence to try whole family learning.
👉 Subscribe for more encouragement for Christian homeschoolers.
Recommended Resources:
- PamBarnhill.com
- Better Together: Strengthen Your Family, Simplify Your Homeschool, and Savor the Subjects that Matter Most, by Pam Barnhill
- Gather: Exploring the Wonder, Wisdom, and Worship of Learning at Home, by Pam Barnhill
- Plan Your Year: Homeschool Planning for Purpose and Peace, by Pam Barnhill
- Navigating High School Course from Pam Barnhill
- Cindy West’s Homeschool Masterclass on Project-Based Learning
- No Sweat Nature Study Podcast
Sponsors:
Apologia is a Christ-centered, award-winning homeschool curriculum provider. Our mission is to help homeschooling students and families learn, live, and defend the Christian faith through our print and digital curriculum and online classes.
BJU Press Homeschool is dedicated to providing homeschool families with academically strong curriculum rooted in a biblical worldview. They offer a complete curriculum from preschool through 12th grade, available in both traditional textbooks and video courses. By teaching through the lens of Christ’s power, they help students view the world through the transformative story of God’s creation
CTCMath specializes in providing online video tutorials that take a multi-sensory approach to learning. Creative graphics and animation, synchronized with the friendly voice of internationally acclaimed teacher, Pat Murray, make learning math easy and effective. Start your free trial today.
The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast is a member of the Biblical Family Network. Our mission is to support and encourage the family by providing the very best podcasts on family, discipleship, marriage, parenting, worldview, culture, and education, all from a Biblical perspective. Visit the website for more great shows, like the Thinking Dad, Culture Proof, Homeschool Insights, and Made2Homeschool.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
One of the reasons that I homeschooled was because I
wanted to be around my kids. And if somebody was taking a
book and going to their room or taking a book and going to a
different room and sitting thereand studying all by themselves,
I mean, I was kind of missing out on some of that, some of
that opportunity to be together.Hey everyone and welcome back to
the Schoolhouse Rock podcast. I am Cindy W your host this week
(00:23):
and I am so excited to be here with my very good friend and
guest, Pam Barnhill. But before we get to chat with
her about multi age home schooling, I would like to thank
our sponsor, CTC Math. If you're looking for a math
program that truly works, CTC Math has you covered.
They offer easy to follow video lessons, step by step solutions,
(00:45):
and interactive practice with courses from kindergarten to
calculus. It's the all in
She said since using CTC Math, my daughter has stopped
stressing over math and I find her actually enjoying it.
(01:09):
Thank you so much for all you'vedone to help her find success in
a subject she hated but now enjoys.
Sign up today at ctcmath.com andstart your free trial CTC Math
Math Made Easy. Hey there Pam.
Thank you so much for having me on.
It's great to be back. When I knew I needed to
(01:29):
interview someone, you, of course, were at the top of the
list. You're always at the top of the
list because I count you as one of the experts in the
homeschooling field. And what I think folks are
probably recognizing about me inthis space on the Schoolhouse
Rock podcast is I come with a very practical view of home
(01:52):
schooling. And I know that you also do
that. So I think we're going to have a
great conversation today. Can you give us a sneak peek
into your homeschool journey, particularly on this topic of
multi age homeschooling that we're going to talk about?
How did you get started with that?
So I ended up having three kids fairly close together in age.
(02:13):
So when I had my youngest, my oldest was like 3 1/2, four
years old. So like, you know, I have 3 kids
and they're all within this fouryear age range.
And already by the time the youngest came along, I was doing
preschool at home with the four year old and then her younger
brother was like 3 at the time, so like really close together.
(02:38):
And so we started doing preschool together at home with
just the two of them. And as the little guy got older,
we simply rolled him in to everything that we were doing.
And so my entire home school journey has not been, well, how
do I figure out how to juggle his history with a third grader
and a different history with a first grader and a preschool
(03:00):
with a preschooler? We just all did the same thing
together. And it was just a natural, a
natural thing for us to all learn together all the time.
And we just took it all the way up till my oldest graduated.
And now my first year, this coming year will be my first
year where I only have one student.
And yeah, I'm not sure how you feel about that.
(03:22):
Well, that is exactly where I was a few years back and I just
graduated that last only child. And I tell you, when you're used
to doing multi age home schooling, at least for some
subjects if not all, it becomes a new thing that you and that
last only child have to figure out.
So I'll pray for you. It's great.
(03:44):
I felt like seriously though, I felt like it was an awesome
experience, but it was somethingto learn differently.
So let me ask you this. I found kind of a natural
progression in that. Do you feel like you have sent
some of the graduates as they got into their high school years
(04:07):
off on some of their own things so that you you're not just
abruptly hit with hey I'm not multi age home schooling
anymore? Yeah.
So when they were little, we didlike like all of our content
area subjects together. And we can talk about the
difference between content subjects and skill subjects as
we go on, because that's such animportant distinction that a lot
(04:28):
of people don't make when they're setting up and planning
their home school. But as my kids got older, they
knew what they wanted to study. And not everybody wanted to
study the same thing. So when they were younger, I was
like, OK, next year we're doing mythology, or next year we're
doing ancient history, or next year we're doing the American
Revolution or whatever it was. And I would kind of plan things
(04:50):
out. But as they got older, you know,
I would have like 2 who were like, oh, we really want to do
botany, mom. And then this other one was
like, no, I don't want to do that.
And so they naturally became more and more independent and
that was fine because they were able to be more independent as
they got older. And it wasn't as important for
me to keep them all together now.
(05:11):
We always did some subjects together.
But as they got older it it kindof happened naturally that they
broke out and started doing their own thing more.
Yeah, well, I definitely want totalk about that progression.
I also want to get back to what you had said.
We really need to make a distinction between the core
subjects and what did you call the other part?
(05:33):
So they're skill subjects and they're content area subjects.
And this is just like whether ornot you're going to do whole
family learning with your family.
This is such an important distinction to make.
And skill subjects are those subjects where students need to
enter into the subject at a certain point.
You never jump into math starting with multiplication or
(05:57):
long division, right? You always jump into math with a
preschooler starting with like, you know, 1 to 1 correspondence
and counting. And you know, these three things
are three things, whether they're far apart or close
together. I forget that what that's
called. But they're like these preschool
skills and kids jump in the baththere and they move through math
in a logical progression where they learn one thing and then
(06:20):
the next and then the next. And every child needs to start
math at the beginning and work through that logical progression
with few, you know, very few twodeviations.
I mean, you might take a break to learn about telling time or
something, but you know, you're pretty much walking through this
progression content area, subjects are different.
(06:41):
And this is something like a history where sometimes we get
it in our brain. Oh, you know what?
Like we got to start with ancient history.
But I'm telling you, when you have a first grader, ancient
history means nothing more to them than like modern history
does or the American Revolution does.
Like it's all old stuff and theyreally conceptually can't fathom
(07:03):
like the whole thing anyway, so you might as well just start
with stories and people. And it doesn't matter what time
frame, there's no beginning where you move through.
You can start anywhere and go back and pick up older things or
come and pick up newer things. Same with science, right?
You don't have to start science with an elementary school
(07:25):
student at any certain subject or any certain point.
You can jump in anywhere with them and then learn about all
the different things. So that's a content subject to
the reason why this distinction is really important is when you
are combining kids and doing whole family learning, there is
really no first grade history orfirst grade science or second
(07:49):
grade history or second grade science.
If you have a third grader and afirst grader, they can all be
learning the same thing. And you know, there's no
distinction. And so one of the things that we
tell people to do is to sit downwhen you start planning out your
home school and think about which subjects are skill
subjects. Learning to read, learning to
(08:11):
spell, some areas of compositionwhen you're first getting
started, mathematics for sure, aforeign language, those kinds of
things. Those are your skill based
subjects. They need to be entered into at
a single point. You need to progress through
them in a logical order and everybody typically works on
their own for the most part. Content subjects on the other
(08:35):
hand, history, social study, anykind of social studies,
geography, science, so literature, you know that one is
totally a content area subject. Everybody can be learning all
the things together all at the same.
Time, I would say Fine Arts too.So.
(08:59):
I did school for the most part this way too.
I had a 6 1/2 year gap between the older two who did a lot
together and then that last one.He still joined us when they
were younger. As my older 2 got older.
You know, I, I did have that only child, but I'm just going
to tell you briefly what a home school day for us would have
(09:22):
looked like. Speaking of the content and the
skills areas that you just did. And then I want you to tell me
how yours was different. So when I was kind of
homeschooling everyone together,remembering I had a 6 1/2 year
gap, OK, it looked like morning time where we were all together
(09:43):
generally doing Bible study, poetry, geography.
That's another one that can be done fairly altogether with no
real starting or end point. We did brain training games and
then after we had our morning time together, which wasn't an
incredibly long amount of time, we would break off and everybody
(10:05):
would be in those skill areas. They would be doing their own
leveled math. When I had kids in phonics or
spelling, they would be doing their own levels on those.
So the language arts, they don'tall have to be a part, but you
can kind of think of language arts as something that I did
skilled where everybody had their own thing going on.
(10:25):
And then we would pretty much come back together for our
science, history, Fine Arts, nature study, field trips,
cooking. And oftentimes I think there's a
word usage that people they kindof get hung up on.
Well, am I multi age homeschooling?
Am I doing unit studies? What am I doing here?
(10:47):
I would call ours unit studies because if we were working on
something, I would just say, OK,well we're studying ancient
history right now or we're studying the human body right
now. I don't think you have to call
them unit studies. I think you can just say we do
these content based things together.
So I want to know how does or did yours look different than
(11:09):
mine? And what did you call that
together? Time learning, Yeah.
So how mine looked different than yours was, We did all the
together stuff first, OK? Because once they did their
independent stuff, I had kind ofa system that I used for that
independent work. And I always started with the
(11:29):
youngest one first and I would get him done and then he was
free to go. And once everybody was gone,
there was no getting them back to do other things.
And so we front loaded our day with all of that together stuff
and we called all of it morning time.
So our morning time was not justa few little things.
(11:51):
It was not, you know, just prayer and brain training and
stuff like that. It included some of that stuff,
but it also included the history, the science, the
literature, the read aloud, all of that stuff.
Yeah. Yeah.
Couple things about that. First of all, we didn't do
everything every day. So that was the first thing.
(12:12):
We didn't do history and scienceand literature every single day.
So we did different things on different days, typically
following like a loop schedule. And then the second thing was my
kids did things while I read to them and while they responded to
me. And so they were, you know, oh,
gosh. Rainbow Loom, Perler beads,
(12:34):
Watercolors, drawing. Like all of those things,
puzzle. Blocks.
Magnets, yes. Oh, magnetiles were huge for a
while. So they were, we were all at the
table. I found that the best place for
us to do it was at the table because they would focus more,
but they, they were constantly doing little things with their
hands and stuff like that. And while they were doing that,
(12:56):
we, I was reading aloud to them and we were having conversations
back and forth about the the content subjects that we were
studying. And so, yeah, there were times
where our morning time was 1 1/2or two hours long, but it didn't
feel that way. And it was still their favorite
part because they were able to do things with their hands while
(13:17):
we were learning. Absolutely, absolutely.
That is such a good point. I wouldn't have even thought to
bring that up. So I see a huge benefit to doing
all of the together, learning early and then sending people
off. I will tell you that I kind of
flip-flopped that we started together, we took a break and we
(13:38):
and we ended together because one of my kiddos struggled with
some attention issues and it wasa really good thing for me to
kind of touch in and out of basewith everyone.
He would have been someone who he finished his work quickly,
(13:58):
rightly so it wasn't that he wasn't doing it and then a lot
of time would have been wasted throughout the afternoon.
So we sort of flip-flopped so that I had another touch point
with with him. Anyway, I I think it's so
interesting that everybody gets to design their homeschool.
We can still be talking about the same thing, which is the
benefit of multi age homeschooling, which we will
(14:20):
come to in just a minute, but wecan do it differently for
whatever family rhythms we have and it still works.
That's so awesome. Yeah, sometimes people say,
well, like not all of my kids are awake at the same time in
the morning or I have these kidswho want to, you know, they want
to get stuff done. It was totally OK for any of my
children to, if they were an early riser or whatever, because
(14:43):
I had planned ahead and I had made their list for them ahead
of time. They knew what that independent
work was going to be and there were a few things.
So if they wanted to start before morning time officially
started, there was nothing stopping them from getting
started with their school day. The only place we would
sometimes run into issues was when, like, they wanted me to
(15:05):
sit down and do something with them and I was still, you know,
yeah, kind of having my first part of the day.
Well, hold on to that thought, because I think that's really
important. But for the moment, we're going
to stop and hear from one of ourawesome sponsors of the
Schoolhouse Rock podcast. Join Apologia for the Homeschool
Boot Camp, a free video series that provides practical guidance
(15:28):
and wisdom from experienced homeschool parents.
You'll discover how to equip your family for academic,
social, and spiritual success. Plus, you'll discover how to
build deeper and stronger familyrelationships.
Homeschool Boot Camp covers how to break free from the public
school mindset, daily planning, supporting students with
learning challenges, homeschooling as a working
parent, navigating the high school years, and much more.
(15:51):
Find this incredible free behomeschoolresource@apologia.com/bootcamp.
Homeschooling is a big responsibility.
With BJU Press, you can feel equipped to give your children
not just an education, but a foundation for life.
Children learn in different ways, and BJU Press lets you
adapt to their unique learning styles.
(16:13):
And you'll love the community ofother homeschool moms who use
BJU Press. They've been where you are, and
they're full of advice, encouragement, and practical
tips. And when you need even more
help, there's the Homeschool Hub, which keeps families
organized with easy lesson planning, calendars and even
grading tools. To learn more, visit
(16:34):
bjupresshomeschool.com. What makes you an expert at
this? I've been doing it for a really
long time. And I know that you have written
not only some things for homeschooling parents but for
kids along this line. So take just a quick minute to
tell us about both ends of that spectrum and then we will jump
(16:56):
back into a couple other questions.
Yeah. So I mean, I've been speaking
about and writing about Morning Time for over 10 years now.
For the longest time we had the Your Morning Basket podcast and
you can still find the old episodes of that where we talk
about this kind of family learning where you're bringing
everyone together. And I've got a couple of books,
(17:17):
1 is called Better Together, which is all about bringing your
family together to do Morning time, whether that be you're
focusing on truth, goodness, andbeauty, or you're focusing on
the more practical aspects. I mean, bringing your kids
together for everyone to learn together is you're saving time.
I mean, you think about being a homeschooling mom, having four
or five kids and you know, four people have to learn history and
(17:40):
four people have to learn science and math.
And you've got to combine some of those kids to do some of
those things to save a little bit of sanity.
Also, we have a book called Gather, which is a kind of a
coffee table picture book which shows a lot of families in
action doing this while it also gives you some practical
information. I Co wrote that with a lady
(18:00):
named Heather Tully, who is a mom of 10 who taught her kids
and she's still homeschooling her kids.
She's got like 4 who've graduated now and she's got 6
left at home and they still havea long morning time every single
day, 10 kids or she's teaching them all together.
And then for kids, we do have curriculum available as well.
(18:23):
So, you know, mom can get the curriculum and, you know, spread
this feast before all the kids and it kind of holds her hand
and shows her how to do that. Yeah, yeah.
OK. And we will talk at the end of
the podcast where everyone can find all of this.
So everybody hang on, we'll get to that.
But you started talking, Pam, about the benefits of homes of
(18:49):
Better Together. You said something about, you
know, it's going to save us time, so there have to be other
benefits. I know some of them.
But I'd love to hear your list of why this is such an important
idea. Not that everyone has to do it,
but at least to consider what? What would be some benefits that
would have them consider this idea?
Yeah, well, it's definitely the efficiency of everyone together.
(19:13):
So you're planning fewer lessons, you're spinning fewer
plates, right. And and you have everybody
together learning the same thing.
And so it's just going to, firstof all, eliminate the number of
decisions that mom has to make. Everybody's learning the same
thing. And it's also going to eliminate
the number of hours that you need in a day to teach all of
(19:33):
this. But the second, what I think is
maybe even the bigger benefit isthe community and the
relationships that it builds between your kids and your
family. So you have this whole shared
language, you have this shared learning experience, and you
have an opportunity every singleday for conversations together,
(19:57):
enjoying each other's company, also teaching opportunities.
How do we? Love each other and still
disagree. Because believe me, when you
bring kids together to the morning timetable to teach them
all the same subject, there are going to be disagreements.
And you have the perfect opportunity to teach your kids
(20:18):
that even after these disagreements, we can still love
each other. And I think that is one of the
major things that is missing in our world today.
We don't understand how we can disagree with somebody and still
love them. You know, as a as a fellow
human, as another person, right?And I would add to that, each
(20:39):
person gets the the gentle responsibility of helping others
through their problems. So if someone is frustrated,
everybody's kind of on board with what the frustration is and
everybody gets the opportunity to either help resolve the
frustration or to be an encouragement.
So it's kind of like you're, you're able to, you're able to
(21:02):
do some character training and some really unique relationship
building ways where everybody's on the same team, even though
they do disagree sometime. But it's all for the good of the
whole family, you know? And those are some of the
biggest benefits right there. Just the the opportunity to
teach and just it's fun. It is so much more fun to sit
(21:25):
with everyone together, everybody learning the same
thing, having these fabulous conversations, than it is for,
you know, people to go off into all of these different
directions and be isolated from each other.
I mean, one of the reasons that I homeschooled was because I
wanted to be around my kids. And if somebody was taking a
(21:46):
book and going to their room or taking a book and going to a
different room and sitting thereand studying all by themselves,
I mean, I was kind of missing out on some of that, some of
that opportunity to be together.Also, just selfishly, as a mom,
I learned so many things. Yes, ma'am.
You know, working with my kids this way.
(22:06):
And we were talking earlier about the fact that I've got one
student next year and the siblings are gone.
And so how are we going to do this family learning?
I'm the other student and I haven't gone anywhere, so we're
going to keep learning together.I love that and that's exactly
the attitude I had to because ifwe're trying to teach that
learning is a lifestyle and the lifestyle is learning, I mean,
(22:28):
why isn't the homeschooling parent and they're learning as
well. OK, so now we need to flip the
script and ask the question thatis inevitable.
What would be difficult, challenging, frustrating or even
terrible about the idea of multiage homeschooling?
Well, yeah, I've got lots of. Those.
(22:51):
Yeah, we can talk about them. So the one of the first concerns
that people have is like, what if my kids don't get along?
What if it's like constantly a struggle or constantly a fight?
And the first thing I'm going tosay is like go back and, and
this is also relevant because another thing that often comes
up is I have a 2 year old or I have a three-year old, right?
(23:11):
So go back to that idea of what I talked about, of this is the
opportunity for for teaching about character.
It may be that the first 3 or 4 weeks you spend doing this with
your family, it's all about the character training.
And I'm not talking about reading them sappy stories or
(23:32):
singing songs or anything like that.
It like you're going to be doingthe content stuff that you
normally do, but you're going togive yourself enough margin that
you can stop and like train for the character issues throughout
that entire time. So you're not going to be
stressed out thinking I'm falling behind.
You're going to stop and you're going to take the 2 year old out
(23:53):
of the room over and over again.You're going to show them like
you have to be quiet, like and there are strategies that you
could use. You know, you're going to be
like putting Cheerios on the high chair tray and giving them
things to do with their hands and even going outside and
letting them paint with water onthe driveway while you're doing
the read aloud or whatever. They're all those strategies you
can employ. But at the end of the day, you
(24:17):
know, the lesson we have to learn is when everybody's here
together, you're playing on yourtoys and you're being relatively
quiet enough that mom can read, and that's what you're teaching.
And the same thing with kids fighting.
It's like we're going to be heretogether, we're going to be
doing this, and we're not going to be fighting.
And the thing you're focusing onfor the first few weeks is the
(24:37):
not fighting. And everything else they learn
is is gravy. And then it slowly shifts to
where you know the problems are fewer and far between.
And I would say this is something you have to do no
matter whether you're homeschooling kids multi age
together or not. Everybody has to get with the
(24:59):
program, whatever the program is.
So it's part of, I think a lot of homeschoolers forget that
part of our job is character training as much as it is
academic training. And that, you know, they get
really worried that they're, they're not doing something
right or they're, they're frustrated in the process of why
(25:21):
am I having to deal with so manycharacter issues?
And what you, I'm hearing you say and what I know from
experience is, hey, that's part of the process and it would be
part of the process. Even if you were putting kids on
the school bus, you'd have to work on what do we do in the
mornings to get on the school bus on time, right?
Or what are you doing in the afternoons to get the homework
done? So there is a level of parenting
that I don't want people to forget that they have to do.
(25:44):
And don't blame it on something like multi age homeschooling as
the problem. Just know that you're going to
run into problems anywhere. Right, right.
So it's a, it's a matter of solving those particular
problems. And every once in a while we
come up with, we come up againstpeople who are like, who are
like this, This just wouldn't work for me, right?
(26:05):
I needed, I needed to have like they needed to be separated.
It was just stealing all of our joy.
And in which case I would say separate your kids and teach
them separately. You know, sadly, I would.
I'm I'm very sorry and sad because it's so much fun to do
it the other way. But if that's just the way it
is. And back to the toddler, there
(26:25):
was a period of time when my youngest was like 13 months old
until he was 22 months old. We did not do morning time, OK,
because he was just all over theplace into everything.
You know, he's just like he had that little toddler death wish
(26:46):
and, you know, he's just constantly trying to like climb
on something or pull something down.
And it was just more than I could take.
And so I said, you know what? It's OK, we're just going to put
this on the back burner right now.
It's not forever. It's just for the season and,
you know, and we just didn't do it.
And then he matured and he was teachable and we started doing
(27:07):
it again. So that's such good advice and
such good wisdom. Let me ask you, we have time for
one more thing and I want you toshare.
If somebody says, OK, all right,you've talked to me to trying
this. What is my first step to be
successful and not just dive in and feel really.
Overwhelmed. Yeah.
(27:29):
I mean, start with one thing. So start with like one thing
that you're doing together and it's, it's kind of different.
So if you're doing kind of like a morning time, we always tell
people like start with, with just one thing and build and
expand and make it bigger. Now, if you're starting with
history or science or something like that, you know, even then,
just pick one subject that you're going to do together and,
(27:52):
and really, really start enjoying the process of doing
that together. As opposed to saying, well, next
year we're going to do five content subjects together.
Say next year we're going to do 1 together.
And you could even do it in sucha way where you start a little
earlier. I've always done a rolling start
to my home school year, especially when my kids were
little, where it's like, well, we would start with history and
(28:14):
we would like do history for three or four weeks and get it
under our belt before we would add science.
So you could do the same thing with this.
You could do it for a few weeks and then add in another subject
and add in another subject as you go along until you get up.
Yeah. Lots of great practical tips
there. And let's just reiterate that
(28:35):
not everything has to be done together.
If you like this idea, you can grab on to the one thing.
Yeah. And see see if it benefits your
family. And then as it does grow into
that. So yeah, can I?
Address, one more thing please. Please, real quick.
Yeah, I just want because there are probably some people out
there who are thinking like, Oh my gosh, what?
(28:56):
How is this lady telling me thatmy 6th grader and my 6 year old
can both be doing the same thingand get the same kind of
learning? And I mean, there's a fancy word
for it in education circles, it's called differentiated
instruction. And basically what that means is
you're presenting the same content, but you're just doing
it at different levels. And so maybe you're starting by
(29:18):
reading a really good quality picture book.
And I will tell you, your 6th grader is not too old for a
really good quality picture book.
You're reading that picture bookabout ancient Egypt and then
when you're done reading that picture book, that 6 year old
leaves. They're done.
They don't have to do anything else.
(29:38):
But the 6th grader, on the otherhand, maybe get some additional
reading that they do on their own.
Maybe they provide you with a written narration about the
content of that picture book. Maybe now you pull out a map of
ancient Egypt and they fill out the map, or they do some
additional research. So you're studying the same
(30:00):
topic, You're starting from the same base material, but your
kids who are older and more independent do more things on
their own. Now I think that's a great,
great point. If we are able, I will try to
link my homeschool master class about project based learning
that has kind of the how would you present the same information
(30:22):
to everybody and then everybody do something on their own level.
So that could be helpful for you.
OK, well before we end this episode and we will see each
other again next time, but go ahead and tell us where they can
find you and the Better Togetherthings for themselves and their
families. Yeah, so you can find
(30:43):
everything@pambarnhill.com Homeschool Better Together is
there and we have all of our curriculum and the Better
Together and the Gather books and and everything you would
need to Start learning together as a family.
Absolutely. OK.
Thanks for being here, Pam. Thanks everybody for being here
with us on the Schoolhouse Rock podcast this week.
(31:04):
Pam and I will be back next timeto discuss high schooling in
home school. Thanks so much for joining us
today for the Schoolhouse Rock podcast.
We'd love to hear from you. If there's a topic you'd like us
to cover, reach out to us at podcast@schoolhouserock.com.
We'd also love to know how we can pray for you and your
(31:25):
family. If you've been blessed by this
podcast, would you consider partnering with us by making a
one time or monthly donation? Together, we're making a
generational impact that transforms lives and points our
children toward the eternal hopeof salvation in Christ.
If you know a friend who would be encouraged by this podcast,
please share it with them. Join us next week for another
(31:46):
exciting episode of the Schoolhouse Rock Podcast.
Until then, keep pointing your kids to Jesus.
You're listening to the BiblicalFamily Network.
Hey, I'm Miki and I'm Will and we're the Co host of the Culture
Proof podcast. We want to invite you to join us
every week as we discuss what's happening in the world and then
(32:08):
filter those happenings through a decidedly biblical lens.
There are many questions, especially when we see what's
happening in our culture today, but the answers are found within
the Word of God, so that's wherewe want to.
Look Amen when we resist those cultural trends that rival the
truth. We remain culture proof.
It's totally normal for kids this age not to know what
(32:30):
they're doing, and even if they start and regret, that's the
coolest thing we've given them through homeschooling is the
opportunity to know how to pivotwell.
If they don't know what they want to do, then the object of
the game is what we call Don't close any doors.
I like that. You've got this high schooler
(32:53):
who's unsure what they want to do.
Maybe they're even a little unmotivated to do the high
school things. I don't know if anybody else has
ever come up against the high schooler like that.
Right? And you're like, OK, I'm like,
butting heads trying to, like, get this kid into college, and
he doesn't even know if he wantsto go to college.
So then we say plan for not closing any doors.
One of the reasons that I homeschooled was because I
wanted to be around my kids. And if somebody was taking a
book and going to their room or taking a book and going to a
different room and sitting thereand studying all by themselves,
I mean, I was kind of missing out on some of that, some of
that opportunity to be together.Hey everyone and welcome back to
the Schoolhouse Rock podcast. I am Cindy W your host this week
(00:23):
and I am so excited to be here with my very good friend and
guest, Pam Barnhill. But before we get to chat with
her about multi age home schooling, I would like to thank
our sponsor, CTC Math. If you're looking for a math
program that truly works, CTC Math has you covered.
They offer easy to follow video lessons, step by step solutions,
(00:45):
and interactive practice with courses from kindergarten to
calculus. It's the all in
She said since using CTC Math, my daughter has stopped
stressing over math and I find her actually enjoying it.
(01:09):
Thank you so much for all you'vedone to help her find success in
a subject she hated but now enjoys.
Sign up today at ctcmath.com andstart your free trial CTC Math
Math Made Easy. Hey there Pam.
Thank you so much for having me on.
It's great to be back. When I knew I needed to
(01:29):
interview someone, you, of course, were at the top of the
list. You're always at the top of the
list because I count you as one of the experts in the
homeschooling field. And what I think folks are
probably recognizing about me inthis space on the Schoolhouse
Rock podcast is I come with a very practical view of home
(01:52):
schooling. And I know that you also do
that. So I think we're going to have a
great conversation today. Can you give us a sneak peek
into your homeschool journey, particularly on this topic of
multi age homeschooling that we're going to talk about?
How did you get started with that?
So I ended up having three kids fairly close together in age.
(02:13):
So when I had my youngest, my oldest was like 3 1/2, four
years old. So like, you know, I have 3 kids
and they're all within this fouryear age range.
And already by the time the youngest came along, I was doing
preschool at home with the four year old and then her younger
brother was like 3 at the time, so like really close together.
(02:38):
And so we started doing preschool together at home with
just the two of them. And as the little guy got older,
we simply rolled him in to everything that we were doing.
And so my entire home school journey has not been, well, how
do I figure out how to juggle his history with a third grader
and a different history with a first grader and a preschool
(03:00):
with a preschooler? We just all did the same thing
together. And it was just a natural, a
natural thing for us to all learn together all the time.
And we just took it all the way up till my oldest graduated.
And now my first year, this coming year will be my first
year where I only have one student.
And yeah, I'm not sure how you feel about that.
(03:22):
Well, that is exactly where I was a few years back and I just
graduated that last only child. And I tell you, when you're used
to doing multi age home schooling, at least for some
subjects if not all, it becomes a new thing that you and that
last only child have to figure out.
So I'll pray for you. It's great.
(03:44):
I felt like seriously though, I felt like it was an awesome
experience, but it was somethingto learn differently.
So let me ask you this. I found kind of a natural
progression in that. Do you feel like you have sent
some of the graduates as they got into their high school years
(04:07):
off on some of their own things so that you you're not just
abruptly hit with hey I'm not multi age home schooling
anymore? Yeah.
So when they were little, we didlike like all of our content
area subjects together. And we can talk about the
difference between content subjects and skill subjects as
we go on, because that's such animportant distinction that a lot
(04:28):
of people don't make when they're setting up and planning
their home school. But as my kids got older, they
knew what they wanted to study. And not everybody wanted to
study the same thing. So when they were younger, I was
like, OK, next year we're doing mythology, or next year we're
doing ancient history, or next year we're doing the American
Revolution or whatever it was. And I would kind of plan things
(04:50):
out. But as they got older, you know,
I would have like 2 who were like, oh, we really want to do
botany, mom. And then this other one was
like, no, I don't want to do that.
And so they naturally became more and more independent and
that was fine because they were able to be more independent as
they got older. And it wasn't as important for
me to keep them all together now.
(05:11):
We always did some subjects together.
But as they got older it it kindof happened naturally that they
broke out and started doing their own thing more.
Yeah, well, I definitely want totalk about that progression.
I also want to get back to what you had said.
We really need to make a distinction between the core
subjects and what did you call the other part?
(05:33):
So they're skill subjects and they're content area subjects.
And this is just like whether ornot you're going to do whole
family learning with your family.
This is such an important distinction to make.
And skill subjects are those subjects where students need to
enter into the subject at a certain point.
You never jump into math starting with multiplication or
(05:57):
long division, right? You always jump into math with a
preschooler starting with like, you know, 1 to 1 correspondence
and counting. And you know, these three things
are three things, whether they're far apart or close
together. I forget that what that's
called. But they're like these preschool
skills and kids jump in the baththere and they move through math
in a logical progression where they learn one thing and then
(06:20):
the next and then the next. And every child needs to start
math at the beginning and work through that logical progression
with few, you know, very few twodeviations.
I mean, you might take a break to learn about telling time or
something, but you know, you're pretty much walking through this
progression content area, subjects are different.
(06:41):
And this is something like a history where sometimes we get
it in our brain. Oh, you know what?
Like we got to start with ancient history.
But I'm telling you, when you have a first grader, ancient
history means nothing more to them than like modern history
does or the American Revolution does.
Like it's all old stuff and theyreally conceptually can't fathom
(07:03):
like the whole thing anyway, so you might as well just start
with stories and people. And it doesn't matter what time
frame, there's no beginning where you move through.
You can start anywhere and go back and pick up older things or
come and pick up newer things. Same with science, right?
You don't have to start science with an elementary school
(07:25):
student at any certain subject or any certain point.
You can jump in anywhere with them and then learn about all
the different things. So that's a content subject to
the reason why this distinction is really important is when you
are combining kids and doing whole family learning, there is
really no first grade history orfirst grade science or second
(07:49):
grade history or second grade science.
If you have a third grader and afirst grader, they can all be
learning the same thing. And you know, there's no
distinction. And so one of the things that we
tell people to do is to sit downwhen you start planning out your
home school and think about which subjects are skill
subjects. Learning to read, learning to
(08:11):
spell, some areas of compositionwhen you're first getting
started, mathematics for sure, aforeign language, those kinds of
things. Those are your skill based
subjects. They need to be entered into at
a single point. You need to progress through
them in a logical order and everybody typically works on
their own for the most part. Content subjects on the other
(08:35):
hand, history, social study, anykind of social studies,
geography, science, so literature, you know that one is
totally a content area subject. Everybody can be learning all
the things together all at the same.
Time, I would say Fine Arts too.So.
(08:59):
I did school for the most part this way too.
I had a 6 1/2 year gap between the older two who did a lot
together and then that last one.He still joined us when they
were younger. As my older 2 got older.
You know, I, I did have that only child, but I'm just going
to tell you briefly what a home school day for us would have
(09:22):
looked like. Speaking of the content and the
skills areas that you just did. And then I want you to tell me
how yours was different. So when I was kind of
homeschooling everyone together,remembering I had a 6 1/2 year
gap, OK, it looked like morning time where we were all together
(09:43):
generally doing Bible study, poetry, geography.
That's another one that can be done fairly altogether with no
real starting or end point. We did brain training games and
then after we had our morning time together, which wasn't an
incredibly long amount of time, we would break off and everybody
(10:05):
would be in those skill areas. They would be doing their own
leveled math. When I had kids in phonics or
spelling, they would be doing their own levels on those.
So the language arts, they don'tall have to be a part, but you
can kind of think of language arts as something that I did
skilled where everybody had their own thing going on.
(10:25):
And then we would pretty much come back together for our
science, history, Fine Arts, nature study, field trips,
cooking. And oftentimes I think there's a
word usage that people they kindof get hung up on.
Well, am I multi age homeschooling?
Am I doing unit studies? What am I doing here?
(10:47):
I would call ours unit studies because if we were working on
something, I would just say, OK,well we're studying ancient
history right now or we're studying the human body right
now. I don't think you have to call
them unit studies. I think you can just say we do
these content based things together.
So I want to know how does or did yours look different than
(11:09):
mine? And what did you call that
together? Time learning, Yeah.
So how mine looked different than yours was, We did all the
together stuff first, OK? Because once they did their
independent stuff, I had kind ofa system that I used for that
independent work. And I always started with the
(11:29):
youngest one first and I would get him done and then he was
free to go. And once everybody was gone,
there was no getting them back to do other things.
And so we front loaded our day with all of that together stuff
and we called all of it morning time.
So our morning time was not justa few little things.
(11:51):
It was not, you know, just prayer and brain training and
stuff like that. It included some of that stuff,
but it also included the history, the science, the
literature, the read aloud, all of that stuff.
Yeah. Yeah.
Couple things about that. First of all, we didn't do
everything every day. So that was the first thing.
(12:12):
We didn't do history and scienceand literature every single day.
So we did different things on different days, typically
following like a loop schedule. And then the second thing was my
kids did things while I read to them and while they responded to
me. And so they were, you know, oh,
gosh. Rainbow Loom, Perler beads,
(12:34):
Watercolors, drawing. Like all of those things,
puzzle. Blocks.
Magnets, yes. Oh, magnetiles were huge for a
while. So they were, we were all at the
table. I found that the best place for
us to do it was at the table because they would focus more,
but they, they were constantly doing little things with their
hands and stuff like that. And while they were doing that,
(12:56):
we, I was reading aloud to them and we were having conversations
back and forth about the the content subjects that we were
studying. And so, yeah, there were times
where our morning time was 1 1/2or two hours long, but it didn't
feel that way. And it was still their favorite
part because they were able to do things with their hands while
(13:17):
we were learning. Absolutely, absolutely.
That is such a good point. I wouldn't have even thought to
bring that up. So I see a huge benefit to doing
all of the together, learning early and then sending people
off. I will tell you that I kind of
flip-flopped that we started together, we took a break and we
(13:38):
and we ended together because one of my kiddos struggled with
some attention issues and it wasa really good thing for me to
kind of touch in and out of basewith everyone.
He would have been someone who he finished his work quickly,
(13:58):
rightly so it wasn't that he wasn't doing it and then a lot
of time would have been wasted throughout the afternoon.
So we sort of flip-flopped so that I had another touch point
with with him. Anyway, I I think it's so
interesting that everybody gets to design their homeschool.
We can still be talking about the same thing, which is the
benefit of multi age homeschooling, which we will
(14:20):
come to in just a minute, but wecan do it differently for
whatever family rhythms we have and it still works.
That's so awesome. Yeah, sometimes people say,
well, like not all of my kids are awake at the same time in
the morning or I have these kidswho want to, you know, they want
to get stuff done. It was totally OK for any of my
children to, if they were an early riser or whatever, because
(14:43):
I had planned ahead and I had made their list for them ahead
of time. They knew what that independent
work was going to be and there were a few things.
So if they wanted to start before morning time officially
started, there was nothing stopping them from getting
started with their school day. The only place we would
sometimes run into issues was when, like, they wanted me to
(15:05):
sit down and do something with them and I was still, you know,
yeah, kind of having my first part of the day.
Well, hold on to that thought, because I think that's really
important. But for the moment, we're going
to stop and hear from one of ourawesome sponsors of the
Schoolhouse Rock podcast. Join Apologia for the Homeschool
Boot Camp, a free video series that provides practical guidance
(15:28):
and wisdom from experienced homeschool parents.
You'll discover how to equip your family for academic,
social, and spiritual success. Plus, you'll discover how to
build deeper and stronger familyrelationships.
Homeschool Boot Camp covers how to break free from the public
school mindset, daily planning, supporting students with
learning challenges, homeschooling as a working
parent, navigating the high school years, and much more.
(15:51):
Find this incredible free behomeschoolresource@apologia.com/bootcamp.
Homeschooling is a big responsibility.
With BJU Press, you can feel equipped to give your children
not just an education, but a foundation for life.
Children learn in different ways, and BJU Press lets you
adapt to their unique learning styles.
(16:13):
And you'll love the community ofother homeschool moms who use
BJU Press. They've been where you are, and
they're full of advice, encouragement, and practical
tips. And when you need even more
help, there's the Homeschool Hub, which keeps families
organized with easy lesson planning, calendars and even
grading tools. To learn more, visit
(16:34):
bjupresshomeschool.com. What makes you an expert at
this? I've been doing it for a really
long time. And I know that you have written
not only some things for homeschooling parents but for
kids along this line. So take just a quick minute to
tell us about both ends of that spectrum and then we will jump
(16:56):
back into a couple other questions.
Yeah. So I mean, I've been speaking
about and writing about Morning Time for over 10 years now.
For the longest time we had the Your Morning Basket podcast and
you can still find the old episodes of that where we talk
about this kind of family learning where you're bringing
everyone together. And I've got a couple of books,
(17:17):
1 is called Better Together, which is all about bringing your
family together to do Morning time, whether that be you're
focusing on truth, goodness, andbeauty, or you're focusing on
the more practical aspects. I mean, bringing your kids
together for everyone to learn together is you're saving time.
I mean, you think about being a homeschooling mom, having four
or five kids and you know, four people have to learn history and
(17:40):
four people have to learn science and math.
And you've got to combine some of those kids to do some of
those things to save a little bit of sanity.
Also, we have a book called Gather, which is a kind of a
coffee table picture book which shows a lot of families in
action doing this while it also gives you some practical
information. I Co wrote that with a lady
(18:00):
named Heather Tully, who is a mom of 10 who taught her kids
and she's still homeschooling her kids.
She's got like 4 who've graduated now and she's got 6
left at home and they still havea long morning time every single
day, 10 kids or she's teaching them all together.
And then for kids, we do have curriculum available as well.
(18:23):
So, you know, mom can get the curriculum and, you know, spread
this feast before all the kids and it kind of holds her hand
and shows her how to do that. Yeah, yeah.
OK. And we will talk at the end of
the podcast where everyone can find all of this.
So everybody hang on, we'll get to that.
But you started talking, Pam, about the benefits of homes of
(18:49):
Better Together. You said something about, you
know, it's going to save us time, so there have to be other
benefits. I know some of them.
But I'd love to hear your list of why this is such an important
idea. Not that everyone has to do it,
but at least to consider what? What would be some benefits that
would have them consider this idea?
Yeah, well, it's definitely the efficiency of everyone together.
(19:13):
So you're planning fewer lessons, you're spinning fewer
plates, right. And and you have everybody
together learning the same thing.
And so it's just going to, firstof all, eliminate the number of
decisions that mom has to make. Everybody's learning the same
thing. And it's also going to eliminate
the number of hours that you need in a day to teach all of
(19:33):
this. But the second, what I think is
maybe even the bigger benefit isthe community and the
relationships that it builds between your kids and your
family. So you have this whole shared
language, you have this shared learning experience, and you
have an opportunity every singleday for conversations together,
(19:57):
enjoying each other's company, also teaching opportunities.
How do we? Love each other and still
disagree. Because believe me, when you
bring kids together to the morning timetable to teach them
all the same subject, there are going to be disagreements.
And you have the perfect opportunity to teach your kids
(20:18):
that even after these disagreements, we can still love
each other. And I think that is one of the
major things that is missing in our world today.
We don't understand how we can disagree with somebody and still
love them. You know, as a as a fellow
human, as another person, right?And I would add to that, each
(20:39):
person gets the the gentle responsibility of helping others
through their problems. So if someone is frustrated,
everybody's kind of on board with what the frustration is and
everybody gets the opportunity to either help resolve the
frustration or to be an encouragement.
So it's kind of like you're, you're able to, you're able to
(21:02):
do some character training and some really unique relationship
building ways where everybody's on the same team, even though
they do disagree sometime. But it's all for the good of the
whole family, you know? And those are some of the
biggest benefits right there. Just the the opportunity to
teach and just it's fun. It is so much more fun to sit
(21:25):
with everyone together, everybody learning the same
thing, having these fabulous conversations, than it is for,
you know, people to go off into all of these different
directions and be isolated from each other.
I mean, one of the reasons that I homeschooled was because I
wanted to be around my kids. And if somebody was taking a
(21:46):
book and going to their room or taking a book and going to a
different room and sitting thereand studying all by themselves,
I mean, I was kind of missing out on some of that, some of
that opportunity to be together.Also, just selfishly, as a mom,
I learned so many things. Yes, ma'am.
You know, working with my kids this way.
(22:06):
And we were talking earlier about the fact that I've got one
student next year and the siblings are gone.
And so how are we going to do this family learning?
I'm the other student and I haven't gone anywhere, so we're
going to keep learning together.I love that and that's exactly
the attitude I had to because ifwe're trying to teach that
learning is a lifestyle and the lifestyle is learning, I mean,
(22:28):
why isn't the homeschooling parent and they're learning as
well. OK, so now we need to flip the
script and ask the question thatis inevitable.
What would be difficult, challenging, frustrating or even
terrible about the idea of multiage homeschooling?
Well, yeah, I've got lots of. Those.
(22:51):
Yeah, we can talk about them. So the one of the first concerns
that people have is like, what if my kids don't get along?
What if it's like constantly a struggle or constantly a fight?
And the first thing I'm going tosay is like go back and, and
this is also relevant because another thing that often comes
up is I have a 2 year old or I have a three-year old, right?
(23:11):
So go back to that idea of what I talked about, of this is the
opportunity for for teaching about character.
It may be that the first 3 or 4 weeks you spend doing this with
your family, it's all about the character training.
And I'm not talking about reading them sappy stories or
(23:32):
singing songs or anything like that.
It like you're going to be doingthe content stuff that you
normally do, but you're going togive yourself enough margin that
you can stop and like train for the character issues throughout
that entire time. So you're not going to be
stressed out thinking I'm falling behind.
You're going to stop and you're going to take the 2 year old out
(23:53):
of the room over and over again.You're going to show them like
you have to be quiet, like and there are strategies that you
could use. You know, you're going to be
like putting Cheerios on the high chair tray and giving them
things to do with their hands and even going outside and
letting them paint with water onthe driveway while you're doing
the read aloud or whatever. They're all those strategies you
can employ. But at the end of the day, you
(24:17):
know, the lesson we have to learn is when everybody's here
together, you're playing on yourtoys and you're being relatively
quiet enough that mom can read, and that's what you're teaching.
And the same thing with kids fighting.
It's like we're going to be heretogether, we're going to be
doing this, and we're not going to be fighting.
And the thing you're focusing onfor the first few weeks is the
(24:37):
not fighting. And everything else they learn
is is gravy. And then it slowly shifts to
where you know the problems are fewer and far between.
And I would say this is something you have to do no
matter whether you're homeschooling kids multi age
together or not. Everybody has to get with the
(24:59):
program, whatever the program is.
So it's part of, I think a lot of homeschoolers forget that
part of our job is character training as much as it is
academic training. And that, you know, they get
really worried that they're, they're not doing something
right or they're, they're frustrated in the process of why
(25:21):
am I having to deal with so manycharacter issues?
And what you, I'm hearing you say and what I know from
experience is, hey, that's part of the process and it would be
part of the process. Even if you were putting kids on
the school bus, you'd have to work on what do we do in the
mornings to get on the school bus on time, right?
Or what are you doing in the afternoons to get the homework
done? So there is a level of parenting
that I don't want people to forget that they have to do.
(25:44):
And don't blame it on something like multi age homeschooling as
the problem. Just know that you're going to
run into problems anywhere. Right, right.
So it's a, it's a matter of solving those particular
problems. And every once in a while we
come up with, we come up againstpeople who are like, who are
like this, This just wouldn't work for me, right?
(26:05):
I needed, I needed to have like they needed to be separated.
It was just stealing all of our joy.
And in which case I would say separate your kids and teach
them separately. You know, sadly, I would.
I'm I'm very sorry and sad because it's so much fun to do
it the other way. But if that's just the way it
is. And back to the toddler, there
(26:25):
was a period of time when my youngest was like 13 months old
until he was 22 months old. We did not do morning time, OK,
because he was just all over theplace into everything.
You know, he's just like he had that little toddler death wish
(26:46):
and, you know, he's just constantly trying to like climb
on something or pull something down.
And it was just more than I could take.
And so I said, you know what? It's OK, we're just going to put
this on the back burner right now.
It's not forever. It's just for the season and,
you know, and we just didn't do it.
And then he matured and he was teachable and we started doing
(27:07):
it again. So that's such good advice and
such good wisdom. Let me ask you, we have time for
one more thing and I want you toshare.
If somebody says, OK, all right,you've talked to me to trying
this. What is my first step to be
successful and not just dive in and feel really.
Overwhelmed. Yeah.
(27:29):
I mean, start with one thing. So start with like one thing
that you're doing together and it's, it's kind of different.
So if you're doing kind of like a morning time, we always tell
people like start with, with just one thing and build and
expand and make it bigger. Now, if you're starting with
history or science or something like that, you know, even then,
just pick one subject that you're going to do together and,
(27:52):
and really, really start enjoying the process of doing
that together. As opposed to saying, well, next
year we're going to do five content subjects together.
Say next year we're going to do 1 together.
And you could even do it in sucha way where you start a little
earlier. I've always done a rolling start
to my home school year, especially when my kids were
little, where it's like, well, we would start with history and
(28:14):
we would like do history for three or four weeks and get it
under our belt before we would add science.
So you could do the same thing with this.
You could do it for a few weeks and then add in another subject
and add in another subject as you go along until you get up.
Yeah. Lots of great practical tips
there. And let's just reiterate that
(28:35):
not everything has to be done together.
If you like this idea, you can grab on to the one thing.
Yeah. And see see if it benefits your
family. And then as it does grow into
that. So yeah, can I?
Address, one more thing please. Please, real quick.
Yeah, I just want because there are probably some people out
there who are thinking like, Oh my gosh, what?
(28:56):
How is this lady telling me thatmy 6th grader and my 6 year old
can both be doing the same thingand get the same kind of
learning? And I mean, there's a fancy word
for it in education circles, it's called differentiated
instruction. And basically what that means is
you're presenting the same content, but you're just doing
it at different levels. And so maybe you're starting by
(29:18):
reading a really good quality picture book.
And I will tell you, your 6th grader is not too old for a
really good quality picture book.
You're reading that picture bookabout ancient Egypt and then
when you're done reading that picture book, that 6 year old
leaves. They're done.
They don't have to do anything else.
(29:38):
But the 6th grader, on the otherhand, maybe get some additional
reading that they do on their own.
Maybe they provide you with a written narration about the
content of that picture book. Maybe now you pull out a map of
ancient Egypt and they fill out the map, or they do some
additional research. So you're studying the same
(30:00):
topic, You're starting from the same base material, but your
kids who are older and more independent do more things on
their own. Now I think that's a great,
great point. If we are able, I will try to
link my homeschool master class about project based learning
that has kind of the how would you present the same information
(30:22):
to everybody and then everybody do something on their own level.
So that could be helpful for you.
OK, well before we end this episode and we will see each
other again next time, but go ahead and tell us where they can
find you and the Better Togetherthings for themselves and their
families. Yeah, so you can find
(30:43):
everything@pambarnhill.com Homeschool Better Together is
there and we have all of our curriculum and the Better
Together and the Gather books and and everything you would
need to Start learning together as a family.
Absolutely. OK.
Thanks for being here, Pam. Thanks everybody for being here
with us on the Schoolhouse Rock podcast this week.
(31:04):
Pam and I will be back next timeto discuss high schooling in
home school. Thanks so much for joining us
today for the Schoolhouse Rock podcast.
We'd love to hear from you. If there's a topic you'd like us
to cover, reach out to us at podcast@schoolhouserock.com.
We'd also love to know how we can pray for you and your
(31:25):
family. If you've been blessed by this
podcast, would you consider partnering with us by making a
one time or monthly donation? Together, we're making a
generational impact that transforms lives and points our
children toward the eternal hopeof salvation in Christ.
If you know a friend who would be encouraged by this podcast,
please share it with them. Join us next week for another
(31:46):
exciting episode of the Schoolhouse Rock Podcast.
Until then, keep pointing your kids to Jesus.
You're listening to the BiblicalFamily Network.
Hey, I'm Miki and I'm Will and we're the Co host of the Culture
Proof podcast. We want to invite you to join us
every week as we discuss what's happening in the world and then
(32:08):
filter those happenings through a decidedly biblical lens.
There are many questions, especially when we see what's
happening in our culture today, but the answers are found within
the Word of God, so that's wherewe want to.
Look Amen when we resist those cultural trends that rival the
truth. We remain culture proof.
It's totally normal for kids this age not to know what
(32:30):
they're doing, and even if they start and regret, that's the
coolest thing we've given them through homeschooling is the
opportunity to know how to pivotwell.
If they don't know what they want to do, then the object of
the game is what we call Don't close any doors.
I like that. You've got this high schooler
(32:53):
who's unsure what they want to do.
Maybe they're even a little unmotivated to do the high
school things. I don't know if anybody else has
ever come up against the high schooler like that.
Right? And you're like, OK, I'm like,
butting heads trying to, like, get this kid into college, and
he doesn't even know if he wantsto go to college.
So then we say plan for not closing any doors.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.