"Homeschool at our House"

tell me where you're from and how old your kids are, because I want to know who I'm talking to and what you're thinking about as it relates to your children. So who you are— I can see your name— where you're from, how old your kids are. Okay, and, uh, then maybe if you— you can say yes if you're currently homeschooling and no if you're not homeschooling. If you're already homeschooling, yes. No if you're not homeschooling. Okay, thank y'all for bearing with me. And great, this is awesome. Mississippi, 9 and 15. No, you're not homeschooling. Uh, from Texas, just moved to New York. Colorado Springs, 11, 9, 7, and 6. And yes. Yvonne, no, you're not. Eno, you're in South Africa. Wow, your kids are 7 and 4. Atlanta, Georgia. Chandy, your kids are 6, 4, and 3. Latoura, Dallas, 8, 9, and 7 months, not homeschooling. Okay, got a lot of you that are not and a few of you who are. So I'm gonna just keep talking and get started. Um, I'm gonna tell you first of all why I'm even doing this live. I'm doing it because so many people ask me to talk about it, and, um, the reality is I, I'm not the— I'm not the homeschool person. Like, there are people who do it way better than I do. They're way organized than I am. Um, they're, they they have beautiful printables that they make and their schedules are pristine. And y'all, we just making it over here every year, like we're just doing the best we can. And I try to learn from the people that are really smart at what they do. Okay, I see you, Jonae. Oh, you've got— let's see— 5 kids. See that, Mary? Mary, you're from Henderson, North Carolina. All right, you just love listening to me, Mary. Thanks for listening in. Real Kingdom Housewife, come on with the, with the title, Real Kingdom Housewives. Hi, Deitra! Kwani! Okay, so, um, I want you to know that what I'm here to share is not the expert view of how to homeschool. What I'm here to do today is to tell you why we do it, how we do it, what we use, and what resources that I might make, uh, I might suggest to you if you're at the beginning of your journey. But if you're like me and you homeschool, it's probably because you're always desperate to see what people are doing, how they're doing it, and what they use, even when you're doing it. And I'm still like that. I still ask other friends of mine who homeschool, okay, so what are you using for this? And so how did you get your kids through this? And okay, I tried this math, it didn't work. So it's a constant education of the parent or the mom or the dad when you're educating your kids, because the point of educating your kids, one of them anyway, is to educate your children in a way that works for them. And then you start going off the rails realizing that there's tons of curriculum, tons of way to do things, and you want to cater as much as you can to your kids. And so while you may start out having a plan, then the plan changes because you change, your kids change, life seasons change. And the education of the parent in a homeschool scenario is just as important as the education of the kids. So let me start out by telling you, I think enough of you are on and you've told me a little bit about who you are so that I can know who I'm talking to. Thanks for joining me. Um, let me just tell you first of all a little bit about our family. Um, and if you have questions, what I would do is hold them until I tell you, okay, start sharing your questions, because there's so many of you chatting and I'm glad you are. But when I'm ready for questions, it'll be easier if I don't have to go through all of the messages but just the ones where we started asking questions. Feel free if I mention anything and it resonates with you to share it, whether it's a link or it's a comment or it's a quote or it's something, because if you heard it and got the link, somebody else may not have. So if you type that in the comments, and that'd be great. One day I'll get all fancy and I'll have lower thirds in my lives and, you know, I'll be able to screen share, but I ain't figured all that out today. So we're just going to do what I know and what I can do so I can get you the information that you need. We have 5 children. My husband and I have been married now for 18 years. We have 2 girls and 3 boys. When we got married, we gave each other the gift of a girl on our wedding day. So the girls represent the start of our blended family. And then after we got married, we added 3 boys. I have not homeschooled all of my children all of the time. When I was first married, obviously I was a single parent before and I was working, and my children— my daughter, the oldest daughter, went to our church's private school. Then she went to a private school near where I worked that was also a Christian school. So that is the extent of schooling for my children. Now, I went to a Christian school until I was in the 8th grade. I went to high school at a public school, so I have that personal experience. My children, however, do not. My oldest child was in the 6th grade. She had been struggling academically. I thought it was her at first because I was busy, and I thought, you know, if the teachers were doing their job, it would be— she'd be fine. So I thought, you know, I'll just move her to another school where I can fix her. Um, so when she was in the 6th grade, and at that time I had been— I'd stopped working. My husband had a crazy job, and we thought, because I had a crazy job too, one of us should be able to look our kids in the face. And so that person was me. I came home and did homework with her. I stopped thinking it was the teacher's job. I thought, well, it's my job because now I have a little bit more time. And I realized in working with her that there were just some fundamental issues and gaps. And it, it wasn't because she wasn't in a great school. She had a different learning style. Now, I'm a learner by nature, so I made it my responsibility to try to learn how I could teach my girl. So I got some books and I talked to teachers and I would go to Barnes Noble's, and I realized that my child was a right left-brain child, very artistic, has always been that way. And school is normally designed— it depends on your school and depends on your teachers, but traditional classrooms are designed for left-brain learners. Um, they learn in bits and pieces and they put the bits and pieces together. Right-brain learners see things in a whole. A right-brain learner is the person who can go into a room and it's a mess, and then they can say, oh, I see what this can be. I'm almost sure that Joanna Gaines is a right-brain learner. And a lot of times classrooms aren't geared for that. So anyway, I'm not here to talk about learners, but there is a book called The Way They Learn. It's by Cynthia Tobias. It's a small read and I picked it up, um, um, somewhere and read it and it opened my eyes to all the ways that I could teach my child. And then I started doing homework and I've got some books on the shelf over here, Right Brain Learners in a Left Brain World, uh, all kinds of things. And I started educating myself to help my child get her education. And then I realized halfway through her 6th grade year This is a lot of work. I was going to the teachers at her Christian school. They were willing to do things with her. For example, on her spelling test, I would know that she had studied the test. I knew she'd studied it. We'd gone over it. I knew she knew the material. Then she'd flunk the test. So one of the things that I'd heard is a lot of times for certain learners, getting the information they have out of their head through all their channels, out of their hand with a pen, they are going to maybe mix things up or they're not going to be able to do that. Or maybe their brains work faster than their— I said, would you do me a favor and do this test? Would you see if after she doesn't do well on a test, would you see after the test, if you give her the test verbally, can she do it? And she made 100. Not only could she spell the words verbally, she could spell them backwards. She could tell you every other letter because right-brain learner, whole-brain learner, she saw the words in her head. So she would look up and spell the word. Well, school doesn't work like that. You can't tell all the kids to get their individual learning and to test in whatever way they need it. And I thought, I don't want her to get this bad rap that she's not a kid who's going to do well in school. So you know what, it's taking us more time to educate her, help her in her education in the evenings. If I did this during the day, at least she had— would have the room to be a kid. The plan was to take her out of school, uh, for a year or two. I took her out midway in her 6th grade year, and my plan was to fix her and put her back. And I always say that she fixed me. We enjoyed being together, and it wasn't easy all the time, but it gave me window into my child, and it also gave my child the bandwidth to do the things she was good at. Now she had time to take photography classes, and she had time to learn to sew, and she had time to be artistic. And it's no doubt that that child is now a photographer who gutted her home and did a Joanna Gaines in the middle of her home, who can sew, who can decorate, who can style people. Like, her— she makes her living— excuse me— she makes her living being creative. I'm so grateful that I was able to give her the opportunity to learn that. I do think she would have eventually learned it, but I think it would have taken a lot longer. So while many people like me in their 20s were trying to figure out what they wanted to do, my oldest daughter launched into her 20s knowing what she was good at, knowing what her calling was, and knowing what she wanted to do with her life. And I think that that can happen for some people, but I do credit homeschooling as being an educational opportunity that gave us the bandwidth to allow her to explore her life. Now, that said, that's how we got started. We weren't supposed to continue. And when my daughter— that halfway point through her 6th grade year, when I brought her home, I was pregnant. My husband said, this is probably not a good idea. I was like, sure, it'll be fine. So in May, we had our first boy. Now, at this point, our second daughter was not living with us full-time, so I had my oldest daughter and my oldest son, and of course he's a baby. And then 2 years after that, we added another boy. And then a few years after that, we added another boy. When it came time for my oldest son to go to school, I thought, it's kindergarten, I can't mess him up. And because we had been home together, neither I nor my daughter wanted to let him go. He was a part of our everyday. And so about the 9th grade, I told her, if you're going to go to school, you got to go now, because I don't want to try to weave you into anybody's high school program. She went and visited a couple of schools and said, "Nah, just stay home." So we had made the decision to let her finish high school at home. And then my oldest son who came along, we didn't want to send him to school. And my husband was like, "Yeah, okay. And if it doesn't go right, we can always send him to school. He's not going to miss anything in kindergarten." About the time it was time for him to go to first grade, my second son who had been born, he had a very traumatic birth. And as a result of that, there are lots of things. One, he has a physical situation with an arm. He has Erb's palsy, a brachial plexus injury. So we had been doing lots of therapy. Proof of that. And then I realized he wasn't talking. He did not talk in full sentences until he was 4— or no, 5, 5 years old. But, um, he had been going since the age of 3 into speech therapy at our local school district. So that's a whole other story about how to help your, uh, your children who need special needs. And even if you homeschool, the school district still should be able to provide services to you. So we did that for 3 and 4. He went to PPCD, that is preschool with, uh, for children with disabilities. It's a special ed classroom. Y'all, my son rode the short bus and everything, but he loved it and it was great and the teachers were wonderful. And then came kindergarten. We were going to keep him in the program, but his therapist said to me, one of his therapists, if they're going to put him in a classroom with kids that don't talk, he needs to be with kids who talk. He doesn't need to learn nonverbal is okay. He needs to learn verbal and he has the capacity to learn that. And when we went and visited the classroom, out of 12 kids, there was only one other kid who had verbal communication. And my therapist said, he's going to get more talking being at home with y'all than going to school. So I kept my oldest son home, and my youngest son, of course, was a baby, to sandwich my middle son with talkers. And now he's the one that talks the most. So we were not going to do that forever. We were just going to do it for a little while. He kept getting therapy. I would take all the kids in the car. We'd go down to the to a local school while he got therapy, and I'd read to the other kids. I mean, this was this whole thing of not planning to homeschool. I'm telling you all of this for this one reason: I consider myself to be an accidental homeschooler. I never intended to do it. I fell into it. Didn't intend to do it for long, and certainly didn't intend to now have 3 boys who have never been to school, who are currently the ones in my home. So I've been homeschooling for 18 years, but by accident. Our second daughter did come to live with us for a while in high school. When she came she went to the high school local to us, and then she said, will you homeschool me? You've homeschooled everybody else, and I feel like I'm missing out on what y'all are doing all day. So she then came, and for her junior and senior year, I homeschooled her. Now, that is our story and the why, okay? And it doesn't matter how you fall into homeschooling. Um, some of you don't have good districts, some of you have always wanted to, some of you just thought it would be cool. For your kids to take a year off for school, and then here you go, 3 years later you're still doing it. So now, how do we homeschool? Let me get into some nuts and bolts of that. And just so you know, I plan to be on here for about an hour, and hopefully I'll ram through a lot of stuff and then have at least 20 minutes at the end, if not more, to answer your question. So if I'm talking fast, it's because there's so much to say. And how do you sum up 18 years of homeschooling um, in, you know, an hour. So just know that I know I'm doing a drive-by. I'm trying not to talk too fast, and if you have questions, just ask me. Okay, so how do we homeschool? I'm going to start with where we are right now and then kind of work backwards. And again, one day I'll be super fancy and I'll share printables and I'll share websites and I'll share pictures, but today I'm just talking. All right, let me call one of the boys. Hey boys, can one— Joe, bring me your clipboard because y'all need to understand, right before I got on this live with y'all, I ordered Panera because I haven't eaten lunch. Here's my soup right here, and I'm coughing because I never actually opened my Pepsi and drank it because this is life. I'm working at the kitchen table, my kids just got back from the thing, I've got this live with y'all, and I need a Pepsi to stay awake, but I also need support. So I'm asking one of my kids to bring me the clipboard. Now, I always want my kids to be involved in the process of planning and being accountable for their schoolwork. You want to say hi? Say hi. Sup, peeps? Okay, out. So right now, this is their schedule. This is actually a schedule that we're trying out because we haven't even fully started school yet. I have the list of their subjects here. I have their assignments for the week here, and then every day they have to let me know that they did it. Now, this week we're typing it in. Going forward, though, they're going to be writing it in, especially my high school boys. Now, we're trying this, okay? I've had like probably 10 versions of this, okay? I've had them portrait, I've had them all beautiful with color. I've done all the things. And every time I get online and search and go, how do I do this? How do I organize this? So the point is, first of all, all, how you do it— sorry about the phone ringing— it's gonna change. So what I'm telling you is right now, this is what we do. Um, we get up when we're on super schedule, because we're not going to be super on until after September, but we get up about 7:30. I want them downstairs for breakfast at 8. At 8:30, I want them to go and clean up their faces, finish getting ready for the day. And up until this year, at 9 o'clock, 9 to 10 was math, and then, um, you know, 10 to 12 we do other things. We take a break for lunch. Then in the afternoon, as soon as they're done, they can either do rotations, and I'll tell you what that is in just a second, or can somebody like pick up the phone and hang it up? Or, or this is my life, y'all. Or they can finish their independent work. As they get older, their day gets longer. So I'm trying to do everything that requires me in the morning. And as then in the afternoon, let them do the stuff that they can do independently. Historically, even when they were little, 2 to 4 was quiet time, and then when I lost— was nap time. Then when I lost nap time, it became quiet time. So I still needed the older kids who weren't napping to do things that were quiet while my younger children napped. Still, from 2 to 4, I try to make it so that I'm off, so that I can work, do whatever else I need to do. So we start with the things in the morning that require me, that also require more of their brain power, and we end with the things in the afternoon that are a little lazier, a little less engaging. Like, for example, for my youngest this one. Rotations are things that you can do on your own that I want you to do, but how you do it, you get to choose. So I'll say rotation to include piano. I want you to practice your piano 4 times a week. I don't care when you do it, just get it in. I want you to work on Spanish. I want you to do that 3 times a week. I don't care when you do it, but it has to be 3 times. You've got to read every day for 30 minutes. So I put things like that in there. If there are workbooks I've gotten from Walmart just to keep them busy and out of my hair, puzzles, anything that I want them to do goes on that list and they get to choose. I I would always tell them, you can do 3 things and then you're free. But some days you're going to have to do more than 3 to get as many of those things in during the week. Now, I don't care how you get it done, but I want you, even at 8, to be responsible for planning. How am I gonna get— gonna get my reading done for 6 days and piano done for 3 days and Rosetta Stone Spanish for 3 days? Okay, I'm gonna pick and choose what I want to do every day. So they would have freedom that they would leave me alone. My older kids don't have as much freedom because they have more work. Right now, my oldest two children are taking dual credit classes at the community college. One of them is taking 9 hours, one of them is taking 6. This semester, they'll be gone 4 mornings a week. The older my kids go— get— the less I do. I want them to be responsible to other people. I want them to have deadlines, because deadlines are not my strength. We're going to keep going until it's an A. Um, but they are— they need their afternoons to get their work done. I just had my oldest son tell me, I'm sick of reading. And I said, welcome, Welcome to being college-bound. So, um, when their afternoons, a lot of their work they're doing independently, but for the younger ones, I try to give them things that they can do to stay busy. So mornings I try to be on as much as I can or available, and afternoons I try to let them do what they need to do. Older kids, independent learning. Younger kids, rotations planned by mom but executed by the kid. So that's a general overview of our current plan. But I want to back up a little bit. When the kids were younger, um, there was a lot of— how should I say— um, mixing and matching. So in the morning, because my kids were younger and they were active and needed my attention, I let my oldest student do her independent work in the morning because I could work with her in the afternoon when they were sleeping. Often I would have her get up before they got up, or during their morning nap we'd do math. So she would do some stuff, then they'd— I'd put them down for a nap, then we'd work on math, then they'd get up, and then she'd do independent. So the schedule kept changing. But another thing that I weaved into the schedule was the kids playing with each other. Like, I literally scheduled this kid can play with this kid. I scheduled 30 minutes of Barney. I put the kids, like, up until 5 in a playpen in front of the TV. Shoot me if you want to, but it gave me sanity. And here's the other sanity-giving thing I want to tell you. My sons from 2 to 4 went to a Mother's Day out so I would not lose my mind. I was like, I just need to have a minute to get things done. So I want you to know that homeschooling can take many different shapes and forms. I don't know why I need to drink the Pepsi. That's what it is. My oldest child would read to my youngest child. Book basket— I would put books in a basket. It's an idea I got that I got from one of the curriculums that I'll mention to you. And book basket— I taught my kids even when they were small with board books. You can spend— you can give 10 or 15 minutes to attention, and that's a skill that no matter the age of your kids, you need to teach them, that they can keep themselves occupied with a book, with a game, without you, without you. Um, that skill, um, I got some of that knowledge from a book called Babywise, and there's that whole thing about do you let your kids cry it out or do you not. I was an attachment parenting mom, because I nursed them all night long whenever I needed to, who had schedule in her day. So I was kind of a blend of the two. And I taught my kids as at a young age to do things that kept them busy. When the kids were small, just so I would have time to homeschool kids, I would put them in a high chair with finger paints. That would keep them busy for at least 30 minutes. I would put them outside with a bucket with, uh, dish soap and some cups and tablespoons. That would keep them busy for 30 minutes. I spent a lot of time when my kids were younger figuring out how to keep them busy so that I could do all the other things. I also wore my babies so that when I had to do handwriting with a 5-year-old, I had a 3-month-old that was attached to me, so I had 2 hands free. The name of the game when you have smaller children is figuring out what your bigger kids need and what your smaller children are going to do while you're doing the bigger kids. So there are whole books written about that. I still didn't drink my Pepsi. Hold on, I'm sorry. Um, there's a book called Manager of Their Homes. You may want to throw the book at the wall with a lot of things they do in terms of family and structure, but there is a priceless schedule in the back of that book. They have multiple families share their schedules, and I would just look and go, oh yeah, I can do that with my kid while the oldest kid does that. Oh yes, I can do this. It was amazing. So, um, if you get online and just Google homeschool schedules, you will get so many ideas for what you can do throughout the day. But the bottom line is I made it work. What do my school-age kids need, and what can my younger kids do while I'm meeting my school-age kids' needs? What can my school-age kids do without me, and then what do they need to do with me? And a lot of this is decided by what you decide to use. So let me talk a minute about the options, um, we use, uh, In terms of structure, our kids— my kids have always gone to a co-op. I've never wanted to teach science, and we have the ability to have multiple co-ops in the area. Remember, I started with a 7th grader. I didn't want to dissect anything. I didn't want to mess up my kitchen with the experience and experiments, and I didn't love science. So, uh, I was like, I don't want them to not love science because I don't love science. So I found a teacher who loves science. And the funny thing is, the lady who started teaching my oldest daughter is still teaching my boys. She's a nurse with 7 kids, uh, who has always homeschooled. Don't ask me how she does that, but she's always taught science. She loves it. So why would I teach my kids when she loves it? And I'm blessing her by letting her— paying her to teach my kids. Another thing I didn't want to teach was art. I'm not an artist. I'm not a right-brained person in a lot of regards. So I've always farmed those 2 things out. If you don't have a co-op Who in your life has those skills who wouldn't mind doing it? Even if they don't know how to teach, you can buy a curriculum and say, hey, can you just go through this with my kid? I'll swap you. I'll babysit your kids while you teach my kids art. Being homeschooling or homeschooling— being a homeschool mom is a lot about creativity. How can you make it work? We've always used a co-op. When my kids have gotten older, we've always used dual credit. Um, I've been known to put one of my children, uh, take them to the bus station, put them on the bus as a teenager, have them transfer downtown on a train to take a train to another part downtown to get on another bus to go to a class because I wanted her to take that class and I didn't have the bandwidth to teach it with 3 young children, and that's where it was. So yeah, it is what it is. And let me just say a thing about help. So right now in my kitchen, there's a girl named Mackenzie who comes here every day to make sure that because I work now and because I travel, that we can still homeschool. But from the very beginning, from the very beginning, my husband, when he would travel Y'all, I was like, I just need a break. And so I found a little high school kid, and then it was a college kid, you know, paid them. They were just happy to make a few, a few chumps of change and said, can you just fold the laundry? You know, I didn't have any teenage girls, and sometimes I had girls come over who I didn't pay. It's just their mothers were like, you know what, I want her to learn what it is to serve another mom. And they would come over, can you, can you just watch, play with my babies so for just a second I could talk to a girlfriend on the phone and fix dinner? Don't be ashamed or afraid to ask for, look for, and if you have the resources, pay for help. I would not be able to homeschool my kids right now if they were not currently in an all-day co-op every Wednesday, if they were not currently in a wonderful woman's writing class on Monday, if my boys weren't in dual credit, and if Mackenzie wasn't here, uh, during the week. Before Mackenzie, there was a Teresa, and before Teresa, there was Miss Julie. From Miss Julie, there was, you know, I mean, there was— I've always had somebody helping me. And as I've increased in my working and wanted to continue homeschooling, some of my work check goes to what would be private school, except it happens to be in my home. So I want to give you full disclosure. For all of you who go, how do you do it? I do it with help, and it has morphed into different ways over the years. And initially, here's my husband— I need you to babysit them because I'm going to take my oldest child out to Red Robin so we can discuss this doggone Scarlet Letter over a milkshake. So it's okay to know that you've got to have help, or that you can have help, and not feel like you're not doing it right. There is no doing it right. You do it the way that you Now I know what you really want to know. I know you really want to know what we use, okay? I know that's what you really want to know. All right, now I've been homeschooling a long time, remember I'm telling you that? So I'm going to give you a list of things and know that right now it's a little bit of a hodgepodge of a lot of things because now I know what works well for what kid and what works well for me. Um, there were seasons where I had time to do the teacher-intensive program and I loved it. And I had time to cut out all the things and to go to the library and borrow all the books. And that's not my story right now. So my story right now is I need to be able to open and go, and I'm using curriculum that allows me to do that. And because I've homeschooled so long, I can say, ooh, but that book from that curriculum was really good, so I'm gonna— we're gonna read that still, much to my older son's chagrin. They're like, this is what our program says, and I'm like, yes, but you are going to read that book because this is a good book. I started out homeschooling in the 6th grade with a program called Sunlight. Sunlight is wonderful, and it's wonderful because the books are wonderful. I picked it because my daughter liked to read and I like to read, and I thought, what better way to learn about history and the Bible than to read books that are both educational, nonfiction, and fiction? Who knew that you could learn history reading from wonderful historical fiction books, stories that the kids actually wanted to read. They have reading books for the kids and read-alouds for parents and children. One of the favorite books that she still remembers to this day is called Mera, Daughter of the Nile. She would lay on the floor and I would read out loud to her while I nursed a baby in one hand, and we were supposed to finish chapter 5, and she said, Mom, can you please read another chapter? And those moments are what I live for as a homeschool mom— seeing them enjoy learning and seeing the light go on. Just yesterday, I had one of my sons leaning over to another son because they're both studying for SAT stuff, and he was explaining to the others, the younger son, how to do the problem. Oh, I live for stuff like that. So having the opportunity to have those moments, Sunlight gave us those because it gave us a shared experience. Every book we read together, and I was encouraged, and I had the time then to read all the books she was reading. Now, y'all, I just use the teacher notes and skim it because I get the general idea because I don't have time. That said, Sunlight is a little bit more intensive than what we graduated to a little bit later. Sunlight, the core program— if you get a Sunlight catalog or go online, Sunlight is S-O-N-L-I-G-H-T— Sunlight has a— it's a core, and then you can add on the other subjects. Core curriculums include Bible, history, and English. So what you're studying that happened in history, you can compare that and line it up with what was happening in Bible history. And then when you're writing, why would you write about random things when you have perfectly good things in history and Bible to write about. So a core curriculum usually is Bible, history, and English. Then Sunlight makes recommendations for great math programs. They make recommendations for great spelling programs, make great recommendations for language art programs. So I got the Sunlight catalog, bought my core, and then from the options that they gave me, I chose them— what my, you know, chose my math, chose my spelling, chose my— now Now all that Sunlight was doing is looking at all the math curriculums that are out there and saying, these are the ones that we think are best. So that was a great starting point for me when I was deciding to homeschool. Another great starting point and how I actually got engaged with the Sunlight people was I went to a homeschool book fair. If you live near any major city, there are homeschool book fairs everywhere, all over the place. Go to one. It's going to be overwhelming, but you'll get to talk to people, meet people, and just see what's out there. At the end of the day, I picked Sunlight because it made sense to me. I was a reader, and they helped me make make the other choices. I didn't have to look at all the choices, I just looked at the ones they gave me. After a while, we changed our core curriculum to My Father's World. Same idea— Bible, history, and English— but it was a lot simpler and it was spelled out. Sunlight basically is like going to, um, it's like going to a buffet on a cruise. It's wonderful, it's really hard to eat it all, but you should pick and choose what you really like. And it can be overwhelming reading. And then we always finished it because we finished it in the summer because my kids have a summer. This world was the same, but that's how I got introduced to the Book Basket. It said, here's a list of things from the library. A mother of 6 who has a, a graduate degree in education, she wrote it, and she wrote it for a mom who has 6 kids who don't have time to read to 6 kids 6 different things. So it's a lot more condensed, a lot simpler, and it's designed for you to do from your kindergarten through 8th grade the same thing with everybody so everybody can be on the same page. I started homeschooling with my sister together. We put all of our kids together. It was a lot easier for me to say, here's what we're doing, Priscilla, because it was spelled out and it was simple and outlined. Sunlight was a lot because it was spelled out, but then there were— I mean, the book for Sunlight is this thick, and the book for My Father's World is this thick. Sunlight has all those books, so they had to give you the answers to all the questions and the summaries of all the books, and it's just a lot. I still use it though because I fill in the blanks with My Father's World with the books from Sunlight. So our cores have been those two things. Now sure, my kids have taken a history class at a co-op, or they've taken something else, some, you know, somewhere else. But overall, even when I sent my daughter on the bus way out to North Dallas, it was because somebody was teaching Sunlight. I was like, I want her to read the books. You should see the book lists that I got from college. Hey, Mackenzie, that big old packet I gave you for Charis for her graduation thing, can you bring that? Thank you. I'll show what Charis did by the time she graduated. So, um, my kids still read a lot because I just think it— readers make leaders and they make great writers. If you read great language, it changes the way you write and think because you get to watch how other smart people process their thoughts. All right, that's core. Bible, history, and English have always been sunlight in my father's world. So math, I love Right Start Math, Saxon Math. I have actually bought that in Homeschool Co-op. But, um, but my daughter, that did not work with her, so we did some other things. We did RightStart Math. Uh, we did, um, I'm sorry, not with her. I did Singapore Math with her. Thanks. We did Singapore Math with her for a little bit, a little Saxon when we realized it wasn't going to work. And then when she got into high school, we did VideoText. VideoText at the time was recommended by Sunlight. It is a video-driven curriculum that allows you to get pre-algebra, Algebra 1, and Algebra to in 2 years. And the premise of the guy who wrote the program, he basically is saying you have to do 3 years of algebra because every year after the summer you have to start over. It actually doesn't take that long to get through all of algebra. So, and it doesn't, we've learned that. My kids have taken algebra and either gone on to CLEP out of algebra or they've gone on to the dual credit program and then taken college algebra and whizzed it because it was easy, but they got the credit and they got the easy A. So VideoText has worked for us, and because I own it, that's what we continue to use. In fact, I bought a web-based based version of the program, bought it for all 3 kids at one time because they're all going to go through it, because I know I like it and I know it, so why change? Um, and so I know what we're doing for algebra until my youngest one is done with it. Um, that said, we also use Teaching Textbooks for geometry. Teaching Textbooks is a great math curriculum if you're not a math person. It is again video-driven, or probably online-driven now. And when I just— I didn't like geometry. I made a C, is my only C in high school. I made a C in geometry, and I told my daughter, you don't want me teaching you geometry. And I don't like it. I didn't want to do all the proofs. I didn't want to do all that stuff, and I didn't feel like she needed that level of geometry. She wasn't a math kid. Teaching Textbooks did not teach proofs, but it gave us, um, all she needed to get that credit. So that's a wonderful thing if you're not a mathy person and you want your kids to be able to kind of be self-paced with their math. Okay, so I think that's math. RightStart is elementary. Singapore's elementary. RightStart is the mommy-intensive version. But oh my gosh, your kids will think like math thinkers. It teaches your kids how to think, a lot of manipulatives, a lot of arranging things before they ever learn their times tables. They, they see what it means for things to be timed, for you to have 4 groups of 5. It was wonderful. It allowed us to have a lot of fun and a lot of games, math games. I still have it on my shelf and I keep telling myself with my 10-year-old, eventually I'm going to get back to playing games with him. So RightStart, um, is what we started with. Singapore has allowed me to Get It Done. It's a workbook, it's small, it's doable. Um, but High School Teaching Textbooks and Video Text, uh, we've used. Teaching Textbooks also has elementary, so that's an option. Okay, science. We have always just done whatever the co-op was doing, and the co-op has always used Apologia. So the books for the kids, the younger kids, are smaller, and the books for the older kids are great. I currently have a son taking anatomy anatomy, another son taking biology, and they've all always done Apologia with a co-op. But they've all always done it. Okay, so that's what we've done for science. I have little notes here. Now for English. English is where it gets complicated because I like to read and I like to teach and I'm a good writer. So I was like, why on earth would I farm that out? And I didn't. We have done, um, writers writing workshop I feel like I'm saying it wrong. Is it Writers Workshop or Writing Workshop? Um, okay, I'll get back to you on that. But, but also, and that's a great easy— you're a mom who's not a writer— teach you and your kids how to write. That's where I started. It was great, gave us common language because I was a natural writer and I realized that as a natural writer I didn't know how to teach somebody else to write. I just knew how to do I couldn't do it. So I needed a curriculum, not because I couldn't write, but because I needed to explain to a kid how I— how to do it right. Hey, um, I know this is so unprofessional, but y'all, this is— it is what it is. Hey, Monique, on the shelf where the recipe books are, there are some blue binders on the second shelf. Is it Writer's Workshop? Write Shop. That's the name of it. I knew I was getting it wrong. Write Shop. Uh, you can do this with junior high kids and early high school kids, and that was a great start for us. Then I discovered Institute for Excellence in Writing. I love Institute for Excellence in Writing, and it took the things that I'd started my kids with and then took us further. Now you can buy their program where it teaches the teacher how to teach. Or you can buy the program that is DVD for the kids that teaches your kids how to do it while it's teaching the teacher to teach. And of course, the more help you need, the more money you spend. Our grammar now comes from IEW. Our writing programs— I bring a lot of— I've taught it before, so now that they're taking— my boys are taking English from someone else, I still speak that language to them. I need you to have— there are, you know, this many different ways you can start a sentence, so I need you to go through your paragraph Don't start every sentence the same way. You have 7 options for starting a sentence. Use all of the options. I would force them to use— and now they know how to have variety in their sentences. They understand what active and passive verbs are. They understand what it is to mix up the length of their sentences. They know how to write the different forms. But, but here's the kicker. The kicker is the philosophy of writing can follow them into any program. So I would use I.E.W. With as it was written, but then I would take an assignment from history. This is where I started mixing and matching, and I would say, okay, we just read that book. I want you to use these principles to write this paper. Now, IEW starts in elementary school. I didn't discover it until my oldest daughter was in high school. They had how to write essays and how to write a research paper and how to be prepared for your standardized test. They have so many things. Now. How to speak, how to, I mean, it's just crazy. He even has CDs where he teaches how to teach wiggly boys who don't want to sit still and who don't write. So Institute for Excellence in Writing, love it. If you need something, we tried one thing last year, which was Essentials in Writing, which is DVD-driven for the kid, and they even have a grading service if you want to send it off. So Write Shop, Institute for Excellence in Writing, Writing and Excellence in Writing, 3 different programs. Sunlight— let me go back to Sunlight and My Father's World. They each have language built in. You don't have to add anything, but I'm extra. And so once I got going with those and saw what they had, and then I was like, you know what, I just want a little more grammar. So then I got some grammar, and then I was like, you know what, we're having trouble understanding the way Sunlight is teaching me this. And then I got introduced to something else. You don't have to to do anything else. But as I discovered what we were— the problems we were running into, then I found things to fix it. I Googled, I asked other homeschool moms, and this is why I have so much experience with so many different curriculums. Okay, that said, that said, there are many of you who homeschool, you already know about Classical Conversations. If you are looking for a community, another type of community is Classical Conversations. Sessions, you meet once a week, your kids all learn the same thing, and they incorporate history, Bible, science, and writing. And you can do it in a community. And they have used, up until recently I believe, Institute for Excellence in Writing as well. All right, turning my page. Grammar, I use Fix It Grammar from Institute Excellence in Writing. Spelling, we've been through a million different books. I just found— just, I just ended up picking up the one that just seemed the easiest to me to grade. There are a million spelling books out there. Uh, we use Spelling Workout right now. Vocabulary, that was a part of Sunlight. Sunlight would say, you're reading these books, ask your kids, do they know what these words mean? And if they didn't, they had to look them up. So instead of vocabulary being initially, we incorporated that into our reading. Now we actually have a workbook called Wordly Wise that we use for vocabulary. Art, foreign language, driver's ed, speech, uh, fun stuff like personal finance. My big boys are taking personal finance. My younger son is doing Latin. I'm gonna— he doesn't even know it yet. He's probably hearing me going, what? But I've got a program online that he can do that. My oldest did driver's ed at home. Art, we've always done that at a co-op, but I do have an art curriculum that I always give them paper and pens to draw with. So I'm like, this is like fire hose. But here's what I need you to understand. I need you to understand that if you just get started, you will figure out what works for you and what works for your family. When my kids were little, I bought a book called 100 Easy Lessons, and in one book about this thick, it took them from not reading to reading at a second grade level. Okay, um, Walmart books, the ones where it's the summer bridge learning and you just want your kids— you know what, if you first pull them out of school, just let them do that till you figure out something else. Just keep them moving. Because the biggest thing— and I'll stop and I'll share this, and then I'll— I'm going over my time. I'm gonna give you a couple of links, then I want to answer your questions. But the biggest thing is that your kids love learning. And they may not always like learning, but the end result is that they love learning. I'll never forget, before I started homeschooling, it was a garage sale. It was the middle of the day, and this lady stopped by with her two kids. And I was like, are you not in school today? And because, you know, I didn't know. And so she was telling me she was homeschooling, and I said, well, I'm having trouble with my daughter. She said, take her out. I said, but what? I don't know what to do. She said, take her out, go to the library, read books, watch some educational movies, learn to cook together. And while you're— she called it deschooling her— then take the time to figure out where you want to start. It's the best advice I ever got. I didn't do it, and I regretted it. And we took some time later— listen, y'all, the kids are in school for 12 years because you repeat things over and over again to make sure you at least remember something. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you have one-on-one instruction or when kids are getting personalized attention. Um, just for the little kids, Um, Walmart workbooks are a great place to start. 100 Easy Lessons. When my kids were little, Heart of Dakota was wonderful. Um, Five in a Row was another wonderful program for reading books and having activities. There's a book called Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready. It actually has activities for your little children from the first week of life until they're 5. Every week there's something to do. I learned that the best puzzle in the world for kids were your pots and your pans with their tops from that book. A lot of just dumb activities. Got a big box, let them play in it. Just so, from the little things all the way up to the big things, uh, or the little ages all the way up to the big ages, I think picking a core is a great place to start. Heart of Dakota has a core. My Father's World, My Father's World has a core. Sunlight has a core. And then you can just start there and figure out what kind of mom you are. There are tons and tons of curriculums out there. I haven't mentioned Mystery of History. I haven't mentioned AmbleSide online, there were curriculums and I haven't checked them so I didn't provide them, but I do have a post on my site that had a list of early curricular options for kids that were free. The problem is some things go out of date and I want to refresh that before I share it, but I will make it a priority to do that so I can share that with you. If you're not on my email list, you want to be Chrystal Evans Hurst.com, and right on that front page, just put your email in there. And then when I refresh the post and share it with my list, you'll get it. Or you can go to my website right now and search for homeschool, and whatever comes up, just know I told you it may not be refreshed. That said, where do you get started? Okay, I want to give you a couple of links. One is HL— hold on, hold on. HSLDA, that's the Homeschool Legal Defense Association. On their front page, on the left towards the bottom, it says, "You can homeschool. Start there." You can also go to homeschool.com/getting-started just to get your wheels turning. But if you go to Sunlight— this is one of the reasons why I chose Sunlight— they had 27 reasons why you should and 27 reasons why you shouldn't. They— there's a lot of information on My Father's World site and Sunlight for beginning homeschoolers, and they both have communities that are willing to help you. The Sunlight forums and now the Sunlight Facebook group, they were my lifeline. They helped me figure out what to do with my kids and help me to relax about not giving my kids enough. I worried that my daughter Charis would not have enough. Y'all, this is what I sent her to college with. This was in her application. I had her transcript in here, and for every class in high school. I had a course description with how I calculated her grade. In addition to that, I put samples of her writing in here. I also put samples of her artwork in here. And then towards the back, I said, here's the reading list. This are all the books she read during 2006 and 2007 school year. And the whole time I was homeschooling her, I was worried. So I'm telling you not to Mary. One more resource for you high school parents: Lee Binns, The Homeschooler. At the time, she was just a homeschool mom that was helping people. She's since developed a business. She has a free phone line every Wednesday. If you're paying for her services, you can call and ask anything you want. She has recommendations for programs, and her, her specialty is homeschooling high schoolers. I learned how to make a transcript from her sharing her transcript with me. All right, y'all, I like I haven't even touched half of the things that I wanted to say. This is like a fire hose, I know it. You can now ask your questions and I'll use the remainder of our time and maybe a little bit past 3 because I want to make sure I answer as many as I can to answer your questions. Um, the main thing I could tell you though is relax, love your children, know what you don't do or what you don't want to do. And now there's so many classes online uh, that you don't even have to teach it. I don't choose to do all of my education online, um, because you could do the whole thing online. You could do the whole thing. I am home with my kids and have them home with me so we can engage. I could have put them in a history class. I don't want to. I'm like, we're going to do this together. We watch CNN News every day because I don't watch the news and I want them to be literate. Geography is built in built into Sunlight and My Father's World. Bible is built into Sunlight and My Father's World. We also have our kids participate in Awana. I see you, Deitra, asking about devotions for boys, please. Hey, uh, Kanan, can you bring me the book that we just started reading, that identity book? It's somewhere over there. It might be on the bookshelf in the kitchen. It's either on the table or it's on the shelf. So, um, as the kids— when they're younger, Awana is what we do together. We— I bought all the music CDs, and I know all the Awana verses too. And then as they progress, the devotions are kind of built into that. When my older daughter was younger, um, we did BSF, Bible— listen, listen, don't correct me, apologize. And if you were here, I would have had you help me prepare before the live stream. Bye-bye. What do you need? Can you take a nap? No, no. Drink some water, do some jumping jacks. If you need to go outside, do that. We ain't even got started good yet. This book we just picked up, it's a book that came out with Priscilla's new movie, uh, Overcomers, and she sent me all the books. I have her book and I have the adult girl book, but this is a boy book, and we've been reading it together at the table. It's actually pretty good, and it's perfect for my— the 3 ages of my boys. So it's called Revealed: True Identity in Christ, and we're just going through it. It's really easy to read. My point is, I just pick whatever. Bible study fellowship was awesome. My older daughter went to that with me, and I still do it. But my boys' sports and things, just— they're— they're— I'm mad about the sports. Oh yes, can homeschool kids play sports? Sports? They sure can. We have a— you know, it just depends on where you are and what you have access to. I'm trying to find my other piece of paper, but, um, but they play basketball, they play football, and we're not doing that. I've made all of my kids, including my boys, they'll do it, run a 5K. It's a part of their PE credit. Okay, uh, there's a lot of information. I feel like I should have like done this in pieces. Homeschooling for littles, homeschooling pigs, but you got to start somewhere, right? Is it affordable? Okay, now I know people that homeschool with the library. In anything in life, right, you trade time and money. So with homeschooling, it's the same. If I don't have the time to go to the library, then I spend the money to have all the Sunlight Books come to me in a box, right? At first I did the library. I didn't have— we didn't have the extra money. Then I started buying the whole box so that they're all on shelves. When y'all see books all around my house. It's because for 18 years I bought every book for every grade. Okay, and then, um, oh, y'all are asking questions fast. Okay, so, uh, I lost that question. Oh, devotions. We were talking about devotions, then we were talking about affordable. It just depends on how you want to do it. I would say right now I'm probably paying the price for private school. So, and we've talked about that. I actually was not going to homeschool this year, and my husband said, meh, it's what we do. I was like, what? You've never cared all these years. You just trusted me to do whatever I want to do, and now you want me to stay— keep them home? So, um, it was either that. It was either, uh, because of where we live right now, it wasn't going to be public school. I'm not against public school. Where we lived 3 years ago, I totally would have sent them, but right now where we are, um, that was not an option. So it was either going to private school or keep them home. And, uh, you know, I'm paying for a lot of classes right now to keep them home. Okay, uh, let's see here. Do you have a housekeeper? I sure do. I have 3 boys. No, but I do have somebody that comes every other week to clean my whole house because I want to clean all in one day. But my boys one time said to me, why do we have to do that? Because, you know, she's going to come and help us clean. And I was like, no, no, she's here for me. She's here for me. She's not here for you. I actually don't have anybody come more often often because they need to know. They need to know. They need to know how to clean the toilets. And a part of our homeschool day is doing your stuff while we watch CNN. You fold clothes, okay? When you're finished with dinner, whoever's finished with school— or when you're finished with school, whoever's done comes helps me in the kitchen. I want to teach them. That's a part of them being home too. All right, what did I use for driver's ed? Virtual Drive. Virtual Drive. There are a lot of them now. At the Uh, there was only one when I started. I'm searching it to make sure I just said it right. Virtual Drive, uh, Virtual Drive. If you just Google homeschool driver's ed, you'll find it, but I'm almost sure, unless they change their name— yep, Virtual Drive of Texas. That's the one that I used. Um, okay, I don't even know how to get back. To the, uh, hmm, let's see here. I'm trying to find where y'all went. I looked that up and now I can't find y'all. Oh, there you go. Okay. All right. Do you have to register as a homeschooler in Texas? Every state is different. You definitely want to check your state. If you're in Texas, another good resource is THSC, Texas Homeschool Coalition. Um, in Texas, it's a friendly homeschool state. On the other website that I gave you, HSLDA, they have a lot of information that's global, um, in terms of different states. You can figure out what— I have friends that have to turn in a portfolio every year. I have friends who have to take standardized tests every year. In Texas, I'm considered a private school, and the only thing I have to do if I want to go to— if they want to go to college, is is to create a transcript, to give them a diploma, and make sure they take the SAT, do standardized testing. And even that you don't have to do if they go— the light changed because it's about to storm outside— if they go to dual credit and they finish, you know, they get enough hours, they can transfer into college. You know, a lot of schools, you just have to look at what your state requirements are and what the colleges are that you want your kids to go to, or the, um, the area of work that you want to go to, your kids to go into, if it's not college. Just a quick word about education I count everything, everything. Um, my, my son made t-shirts and then he sold them. Okay, we're going to create a class in high school called Entrepreneurial, uh, uh, Intro to Entrepreneurial Education, and then we're just going to count the hours, all the things that he did. A typical high school year is 150 to 180 hours, so if you divide that up, that's 36 weeks, an hour a day. But I just keep a record, and then at the end I count up how many hours they had and I go Okay, that was a semester worth of work, or okay, that was a year's worth of work. So when it's curriculum-based, you know— are you need me? You trying to give me more light? When it's curriculum-based, then that's spelled out for you. But there are a lot of things that aren't curriculum-based, and you can make it up. Um, there's a whole book about homeschooling for high school, and I can't remember the name of it, but it taught me that. Just go ahead and count what your kids do. PE, they needed 2 credits. They didn't get those 2 credits in 2 years, or I just added up everything they did over 4 years and said, all right, that's enough. So you can be very flexible with how you do it, at least in Texas you can. Okay, let me go back. Teaching textbooks, teaching textbooks, my father's world. You add in other textbooks? Yeah, we always add in other reading books. Trying to find your questions here so I can make sure. Okay, what made you decide on homeschooling? So, Power of Care that was the whole beginning of the YouTube. So I'm going to let you rewatch that, okay? So I can deal with all the questions. I'm not ignoring you, I just want to make sure you know I did answer that. Getting started with it, like making sure you're meeting the requirements and what steps to make it official. So the first thing is look at your state. Look at your state to figure out what is required for your state, because I don't want you to get in trouble. Don't tell them that Chrystal Hurst told you to homeschool. I'm not going to answer my phone. All right, then the next thing after that— I'm looking at my my notes here. The next thing after that is that you want to, um, you want to make sure that depending on the age of your kid, that they'll be ready for wherever they're going next. So if they're in high school, then you start with— you can go on the TEA website, the Texas Education Agency, or whatever your state agency is, and look at what is considered a standard diploma. And, you know, they have different levels, you know, distinguished, and figure out what do you want your kid to have on their script. What do they already have and how are you going to add the rest in? So when it comes to high school, that's when it really matters. I don't give grades for my kids. I start giving grades, eh, 6th, 7th, 8th grade, but it's really to let them know it's almost time to get serious. Nobody cares. It— for in Texas, for me, nobody cares. I— and I know as a mother whether they learned it or not. I know because I'm with them all the time. When we did history, that's one of the major questions that Sunlight got ask. How do you know they learned it? Well, if you're with them and you're discussing the questions that they gave you over the dinner table, or, you know, you know, you know if they learned it or not. And we of course would drill things and go over timelines and what happened in 1492, and we have songs for all these things. So you kind of know that they know it. A teacher needs tests when she has 30 kids in a room and she can't spend individual time with them all day. So tests, there's nothing wrong with them. I'm just saying there's a place for them, and there is scope and sequence of education that exists for real education, and then there's a scope and sequence for education that exists for industrial education. And you need to understand, I'm not against schools. I love school. I'll be going back to school soon. But our school systems were created for factories. Let's teach everybody the same thing so they can do a certain job. And I'm of the opinion that when you are a parent, whether you homeschool officially all day day, or you after school, or you give them enough to read on the weekend. Your child's education is your responsibility. So whatever you do to get educated as to what your kids should be learning or what they, uh, need to, need to be learning, you need to do that regardless of whether in school. Okay, a little soapbox. Have I used Time4Learning? I sure did when my kids were small. Time4Learning is wonderful. Alphabets, learning their alphabets. And, and as they get older I just practiced with math, but I used Time4Learning as a supplementary option, but it was a great one. I also used ABCmouse and a lot of other— again, that was keeping the kids busy. I bought all the little CDs with the fun and games to learn their numbers, all that, did all that. Okay, let me look at your questions. You were told to deschool and skip, skip it. Yep. I skipped it too. And I regretted it also. Make sure you check with your state. I'm looking for questions. What did you use for driver's ed? I answered that. Uh, let's see here. I answered that. Writing curriculum— IEW, Institute for Excellence in Writing. The curriculum isn't for Wiggly Boys, but there is— there are talks that Andrew Pudowa, who is the, um, person who— he's like the, the central person for that, uh, that curriculum. Um, he does talks at homeschool conventions and he has them for sale on his site, and one of them is basically how a lot of school boys, teach boys to write who don't want to write because they don't want to. They want to go outside and play and build forts and play video games. And honestly, boys in this day and age, I really feel with the whole screen thing, their boys are visual. We know this to be true. And so, you know, who wants to write and read when you can play a video game? You are competing for your boy's attention. So he gives some really great tips and tools for how to make it interesting for them. Okay. Okay, let's see here. And oh, I lost the questions here. They came back. Do you have an end time? So this is a fun thing. Where can you sell your homeschool books? I'll come back to that in just a second. Selling your homeschool books, there used to be a lot of great places. Now I think the, the best place is like Facebook. Like you can sell on Facebook or Craigslist. There, there used to be a place called VegSource. I find a bunch of stuff on there. They just shut their stuff down. And there used to be some forums where you could buy and sell Sunlight You know, people have to keep these things up, and if they don't want to keep them up, then they shut them down. But right now, Facebook, just put it out there and put your stuff for sale. You'd be surprised, um, what you might find. And then I would just Google. Um, there's also The Well-Trained Mind. That is a site for classical education, and they have great forums that are still fully robust, and they have a for sale section in their forums. Okay, do you have an endpoint? Kind of. So my oldest daughter was a young senior and she was doing dual credit. So what I did is I stopped schooling her altogether her senior year and gave her an extra year. It's like, it's not gonna hurt you, it's not gonna hurt you to get some extra dual credit classes under your belt that still apply for your college education. And so I also start early. My oldest son took high school Latin in the 8th grade. So am I going to count it for high school? You bet I am. Schools do that, right? They start letting kids earn high school credit when they're in 8th grade, and the other end works as well. So basically I just make sure they have all the credits I want them to have, and then I launch them into the world. But my oldest daughter kind of had a gap year where she was at home still doing dual credit. I counted the high school-related classes for high school, and then she went off to college. ACT or SAT? Um, my brain just died because I won't give y'all the name of this program. Hey McKenzie, what's the name of the SAT program we're using? College Prep Genius. So you can have your kids do SAT prep at home. Now I'll tell you, they don't want to do it, and I still may send them and pay for them to go to a college prep class because I have to stay on them to do it, and it's the last thing they do. They say, but it's for you. I'm like, what? What are you telling me, that what you're going to do for your science teacher, you're not going to give me the the same, the same respect? No. I mean, they'll do it because I make them, but they're not excited to do things for Mom. So that's a great option, but I'm having to push them through it and it's killing me. Uh, okay, let's see here. So I answered the end time question. Uh, online Facebook groups can help with supportive resources. And, um, oh, Lee Benz is the person who helped me write the script. The Home Scholar. Scholar. Lee, L-E-E, Binz, B-I-N-Z. The Home Scholar. What do I recommend for kids who like to play all day, teacher? Work and wiggle time. Dance in the morning, give them playtime after lunch. You gotta let them work their wiggles out. And my boys, we went through a season— I haven't done it recently, I probably need to do it again— well, when they started getting sluggish, I'm like, go outside, go outside Run, drum up, drum up the stuff. Um, because, you know, we fall asleep. I fall asleep in church. I fell asleep at work. I fell asleep in class. So it is what it is. But I do think that when they're younger, they do have a need to burn off steam. We always had a trampoline. I know some of y'all may not like that, but we did it, and it was a sanity saver. But I also, again, made sure that my kids could play by themselves. Uh, puzzles. Uh, I, I spent— where people were buying toys for their kids, I didn't buy toys. I bought puzzles. I bought educational things. I bought, um, like magnet— like, build this shape, look at this picture and put shapes on this picture to make— I mean, like, I should do a whole thing on just like manipulatives. I kept them busy. I also— we did for a while— there's this thing called Work Boxes. It was designed by a special needs mom, and basically she just had one of those plastic drawers that you can buy from a hobby store, and she had them numbered. And so the kid had to go through the numbers. And for kids who need to stay on task, it's helpful. But in the first box, first box, she may put a workbook. The second box, she may put a puzzle. The third box, she may put a snack. The fourth box, she may put a piece of paper that said, go outside and play basketball. So she just like let them be totally independent, but she planned that out in advance. And I tried that. It worked great when my kids were small, but then after a while it was too much to plan and I just let that go. Work boxes is great for small kids just because they get excited about seeing what's in their box that day, but that means every night you've got to come and load the boxes. Oops, what did I just do? I think I just got rid of y'all. Let me get back to you. Okay, I have too many tabs open on my computer. Priscilla and I homeschooled together when we lived next door to each other. Then she sent her kids to a university model school where the big kids go Monday, Wednesday, Friday, the little kids go Tuesday, Thursday, and on the days when they're home they're homeschooled. Now she's got— she's even changed her situation since then. So we did it when we lived next door to each other. We did certain subjects together. We did Bible separately, math separately, independent work separately. We came together for the core where we did history and, uh, history and English together. Screen time, well, it's always a work in progress. Right now they're not doing screens during the week, but on the weekend. When they were little, other kids came home and had homework. My kids didn't have any homework, so they had screen time like, you know, an hour a day because you earned it and you still have time to play outside. But right now we're in a season where it's— we need to pull back. We need to pull back for a lot of reasons, but one of those just being they have other things they need to do. And, you know, screen addiction is the thing, and I'm just like, you will not be. So in addition to all the other books you have to read for school, you still have to read for pleasure. It is what it is. Okay, uh, All right, learning never stops. You're right, Lauren, and it doesn't stop for your kids, nor does it stop for you. Um, yes, so RCB said it's extra studying, but it helps when they're in the circle of friends. I want to say that part of me sending them to a co-op, especially as they get older, or sending them to dual credit, is a certain amount of wrestling with information. There's a— there are— there's There's a trivium. It's a classical form of education where they say, you know, when they're younger, they're in a certain stage. They're in a parroting stage. Teach them, repeat it, you know, memorize their times tables, learn all the prepositions: above, about, aboard, about, after, along, against, across. We've learned all that. You don't need to know why it is and what you need it for. Just learn it. Okay, there's that stage. When they're in the 8 to 12, 13 stage, it's called the dialectic stage. They're starting to want to understand why things are. They start arguing with you. When they're in the high school school, then it's rhetorical stage. They need to be able to provide a basis for what they know. That's why you write the papers and there's argumentative essays and speeches. So there are stages of learning, and when they're at that dialectic rhetorical stage, they need to wrestle with it. So when they're talking about something controversial, my kids don't want to wrestle with me, they want to wrestle with their peers and have opinions. So a part of me outsourcing things is because, yeah, they can argue with me, but— and I know a lot of people who homeschool their kids all the way and never do anything extra. But that's a part of our reason for letting them go out and stretch their wings a little bit. Um, thoughts on reclassifying your kids? I think when you homeschool in Texas anyway, you just do whatever works. I mean, that's my opinion about that. I think— but my thing is not to give them an extra year for sports. My thing is if they need the extra year, give it to them for life. They're not gonna miss whatever they're going to learn when they're 18 or 19. They would probably be glad they learned when they're 25, because as far as I'm concerned— and I've told my kids— from the ages of 15 to 25, you make the dumbest decisions ever that wreak havoc on the rest of your life because you think you know it all and you don't. How do I assist with their virtual school while caring for twin infants? Well, I think that nap time is golden. I think when your infants are napping, I think you have to say, okay, this is the time, this is the time when I check their work, this is the time when if we have to talk about something, you have to Strategic. Don't try to do a whole lot of stuff when your twins are up. But I will say that I did a lot of things with my boys at the island, at the kitchen island, when I had a third one in a high chair with finger paint or blueberries, frozen blueberries, or whatever. I had them both sitting right there with their worksheets, and I would put some blueberries on the high chair and then say, no, no, no, that H, you need to straighten that up, or the slant is not correct. And then I put some more blueberries on the high chair, and then I'd go around and look over them and say, okay, nope, these are the ones that I need you to redo. While I'm cooking dinner, bring me your math. Okay, what's the problem? Tell me. Okay, hold on one second. There's a lot of multitasking, which is why I still have my lunch sitting here. Okay, so you look for those pockets, but for blocks of time, use nap time and teach your twins how to play by themselves. My goodness, they have each other. Um, okay, let's see here. I want to make sure I get as many as I can. For a special needs child Okay, it depends on the special need. My middle son's special need was verbal communication. He had a mixed expressive receptive disorder, and we did all the therapy, took him to see the specialist, and help for him was he needed to watch TV. Like, that was literally a tip that we got. He's gonna learn language by getting as much language as he can. So we let him watch the same shows over and over and over again, and he learned what language meant it by watching the TV and how they use the language. Like sometimes if he would want milk, he would say— I'd say, do you want milk? Vroom, vroom, let's go! But he was communicating. And so our special needs help came from therapists who taught me what to do at home. She also said, you're going to want to teach phonics. He's a right-brain kid. Don't teach him phonetically. He's going to struggle to put things together. Teach him whole language. Whole language. And every educator— a lot of educators right now will say whole language is bad, but for that son, whole language was great. We took words on 3x5 cards and posted them all over the house. That's how he learned to read. Then we went back into phonics, and when I realized that I needed to teach him phonics, I went to the homeschool book fair and said, what programs would be not super babyish that will teach phonics to my older son? And we ended up buying a curriculum from some Mennonites. So all the examples were wagons and nails and cows and, you know, but it worked. So you have to know what your kid needs. And I would defer to your school system to having them tested. Uh, you know, Google special needs testing Dallas if that's where you are, but you know, you have to be an advocate for your kid. And the school system served us well. My middle son did speech at the school system wherever we were. Wore until he was in the 5th grade. And we were so blessed by every single person who did. But when he was also 6 months old, we had early childhood therapy come to our home. When he wasn't moving his arm, they exercised his arm in my home. So you've got to ask your doctor, what are the resources available for me if I have a special needs kid? Because there are a lot of resources out there. At the Homeschool Book Fair, I learned great lessons from people who were there just for special needs kids. Okay, okay, answer that. Dual credit colleges. Well, we just do the one that's in our area because the great thing about the Dallas area is the dual credit colleges are free. The kids go to school for free. I buy their books, the ones that are— buy their books. Now I also only let them go on the campus for their classes because they're there with high school— with college-age kids and adults. They go to their classes and they come home. And when I start them out on the dual credit program, I initially do online classes so they can get used to the Blackboard and the, you know, all the things that they have to do to be online, the pacing, the communication. Then I send them to class. I broke that rule with my 9th grader though. He's the only one that's gone in the 9th grade, but he asked to go. So easy classes. He's doing Adobe Illustrator and basic 2D design. They don't do— we don't do history or English until they're seniors because I don't want— I want to be— I want to make sure I can give them a worldview that I approve of as long as I can. Math, it's objective. Biology, we don't believe in evolution, they got that. So those things we do, um, but history and English and your ideas, I still want to have a bubble of ideas because you're going to be out of it when you go to college. Now that said, Both Sunlight and My Father's World challenge the bubble thinking, so they are getting the wrestling, but I, I— that's our preference, so I'll just say that. Work boxes during the summer are wonderful. Hooked on Phonics, that's a great suggestion. Classical Conversations, we tried it, it did not work for us. It did not work for us for two reasons. My youngest son was not a fit— I mean, my middle son, the special need one, was not a fit for that scenario. It's really hard to have him cooped up up in a room for 3 hours with other kids trying to stay on schedule and get all the things done. Um, and if it didn't work for him, it didn't work for us. But I actually signed up to teach and everything. I still have Classical Conversations books, books in my school closet, and I still have— when they had memory CDs, I bought them all. And my youngest son still does them. When we were doing U.S. history, he got the Classical Conversations CD, and in 1492, Columbus sailed the first of 4 ships to— I mean, the whole songs. We all that, but we didn't actually do it because it didn't work for our family. The co-op that I'm a member of right now, that I'm a part of, I get to drop my kids off, and that's what I need as a woman who has to work. Okay, how do you deal with discipline problems? Well, in middle school, well, you just have to know what, what'll hurt them. So at this stage of the game, technology hurts them. Not being able to hang out with their friends, it hurts them. You just got to hit them where it hurts and make sure you— it makes a mark. That's it. So for my kids, it's always video games, it's always turning off the stuff, it's all— I mean, it's just fun. They want to have fun. So, and sometimes I hold the punishment. So I'll tell them, you're going to get in trouble for that. I don't even know how because I don't even know what to take, but when something comes, it'll probably be the next thing that you want to do that gets picking. I mean, that's just the worst, but it works. Um, let's see here. Okay, all right. What grade do you recommend dual credit classes? All right, I'll answer this one, and I think, I think we're good. I think I've like given y'all enough, and, uh, hopefully it's enough to get you going. Um, my kids always started in the 10th grade, but my youngest, my middle son, asked, he said, can I go in 9th grade? And I said, actually, I think you can. And he wanted to go, so he's now started. My— he's taking those two design, graphic design classes. My oldest son is taking speech on campus, trig and plane on campus, and he's taking Japanese online. I told him, I can't help you with Japanese. I encourage all my kids to take Spanish Spanish, because I can help you with Spanish. We own Rosetta Stone. We can do it for free, for goodness sake. But he's really interested in Japanese. Well, he's 16. He wants to do it. I said okay. Yes. Some other questions: your kids can take part in sporting activities. You want a get started curriculum, I highly recommend Sunlight or My Father's World. How do I juggle ministry and homeschool? I've told you that I have help, um, for parents who work full-time. Them. The lady who was the homeschool administrator at our dual credit college homeschooled her kids. They were older. She let them sleep in late, and then she told them, by the time I get home, this is what you have to have done. And then she checked their work and reviewed their things with them in the evening. It's possible. It's hard, but it is possible. Uh, there was a lady who opened up a Marble Slab ice cream shop up the street from us. In the back room, her kids were always there with laptops doing their schoolwork. And that— she wanted to homeschool them, and that was the way she could do it, was to have them doing all of their classes, uh, either virtually or DVD-instructed. If you want to homeschool, you can figure out a way. You may have to work, you may have to look, you may have to dig, you have to ask questions, join Facebook groups. Google on the internet is your friend. But if you want to do it, you absolutely, absolutely can. Um, what all do you do to bring in— oh, I write and I speak. I, I, I, I'm— I have a lot of jobs. I'm an author. I'm a speaker. I travel and speak. I write books. I put out a lot of content, and I also have a small role at my church. I have always been busy, but in this season of my life, due to just a lot of health issues in our home, I have to work. And that's what I do to make money. I have a lot of friends who do a lot of things. They virtual— they do virtual assistant jobs from home. They watch other people's kids. Me. When I wanted to have my kids go to the co-op and couldn't afford it, I taught a class. I taught Write Shop because I liked it. My daughter was supposed to be in it, and then she said, Mom, I really don't want to take writing from you. But I still taught it, and my check— I literally got my check and handed it over to the other teachers. So, um, let's see, last few questions. Will you send out an email with the resources you provided? You know what, I will. I will have an intern We have interns. I'll have one of them listen and just list the things that I said, and then hopefully later I will organize it and make it a little bit better. Um, my frustration during lessons— I've been known to disappear, tell my kids we need a minute, we take a break. I've been known to send a kid upstairs who was having meltdowns, you need a nap, go take a nap. And that's my youngest, and he hates taking a nap. But it gives us a break. I have to tell the kids all the time to leave each other alone. I mean, you know, it is what it is, but you learn how to navigate it. What books do you recommend for 16-year-old boys, spiritual and non-spiritual? Hey Trey, can you bring me The False Prince, the one that you really liked? I mean, I let him read The Hunger Games, he loved it. Okay, well, whoever has it, can you bring it real quick? In Texas, Naturally Peachy, the students do not have to take state testing, but you have to check your state. Struggling reader on level. Okay, so that's a great one. McKenzie, what's the name of the reading thing that we use for Kanan and Joel, like, that took them through the different Literature and stuff? No, the book like where we, we tore out the pages last year. Reading Detective, that's a great one for struggling readers. But my MO is, oh my gosh, for struggling readers, read. Thank you. This book, so Hunger Games, I let my oldest son read. This book recommends the best books, so much so that he was like, can we get the sequel? My boy who hates reading wanted to read the sequel. So this is a great book for boys. But listen, if you just get the Sunlight list, just go on to Sunlight, look at the descriptions, go online, look at the Amazon reviews, and pick a few to get from your library. Just start reading. Um, but struggling readers, it's not so much— there are absolutely things that struggling readers need. Like you need to know if your kid is dyslexic or dysgraphic. You need to know there are some challenges there. But that said, for most of our kids, they just might not be ready. And so reading more with them and, um, parallel reading— you read a page, I read a page. Don't be afraid of the books with pictures. Um, you'd be surprised. 100 Easy Lessons, though, was great, and we enjoyed teaching our kids to read with that. But for kids who are a little older who need some help reading Detective is great also. Um, okay, I don't know about the best program for a child with ADD and dyslexia, Chrystal. I do know that I have for sure two kids who are ADD, and the best thing for that is just breaking things up in small pieces and giving them a curriculum that is helpful for their attentiveness, meaning the pages aren't dry, that there are some pictures, that you make it interesting. And I don't read all the books. Sometimes it's like, we don't have time to read that. I get the book on tape from the library or my audible.com membership, and we all listen to it over lunch so we can all eat. Oh, I just answered your question, Cynthia. Sometimes I read to the kids because I like putting some excitement in there. But y'all, some of these Audible books are great. They're like— they have sound effects and everything. Um, we have read a series, um, Kingdom. Y'all, what's the name of the series that we read all the books? Kingdom What? Kingdom Dawn, Kingdom Hope. They're not answering me now, but there's a series. Oh God, I'm gonna look at it. I'm gonna look for it. Kingdom Dawn, because there's a whole series and it's an allegory for, uh, spiritual things. It's wonderful. And, um, Christian guy, the Kingdom Series, volumes 1 through 6. The author is Chuck Black. That is awesome, either to read aloud out loud or to read to your kids. It's great. We listened to it, and even my husband was like, so we're gonna pick back up with that audiobook we were listening to? Your kids will love what you love if y'all engage together, and you will begin to love the things your kids love when you engage together. Homeschooling for us, all it has been is the opportunity to learn together, for me to learn them them and to cater their education as much as I can for them, and for them to learn according to their learning styles and according to delight-directed learning. Uh, delight-directed learning, that's a term that Marilyn Houshaw— if I spell her name correctly— uh, is my internet not working? Hold on, it's coming. Marilyn Houshaw, okay, she wrote a series of books about how to have homeschooling not be homeschooling but being life schooling. You can go to Marilyn Howshall, H-O-W-S-H-A-L-L, .com. Her ideas are life-changing. It's like, yeah, homeschooling is hard and mothering is hard, but there should be joy. You should look for joy in your kids and you should look for joy in you. Um, sometimes you just shut it down and you go see a movie. Sometimes you just shut it down and get on a train and go downtown and explore your city. I mean, like, they're learning. And if you're, as an adult, have learned to be a lifelong learner, so will your kids. Doesn't mean you have to know everything, but it means that as a mom or as a dad, that you have the ability to find what you don't need or what you don't have that your kids need and give it to your kids. You don't have to know everything, you don't have to have everything, you just have to be willing to be an advocate for the knowledge and growth of your child's mind and their character. And there's so many resources that I wish you should see my school closet. I have literally a whole deep closet with materials, and I probably told you about 1/20th of what's in there. But I hope it's enough to get you started, and I hope this has been helpful. Um, Natural Miss Hazel said, I reached out to you on Instagram about homeschooling her ADHD ADHD son, and she's now using Alpha Omega— oh, Alpha— I can't talk— Alpha Omega. She's so thankful for homeschooling. Kingdom Series by Chuck Black, TR. Be an advocate for your child's growth. Okay, y'all, 90 minutes. This is like a lot, but hopefully you've gotten something out of it. Feel free to send me your questions. I will save them for the next one, or maybe here and there, maybe I'll just add a little something at the bottom of my emails for you homeschool moms, or for you moms who want to learn how you can be a greater part of your kids' educational journey, even if they're in public or private school, charter school. Uh, I love education. I love learning. I always have. And the ability to teach my kids or arrange the environment and the structure for their learning is my privilege. I don't even teach any— everything now, but I'm basically their counselor and and their, and their guide with how I structure. Somebody invited me to speak in Seattle, and guess what's in Seattle? Nintendo. I think I'm taking my kids to Nintendo because it's educational. And why not? Why not let them ask all the people that work at Nintendo, what, what was your degree in? How did you get this job? It's education. It's occupational learning, occupational career education, career and occupational education. Have enough hours that, it's a credit, at least a half a semester. Listen, everything is learning. And once you begin to see the world that way, whether you homeschool or whether you don't, it will allow you to create experiences in books or, or out in the world that add to their lifelong exposure. Here's the goal. The goal is you want to develop the gift in your child. You want to give them the tools. They got to know math, they got to get the algebra, they got to learn how to study, they gotta— yeah. But once you get given the tools. As a parent, whatever schooling opportunity you choose, how can you expose them and develop the gifts that you see so that by the time they go off to college, they have a greater awareness of who they are and what they want to do with this world? And there's a great opportunity in homeschooling to do that. All right, y'all, I'll talk to you later. I gotta go make sure my kids actually did what they were supposed to do today. Bye.