166: Homeschooling While WFH with Kathryn Haydon

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Before we dive into this episode where I interview my friend Kathryn Hayden on all the questions I've ever wanted to know about homeschooling. In the event that that's helpful for you too. I had just finished recording with her when I saw a couple hours later an article in the New York Times Opinion section called I Refuse to Run a Coronavirus Homeschool by Jenny Weiner, who is an Associate professor of Educational Leadership. For those of you who are feeling tremendous stress with working from home and you don't want to buy in or you don't have time, or you don't have the energy or the mental space to all of a sudden start the most uber creative homeschool regimen right now, this article and this position on it may be for you. The caption at the top of the article says maybe this is the perfect time to call a timeout on the academic rat race and I'll read you a little excerpt right from the intro. She says. Thanks to the coronavirus, my third grade twins are home all day for the foreseeable future. I am not going to recreate school for them. Judge me all you want out of respect for their amazing teachers. I'm making a good faith effort to get my kids to do the work that's been sent home, but that does not come anywhere close to filling what would have been a school day after accomplishing the bare minimum. The agenda is to survive and watch too much tv. We are eating cookies and carbs and hoping for the best. We are loving one another and trying not to go insane. When we got the call that our schools were closing, I knew I'd start seeing social media posts with homeschooling schedules, an amazing and quite labor intensive for adults activities for children. I want to send a message to parents and in particular to working moms who will inevitably take on most of this home labor along with working remotely. This is going to be messy and that is okay. That's as much as the excerpt I'll read for now, but I just wanted to offer that up. I am genuinely curious about homeschooling and I'm so grateful to Catherine and all the resources she shared. And even my incredible attorney Francine Love made this amazing list of homeschooling and educational resources for kids that I'll also link to in the show notes. We have a ton of great resources and links in the show notes and creative ideas in this conversation. And yet if you are just maxed out and tapped out right now, I thought this would have really seemed like a breath of fresh air. And it takes us back to what Lindsay said from the Greater Seattle area in episode 162 that part of managing this time is releasing the pressure on ourselves to have a Pinterest worthy pandemic or something that looks so curated and amazing. Whether it's from homeschooling to what you're eating, to what you're doing together as a family and how it all looks, it is a roller coaster hour by hour and wherever you fall in the homeschooling spectrum in general. And then right now, I hope that this episode can be a resource for you at some point and I will link to this article. I refuse to run a coronavirus homeschool in case some of you are just feeling completely overwhelmed and don't have it in you to implement all these creative ideas at the moment. With that, let's get into today's show. What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

I am thrilled to be here today with Pivot Insider member and dear friend Katherine Hayden. I've been mentioning her on many of the recent episodes. She is a truly brilliant, warm, kind and creative person and a Pivot Podcast success story. Katherine listened to the episode with Rohit Bhargava from December 2017. Become a trend curator. It's episode 75. She ended up reaching out to him and next thing you know, his imprint, Non Obvious Guides, was publishing her book, the Non Obvious Guide to being More Creative no matter where you work. Over the past decade, Katherine has written four books, several hundred articles, taught and trained thousands of kids, educators and business people, all while working from home and homeschooling her son while her husband worked long hours at the office and on weekends. This podcast came about in true serendipity, both of Our favorite thing, she was on the recent Pivot Insider Q and A call and somebody was calling in, actually Lindsay, who you heard on episode 162 from the Greater Seattle area, who got a head start on having the kids be sent home from school. And Katherine said, I homeschooled for a long time. She's like, I have a ton of resources on that. I never thought I would talk about it publicly, but what. Why don't I throw something together? So she has a course now and we're here on this podcast to hear her tips, best practices and lessons learned the hard way. Katherine, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Jenny. It's always a joy to be with you and I just love being in your community.

Well, thank you. Right back at ya. You think a lot about creativity. What is your reaction to all of this that's going on? And what, what's your take through the lens of creativity on how we can navigate this crisis?

Well, it's interesting you would use that exact word. What's your reaction? Because did you know that reactive and creative have the exact same letters?

No, I did not know that. That's so cool. But they seem like opposites in a way.

Exactly. And I love to talk about the fact that when we're thinking and doing our highest level of thinking and problem solving, we put the C back in its right place in the word reactive. So we move the C to the front and it becomes creative. And really.

Many people might think about creativity and think, wait, creativity? Why do you need that at this particular time or in general? And the thing is, creativity really is misunderstood. It's not necessarily about art, it includes art, but it is problem solving. It is our highest level of thinking, our highest level of mental functioning, said psychologist E. Paul Torrens. And when we are able to tap into, nurture and use our creativity, we. We are able to navigate rapid change and changing circumstances and be able to do that without getting stuck or pulled under or paralyzed.

And how do you think that's particularly helpful during this time? I know you shared a really interesting reframe question or inquiry on our Pivot Insider call.

Yes, I think that the first thing I love to think about is possibility. So.

When we are faced with a crisis, a challenge, things change. We're not going in the direction where we expected. I love to use this structure and it's what I call a possibility question. And that comes from this term, possibility thinking from a British researcher named Anna Craft. She talked about this idea of possibility thinking. How do we think differently? And I riffed on that and created possibility questions. And how you create a possibility question is you state your problem. And maybe your problem is, gosh, I am really afraid right now. I don't know where my business is going. And you can simply use the little question asking stem how might or what might be all the ways to state your to turn your problem into a possibility question. So I would say what might be all the ways to be less afraid or what might be all the ways to think about new income sources or think about how I can serve differently.

I love that. I love that. So what might be all the ways to have kids attending school from home, or maybe schools haven't even gotten that far yet and working from home. That is the topic of today's conversation. So I want to start by asking you to that end, how did you decide to homeschool? And what do you wish you had known when you started?

So I decided to homeschool kind of by default. I didn't really set. I never set out to do it. We were moving across the country, and my son was very young, and I thought, oh, well, we'll just move and he'll jump into a school and all will be great. And we had moved kind of in the middle of the fall, so schools had started, and I couldn't find just the right place for him and for his particular style. And at that time, we had just moved to New York. And as we were looking at different schools, we by default started going on field trips and learning things at home and exploring and getting to know our new community, using New York City as a resource, primarily seeing all the historic sites around. And I thought this actually works out pretty well. This is a pretty great way to be at this point in time. And he has gone to school at different points, but really our main approach has been to homeschool.

And what's something, looking back on your years of homeschooling that you wish you had known when you started?

I think I would have liked support on how to create a schedule. That's probably. I'm not a schedule person, but kids really thrive on schedules oftentimes, and it creates a structure and a set of expectations. So if I had known sort of how to structure a day and also to know that I didn't have to create school like school is. So when you're in a different setting learning, it can look different. And there are many different opportunities to learn that you may not expect or you may not have thought of. When you're thinking in terms of a.

School model what are some of your favorite things that you did that bust out of the typical school paradigm?

Well, there's a think tank that I love and it's called knowledgeworks and we can put it in the show notes. This particular infographic that KnowledgeWorks has produced over time. They do a lot of studies on the future of learning and on the future of what school looks like. And I remember looking at this graphic when it first came out, it might have been five or more years ago. And I looked at it and I thought, wow, this is exactly how homeschooling looks today. And it's a very dynamic, almost mind map. Putting the learner in the center and then connecting with the community with different people, online courses, resources, nonprofits.

All different outputs and inputs. And this is how they predict the future of learning. Because now we have the technology and the tools and different flexibilities to individualize curriculum and experience for a child's need. And they call it the learning playlist. They say each child eventually, in this kind of future of school model, will have his or her own individual learning playlist of skills they need to learn and resources that they have and people that they connect with. And I think that concept is my favorite thought when I think about homeschooling. So many people think of it as parents sitting around by themselves with their kids around a table kind of alone, but it's completely the opposite under normal circumstances. I understand that right now, during this particular time, it actually probably does look a little bit like that. But in typical homeschooling, it's actually quite dynamic, innovative. You're out in the community, you're connecting with a lot of people and just that whole model. I like envisioning it that way.

Absolutely. I was thinking about that, that one of the joys of homeschooling would be all the field trips and outings. And yet right now, at least with so many people being told to self isolate, that's not possible. Although I have to share just yesterday, my brilliant, beautiful sister in law and she gave me permission to share this. But I got an email from her to the extended family called Jill's mom, Tesori. She and my brother live in San francisco and my two nieces are 4 and 2. A little older now, a little older than that. But she wrote to us and she said, I wanted to see if any of you have any interest in being a guest lecture for us via FaceTime. You can read a book, tell a story, sing songs, teach them to meditate, or do a yoga sequence or other movement or literally anything else you can imagine or want to do. Typically, the best time of day for us is between 9 and 12 and the lesson could be 10 minutes or up to 30 minutes. And then today she reported back, we're doing botany with Bob, that's their grandpa, one of their grandpas on Jill's side. And he's going to teach over FaceTime about plants. And then next week travels with grandma. So my mom is going to talk about traveling to Tanzania. It's just so cool. And I'll probably do a lecture on personal finance because believe it or not, I used to teach for Junior Achievement.

No, so did I. Yeah, I taught.

Five year olds personal finance. Is that what age group you worked with?

Yeah, I worked for the Junior Achievement chapter where I recruited volunteers and I taught elementary students.

But yeah, I had so much fun. They have the cutest lesson plans and it's like just wrapping one's mind around how do I teach? And I remember going into this classroom of five year olds and saying, okay kids, what's a need versus a want? And then having them raise their hand, you know, what do you need? Clothes, shoes, whatever. And then what do you want? And it was just, it can be so simple, but teach these fundamental concepts. So I think it is kind of fun as an adult. And I love that Jill's doing mom tesori. So I can think, what would I lecture, what would I guest lecture on?

And I'm about jumping out of my chair saying, yes, yes, Jill, that's exactly it. Because even under these circumstances, we can expand our idea of what is community, what is learning. And just in the last couple days, I have nieces about the same age, just about one year older each. And my son has been doing online zoom lessons with them and it's been wonderful. And it's such a great way to connect when people's schedules are basically stopped. So there is open time to be able to connect that way.

That gave me an idea that is actually just as rewarding for your son to be involved because he received homeschooling in a way, and now he gets to teach it. And even someone maybe four is a touch young, but you never know, four or five year old might be engaged. How could you teach your younger sibling something? And I always joke when I give pivot keynotes that because I ask people, what did you love to do when you were a kid? And I loved to teach my brother what I was learning. I wanted him to be ahead in school. So I would make worksheets for him to Fill out him and his friends and I would, we would play school kind of whether they liked it or not. Like, sometimes he was excited and sometimes not. And then I have everyone in the room with me and I go, what you're doing right now is not that different. I made a worksheet and you're here filling it out. You know, like, I love that it's fun to teach at any age.

Well, and I did something similar where I babysat a lot. And I would create a custom backpack that I'd bring to each babysitting client. So I'd design different lessons and things like that. And that's what I've been doing for practically my whole career after I got out of banking.

That is so cool. Yeah. I had a babysitting club. Babysitters Inc. Started it when I was 11. We had flyers, magnets, business cards, a binder, worksheets, like templates that we'd have the parent fill out about their kid.

Oh, I love that.

We'd even have post babysitting night templates that we would say, what did we do? What do we play? What do they like? Not like. And now I think about momentum and the Pivot toolkit and all these resources. It's like just an online binder of the same vein.

That is so you too, you had the systems, you had the systems around it.

I guess so. So here's my question, especially now.

I talked on a recent Pivot webinar that we're all getting pivoted right now. Let's be, let's just say it. We are getting pivoted in various ways by this pandemic. And especially parents who have kids at home, they didn't choose to work from home and have their kids from home. And especially parents whose kids are not quite self sufficient. So I'm thinking probably younger than high school age. So they're getting pivoted multiple ways. They're working from home, they're trying to stay focused, their family's around, everyone's isolated, going a little stir crazy. And meanwhile, they're also trying to fold in their child's schoolwork and school schedule or in the absence of the school having that plan yet the parent needs to fill in. So how on earth do you juggle your own work with your child's school and schedule when they're not yet totally self sufficient?

I'm not gonna lie, it's hard. It is very hard. And especially very hard when it kind of slaps you in the, in the time of total uncertainty and the rules of Life have completely changed for this temporary period of time, and that is very, very difficult. But there are things that you can do, and I think the biggest is to get in the type of mindset that will allow you to thrive and not only just survive, but to thrive. Because there are some silver linings to it that we can find. And if we can shift our mindset to see things differently, it's less of a sort of everything crashing into one another. And what I mean by that, I think the biggest mindset shift, and I alluded to it earlier, but it's that when you think about school, and for that matter, when you think about work, kids are at school for what, six hours a day perhaps, and maybe longer if they have activities, depending on the age. But it's generally said that in that six hours, or however long it is, there are about three and a half hours of formal academic instruction or fewer. So when you are all of a sudden faced with your kids learning at home, your expectation should not be, oh my gosh, if my kids aren't engaged in formal academics for six hours straight, they are going to get behind, they are going to fail, they're never going to college, and all that sort of spiral of, of fear because really they don't need that. So much of school and so much of life is what I call learning in the margins. And at school you have transition times, you have recess times, you have other times when you're navigating life and.

Doing different things. You have your commute, you have homework, you have wake up times. So there are a lot of different times that are built into a school day that aren't actually doing academic work. So if we can identify that once our kids are home and say, okay, so we have all these things that they used to be engaged in that was extra time to actually say academic learning, how can we take advantage of that freed up time? And then how can we look at the other extras that might happen at home and make sure we account for that and maybe take advantage of it rather than kind of whittle it away.

You are creating, you've already created a course. And I just love how quickly you're moving with this because you've realized how needed it is right now. And in the description to the course, which of course we'll put in the show notes, you say that your husband was working a lot of the time that you were homeschooling. And even on weekends, what do you do on days where you are just so frazzled or your patience is so thin? And probably at the same time, your child is like being more rebellious than ever. That's what I always. When I envision homeschooling, I can see so much good and creativity that can happen and freedom and personal choice from the kids. And then I can also just picture that pulling your hair out scenario that often gets depicted, I have to say, in modern TV shows of like the frazzled mom, but times 10, if you're trying to homeschool. So what do you do on the days where, let's say, your chemistry just isn't jiving from parent to child to teacher to student?

I think you let go of expectations and you really give yourself that. That gift of grace to say.

It doesn't all have to go as I expected today. And I think, especially in this time, one of the things that's very interesting is that when kids move from being in traditional school all day into homeschool by choice, usually they are advised by other homeschoolers to take some time to deschool D e school, take some time to really just don't throw yourself into a whole schedule of academics and just schedule up your time right away. Just stop, kind of get into the mode, shift your mindset, start to feel how things might be different, start to feel the rhythm of things and what you might be able to create from around your own family's lifestyle. And that takes a lot of the burden off. And that kind of time of deschooling helps people move into a different kind of mentality and a mentality of, okay, what are all the ways we are going to learn that may not be even possible when you're in school and maybe an opportunity here? So I think that you kind of asked.

A big question because it was kind of a simple question, but it goes back to the mentality and the expectations you put on yourself. And some days just aren't going to be productive, and that's okay. And one of the things is just to.

One thing that I really advise people, and especially moms when they are homeschooling, is to find their own time. They have to have their own time. And really everybody in the house needs to have their own space and have some kind of ground rules that respects that space. So if I need some alone time, I have a place to go. Even if you're in a tiny studio apartment, Jenny, I know when you guys were before you moved.

You can have your little, you know, a corner of the apartment or just, you know, pillows and blankets up against a piece of furniture. It doesn't matter how much space, Just that there's space that each person can go to be alone and to fizz and to kind of take a personal time out. And I think that's really important to get your own individual time, especially on a crazy day, just, you know, kind of agree to disagree, agree to kind of move and kind of fizz and just not try to accomplish whatever you were getting upset about.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it's also going with the energy, so. And that your kids need their own space and time too. Here's a two part question and this is one's kind of basic, which is let's say people are a little bit. Now in a wild west of curriculum, is there a core curriculum that homeschoolers work off of or some known go to set of core curriculum by age or by grade, let's say. And then for so many parents who are working from home and didn't already plan on homeschooling, I can imagine in the business world we have quarterly targets, objectives and key results. We have annual goals. We have all kinds of ways that we measure our progress toward those business objectives. What about with homeschooling? Is there a way that you measure your progress? How do you know you're on track? Or do you just go free for all and just figure everything is learning, it's all good?

Well, I think all of the above. So every homeschooler has a different philosophy of learning. Usually they're guided by their state's mandates. So in New York, for example, we report quarterly on different subjects that are mandated to teach. And how you achieve teaching those subjects is up to you. You might be enrolled in a class, you might go to a historic site and do some deep learning there in an independent study. Some people do what's called unschooling where they don't really. They kind of follow their children's interests and don't really kind of pre structure learning. So there are lots of different ways and different learning ways work for different people. And it's interesting because homeschooling itself is a different way of learning that works for some people and works great for some kids. And for some kids, they love the structure of school. So I think that when first of all looking at homeschooling, it's important to see that there's really no judgment as to what works for you versus what works for me. Because kids have very different learning styles, families have different styles, and I've never done unschooling or. But a lot of people that I know do. And they love it. And their kids are learning and they are diving into it and loving it and even more advanced than their grade level based on this style. So there really isn't a comparison across the board, which goes to answer your question, that there's really not a core curriculum that homeschoolers use. There are different philosophies, different pockets of people, but usually people are using different resources from different places. That said, they may be using their state standards as a guide, they may be using other kind of standards that are put out there as a guide if their states don't have particular mandates. So there isn't one place for people to go. And I think in this case.

And this is most people that are listening are probably going to be temporarily homeschooling. Some of their schools are putting out online learning for several hours a day. Some schools are giving worksheet packets. Some schools aren't doing anything. There's a wide range of what schools are doing, so each family would have to sort of build it around what their school is doing.

But they probably will think, well, that's not enough. And the great approach would be to allow your child to do some real meaningful learning and to use their interests, their strengths, their curiosities to really explore and learn in ways that may be unexpected. So I think that is a good piece of advice for especially temporary homeschooling. I'm a fan of following interests no matter what, but especially right now.

And there's probably a lot of stress around families and kids and so allow them to enjoy learning and to discover new ways that they can enjoy learning.

I have such a big smile on my face. I just love. You're so right. And oh, my goodness, there's so many gems in what you just said. I'm going to work backward, starting with build on their strengths and their interests. And it's so true that everyone is under so much added stress right now that to let your kids have fun and enjoy this time and start with what they love the most, to build the structure and build the habits, is so beautiful. When you talked about unschooling, you reminded me there was a longtime Pivot community member. Her name is Laure. She's in France, who first enlightened me to the ways of unschooling. And she's all in and has been for years. So I'm going to have to reach out to her. Or if you're listening, let's get in touch. It'd be fun to do a podcast, but I love the idea. So the whole concept of unschooling and even my understanding of Montessori principles of allowing the children to be leaders in a way and follow their own energy, their own interests, and their own approach to learning and even what activity comes next. Do you have any best practices for that in terms of, you know, at a range of ages? How do you do that in a practical sense? How do you sort of honor the child as in charge of their own learning?

I think I can answer that, maybe to resonate with people from what I've done for a long time with families. Another thing that I did before I did my pivot about, I don't know what it is five years ago where I'd very much focus on corporate trainings. I worked with families, especially kids who weren't thriving in school. And.

This was for a variety of reasons, but I would bring them through this process. And I still do it to some degree. If someone kind of knows of what I can do, I'll definitely still do it, but it's sort of more of a secret. But I'll bring them through what I call an interest inventory to identify things that they love. We've designed an interest inventory at Sparkativity that's really quite different, that gets at the way you like to learn things and the way you like to create.

Then we have another one. The precursor to Sparkativity was Ignite Creative Learning Studio. And I actually had a think tank, a laboratory, where we were figuring out the best practices in drawing out people's full learning. So from a kid standpoint, or people's full contribution from an adult work standpoint. And we actually had a space and ran classes and developed best practices and a lot of curriculum. And so part of this is that we'll put out another inventory of different kind of intriguing classes, like the art and design of math or World War II strategy through games. And that will give the kids a list of potential classes and say, well, what classes would you like to take? And that way we'll get another insight into what they like. Then we'll do a strength spotter. And this I actually have free on my website, so we can put it in the show notes@sparkativity.com.

Strengths Spotter. And this is a tool that parents can use to find their child's creative strengths. So a creative strength might be sense of humor or independence. So once you gather all this information about their interests in how they like to approach things, their interests of different topics, and then their interest in and then their particular strengths, you can Start to see, okay, if I see a resource out there, does that match any one of those categories for my child? Or you're looking for resources. You know, your kid has a great sense of humor and you think, okay, there are tons of resources being offered right now, I'm overwhelmed by them. But my child loves, has a great sense of humor. So I'm going to choose resources that tap into that, that are fun, funny, maybe, you know, have a sense of hum built in. So that is one way to navigate that and to put kids in charge. But I have found that they need input because they don't necessarily know what their interests are unless they have models. So it might be also doing it as I described or just putting a lot of things in front of them and seeing what they gravitate toward.

I love that, giving them choices. And the inventory sounds so cool. I can't wait to check that out. The interest inventory. And yes, I'll put all these links in the show notes as well as the link to Katherine's homeschooling course, Fresh off the block.

And Jenny, another tip for little kids. This is a really good tip.

We want all the tips.

So teachers have a great approach. Teachers in their early grades and very early in my career, I taught Spanish to preschoolers and I taught second grade. And we use the center's approach. And the center's approach is that you set up different stations around your home and there are things that kids can do independently. You might think of it in terms of craft projects or, I don't know, my sister was just doing with her little kids during this time, money sorting. So just taking that jar of spare change and having the kids sort them and then teaching them what values they have. But you might just have a few different areas around the house of interest based activities that kids can do for very little kids. It might be a bucket of.

I don't know, cotton balls with little toys hidden in the bucket of cotton balls so they can kind of excavate and take them out. It might be very, very simple things, just.

I don't know, magnetic poetry, words on a fridge that they can come and kind of explore or.

A set of blocks or just some little intriguing material that they've never seen before that they might like to take a look at.

This is the coolest thing I've heard. I just, I love it. I keep saying I love it, I love it, but I really do. This is so tactile. And it's funny because I just Yesterday recorded the 25 favorite tips for working from home. And my number one tip, my first two things that came to mind or first three were separate your devices. For me, each device has a different function and I really don't cross those boundaries. I never open my laptop if I'm not doing work. So when I close my laptop, I close my business brain or at least I try my best. And I designate rooms of my house. So even when Michael and I lived in the studio, it was one room. We had no bedroom door, there was a walk in closet and there was a bathroom and a little micro mini kitchen. But I would never bring my laptop across the half of the room that crossed the floor to ceiling bookshelf into the quote bedroom. And I wouldn't, I tried not to bring my laptop to the couch even though it was, we're talking 10ft away. So this is kind of the flip of that, which, which is so cool of setting up stations around the house so that kids can associate a shift in their mind. Okay, now I love the money sorting idea. Like okay, maybe not now with all the germ phobia, but we're, we're going to come over here and learn math in this part of the house and math related activities or tactile projects. Okay, great. We're going to shift over here now. We're going to shift over here. I know Jill, she, she has a nature walk. She wrote a schedule. It's like a nature walk, nap time, single subject activity, snack time and probably each of those things, even reading a book together. Meditation, breathing and movement. Like she is so amazing. I really tell her all the time, I won the lottery. We just won the lottery the day my brother met her and married her. But I love that she outlined all these activities and then you could just take it. How fun would it be for the kids that you shift? You're like, let's go into the library now. And even if it's just a cross section, the or everybody stands up and rotates one seat to the, to the left, you know, just to give that physical indication. Okay, we're moving on now.

Exactly, exactly. And the idea too to have non real time items that maybe are a little different from the norm that kids can explore. So if you have to pop on a work call, because that's the other issue here, everybody's trying to balance and teams are even having more meetings to try to stay connected during this time. And so that puts another pressure on parents who are trying to be on these meetings with their kids.

Right in the background.

Yeah, you mentioned something important there, which is asynchronous learning. So even listening to this podcast is asynchronous because we're recording it at a certain time, but it's not live. You're all listening asynchronously. It's not happening in real time. So that's a great point of planning for those meetings that you have to make as a parent and then figuring out what are. That. What's that. That asynchronous learning. And. And I think we're talking about two different things as well, because either the school or you, the parent, may assign or, you know, give some guidance on what to do. But what you're describing, Catherine, is even on the spot or discovery learning, like things that are sort of sitting around. And then what I love about that is it draws the kids in to that. So there's a curiosity, there's a choice to say, let me move closer to that. What is that thing? And I can't help but draw the parallel to puppy training. Yeah, I see him go over and be like, what is that thing? You know, he'll even come in my room and be like, what? And of course, it's all the stuff I don't want him to put in his mouth. But if it's something he's never seen or smelled or touched or tried to eat before, he's gonna go check it out. That's just how he works.

Yes, yes, exactly. And so anything like that, I remember a long time ago putting out, like, beans, bags of beans with little toys in them that you can find. And it was probably around a theme. What other types of. Just any type of found material or item. Kids gravitate toward things that they haven't seen. Obviously, they have to be safe if they're little kids, but there are many possibilities with that. Also, my sister has been having a theme each day, so I think she had fashion show one day because her daughter was really interested in sewing. And so they learned how to sew something very simple and made a fashion show. And then one day it was farm animals. So they did a lot of very.

Simple activities around farm animals, including go to your toys, look through all your toys, and find all the farm animals that you can. Simple, right?

That's great. What have been some of your. Okay, now I have two more questions. They're coming to me in twos today. I don't know why, but some of your favorite resources just. Just go to central resources that you would go to when you felt like you're out of ideas. And then similarly, with all the consulting you've done over the years and even informally with families who are homeschooling. What have been some of the most creative things? You've shared so many already, but what have been some of your favorite out of the box approaches and also your Go to resources.

Okay, so some great resources. I love this site called Birdseed tv. It's by R D S E E D tv. And this is a colleague of mine that I worked with in California. And he was an amazing teacher for.

Advanced fifth graders. I think that was his specialty. But he has created this Birdseed TV site with really robust online projects that kids can do. And right now he's got a lot of his videos up for free, so we can put that in the show notes. And there's also a subscription service. But this is something to help teachers actually bring in kind of hands on learning for early finishers in grades three through six. But they're amazing for all kids. I've created over the years, I've created a couple of videos for him and I just find the quality is very good. They're really deep thinking, really interesting approaches to subjects. So very similar to what I used to do at Ignite Creative Learning Studio. So that is a really good resource. And so many of these resources are being offered for free right now, which is great. Another interesting resource for math, this is more of a book series. I don't know if they have what they have online right now, but it's called Life of Fred and it's quite an interesting approach to math through a story. And this could be something fun to read with kids if you're able to order the books or maybe they have some samples online. Life of Fred, there's another interesting math program called Beast Academy and I know they're offering right now some free puzzle pages. And Beast Academy is a math curriculum written kind of in graphics. So it's written in.

Like comic strips, but it's very deep and quite advanced. So that's an interesting take on math. There is.

An interesting resource that's being offered for free now. I think it might always be free. It's called storylineonline.net and it's geared towards ages K through 5. And they are offering. They have their storytellers, storytellers reading children's books. And there seem to be hundreds on this site. So you can actually like right now our libraries are closed where I live and you can't get books out at the library. So parents who want to access books for their kids can actually get someone to read Online. And that's another way to have an interesting story hour while you grab a quick break.

These are awesome.

Yeah, those are some. I mean, there are tons out there. And I've been trying to curate some in this course just to help filter through because there are just so many. And it's really amazing to see all these companies being so generous and just jumping in and helping and saying, hey, we've got this resource for you. We have it up.

That reminds me of language learning came to mind. There's an app called Italki. It A L K I. I'll put this in the show notes where you can actually have a call live with someone across the planet. And it's very inexpensive. So there's of course, duolingo for language learning. But Italki is great because they either charge money or I think there's a barter system. And if they charge, it's really not very much at all. I think some people are $8 for half an hour, let's say. But when I was trying to learn Arabic, I remember setting up a session or two.

And then I ended up finding a local, another Skype tutor. But Italki is great. And there was this one company that pitched on Shark Tank. I don't even think they got funded. I can't remember. And now I. I don't know how I'll find the name. Maybe one of you listening will know where. I think they were sending a learning kit once a month. It was a subscription service for a learning kid that would be tailored for the age. And of course this would be if you had any additional resources to put toward this, which I realized during this time, many people don't. But that seems like a great idea, too. Some kind of a subscription service. If someone's not already doing this, now's the time.

Yes, exactly. And I know that one. I just ordered it for my nieces for Christmas and I can't think of what it is, but we used to get it too, and it has it for all ages. We'll figure it out and we'll put it in the show notes.

This has been so helpful. I'm wondering what we're missing. What haven't I thought to ask you or what message Just given all these families that are thrown into this wild world of learning and working from home and trying to do it all simultaneously, what would you offer to them or say.

I think maybe the topic we haven't talked too much about is balancing work. And. And that is probably key that I should share about because.

That'S the hard layer to layer in, right? Because if you are solely dedicated to homeschooling, it's still a lot, in a lot of ways. But the thing is, when you choose to permanently learn at home, it's a totally different schedule, it's a different lifestyle. Some people say to me, well, I just get into fights with my kids when they just to help them do their homework, I could never homeschool them. And that may be true and that you would get into fights with homework. But there are some reasons why that's different than homeschooling. When a child brings home homework, they're bringing home to a new context, something they were doing in their other context and they may need help with it. But you don't have the background, you haven't built up the trust around that topic. You don't have the history to really work with them on it. So it sets it up for kind of friction because it's not really something you're directing. You haven't set it up. So you really don't have.

The same.

Not power, power is not the right word, but the same authority that the teacher does to help. But when you decide to homeschool, there's a whole different dynamic, there's a whole different family dynamic. That is probably not what people are experiencing right now, because right now it is sort of a mingling of many worlds and trying to fit traditional schedules on top of untraditional schedules. So that is something really important to keep in mind that this is a very unprecedented time and experience.

And it might feel very, very, very hard, but backing away from that, just trying to focus on your priorities. I love Cal Newport and his concept of deep work. And something that I advise people is to identify their deep, most high focus tasks that they have to do each day where they cannot be interrupted by and then build their schedule around that. And it might mean getting up early, it might mean staying up very late, it might mean doing something that you're not used to in terms of your own schedule and finding a different high productivity work time for yourself. But if you can at least prioritize.

Those top things that you have to do and find time for yourself when your house is, is at a lower activity level, you will take so much stress off of yourself because then you know, okay, the other tasks you can do, you can do while people are interrupting you or you know, there's energy around or you're multitasking. So I think that is extremely important to keep in mind.

Perfect. And I'll link to the deep work episode I did with Cal in the show notes.

You, when you were talking, it occurred to me, I wonder how many parents, when all this is said and done, I wonder how many workers, maybe not even just parents, how many workers will say, I don't want to go back into an office. You know, like, I'm either going to work remotely or pivot and. And just realize how. How much better that rhythm suits them and their sanity and their humanity and their circadian rhythms. And of course, some will be dying to get back to the office.

Yes.

Can't wait. And then I wonder how many families will have some breakthrough around. Oh, my goodness, we can do this. And we love homeschooling, and we're gonna pivot into homeschooling now. It'd be so interesting that everyone's going through this simultaneous collective experiment.

It is. And I think that one of the things that can be very helpful for people is to have we talked at the beginning about creativity and to really use some creativity principles to help them go through. So that idea of turning problems into possibilities. So using every time you encounter a challenge, use this with your kids. This is what I teach corporate teams, but we can use it with kids. Everything in the science of creativity, when we're talking about design thinking, creative problem solving, we can apply across the board. And this is a perfect application for it. Again, so you state your problem, okay, what might be all the ways to overcome that or to move toward a different outcome? So that's one another is to create a vision for yourself. And the words that I use for that is, it would be great if. It would be great if today we could find something that our entire family enjoys doing together in our home. Maybe that's the vision for today. And how might we approach that? How might we do that? When you can learn creative problem solving process tools to be able to apply with your kids, that again, changes the dynamic because then these tools are designed for collaboration. They're designed for team productivity and teamwork and harmony while you're getting things done. And so if you can apply those with your kids and you say a brainstorming tool to think about how you're going to structure your day or what new activities you might want to do, what new ways of learning. If you can use these kind of second nature, it brings a structure and it really functions the same way as you might on a business team when you're trying to together leverage the team's strengths and solve a problem or come up with a new opportunity.

Speaking of Structure. The one thing I forgot to ask you and you kind of mentioned it when you said unschooling or deschooling. Sorry, this was deschooling. About how many hours a day did you spend when you were homeschooling? And because I know for me I've had to decorporate and unhook from the typical five day work week and nine to six or whatever the hours are, and only work out before or after work. I don't listen to any of that anymore. But it took time to sort of deprogram myself. When it comes from deschooling. What should people expect in terms of about how much of the day is viable or reasonable or helpful? You know, there may be a point of diminishing returns with homeschooling in a way that it would not be so in the classroom. Although how many of us were so bored sitting in one square room to the next all day long in our own school, factory school system?

Well, and I think that again, it's very individual. So it's. And it depends how you structure your entire life and sort of how you take advantage of learning in the margins and doing different things as part of life where you're learning. So it's not like some homeschoolers might spend an hour a day doing what we think of as formal academic learning. So maybe an online course or an in person course in normal times, maybe studying a textbook or whatever. Maybe they'll do an hour, maybe they'll do three. It depends on the age, it depends on what they're doing. I think now again, it's directed by schools. If your kids are in school and the schools might have a particular guidance or level of instruction that they are providing online. But I think that as a rule of thumb.

The kind of school.

Associations say about three and a half hours of academic learning is happening in schools per day. I don't think that is necessarily needed unless your school is providing that. I think there's so many different points of learning. Maybe if it's a high schooler they are doing more because they have a lot that they've been given. But if it's a younger child, there's so much possibility, like all these learning possibilities that we've talked about for middle school and teenagers. There are a lot of life skills that kids are too busy to learn these days because their activities just are so filling their days. They don't necessarily learn how to cook or how to budget or how to do yard work. So any of those life skills are wonderful. To focus on right now and they can help the family move forward. Because when you have everybody on under one roof, the house gets messier. There are more people to feed, there are more chores to do during the day. So spreading all those out among the entire family is very important so one person doesn't get saddled with it all.

Do you remember home EC class? Did you have that?

I did. I remember making an ice cream shaped pillow on the sewing machine.

My gosh. Yeah. We were cooking, we were sewing. So home ec, now's the time if everyone has to stay home, it's Home ec. There's a home EC module I'm sensing. But I love, love, love this idea of looking at life skills and helping the whole family move forward. And you're absolutely right that learning is part of life and that so much of learning happens in the margins. And I love that perspective to give everybody a little relief as well that there's just so much. I mean, I remember in seventh grade or six, sixth grade, I had a typing class. And I remember, I think my mom got me Software typing with Ms. Maven, whatever her name was, had to do with Maven. And it was so fun. I loved it. Even now one day Michael and I raced each other. We went to typingtest.net or something. There are so many fun little games and we have the Internet at our fingertips. Even things that you, the parent, don't have enough depth of expertise or knowledge in. Like if I tried to keep teach my child calculus, oh, that'd be a disaster. But now we have so many resources, Khan Academy and the like YouTube, Udemy, it's, there's a lot out there. So Katherine, thank you so much. Not to mention your course. Before we wrap up, can you tell us a little bit about the course that you've just created and launched?

Sure. Well, the course is called Work from home with kids and Thrive. And it's based on the work that I've done been doing with families for a long time, especially before my pivot and so many resources.

I turned it from a private kind of coaching course into an online course that is self paced. And there's another option for organizations that is an interactive workbook. So they can basically license the workbook to send out to families. I have schools ordering it for their families now to just help them and support them. And businesses have been ordering it for their employees. They're finding that there's a lot of advice out there on how to work from home. But that kid layer is the layer that people really don't know how to add in. And so this course that I created has 10 learning units and it takes you through some of the topics I mentioned. So how to create, get that mindset shift, how to structure that private space alone space for yourself, how to prioritize and optimize your time. I have scheduling tools so that people can work through really a creative problem solving process approach to scheduling. It's quite complicated actually when you have to deal with everybody's.

Work schedules and learning schedules and at home and space and being quiet in the house. And so there's a process for that that makes it less stressful and breaks it down. Then something, a whole unit about learning in the margins and it talks about what we talked about, about interest and how do we find these natural learning in the margins opportunities with the resources that we have.

It gives more support on figuring out how to learn beyond screens. We talk about how screens are a very necessary, needed part of learning. But how do we then go past screens? Because we don't just want our kids to be having to sit in front of a computer like many of us do the whole day.

That's true. Get me away from this thing. No, just kidding.

Yeah, that's true. So there are all different tools and I've tried to make it as simple as possible, but as interactive as possible. So parents can do this quickly. They can in the online course watch the videos and do the activities themselves to kind of plan and structure their day. If they have older kids, they can use these older meaning even elementary school kids, even very young kids can do some of these activities and they're designed for that. So these can be kind of fill in activities that you do with your family to actually set up your structure to have a successful work at home, learn at home situation. So it's kind of multi layered from that standpoint. So that these then set you up with tools that then you can use if you go back to work, your kids go back to school after this situation is over. This will set you up for sick days and for vacation days when again you have to work from home and you've got kids. So. So it's just, it really is.

A joy to be able to share this. And I'll tell you, it does go back to Pivot Jenny, because when we were on that Pivot insider call and Lindsay was so just like, oh my gosh, our schools have closed and we don't know what to do. I just, it touched me to the core of my being to say I've got the resources for this I can help and I can help a lot of people by just shifting a little bit how this is presented. So I'm grateful that we had that call and that her.

Just her sharing could spark me to think in this direction and to be able to reach out in that way.

Me too. It was so cool to see that interaction and just that is it. It's what I refer to in Momentum as brilliant spidering. Just what do you need? How can we exchange the information that we have and in the moment? Real time REM response. It's also, you're such a great example of. I Talked in episode 146 about rapid prototyping a course. You already had all the content, but you were so quick to put it together, get it out there. And I think part of that comes from your passion and your deep desire to serve during this time and to just see that you had this vast set of experience and even material and be able to pivot a little from what you were previously focusing on. To say let me get this out there now and then. It's amazing to hear that companies are licensing this. Schools are licensing. I didn't even think about businesses sending this out as a resource for their employees. But that is so brilliant. Tell people where can they go to learn more about the course and sign up if they want to take it.

So they can go to my website. So it's sparkativity.com so there are three eyes in Sparkativity S P A R K I T I V I T Y and we have a menu item. It's sparkativity.com.

Thrive.

Is that the one that is the free resource? Yes. We'll do the Thrive for the free resource for your listeners and then that will link up to the page. I'll put a link on there for sure.

Okay, great.

But the workshop is called if they go to the menu Work from Home and Thrive.

I love it. I love it. Katherine, this has been so fascinating and helpful and interesting. I just love hearing about this side of you and your work and your home and work life. It's. It's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing. And is there anything else you want to say as we close out?

I just want to say that what, what we talked about just now about Pivot Insider and rapid prototyping and this came from that question that we were asking on the call. In what ways we were using that possibility question again. What might be all the ways I can serve during this time? How might I be of service? And that brings us full circle to why we desperately need creative thinking in the time of a crisis. Because when we are able to maintain our ability to ask those kinds of questions, we don't get stuck and we can keep moving forward. And we may be concerned, we may be cautious, we may be worried, but we're not paralyzed because we're able to maintain this productive thinking that helps us to help our neighbors, helps us to help others, helps us to reach out and think of different ways of doing it. So creativity really is such a superpower for us to use as helpers during this time, and we can use it with our family, with our work, and just in the world at large.

So well said. And I'm glad you brought up that topic from our call of how can I serve? Because I have to just say figuring out how I can serve, it's the one thing keeping me sane. Like doing all these podcasts is my reprieve. It's the one thing I can directly do every day or as often as a topic comes to me. So thank you so much Katherine for being my guest. It was not that long ago that we all this started going down and you just jumped at it so quickly. And to be here with us. Thank you so much. And if you want to find Kathryn and get in touch and learn more again, it's sparkativity.com and I'll put all the links in the show notes@pivotmethod.com podcast thank you so much.

Thank you Jenny.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the insider scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.

Sa.