Intro to Homeschooling with Eric Ries, Monique Scott and Manisha Snoyer

Okay. It is so great to see you all today. Nearly 700 people signed up for this workshop, which is incredible. So you are definitely not alone in this process you're going through of deciding if you want to homeschool. How does homeschool. And you should definitely know there's a large community of other families who are going to be homeschooling with you that you can connect with and rely on for support. So I know that everyone here today has come for a variety of different reasons. Some of you are concerned about the way distance learning is happening in your school. Other of you are worried that your child might get sick at school. Some of you are excited about teaching your children from home. So whatever the reason you've come here today, if you're just kind of playing with the idea of homeschooling or have already started, you are very welcome, and we're really happy that you're here. So, first of all, I just wanted to acknowledge that a lot of people are coming here today because they're scared and they're worried, but there are a lot of really wonderful and exciting things about homeschooling. So I was a teacher for 15 years. I taught in public school and private school. I was a private tutor. I taught at some really, really elite private schools, and I also taught at some really struggling schools. I taught at risk students, students with special needs. And what I witnessed in my experience was really an education system that was broken at many levels, that wasn't providing a personalized learning experience for children, that wasn't addressing special needs, and what wasn't succeeding in building a diverse and inclusive community. And I discovered this amazing movement of families who are going outside the traditional education system and designing an education system that worked for their own child. And I was really amazed to discover this homeschooling community. I kind of had thought about homeschooling as something where a parent sits at a table with their child for seven hours and teaches them math and reading and science. But in fact, I discovered a community where kids were out in the world, going to museums, playing, directing their own learning, taking science classes, learning about marine biology with marine biologists, and really led a very vibrant and rich social life, doing skill shares with other families, starting playgroups and learning groups. And I just became really fascinated by this movement about five years ago. So I'm really excited to share it with you today. There are so many benefits to teaching your children from home. You can personalize their learning. You can have a greater role in their learning. So much research shows that a parent being involved in their child's education has almost more impact on their learning and their success in life than any other factor. And it's just there's so many wonderful things that you can do when you've made this decision to learn from home. So today I'm going to briefly go over the kind of main concerns that parents have when they're homeschooling. First of all, just how to get started from a legal and regulations point of view. Then learning and curriculum, child care, how do you homeschool if you have a full time job or if you're a single parent or if you're really on a shoestring budget. And then we're going to talk a little bit about, about support. So just to kind of dive into getting started very simply, every state has different regulations regarding homeschooling. The best way to find the regulations in your state is to go to the Department of Education website. There is. Usually it involves signing up as a homeschooler at the Department of Education website or sending in a letter of intent to your school. And, and in addition to the doe, I sent this in the email before the workshop. There's a really great new startup called Primer and they have a navigator where you can look up the regulations state by state in every state and figure out how to get started. And I'll send you that link after the workshop as well. So just getting started. Secondly, I want to talk about learning. So the great news about learning from home is that it really only takes about one to two hours a day. When you start to think about doing learning from home. What's really important to keep in mind is that it's very different than learning in a classroom setting. So when I was a teacher, I taught. I usually got to school at 8:30 and I left around 3. A lot of the time that I spent in class was managing behavior, teaching all the kids the same assignment, and making sure that everybody was at the same level. But when you're homeschooling, your child is doing one on one instruction. So they're able to move forward a lot more quickly than they would in a group setting. Either you're teaching them, a tutor is teaching them, or they're studying independently. And we often refer to this concept as mastery learning. So children are learning at their own rate. They master one concept before they move on to the next and they can move as quickly as they need. So mastery learning is a really important kind of phrase to keep in mind as you think about homeschooling. Because you'll see that in some ways you could almost compare homeschooling to homework where a child is studying a subject maybe one or two hours a day. So when you're thinking about curriculum, also great news here. There are so many wonderful curriculum available for families who are homeschooling. They are mastery based, which I just discussed, meaning that you move forward at the rate that you're ready to move forward. They are personalized. There's curriculum for every learning style. You don't have to be a teacher to teach them. You don't need any prep time and a lot of the tools kids can use independently. A wonderful example of this is Khan Academy. If you haven't discovered it already, it's 100% free. It covers every single subject. It's personalized. And you can give your child Khan Academy and be assured that, that they're going to be learning at all of the standards that are required for state learning and more. And there are many other curriculum like that. I sent you an. Oh, I'm just going to mute. Okay, we got to mute it. So there's, there's a lot of really wonderful curriculum available and we can go into each of those in more detail, but they're project based, they are personalized. There are programs for children with special needs, for gifted students. This movement of homeschooling has been going on for a long time. So teachers have the opportunity to create really wonderful curriculum for you. The other thing I wanted to address is that you don't necessarily have to choose a curriculum, even though there are really great ones available. Some families decide to unschool. What unschooling means is that you basically don't teach your children at all. And they can do whatever they want, whether that's playing Minecraft all day or watching videos on YouTube about how to learn French or reading books. It's not a method that necessarily works for every child, but it does work for a lot of children. There's a really famous book that came out. I think it's called Unschooled, about a woman who, her parents didn't teach her at all. And whenever she wanted to learn something, they would say, go down to the basement and find a book. They had a huge library of books and she went on to to study at Oxford. So again, I'm not saying that's the best approach for every child. Research shows that having some structure to your homeschool curriculum is good with little cohorts of homeschoolers they've tested. In general, homeschoolers perform at level or above their peers, with students with just a bit of structure performing higher than their peers. So unschooling is totally an option. And another option is self directed learning, similar to unschooling. But this is where your child is really taking the lead in their learning. And Monique can talk a little bit more about this, but they'll say they want to learn about a subject and so you find resources to support them. And then another thing, I feel like I'm glossing a little bit about over self directed learning, but we'll return to it. But it's really incredible what a child can learn from when they understand why they're learning it. And they're the ones that chose to learn about this subject. And self directed learning, children just have this incredible innate desire to learn. Sometimes it takes. Sometimes you kind of have to step away for a while and let them be bored and frustrated before they figure out what they want to learn. But they will come around and learn. So self directed learning is. It's really good, beautiful thing when it happens. And then some parents, rather than having a general curriculum with math, reading, social studies, all the core subjects, might choose just to focus on math and reading and handwriting, because they find that with those tools of knowing basic math, knowing how to read, knowing how to write, that's enough to let them explore other subjects freely. So those are just a couple different approaches. And you can absolutely choose a homeschooling curriculum that's very easy to follow. You don't have to be a teacher. You can sit back and relax and make sure that your child will be ready to go back to school if that's what you want. And if you have a caregiver, there's lots of curriculum that's very easy for caregivers to follow. So that's just a small overview of curriculum. I feel like we could do a whole other workshop on just that topic. But it's a really fun one and there's just so much available to support you. So next I want to talk about child care. So before we get into this topic, I do want to say that I personally feel very strongly that we should have universal, free child care. And parents are really struggling right now to get their child care needs met. But when we think about homeschooling, it's useful to separate this idea of child care education in our minds, because they're kind of two separate problems. Your child really only needs one or two hours a day of instruction. You don't need to be sitting with them every day teaching them, but your child does. You can't just leave them at home alone. They do need an adult present to be safe to interact with. So I think that in thinking about childcare, sometimes it's good to try to remember what it was like for you when your child was in preschool. It's a very similar situation to homeschooling. So when you were in preschool, you kind of had to think about creative options for childcare. So just like preschool, with homeschooling, if you're able to, maybe you have one stay at home parent, that's a wonderful option if it's something that's possible for you. Being able to teach your child and be involved in their children's learning is my dream job personally. But it's just not possible for most people. If you can afford it, you can hire a caregiver. A caregiver can absolutely help support your child's learning. You can do a childcare swap with another family. You can. There's lots of different options for how to do child care. So, you know, sharing a caregiver with a group of other families is also a good option. Another thing to consider, it's a little bit more radical, but you can try to find a job that better supports homeschooling. There's flexible and remote work options that are available to you. Starting your own business, teaching English online. There's lots of jobs that are kind of better suitable to homeschooling parents. So that's a little bit about child care and then social interaction. So this is a really crazy topic because socialization in the homeschooling world was so different before this crisis. If you think about a homeschooler pre social distancing, this is what a day might look like. On Mondays, they spend four hours in the park playing with their homeschooling friends of all ages. On Tuesday, they might meet up with 10 other families. And every time that we have, every time they meet, a different parent teaches something that they're passionate about and they have this great skill share going on. On Wednesdays everybody goes to the museum. On Thursdays you might take a theater class or a science class after school. And on Fridays everybody might go out on a hike. So a lot of homeschoolers lead very, very vibrant social lives. Right now homeschoolers are really suffering as much as everybody else in that they don't have that incredible, incredible social experience that they had before social distancing. So when you think about socialization because it's so important to help our children Build healthy social interactions. And we all want them to make friends and just be able to collaborate with a group of people. So there's a couple things that you can do that seem to work relatively well in quarantine. First of all, don't underestimate your relationship with your own child. If you're able to build a great relationship with your child, your child will know how to build great relationships with other people. So really focus on that component first and don't underestimate how important it is that's your child's first social relationship. Then there's also relationships with siblings. If they have them, you can nurture those. Another possibility is making friends with one family who's also social distancing. We often think about socialization as happening in a huge, huge group of kids. But really building a relationship with one friend can be just as great for learning socialization as learning it in a big group. And then this one is a little wild to most families, but you can actually build meaningful social relationships online. I think that a lot of people have a very negative view of online socialization because of the way distance learning has been happening. People have naturally had a lot of difficulty adjusting to this medium. And kids are spending a lot of time being lectured at and not a lot of time engaging. But, you know, I know a lot of kids who face time every day with their friends. We've been running social learning groups every day, and we usually start with a prompt for connection. Children share their feelings. We might do a scavenger hunt. And I often spend three or four hours a day talking to a kid online. It's really fun and really meaningful. So think about innovative ways to connect online. Step outside the box, do it differently, Keep exploring that as a possibility. And then. So the last thing I just wanted to talk about is support. You are definitely not in this alone. There's a ton of homeschool specialists that are out there. Almost any homeschooling parent that I know is always happy to talk to other families for free. There's a really great online community called C Homeschoolers that is all secular homeschooling families. There's about 30,000 of them. I found almost all of my best curriculum ideas there. You can also, one of the ways I think is the best to connect with other homeschoolers is just to look on Facebook for local homeschool groups or even local parenting groups and say, hey, I have a seven year old. We'd love to make a friend. Or I have a question. Would anyone be willing to talk to me. And if all that fails, we're here for you. I am always happy to talk to anyone who wants support with homeschooling. I've learned a lot over the last couple years. And really, if you have any questions at all, I think you all have my email. I'm happy to talk anytime. So we're all here for you. I think Monique and Eric feel the same, that if anyone needs help, it's just a joy and a privilege for us to help you figure out how to design your child's education. So that was a lot of information, but thank you for listening. And I really believe strongly in interactive learning, so I want to leave a lot of room for questions. But first of all, I wanted to introduce my wonderful colleague Monique Scott, who founded Freebrook Academy, which is an incredible homeschooling community in Bed Stuy. She's really been a leader in developing innovative educational models in New York City that have influenced the entire world, in my opinion, and is now the director at Brooklyn Preschool and has been heading up their distance learning initiatives. So, Monique, is there anything that you wanted to add to what I say or introduce yourself to the group?

So I think you said a lot. I think you said a good amount and really was able to, I think, bring everything together in a nutshell. So thank you so much for that. Yeah, I think often we think about homeschooling in a way that's very isolated or siloed, and that doesn't have to be the way it is in both of the school communities that I've worked in. One building from the ground up was both of them had to do with creating that freedom that we see in homeschooling and also supporting parents. And so when you're looking in terms of homeschooling, you may find homeschool resource centers, you may find co ops, you may find groups of parents that naturally and informally want to come together. And that is something that, that is so invaluable. Right. It's something that we really do have to take into account. And so in my experience, thinking about self directed learning is something that comes to mind when thinking about homeschooling on a regular basis. And that really allows for us to think about each individual child. And I encourage people who are struggling with a given curriculum or trying to just think that things have to be the way they were for us when we were in school, when we were younger, possibly to think about following the child. Think about following your children and seeing what they're interested in and allowing them to create their own path and really having open conversations about education and thinking about what it means for you, for your child, for your family, so that everybody can be on the same page. And even in a community of learners that is not family based, those conversations are really valuable. I think Manisha mentioned making sure that the education that our children are engaged in is meaningful to them and that's powerful. And that can take the form of any subject area. It can take the form of math, science, literacy, any area. And we have to be thoughtful about it. And that means that sometimes we reach out to a fellow homeschool parent, a teacher, or someone who is willing to just sit and talk about it for a little bit. And self directed learning doesn't always have to be just a book. It can be hands on. And so I have seen young people decide that they really want to go into mechanics or they want to work on building a plane. I have seen students create E bikes from scratch, Starting with a regular bike and figuring out what motor, what type of wheels to use, that level of interest, that level of investment, and that level of self challenge is something that doesn't just come from a book. And so when we are thinking about homeschooling, especially self directed homeschooling, all of that space is there and that freedom to have a high level of challenge is really there. As Manisha stated earlier, many homeschool students are actually able to test a little bit higher than other students who are in private schools and public schools. And so it's just something to give thought to. One thing that wasn't mentioned earlier is just the thought of thinking about culture and thinking about social change and thinking about current events when we're thinking about homeschooling. And I think that concept is easier outside of this pandemic state that we're in at the moment. But it's still something that's possible now. And so when young people are learning, when young people are in existence, it's not different than you and I, right? We live in a world where we see what's going on here and there, we see media, we are engaged in media in various ways. And so having discussions around finding the narrative, having discussions about what's truly going on here, having discussions about finding factual evidence, and then allowing young people to take charge in something that they're passionate about, which might be the environment, might be animals, might be fundraising for a dog shelter or something of that nature. And that really allows for young people to have a more interdisciplinary look at their own passions and their move forward their educational path that they can create on their own. The resources that have been listed in the chat, the resources that Manisha have spoke to all can be rolled into self directed learning. When those conversations of, okay, well, do we feel like we need to gain more math skills? Yes. And this is the reason why. Okay, so what type of learning makes sense for us, our household and our students, our children? And children usually can speak to. Well, I'm a hands on learner or I like to listen to podcasts, or I like to watch YouTube videos and I learn really well from that. Having those ongoing conversations and being mindful of what we can hold as parents in the home is helpful and productive. So I just want to be able to say all of that. I don't think there's anything else for me right at the tip of my tongue. But Manisha, if there's anything that you think that I could share a little bit more, please let me know.

I think that was awesome. Monique. I would love to know if anybody has any questions based on all of the information we've just shared with you. You can either put it in the chat or if you want, raise your hand. There's a little button where you can raise your hand and we can call on you. Okay. Wow. I don't see any questions, which is pretty wild. Maybe. Eric, thank you so much for being here today. Eric is a collaborator of mine and a homeschooling dad to two children. Eric, I would love to hear a little bit more about why you decided to homeschool. I know it's not something you had been thinking about for a long time before you decided to do it and maybe address a little bit a question a lot that comes up a lot, which is, how do you homeschool siblings? I know you have two children.

Yeah, thanks. And thanks everybody for being here. Yeah, our kids are 6 and 3. So we made the decision to start homeschooling when our oldest would have gone into kindergarten. So we're relatively new at it. But we started, you know, six months before the pandemic. So that turned out to be pretty good, pretty good timing. And it's not something we had ever previously considered. But as we were looking at school options for kindergarten, we just couldn't really fathom why it made sense to have kids learn in a classroom environment. And we couldn't find a classroom environment that felt really humane and properly scaled to the kids. And at the same time, we were doing a lot of reading about education and schools and trying to research the best we were Rigorously researching the wrong questions. So really trying to understand what is the best classroom, what are the best schools, what, what's proven to have the best educational outcomes. And if you spend time with the education research, it's just really clear that things like mastery learning, one on one instruction, the bond between parents and kids, like, there's just incredible evidence that that's a superior way for kids to learn much more in line with the history of how kids have learned in the past. And I kind of couldn't believe it. So then we spent a lot of time meeting homeschooling and non homeschooling families and trying to really feel our way into it. And we decided that we would try it for kindergarten. So we're not ideological homeschoolers. We're not, you know, she's not doing this for religious reasons or for some other reason. And then, you know, we were able to build a really amazing kindergarten year for, for our oldest. And then once we were doing that and that was going well, it made sense really for our younger child also kind of to join into that rather than to do preschool as our older, older child had done. And so, yeah, I mean, we both work, we're both very involved in the design of the homeschooling program and the actual teaching day to day, and of course, happy to share, share about the details of that. I feel like, for me, the biggest question I had when I considered this, and I certainly have talked to, I don't know how many hundreds of families now who have been forced into homeschooling by the school closures was just like, it just seemed too good to be true. So, like, how could it be? How is it possible that you could get such great educational and social outcomes in a form that, to me anyway, feels like less actually less work, less stress, and less expense than doing it in a school setting? So, yeah, that's. That's been our experience.

Wonderful. So Nicole asked a really important question which I think is on a lot of people's minds, which is that what do you do if. Would you recommend following the curriculum that a school is using so that the children are ready to go back to school. School. If they want to go back to school. So that's kind of a complex question. There's a lot of different elements to it. First of all, what we found is that it's a lot easier to move to a homeschooling environment to school often than it is to move from school to homeschooling, because homeschoolers are very autonomous learners. They're excited about learning. They're driven to understand. And teachers are often really excited to have homeschoolers come into their classroom for that reason. So, you know, once sometimes when children leave school, they can sometimes need a period of, I guess you could call detox. Some people call it deschooling. They kind of work out all of the rules and regulations they've been getting in the classroom. And definitely different schools vary in their approach. But often in a lot of schools, there's a lot of work you have to do, and you're not really told why you have to do it, but you just have to do it anyway. And homeschooling is very different than that. So it can sometimes take a little while to get used to. And, you know, I think that sometimes parents are terrified. You know, if I don't start homeschooling this week, my child's going to be behind in school. But actually, I mean, your child can miss a week, a month, even, you know, three months. They're going to be fine as adults. They're going to be fine going back to school. So you can absolutely follow your school's learning plan. A lot of the kids who are doing modulo, which is our support system for families learning from home, are actually enrolled in school and doing distance learning and using our homeschooling program as a way to support their children's learning. So that's absolutely an option. But also a lot of the homeschooling curriculum that we're going to recommend to you is aligned with state standards, so you can use that curriculum as well. And I kind of recommend it because the main reason is that schools often use very specific strategies to teach, which are really helpful if you're teaching a large group of children and training a ton of teachers to teach in the best way that you can kind of come up with for a lot of people doing something. But when you're teaching a child one on one, it's really great to choose a method that works for them, and you have the freedom to do it with a homeschooling curriculum. So I think that that's a better option for most children. So let's see what other questions that we have. Can you share how you manage? With both parents working, my kids gravitate towards screens if we are not able to pay attention due to work, et cetera. So this is something that we get all the time, and I think maybe the best way to answer it might be to describe how a child who's in our program right now is Doing this with two full time working parents. So one of her, she's five, one of her parents is a scientist and one of her parents work full time at a startup and she starts her day with a math or reading app. So I think right now she's using Math Tango, which is a really fun mastery based math game, and Teacher Monster to Read, which is a really, really fun free app that kids can use to learn how to read. And then at 10 she joins our social emotional learning group. So that's just an opportunity for her to connect with other kids, talk about what's going on in her life. We use self directed learning techniques. So if a kid is interested in learning more about. Last week we were really curious about basilisks. So we watched a few YouTube videos about basilisks and researched basilisks on Wikipedia and actually it was very exciting. One of the kids insisted that basilisks for real and I was insisting that they were legendary and indeed I was wrong. And there is such a thing as a common basilisk. So this is our kind of fun online connection. So then after her social emotional learning group, which can go two or three hours, she generally has a FaceTime with her best friend which can go on for another two hours or so. And then she participates in really incredible electives. I mean, the amount of free electives that are happening online right now from libraries, museums, teachers, just nice people, is unlimited. I looked at Red Tricycle yesterday and there were maybe 200 events just for 7am in the morning. So that's how she does her day. I mean, her parents are both at home, so that's a big deal. They're able to make sure that she's safe and they're able to pop in, you know, on the hour and say try this, try that. But she's mostly on her own and she's very social and friendly and having a great time. Another example is Monique actually homeschooled another child when she was homeschooling schooling her child. That's a really great way to do it. You can find another family who's homeschooling and they can homeschool your child as well. So it's tricky, but there are definitely ways to do it. I would suggest another approach. If you have flexible jobs, one of the things you can do, I think that sometimes what's helpful is to think about it in terms of two or three hour blocks so you can get your child started on an activity and let them know it's going to start last two or three hours and Then you have a two or three hour block to work. Hope that helps. Wow. There's so many great questions. So a lot of people are. Yeah, Monique, sure. Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry.

No, no, it's okay. I wanted to add to that, but also answer a couple of the questions that I saw. So in terms of two working parents, during this moment, when some parents are at home, one way to do is to have time where there's similar activities going on. So if there's work that is not where you're not in a meeting but you're typing, maybe that's a time where you're sitting near or with your child and you're doing something similar at the same time, there is just trust that should be thought of in terms of our children at home and trusting that they're able to find something for themselves. Because homeschooling is really often about that freedom and the ability for a young person to find their intention. Another good thing to think about are the apps, but also maybe setting some parameters for the day or intentions for the day so that the young person knows, okay, well today I want to accomplish this, this and this. And that goes for young children who are 5 as well as older students who may be 13. I have a 13 year old and a 5 year old and it works in different ways for both of them. Right. And so we know, okay, well, we might want to really do this which is not connected to academics. And I know I could really saturate my time at this, this particular activity that might not be great, might be just time on Instagram. Right. And so I need to try and do these other activities which might not be traditionally academic but beneficial, might be cooking. Right. It might be doing something else. And so I'm going to set a schedule for myself if I'm a 13 year old at home at this moment. There are also questions about having multiple children at home. And so I just want to just bring out a couple of areas where there can be support just by having multiple children. So one is not to think of it, I guess, to expand our minds and not think of it as additional work, but think of it as a community in our home. And so again, I am always talking about having some type of agreement or guidelines that you come up with together. And so if there are quiet times that are needed for some, the children, the home, to do something that they're really passionate about, whether it's music or studying on a particular topic or whatever the case is creating a space where everyone agrees, okay, well, from three to five or from 12 to two. I'm not going to interrupt my sister who's working in the living room or working in her room. Maybe we'll all have quiet time from 12 to 2 or 12 to 1. And just being able to create those guidelines for all of them and then including yourself, then also thinking about working with students and young people in our homes based on what their interests are. And this might not be something if you are following exactly the curriculum from school, from the public school your child is in, but you're also thinking of moving into homeschooling or something of that nature. This works for both. And so finding the passions and allowing our young people to share those passions in the home, which means leading a class or an activity for all of us, right? For all of the young people in the home networks, in the atmosphere where you have multiple families and an atmosphere where there are multiple children in one home. I feel like those are some questions that did come up. And then there was also a question about how much it costs to home school. And I just want to point out that I've been in situations where I didn't have a lot, but I knew that my passion was to build an educational community for people. And we were able to really operate on a shoestring budget, being really creative, using cafes, libraries, going to art exhibits, having fun in that way based on what the interest of the student happened to be, as well as a few online classes and things of that nature. There are apps and there are ways to see what math, art, young people like, because people do mention math a lot. And then when we see our young people gravitating towards one area, we can support that. That doesn't mean we have to be an expert. We can still support. We can do research together, we can learn together. And we can also find consultants. And sometimes consultants can be a little on the expensive side, but often you can find another homeschooling family that has a contact or someone nearby who can support for minimum, for barter, or for free.

And I will talk to anyone for free about their homeschooling. So you have me. We also have a hotline through our nonprofitschoolclosures.org that is staffed by homeschooling parents. So you can. I just want to put that out there. If anyone needs a free homeschooling consultant, I'm happy to chat. I want to address Maya's question. She asked, at what point or how does one determine their child is ready for promotion to the next grade level? Alternately, if we were to make the decision in the future to transition from homeschooling back to a conventional school, how would we be able to determine what grade level our children are ready for? So with regards to the question of figuring out what grade your child is at, this is again why I really recommend mastery based learning for parents. Because it allows your child to move ahead at the level they're ready. And a lot of these mastery based curriculum have placement tests. So when you get started, they can get you started at the right lesson. Khan Academy is designed that way so that you can easily figure out where you are. And what's great about homeschooling is that, you know, maybe your child is incredibly gifted at math, but really behind in reading. So should they be doing reading and math at the same level? No, that doesn't make sense. If they want to do 8th grade math and 2nd grade reading, they should be free to do that. So the idea of grades is a lot more fluid. It's really with a mastery based curriculum, it's really where you are in each subject that's important. And you're not going to be forced to relearn a concept you've already learned or, you know, be forced ahead too fast if you're not ready and then lose a chunk of information that's really important for you to understand the next concept. So when you're looking for curriculum, please, please look for this keyword, mastery based learning. I'm also going to talk about my favorite homeschooling curriculum because a lot of people are asking about that. And then the second thing is how do you determine what grade to send your child to when they go back to school? So there's a lot of great assessment software available to you. Some of it is built into the homeschooling curriculum. One of the ones that homeschooling parents I've spoken to seem to love the most is Moby Max. I just wrote that in the chat and I'll also send it out to you. But what's really great about MobiMax is that it's very holistic. It takes into account all academic subjects, and it even has curriculum so your children can work on areas that they're having difficulty with. I think that it would be useful for people for me to talk a little bit about some of my favorite curriculum. So first of all, I mentioned Khan Academy. I think if your child likes videos and if they get really excited when they get kind of, what should I say, like words of praise like, yay, you did it. Congratulations. Here Are all your stars. Khan Academy is really great. So if your child is one of those kids who gets so happy when the teacher gives them a good grade or when they do something well, and they're a real achiever, perfectionist, Khan Academy is a really great one for them. And that's totally mastery based. I love Khan Academy. It's free. They're actually launching a new platform for free tutoring. They're just doing 11th and 12th grade now, but it's going to be really incredible. So you can also get support in that way. And we also offer free tutoring through school closures.org so that one is, I guess, number one favorite. And if your child is in K through second, they have con app kids. If you're so that's the app version. And if your kid really likes video games, they're sure to love Con app kids. And you can have them work on that an hour a day and feel confident they're where they need to be in their subjects. Another one I really love, if you really don't like screen time and you want more of a nature and art based curriculum is Blossom and Root. And Blossom and Root really stands out. First of all, if you're starting a learning pod, I know a lot of people are bringing small groups together. Blossom and Root is a great curriculum to give your caregiver or facilitator to lead the group. They have daily lessons, includes math, reading, and one of the best social studies programs that I've seen. It's a very inclusive, revisionist approach to history, which is really important to a lot of parents who are homeschooling, that their children get a more multidimensional view of history that includes marginalized groups. So that one is wonderful. So if you're the kind of parent who's always running errands in your car kind of all over the place and wants to fit your homeschooling into 20 minutes here and there. Torchlight is a fantastic curriculum. It's inquiry based. So it's really encouraging children to kind of think about like, you know, oh, I have a question, Monique. Like, why is the sky blue? Okay, well, why do you think it's blue? You know, how can you find out this information rather than the sky is blue because of the molecules and reflect, you know, not direct instruction, but really encouraging questions, psychotic method. And they have podcasts you can listen to in the car. They have bedtime stories that are educational. So it really weaves in well to a parent who kind of has to fit their homeschooling in here and there. And it's also great for auditory learners. So if your child really responds well to music, if you find that they really get engaged when you're playing the radio, Torchlight could be a really great choice for you. And then Moving beyond the Page is another favorite. It's designed for gifted children. I like that one a lot. Critical thinking company. If you're a parent who cares a lot about your child performing well on tests, they're kind of geared towards helping your children test better. And it's a really solid curriculum. Time for learning is great. A little more standard, very inexpensive. But if you just want to do something kind of vanilla that hits all the bases, that's a great one. I know that I'm shouting at all these curriculum, and I did email them all to you before the meeting, and I'm going to send them all to you after the meeting. So those are. I mean, they're just so many great ones available. And those are just general curriculum. Yeah. I mean, there's also amazing math curriculum and writing curriculum and social studies, and you can take online classes and visit museums. So there's just a wealth of resources available to you.

Monique, can I say one thing about assessment?

Yes, please.

And I want to say something.

Oh, Monique.

No, you go ahead, please.

Eric, you from the expert, please.

Eric, go ahead. Monique wants you to go first. All right.

I was going to say on assessment, I heard this story from a lot of homeschooling parents, and I absolutely did not believe it until it happened to me. And take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, because, of course, my eldest is only in kindergarten. But if you've never actually read one of the official school curriculum, like assessment standards, you should actually go read it. And especially for those of us who have been doing mastery learning with our kids. And I heard this story from a lot of parents. You read the standards of, like, the supposedly rigorous school things that their kids are supposed to be, and you start laughing. You're like, that's it. That's all that the curriculum is designed to accomplish. Like, it's actually not that intimidating if you actually break it down. And I get. I did. I know a lot of you are gonna be skeptical. It doesn't seem possible. But, like, when you're teaching your child directly using mastery learning, you already know what they can and can't do. So we rarely have to use any kind of quizzes or assessments because it's extremely obvious what skills a child has already has accomplished. And if you're ever not sure. Sure, you can do a quiz about it, but we also sometimes will just work a lesson into it or even like work in a word problem related to that concept, like into story time or at any time during the day as convenient. You just. I have those kind of ideas in my head of like, what are we supposed. Trying to probe and check on? And it's not. It's just not a big deal. And because all of us were conditioned in schools, went to traditional school, we have this idea that tests are this huge and important thing. The only way you could possibly know.

And it's.

A lot of those techniques were designed because we have to assess lots of kids at the same time in a standardized way. And once you let that go, it's actually much easier than it sounds. So. I know that sounds crazy, but. But it really has been our experience so far.

Yeah, I was going to speak to that just a little bit. We have our own predisposition of what assessment means in terms of schooling and all of our standardized tests. And if we do take a step back and think about what our children need, sometimes we want them to have more than what the school is asking for. Sometimes they want more. And sometimes I often go to the show are you smarter than a fifth grader? Really, we don't use a lot of the information that we're taught when we're younger. And so it's really about what you and your family are comfortable with when thinking about assessments. I'm going to send. And Manisha probably already has it, but there are assessments. Standardized. They call them standardized, but they're assessments that are actually creative and progressive, that are used throughout the United States and accepted here in New York as well as in California and several other states that are personalized. And so before taking the assessment, and I'm talking specifically for up to 8th grade, for K through 8th grade, the student takes an assessment first just to see what traditional grade level they would fall out. Fallout for different subject areas, specifically English and math. And then after that, the company will send you packets of assessments for the particular grade levels that the child is at, regardless of their age, has nothing to do with their age. And then you. The child completes those assessments. And that is what if you are in a state where you are required to send in test scores for students who are eight or in grades four and up, Then you would send in these test scores and it's less stressful for the young person because they already know what they're getting and you've already figured out how to make sure that the test is continuing with where they're at. That means that if you have a nine year old, but they do seventh grade work, the test is making sense for them. The other thing I wanted to point out around the question of what grade does your child go to after homeschooling or how do you feel? Figure that out. Again, it's really about what you, the child and your family are comfortable with and what you see the need being. I want to tell a really quick story about my 13 year old. My 5 year old loves being free and it's a whole nother story. But my 13 year old, my daughter, she really enjoys structure. She wanted to be in a place where everyone was taking class at the same time. She still wanted challenge. She wanted to make sure she was in a space where they were discussing issues of marginalized communities and making sure that they were talking about just all that was going on and reading high level text. So she chose to go to another school after going to a free school and being homeschooled. And I'm going to send Manisha the name of the assessment program that I was mentioning earlier because I don't have it on hand right now. And what I ended up doing for her because I had the ability to do so, was marking her as being in eighth grade while she was with me in a, in a free school because she was homeschooled prior. And that means that I was able to identify what grade I was putting her in in that school. And then completely, for all of the public school data, she was thereby in 8th grade. And so she entered high school at the age of 11. I believe she's a rising junior now and she's 13. So it made sense for her, made sense for me because socially and emotionally that's what made sense for her. And academically, she had been taking algebra for years. Right. So that's what makes sense for her. And I don't know that that would make sense for everyone, but you have a lot of ability once you stop and think. You don't have to sit within the box of traditional education, public school education. You can do what's best for you, the family, as well as your children in general.

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Monique. So I wanted to let everyone know we're going to wrap up in about five minutes so Monique and Eric can return to their work and their kids. But I am going to stay on as long as people need. Last time we went on for two or three hours. So you'll be able to ask me Any questions that you want? I do want to address a question that Dr. Maria Perry asked. So she said that during the first wave of COVID she was homeschooling her children. It was really rewarding but absolutely time consuming and totally not possible for two full time working parents. So I really feel for you. This has been what's been expressed to me by a lot of the families I've been talking to through the school closures hotline and modulo. It's been really, really hard for parents trying to follow distance learning plans at their school. In particular, it's been taking three or four hours a day just doing the English homework. And so I did. I think that what's really important again is to think about when you're choosing your child's education and their curriculum. It's very different than when you're trying to get them caught up with work they're being given at school. Because the way school is designed is to be teaching subjects six hours a day. And parents are kind of scrambling to try to understand why their teacher is something, doing something, what strategy they're using. I mean, I sometimes walked into a second grade classroom and could not figure out how to teach long division because I had no idea what method was being used. But with homeschooling, it's a very different type of instruction. You really only need an hour a day, especially with younger kids. And you could just set them up and you know, once you find the right tools for them, just get them started on their apps and get them started in their classes. You really don't need to be sitting with them at a table six or seven hours a day. And if they're not ready to learn something, sometimes it's just best to wait until they're excited to learn about it. So there's a lot less scrambling and forcing children to learn specific subjects that have been deemed important to them at specific times and a lot more freedom for children to learn at their own pace. It just looks and feels very differently. That said, every child is different. Some children are very independent and can go outside and play for hours on their own or study for long periods of time. Some children need a lot of attention. And that's why I kind of keep returning to this idea that if you're struggling as a full time parent, you don't have an education problem, you have a child care problem. So trying to think creatively about that child care problem is really important and sometimes impossible. And I'm happy to help anybody try to think it through. But I think if you're really focused on it as a child care problem and not as a teaching problem, you can make a lot more headway. Sure.

I can't even tell you when I. When I have so many friends who have kids in school. And I had remembered from my own time in school and even from preschool with my kids, a lot of school is about deadlines, getting things done on time. There's a lot of time pressure to do specific things by a specific time. And it's like, such a relief to have that be remembered, moved. I mean, I almost moves me to tears to be talking about it. And again, I was very skeptical of this. But the number of times when, like, the kid just needs a day off and just is like, I don't want to learn anything today. Every time it happens, I'm convinced. I'm like, see, that's. It proves that he's never going to want to learn anything again. And I failed it. And, like, he often knows better than I do when he needs a break. And so he'll take a break from a subject and then come back to it a few days later, like, having had a mental huge leap, incompetency. And so taking that pressure and stress out of the family relationship and out of the learning relationship is also really a beautiful thing. If you've never had the privilege of experiencing it, strongly recommend trying out. It's pretty cool.

Absolutely. And I just want to add again, you know, I. A lot of people have been asking questions about bilingual education, and I started my own foreign language school and also used to be a sub in the bilingual school education program in New York City. So I. I think, you know, one of the things often thinking you can think about the way you learn languages. When I spent my junior year abroad, I would find that, like, you know, for three months, my French did not make any progress. And then all of a sudden, one day, I was just chattering away in French and understanding everything. So learning doesn't happen like this. It can happen like this and this and this. So many children are struggling with selective mutism, so they're learning to speak a lot later than other children and really concerning their parents. And I've seen so many children who did not say a word until they were five and then suddenly were just chattering away. So it's just so great to give your children that freedom to learn at their own pace and also give yourself space. I know that a lot of parents have been really struggling to communicate with their children. Like, my child never listens to me. I Can't get them to do anything. So space, space, space. I did want to also address screen time. A lot of people have been asking about that. So I think a good example of this would be my own personal story. We're all in this really tricky situation right now where we spend so much time on our screens and we kind of don't want our children to be spending any time on their screen. But we live in a digital world where navigating technology is really important. And so how do we find balance in that? So, you know, when I started reading these books about self directed learning, a lot of the teachers would say, like if your kid wants to play video games, if they want to play Minecraft until they're blue in the face, just let them play Minecraft and eventually they're going to want to go play outside and do their other things. And I was a little skeptical of this approach. I'm a really big believer in playing outside and being in nature. So a couple, my partner has a three year old and when we came together I noticed that he let his child watch TV all the time as much as he wanted. And it kind of drove me crazy because I'm not his mom. I can't tell him to not watch tv. What am I supposed to do? And it was really an uncomfortable situation for me because I was kind of this teacher advisor and then all of a sudden I was in a position of being a parent to this three year old who really loved watching tv. And two things happened. First of all, noticed that he started spitting out these incredible phrases like that. I just had no idea how he was developing such sophisticated vocabulary. And he's watching these shows about oceans and learning so much about marine wildlife. And so he's actually learning a lot. And then the other thing that happened is that he'd be watching his TV and then all of a sudden he walks over to me and he's like, okay, time to play. He calls me because time to go to the park. So sure enough, he kind of knew what he needed and he's been able to really find a good balance for himself with screen and playing outside. So I think that that's kind of a good thing to keep in mind. A lot of parents are really scared of screen time, but sometimes if you just give your child the time they need to be on the screens, they will come around. And another thing I would say is try to engage with them on the screens as much as possible if they're watching a show or if they're playing Minecraft. Play with them, ask them questions about what's going on. I can send you an article from Anya Kamenet, who's she's a writer, NPR education program, and she wrote a great book on navigating screen time with young children. Yeah. So I think unless Monique and Eric, you have anything really important you want to add, we're going to kind of wrap up the formal part of this and I'm just going to stay on to answer any questions that you all have.

I think it's been said a couple of times. I just want to encourage people to breathe and try to open our minds a little bit because often we have been trained to think in a certain way when it comes to education. And because our young people, our children are still young, sometimes they're resistant to that traditional way of thinking. So if we open our minds a little bit and breathe and relax, sometimes we can get to a middle ground or fully understand where our young people are coming from and find that to be an opening for dialogue, discussion and real, I guess, agreements as to what the future of education in our household needs to look like when I say breathe and relax and maybe just open our minds a little bit in relation to screens. I have a five year old son who loves Wildcrats and because of COVID he now regularly watches Wildcrats almost every day because he has a, he has a need for scheduling. So we do that and I'm okay with it. And then we find certain aspects and wildcats, which might be lemurs. He might be really excited by lemurs. And then we research it a little bit more and maybe he teaches a class on it. Right. So it's not that our children should just go and do their thing, but we should be engaged and see how we can continue to build upon their interests and identify their interests. Because maybe the interest isn't the mechanism, maybe the interest is the content or vice versa. Maybe the interest is not the content, but it's the mechanism. Right. So we want to be really thoughtful of that, to be able to support our young people as much as possible. Manisha, I'm going to answer a couple of questions in the chat and then I'll probably step off in a few minutes as well. But I think that's it. And someone said trust the process. And I'm all in for that. It's a statement I say to the young people I'm around all the time as well. Well, as adults, especially adults, because sometimes we are the ones who are, I guess the term often is stubborn. Right. That's Us and our young people are usually able to flow and grow a little bit more easily, but yet this is a process. This is work that we need to do, and we need to be thoughtful of how we relax, release, open our minds a little bit, and breathe.

Wonderful.

I'll say goodbye, too, but I want to especially thank Monique for sharing her wisdom. That was really helpful.

Thank you.

I'll just say one last thing, which is it can be hard to see the silver linings in an awful humanitarian and economic crisis like what we're living through. One of the tiny ones anyway is when we started homeschooling, there was still a lot of stigma about it, and a lot of our friends and people we knew, you know, just thought it was a kind of a weird thing to do. So it wasn't. You know, it's become more mainstream in recent years, but it wasn't like we didn't get a lot of high fives for it. And so the fact that we've all been forced to try this, like, if you can try to whatever extent to see this as a bit of a blessing that you have now, the total freedom to just try things that you would never have been willing or able to do before, you can ask for accommodations that you wouldn't have been able to ask for. That's like, actually a lot of blessing in the hardship of this. And maybe you will be able to discover something that your kids will really thank you for one day. And so just try to keep that perspective as best you can. I think that's. That's really amazing. I put my email address in the chat.

Please.

If anyone has questions, please do reach out.

Sure, I'll get to. I see. 089265. I don't see your name, but Monique. I was actually wondering if you could touch upon a topic. We really didn't go into that much depth, but today, which is that a lot of parents are worried if they don't send their children to public school, they're not going to be exposed to people of different backgrounds, a diverse community of socioeconomic race, you know, viewpoints. What would you suggest for parents who really want to give their children access to a diverse community?

Yeah, I think that's a great question. I don't think that homeschooling has to be siloed or isolated. Again, I think that it's not easy to connect with different families. And there are families of all different backgrounds, every socioeconomic background that is homeschooling. And often, if the goal is to be supportive or connect with families who are making much less money than you might be, or who are higher on the economic spectrum, who are of a different culture or race, then it's really about thinking about access. And what are the passions of my young people? What are the passions that I have? Do I have access to spaces where this is paramount and bigger? And let me look at these spaces, let me look at these organizations. Are they diverse? Because the reality is, if my child has a passion for animals, there are organizations that are diverse, that have also a focus on animals. There are organizations that do not. And if we are homeschooling, if we are thinking about our young people, we can get involved with organizations outside the home, online and so forth. And we can also be mindful of what our personal intention is around diversity and what our goal is and find these organizations that are diverse. The other aspect of it is really thinking about the material that we're presenting to our young people. Are we presenting material that is one sided or erases marginalized voices? Is thinking about mainstream culture as opposed to thinking of people of color over history, really thinking about the material? And I think that's a wonderful aspect of homeschooling because you don't have to stick to a textbook. You can really do the research and find websites that make sense. You can use Howardson, you can use other resources, and you can go to a library or a library site to be able to really gain information from multiple perspectives. And in that way you are opening up the arena for your family, your young person, to be able to see bigger than just who they are in their home. I think the last thing is really to think about projects, efforts and see what's happening in the world. And from there, there can be names that pop up from people in the neighborhood who surprisingly might be homeschooling. That happens very often, but people that our young people can connect to. And so that allows for conversations to happen which could turn into a project which could be a newspaper, an online site, an event that the young person puts together, or a conversation that happens around lemonade or something of that nature. I'm thinking of a lemonade stand at the moment. Sorry, but a lemonade stand where there' information being given and exchanged around a particular topic. And that being based on wherever you put it will allow for there to be differences in our engagement around race, around economics, around all of the cultural aspects that might be really interesting in thinking about diverse curriculum or diverse experience. Also, there are homeschooling groups all over the world, so you don't have to just think about your neighborhood. You can think about the whole world, especially in this situation that we're in now where many people are online. I just connected to a school. I really was looking for it, but I know that now it's in South Africa. So I'm happy to be able to connect with the school and see what we can do. I'm connected to another school in Puerto Rico. And so working with that institution and community, we're going to create opportunities for our young people to work together. Together in the beginning of the year and then again later on in the year to really think about the political state of Puerto Rico, connections to our young people here, and also just have that diversity flow in and almost naturally.

Wonderful. Just thank you so much for being here today, Monique, and for all your wisdom and Eric, for sharing your experience with everybody. It's been incredible. And you're welcome to stay but also leave if you. If you want to. And I'm going to stay on and answer questions. I think it would be great actually, if people want to, if they want to ask a question, you can unmute yourself and just ask your question and we'll do more of a free flow. I'll just say Ramona just asked what's the best program for homeschooling preschoolers. So. Oh, she asked us to be privately. But I think that what's the best. The wonderful thing about homeschooling is that you can choose the program that works best for your child. So I mentioned before, I think if you have some time to spend teaching your child or you have a caregiver who can do it. I love Blossom and Root for a mastery based nature and art program. The other program I really like is Con App Kids. If your kids are really into video games and apps and things like that, those are both wonderful preschool programs. You could also look at Montessori or Waldorf curriculum for preschoolers. I also recommend just doing nothing. I think play based learning is fantastic at that age in Finland. Bye, Monique. Finland is widely renowned to have the best education system in the world. Their kids are performing way, way above other countries, especially ours. And they don't start schooling formally until they're seven. So they don't even know. Often they don't even know how to read until they're age 7. All play based learning before then. All right, let's see. Does anyone want to unmute themselves and ask a question? I will.

My name is.

Hi.

Hello.

My name is Leanne and thank you very much for.

Nice to have you here.

Yeah, for this introduction to homeschooling.

Yeah, I decided to homeschool my three boys after my daughter went through the whole system of education from K to post college.

And it definitely, definitely a bachelor way to educate children. All three of my boys have different learning styles, but it worked for all three of them.

So.

But anyway, I really am not interested.

Matching the low standards of the schools.

But I think we can all far, far exceed them.

So what would you suggest for academically, so to say inclined children and parents? And I put my question in the.

Chat about art of problem solving program. Are you familiar with it and what.

Do you think about it?

Yeah. So to answer the first question first, I definitely agree that a lot of parents I think feel nervous about their children meeting state standards when they're embarking on this for the first time. But some of you have already gotten past that and you just want to learn your children to learn as much as they can, as fast as they can and love learning. So if you're there again, I would reiterate, really look for mastery based learning because mastery based learning is designed to help your children move ahead as fast as they can. You won't have, they won't be held back because they're at a certain age or grade level. Once they've mastered a concept, they'll move on. If they don't understand a concept, they won't move on and miss a big chunk. So if you're curious about a curriculum, always ask, is this mastery based? The alternative to mastery based curriculum is spiral curriculum, which is more of kind of what you see in school where it's reiterating different concepts whether or not the child has learned it or not. So that I would say mastery based learning, I don't, I'm not familiar with that particular curriculum that you recommended, but I would try it out, see if your kids enjoy it and just know. I mean, I think one of the best ways to, for a gifted child to learn is through YouTube. Every day I teach a group of 6 to 9 year olds and whenever they ask a question and I don't know the answer, we just go on YouTube and we love it. It's so much fun. Well, how do you draw a dolphin? Well, let's find out on YouTube and draw a dolphin. What's coding? Actually, I don't really know what coding is. Let's find out someone who does. There are just so many great classes and activities. Actually, one of my favorite stories is from movie called Class Dismissed which you should definitely check out if you haven't already. And basically this woman started homeschooling her two daughters, and she was really anxious about it. She kind of tried every possible way to homeschool, from doing an online school to charter, to teaching a curriculum. And finally, a homeschool consultant told her that she should do a period of deschooling, which is basically, take a few months and let your kids do whatever you want. And her second grader basically kind of locked herself up in her room and would just be on YouTube hours and hours a day. And finally, after a couple weeks, the mom is just, I just can't take this anymore. I just. I have to stop her. So she raced upstairs to her daughter's room, and to her surprise, discovered that her daughter had taught herself sign language using YouTube. And then she just stopped bothering her from then on out. So that's a great example of a child pursuing. There's something that they're interested in learning about it on their own, which is wonderful. Great. Anyone else want to ask a question? Oh, hi. Hi, Lisi. Thanks for coming. Yeah, thank you. This has been great.

I just wanted to ask a brief question about technology.

Sure. I'm just wondering.

My kid is going into first grade, and my biggest question is, would you recommend a tablet? I know the schools are providing, like, the schools keep saying, Chromebooks, but is that just because they're reasonably priced?

Is a laptop or a tablet? Is one better than the other in your experience? This is such a great question. I'm so glad you asked it. Because it's so important that you set your child's learning environment up to help them succeed. We're actually kind of looking into different ways for children to connect online in our social learning groups. And there's a new company that I think has built kind of like a portal that watches the kids and kind of follows them around. And we're trying to think about maybe if we can partner with them. So, I mean, I think it really depends on your child. I like iPads because they can kind of run around with them. I really think you should as much help your child not to sit at a computer all day. So it's really great if they can have a tool that they can bring outside, one that doesn't break easily. I know even the Kindles have that good case, so as portable as possible. I think iPads are pretty great for that if you can afford one. And then make sure that they get the right set of headphones. I don't have it at the top of my head, but there's a dad in our group who he kind of tried out all these different pairs of headphones and found ones that kind of go around his child's ear, and they're all child safe. So finding a good pair of headphones that will kind of help their online social connection during social distancing is important. So iPad headphones, maybe a microphone. I need to get one for myself because it's easier to hear. But, yeah, just as much as they can. If they're doing an online class, encourage them to be standing. We do a lot of dance breaks in ours. Or sitting. They should be able to bring their little iPad into a fort if everybody wants to make forts. So I think those are the good things to have when you're getting started. Just in addition to that, I would recommend getting a subscription to Audible and Kindle so they can explore podcasts and read books as much as they want.

I actually. Can I jump in?

Hi. It's so great to see you. This is one of my friends listening.

The whole time, but I've usually been. I've actually been crafting with my daughter also, so I just actually asked her what she prefers, and she prefers the desktop, so. And reason, I'm not exactly sure why, but she loves hopping on the desk. Like the desktop that's there. I love it because there's actually a free typing thing. But I love that she's learning the typing. The iPad. She was doing distance learning with school and oh, my gosh, that was. She's typing, I mean, one, two page papers via voice, text or via, you know, the screen. And it was just, I think they're like, you know, losing a skill. I think that desktops are super important, so I'm not really sure why she loves that the most. I know that obviously iPads are awesome because you can take them wherever, but.

I don't know, I think it might.

Be up to kids, too. She loves the desktop.

Wonderful. Yeah. If you have a question, just go ahead and unmute yourself.

I have one.

Hi.

Hi. I'm wanting my daughter to learn 10.

Key sometime during this year.

What's a good program for that?

I'm sorry, what do you say? 10 key, like typing. Oh, typing. You know what? So Mavis is a great program for typing. I just actually discovered this one. Mavis. I believe it's Mavis M A V I S. Yeah, I'll put the link in here. Right now. It's Mavis Beacon, teaches typing.

Okay.

Yeah. And that's, you know, and again, I would just say, as with anything, it really depends on Your child. I have about five of them that I like. And another thing to keep in mind is that if your child has a strong aversion to handwriting, maybe some sensory issues, that typing can be a really good way to teach them to write. Thanks, Melissa. Type tastic. Melissa. Yeah, it's fun sharing all these curriculum resources. And I'll make sure to send you some of my other favorite ones, too.

Yeah, we use typing club.com.

Typing club. I've heard a lot of great things about that one.

Yeah, I'll write that down to you.

Yeah. And also, you know, a lot of people have been asking about diverse communities. We're a diverse community too, and we would love for you to join us. I'll actually share our. You're already in the community. We're having a great community moment here, but we have a modulo learning community that we just got started on Facebook. So please do join. It would be great to continue the conversation there.

So is that for kids, though?

Oh, for kids.

I want something for my daughter because.

Well, as it is, we don't have.

A lot of diversity in the area and I'm always worried that she's not going to be exposed to that.

Yeah. So see homeschoolers if you're looking for more of a facilitated online community. We just started one because I didn't see anything else like that that existed. And if you want to try it out for free, just send me an email and you can join and be in my class. What is the name? Yeah, so what. What did you say that I just. I. I posted the modular learning community and I've also posted C homeschoolers a couple times. And then I would say for diverse online communities, definitely check out unschooling groups. And then we offer a facilitated hangout at Modulo. That's the company that I run. And if anybody wants to give it a try, it's actually, I would definitely be happy for anyone to try out for free. We do charge a monthly fee. It's 249amonth to do the group with a teacher twice a week. But if anyone can't afford that, we're really committed to making it accessible to everyone. So just let me know and we'll.

That's the modulo one. That's for diversity for kids.

Yeah. So it's social emotional learning.

Can you.

Yeah, sure.

So sorry, can you repeat what that was for? Social emotional learning in a group through your organization.

Yeah. So Modulo offers social emotional and academic support for families. And our social emotional learning group Meets every day. It starts generally with a prompt for connection. So for example, one exercise I like to do every day is called red, yellow, green. And the kids go around and say if they're feeling red, yellow or green and why. And it's a really great way for them to get in touch with their feelings and connect with others. And then we usually do some activity like we might do an art hub for kids drawing, or we might do a little cooking exercise, or we might try out a new app, or we might do a few scavenger hunt. And that gives kind of the opportunity for the conversation to start flowing. So we're not like teaching them specific subjects. It's more focused on helping them learn to take turns and connect with the group and learn collaboratively. But a lot of the kids stay on for, you know, three hours a day or so. So yeah, that's our program Margelo.

And that. And the fee for that is. You said 200.

Yeah. So we charge $249 a month for twice a week. Every day is $549 a month. So that's the fee that covers our instructors and our administrative fees. But we're really committed to being an inclusive program and we don't want to ever turn anyone away who can't afford it. So if that's something that you're interested in, feel that your child would benefit from and you can't afford that fee, please just email me and we will work something out for you. We really. It's a new program. We need your feedback and we'd love to make a way for it to work for you. And I'm the teacher and I would love to meet all your kids.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, so. And Leon asked if there's an in person component. So because we're of social distancing, it's all online right now. And once social distancing stops, we might consider making in person or pretty. We feel pretty strongly that social distancing is the way to go right now. You know, a lot of the research that's been coming out has shown that if we all social distanced and wore masks, we could stop this virus in a matter of months. So we are really encouraging families to stay home and trying to build these connections online. I know that a lot of you have talked about creating learning pods and I know that that's a really important child care need for a lot of people. So that's definitely an option. I know I didn't address it very much, but again, I would kind of if you're thinking about starting a learning pod, I would really encourage you to think of it as trying to solve your child care problem because there's so much great learning you can do independently or with a parent. You can also give a caregiver or teacher a curriculum to use. But I think that if you do do a learning pod, I'd really, really encourage you to try to get your children to wear masks, because if one child in the group gets sick, it can. You know, everybody is going to get sick in every family, and children are carrying this disease even though they're not exhibiting symptoms. So we're pretty much really trying to find way, meaning, meaningful ways for kids to connect online right now. But once this quarantine is over, the sky's the limit. I mean, there's just so many amazing groups of homeschoolers for you to connect to. And you know, an example in San Francisco, there's an awesome group called Hugs SF that meets two or three times a week. It's super diverse and inclusive. I'll just. You can find it on Facebook. It's Hugs sf. There's also in New York City, Brooklyn, Apple Academy is a wonderful homeschooling community. They're going to be actually doing a workshop soon on homeschooling paperwork in New York State, but they do a ton of meetups. If you go to see homeschoolers, which I've talked about over and over again, you can just post and say, I live in this area. Who wants to meet up with me? Or what. What groups are there in my area? It's really easy to find Facebook groups on homeschooling groups on Facebook. I would just look at if you want to build, if you want to join a more diverse, inclusive community. I would try to look for groups that are secular, not religious, because those tend to be a bit more diverse.

Yeah.

Other questions?

Hi, Manisha.

Hi, Adriana. How are you today? Hi. I can hear you.

I'm good. How are you?

Good, thank you.

Thank you so much for such great information.

So excited.

I have a question regarding the curriculum. I have two girls ages 12 and 13.

Wonderful.

So I was wondering, I was wondering if there are certain curriculums or programs that are more geared towards middle schoolers and high schoolers, because I'm at that stage where I have pretty much now they're seventh and eighth grade now, you know, in the fall. And it's one of those things where I didn't think I would even, you know, be considering very early on before they started school. I was thinking of homeschooling and then work and everything else. And then now with the world pretty much the way it is. That's why I joined the workshop, to learn more. But are there specific programs geared for the older kids?

Yeah, absolutely. So what kind of learners are your children? What do they do? They like reading books, do they like movies? What kind of activities do they do in their free time?

Well, my girls really love from, even from even during the pandemic. I have my 13 year old who pretty much just loves languages, has taught.

Herself that she's a K pop fan.

I want my little one too. And they both like learned Korean. And I'm like, what?

What are you doing?

And then they, they impress me so much because it's like learning languages and things like that. And my family is Spanish Dominican Republic. So learning that, you know, practicing more of the Spanish. But I realized, well, my youngest did.

Miss school a bit.

The structure of it, you know, the structure, the structure part. But the more the weeks passed on, she found her groove as far as just being very independent. My oldest definitely is, you know, YouTube. Hey, I want to know how to do this. Oh, look, look at this art. And I just created, I just learned that, you know, it's like all of a sudden it's like, oh, mom, you.

Know you're doing that wrong.

Let me just put on your computer. Don't worry about it, I got it. So I think she gets a hobby too, because he's an IT guy. But so it's like stuff, like a lot of self learning too with her.

But that's fantastic.

But my fear, I'm going to be honest with you, I struggle with that transition with the core subjects. And I know we're kind of ingrained, unfortunately with the math and the reading and the scores and blah, blah, blah.

And all of that.

So I struggle with the fact that, you know, junior high school math to.

Me is still like, you know, a horror show. So that's the part where I'm struggling with. Okay, will they be stack if I go forward?

So yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. So I definitely think that Khan Academy is a super robust, great program for older kids. And if math is an area that your children either struggle with or are really gifted in, I recommend using a supplement to Khan Academy because so one thing is that sometimes it's really hard to design a good math curriculum. So a lot of the general studies programs don't necessarily do math as well as the program that's exclusively focused on Math. So I would definitely use Khan Academy. Let your kids continue to explore all the subjects they're interested in. Try to find them some facetime pals in Korea or whatever they're in, so they could, you know, do a language exchange. Bless you. But, yeah, I would just start with. I would start with Khan Academy and kind of see what they find. Howard Zinn has an amazing US History project online. I'll send you the. The link to that as well for history. But, yeah, I would just start with Khan Academy. I think that would be a great fit for them. And then I. There's a couple different math programs out there. I like Singapore Math a lot. It does require you to sit down with your child, but. And make sure you get the teacher's guide if you're going to do Singapore Math. Some people find it a little bit dry, but there's a lot of really fun math apps out there. I'm not sure if Math Tango goes up to middle school, but, yeah, I think it might be for younger kids, but, yeah, five to 10. But if you have younger kids, I just love math. My newest grapevine. But I think you should be fine with Khan Academy and definitely reach out if they need any extra tutoring, and we can connect them with, you know, a volunteer tutor or whatever you need.

So. Sorry.

Sure.

Is Khan Academy more than math? And then I'll let you know.

Khan Academy is Khan Academy. It's all subjects, and it includes math. I just, you know, math is just such a tricky one that sometimes it's good to supplement. And then for writing, actually, Brave Writer is a wonderful program.

You said a wave writer.

Brave Writer. Brave Writer. All right, thank you. Yeah. So let's see. The other thing I want to mention is that a lot of kids have a great deal of pain and frustration around handwriting. And a program I've discovered that I love is Handwriting Without Tears. It's just really great for any kid, especially ones who have an aversion to writing. And children on a spectrum. And children with sensory issues respond really well to it. In particular, I think we had a question from Shirley. Yes.

My question was, I know in Florida, they. When I was looking on the website, they require for you to get a certified teacher to certify the kids test by the end of the year. How did that work?

What state are you in?

I'm in Florida.

In Florida. So I'm actually not 100% sure. I know in New York, for certain grades they require a teacher evaluation, so it could be. And again, I'm not an Expert in Florida laws. But it could be that there's a teacher at your public school who will do that service for you. I know that Florida is super homeschooling friendly, and so you could probably find a teacher at your school who. The public school who would do that. But I'm also going to send you. There's a massive group of Florida homeschoolers that. And I'm sure that somebody in this group is going to know the answer to that question. Just pasting it here. I also know a woman, actually. She runs a homeschool co op which is unfortunately now closed because of what's happening. But she's doing a lot of online stuff and it's called Khan Academy. And if you reach out to her, she'll be able to give you the information. It's a homeschool club in Brevard County, Florida.

Okay, I will definitely do so because for my. For us in Florida now, it's horrible. And the city where I'm in, well, the county we one of the people. Well, I'm pregnant. By the time. By the time school start, I'll be giving birth, so.

Oh, my goodness.

Yes. So that's. That's my. My biggest worry too. And then not only where my son is going to third grade and I live in a great neighborhood. He go to a. A plus school rating and so on. What I learned just for the shirt period of time of doing the distance learning was that the school had my son had me spending all type of money through mathem for my son and all kind of stuff. It was just like really frustrating because, you know, I don't want him to fall behind and so on. So what I learned was that doing the distance learning, my son is very smart. And. And what I discovered about my son Jeremiah is that he more focused on playing than doing the work. But can he do that extra work? Yes, he can do the extra work because even though a lot of the school wasn't able to take the test and our school, they still had required them to take the standardized some type of test. So as a parent, I'm all for education. I wasn't gonna help him because if I help him, he would injure his own self. And when he took the test and I was there with him and I was on his butt like, let's go, Jeremiah. Focus. Like, let's get this thing done. You have a certain period of time. Let's get it done. And he actually went through the whole test by himself, not one question. He actually me and score right at third grade level. So with that being said, watching him doing his work, and I'm on top of him telling him, okay, he likes to take break, you know, where he's wandering around. All of a sudden he's just like. And la la land. I'm like, jay, come on, let's get the work done. So through the whole thing, I mean, he get ended up getting straight A's. He gets straight A's. But what I've learned is with him is that you have to stay on top of him. But in a class with 30 kids, how can the teacher, you know, stay on top of Jeremiah? Keep telling Jeremiah, let's go. Let's get this done. But he's very bright and smart. But I've learned a lot with my son. Just, you know, teaching him, teaching him at home and watching him doing the work, and it was just like, wow. So that's why I'm really pushing towards the homeschooling. Because if I'm there, I can get him to do more than the teacher can have him do by doing it one on one. But with the curriculum part, I was nervous about it. But with all the information that you give me and Monique and Eric, I'm very grateful for that. So that just make the decision even easier for me. So thank you.

That's great. And I just want to say that your son is so lucky to have a mom who cares so much about his education. Definitely, he's really fortunate. I think, that you'll find that the standardized tests get a lot easier once they've had this period of kind of space and relaxation. I mean, for a lot of homeschoolers, the tests are kind of just a fun game. Which tests really are. I was an satisfaction tutor and an SAT tutor for years, and I just kind of tried to get kids used to the idea that these tests are a certain way of thinking and that there's a value in understanding different ways of thinking. But the tests itself aren't really testing your knowledge. And then just in terms of concentration, I will say that I probably tuned out for all of middle school and most of high school and probably elementary school. I was just one of those kids who was always staring at the ceiling. And it didn't seem to impact what I learned at all. I mean, I graduated with highest honors from college. I think I really thrived in a college environment where I got to choose my own subjects and do my own projects. It's possible your son might also be very kinesthetic. He's just one of the Kinds of kids who needs to move around a ton and jump around a ton and has physical relationship builder. So it's really important to nurture his learning style and not force them into a learning style that doesn't work for him. So I would really try to find curriculum that encourages that as much as possible and see it as a strength rather than a shortcoming. So it's great that you're doing this. I'm really lucky.

You actually nailed it. My son like to build things. Like, I buy him those Lego thing, and he gets so creative with it. He built me a mansion with poo and everything, with Jacuzzi and all. And later and the elevator. I was like, how did you do that? And I was like, whoa. So he's really good with his hand. Like, when it comes to Legoland, this is his thing. He's very creative and stuff. And it's like the things that he create is like, wow. And, you know, he's been the only child for a long time, so he learns things. Like he create things to play within himself. He keep himself entertainment and so on. Is. He's amazing too. I mean, Jay.

And you can really nurture that talent. I mean, find him different, you know, different things to build robotics projects. There's just. There's so many great things. And I'll. I'll email you some more resources after our call. Okay. What else? What else is on your mind, everybody? You're so welcome.

I have a question.

Hi. Hi.

Thank you so much for offering this. It's very informative and I really appreciate it so much. I'm having a hard time figuring out, you know, if a learning pod versus home school, what's the difference if I'm. If I'm purchasing a homeschooling curriculum, are my children, you know, am I walking through my children through certain programs on their computer? If that's the case, does that. If there was a learning pod, would it be, you know, like four kids on their own devices using the same program with a facilitator that you hire? Parent. I'm just trying to understand what this looks like or what.

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. It's such a good question. And I noticed actually in the chat, a lot of people were asking, well, what is homeschooling? Is homeschooling the same as distance learning? Am I homeschooling if I'm enrolled in an online school? And unfortunately, homeschooling isn't a very well defined term. I mean, in some cases, people aren't schooling at home at all. They're just running around the city, going to cool museums and such, or traveling the world. So I guess I kind of let's. I think we should step back a little bit and think about what are your educational, social and childcare needs. So what, you know what, what do you want for your child this coming year? What's it and what is your kind of working situation? What's like, what's your motivation for starting a pod?

For me personally, I'm considering taking the year off from work to ensure that my children get the proper education as opposed to, as opposed to or in conjunction with whatever distance learning might be offered from their school. I do, I want them to be engaged with whatever it is. I don't feel that they were properly engaged, you know, or that they were engaged in what was provided to them in the spring. So I'm looking for them to have a more engaging experience that also has a social component to it that I can support. I felt very unavailable to help them in the spring. I was working, you know, 15 hour days. Sure, I'm sure many parents were. So, you know, it's something I want to support them with, but I also want them to have their own engagement and some socialization in there, which is why I was thinking of the pod versus just homeschooling them.

Great. Okay, wonderful. That's a really helpful framework. So first of all, I think if you're in a position where you can take the year off to learn with your children, I think, you know, go for it. It's going to be the best experience of your life and such a huge gift to your children. I mean, children need parent engagement. The more we can give them, the better. Your child's best teacher is you. That's how biology works. You know them better than anyone else and this opportunity to engage with them, talk to them about what they're interested in, nurture their talents, maybe even create cool projects for them based around their interests. I mean, it's such a wonderful opportunity in terms of the learning, I think, you know, nothing is set in stone. So this is just my opinion, but I kind of keep coming back to this term mastery learning. And I do think that in the core subjects, your children will learn a lot faster if they can do those one on one. So you know what? It might. I think what I would recommend to you is that you spend, you know, like kind of put aside maybe like an hour and two each morning to do their studies with them. And this is very different than teaching. This is really facilitating. So you might pick a Math curriculum that works really well for each of them, a reading curriculum, a handwriting curriculum, and just make that kind of their morning study period. It can also be an hour a day. Or you could choose an approach that's more kind of, you know, here and there learning, or do an unschooling approach. It's really up to you in terms of what your educational goals are. But I would definitely, I would recommend doing that part outside the learning pod. And then I'd really focus the learning pod on just the social part. So, you know, maybe have a meetup two or three times a week with one or two other kids in your neighborhood where they go to go outside and play. Maybe, maybe there's some type of thing where a parent once a week does a lesson, kind of like a skill share, but just really focused that mostly on playing. And don't worry about them learning in the learning pod. And then I would also just say there's other ways that your child can connect socially besides a learning pod. First and foremost is their relationship to you. It's a really, really important social relationship. You can focus on nurturing that, building good communication with your child, modeling good communication. That bond with the parent is going to help. That's the foundation of every other bond they'll create in their life. And then, you know, I mentioned this before, but finding one other friend who's socially distancing, that can be a really great way to connect. You don't need a huge group of kids. The relationship between your siblings, those that's your best friend for life. And so again, if you can create a good foundation of them getting along well, that'll be really important, especially, you know, in later years. So I would say those are all other ways you could socialize. And then there's also online socialization. I mean, as I said before, I was so skeptical about online connection, but it's been going so well in our groups. The kids are really connecting with each other and that's just a totally viable way to relate. I mean, it's not ideal, but we kind of all have to do our part to stop the spread. So I guess kind of to wrap it all up, I would say if you can focus on just doing the learning part with your kid once a day and then having whatever learning pod you create, be more focused on social and childcare, that doesn't mean they can't learn stuff in it, but it's kind of less of that, like building blocks, math and reading, studying. Because sometimes in a learning pod, one problem is that if Kids are all trying to learn the same thing at once. Maybe one kid is ready to move forward and another kid isn't, and then everybody kind of gets held back. Thank you.

That's very helpful.

I hope that's helpful. I hope so. I'm happy to talk about it some more. I actually, before I founded Modulo, I ran a company that helped teachers and parents start what we called micro schools and which is now called Learning Pod. So I have a lot of experience setting these up and there's a lot of fun things about them. Yeah. Who's next? Sure. My pleasure. Alyssa, any other questions? Yeah, hi.

Hi there. Okay, so question about mastery based learning. Yeah, again. So my only experience has been just, you know, traditional schooling. So with mastery based learning, I understand that you don't move on until, until they've mastered the subject at hand. And so is reinforcement needed. So I mean, just giving an example with just homework and just worksheets and worksheets and worksheets that they would get, you know, just daily, on a daily basis.

How.

So for mastery based learning, do you just kind of teach it, teach it once, do your little, you know, whatever the lesson is for that, for that day, and then do you give homework or like, how do you kind of reinforce that, that learning so that they don't, they don't forget it say when, you know, they move on to other subjects. Sorry about the baby, but yeah, so I'm just a little hesitant. It just seems like we're not doing enough in terms of reinforcement. And so is that necessary when you're doing mastery based learning?

Yeah. Let me try to see if I can explain mastery learning in another context to you. So mastery. When I talk about mastery learning, I kind of am talking about, first of all, the way a curriculum is written. So, you know, like for example, in Khan Academy, every time a child signs in to do a lesson, they're not, if they don't understand what's going on, they're not going to be given a new concept. They're going to reinforce what they've learned before until they're ready to move on. So I have a friend I just talked to who's so frustrated because her son keeps doing the kindergarten level of con app kids over and over and over again because even though it's super easy for him, and I just told her, like, don't worry, he's going to move on when he feels ready to move on. So a really well written mastery based curriculum has that element of reinforcement in it because you literally can't move ahead until you've mastered the concept. What kind of curriculum are. And so another way to think about mastery learning is like working one on one with a child as opposed to in a group setting. So when you're working one on one, you're really focused on what they know and what they don't know. And you can see it right away. You can see if they need a concept reinforced or if they're ready to move on to the next thing. So it's, it's progressive. They're building blocks. They're, you know, if you're, if you're learning French, for example, it's hard to kind of learn how to communicate if you don't know verbs. And so you're going to need to learn them before you can speak to people. I don't know if that's the best example. Yeah, yeah.

So what I'm thinking of specifically is so we were doing Singapore Math, for example.

Okay, great.

I'm so again, traditional school setting as my only reference. I'm just so worried about him not grasping the fundamentals that I very clearly ready to honestly to go to like 2A or 2B. And he's in first grade. So again with just making sure that he has the fundamentals that we keep going over. We are in 1A right now and I want to make sure he masters everything.

This is distraction.

He grasps everything before I move on to 1B and then, and then so forth. So I don't know, do I just. If I clearly see that he's at the 2A level, do I just start there or do I just make sure to reinforce, reinforce. Just reinforce all the basics to make absolute sure that he knows all the basics before we move on to, you know, a higher, more advanced level.

Yeah. So first of all, I would trust your instinct with that. I think that Singapore is a well designed enough curriculum that if he's passing the placement test, he's ready to move on and any concepts he doesn't understand will be reinforced. That said, sometimes the curriculum, mastery based curriculum can be, be very frustrating for a child because they're not able to move ahead when they're ready to move ahead and they want to have that forward momentum. So if I would say if he's not enjoying Singapore math to maybe try something else because a lot of kids find it dry and frustrating that they're kind of stuck until they've learned everything. So if he's passing the placement test, move ahead, you can trust he has the foundations he needs. If he's not liking it. I would just switch to something like Math Tango or a more fun math learning app. That would be my advice. Does that answer your question? A little bit.

I have actually something to say about that. So math is like a really big, like, building block type subject. So you're gonna revisit most of this stuff anyways. So if you're worried that he's not mastered all of the skills, you know, but he wants to move on, you're probably gonna revisit it anyways.

Yeah, I think that's a really great point. Great. Bonnie, you've had your hand up for a while. Thanks for your patience.

Yes. I wanted to ask about. One of the things I'm having trouble with is organization. It's not my strong suit. I want to basically keep kind of a log of what they're doing academically just in case there's any problems with going back to school. And also just to know what we've done over the. Over our time during homeschooling. Do you have any thoughts as to an app or something that we could use online? I need something simple and easily accessible.

So I think you asked two questions. One is scheduling your homeschooling day, and the other is about building a portfolio to track your children's progress. Am I hearing correctly?

More so about the tracking. We're kind of. We're doing a lot of child directed learning. We a little bit from, you know, some of the books, the curriculum books, but we do a lot of, you know, what do you want to learn today? Kind of things. And YouTube, like you said, is wonderful.

But.

I'm having trouble trying to, like, right now. I have it in my phone. I've just kind of listed things that we've done. We started homeschooling this week, so this is my first week completed.

Congratulations.

Thank you. And it went pretty well overall. But how do you organize that part, I guess, on what they've done?

Yeah, that's a great question. So, first of all, I think that there's a very simple way that you can do this in Google Docs, which is just at the beginning of the day, sit down with your child and say, what are our goals for learning today, this week, this year, by the time we're in the workforce? And then at the end of the day, kind of just make notes together about what you did, what you liked, what you didn't like, and then that way, it's just kind of a very simple journal you can keep. If you go on Pinterest, there's about A million ways that parents have suggested to track homeschooling portfolios that you can just basically kind of download a PDF of them and use them to track your child's progress. That's another example. And I will keep looking and see if there are any companies that have kind of started to think about portfolio building. None come to my mind immediately, but I think that just it.

Your audio went away.

I muted myself. That's fine. Yeah. Great. Other questions?

I have one other question.

Please go ahead. Bonnie.

Have you ever used IXL or. I'm trying to get feedback on that. Both of my kids have ADHD and I've heard there might be some issues that it can be kind of punitive towards the end, but it seems academically it's a great way to reinforce some of those skills that we're learning. And, and I'm kind of on the, on the fence about that. I wanted to get people's feedback if they've had experience with that.

Sure. I'm sorry. And you said that your children have adhd?

Yes, they both have adhd. One has autism. High functioning. We got a bunch of issues. Dyslexia.

Yeah. So I haven't used IXL in particular though I have done a lot of research on the different curriculums that people like for different learning needs. And I know that for children on the spectrum, a lot of parents really love moving beyond the page. And for children with adhd, Blossom and Root tends to be a really great curriculum just because it's so hands on. So I think that, you know, those are, those are the kind of the most favorites that I've seen for ADHD and for children on the spectrum. Also, you might want to look into Beast Academy if your child is on the spectrum. Families really, really love that for math. And then I think, you know, as kind of, you know, my two favorites for math are Singapore and Right Start. But Right Start is particularly great for children with ADHD because it's just so hands on. Does anyone who's tried IXL want to comment?

Yeah, my three boys have ADHD and autism and it's the same thing. Bonnie. Towards the end, it's like I was so close and you know, one mistake I'm back down to 70. So what I've done now is I've put a post it note so they can't see the time elapsed, they can't see questions answered and they just have to work. That's what I found. Worked for the eight year old the best. But on to that note, I'm sorry, Bonnie, I don't mean to hijack, but did you find that your children had the same thing? Like, my kids can answer 48 +12, but when they tried breaking it down and asking them, okay, how many tens is that? How many ones is that? It just frustrated the life out of him. And so, Manisha, I was thinking maybe I need to explore it. Because if he's a big picture thinker and forcing him to break his thoughts down, I don't know, maybe Beast Academy will be better.

I mean, I just think you need to find a curriculum that your child loves. Like, pretty much. My bottom line is they need to understand why they're doing it and they need to enjoy doing it or at least be motivated to do it. And it's. I feel like there's too many great curriculums available that do work for every type of learner. Then just, you know, that doesn't really warrant you sticking with something that's not working for them. So, yeah, so I guess. And people asked me to write these down too, so I guess I said, you know, for your children on the spectrum, moving beyond the page is a great choice for K through 7. Beast Academy is great for math, for reading, if they can already read. I really love build you'd library. And then definitely for a child on the spectrum or with adhd, handwriting without tears is just so great for learning to write. And then if you have a child who has adhd, I said blossom and root. If you just. Fantastic. I also think Khan Academy is great. I mean, if they're getting bummed out because they're getting this negative feedback, Khan Academy is purely positive and really fun. And then for math, right. Start math is really great for adhd. And then for reading and math, for reading supplements, again, I just really like, build your library and handwriting without tears for almost any child. Yeah. And then also I would say think about, like, what kind of things do they hazel like, do they normally enjoy? If you say, okay, it's not learning time, it's do whatever you want time, what do they tend to enjoy?

Well, that was what I was gonna say to you. It's like, I feel like if I just leave them be, they would spend all day on the trampoline, which is great, and building Legos, which is also great. But I feel like I have to interject and try and explain, expand their horizons, because sometimes they can be rigid thinkers. You know, they just think, well, that's just the way it is. And I think I randomly left a book out and it was about My year with polio. And then the middle kids started asking me questions about polio and I was like, okay. You know, and then he goes on Brain Pop and he explores things about depression and how the brain works and cardiovascular disease. So I think you're right. But then I also feel like, oh, shouldn't I expose them and, you know, help them be less rigid thinkers?

Yeah, I mean, I think what a. What a difficult question. So there's a lot of different ways to do inquiry based learning. The most free form is just kind of sit around and wait for your child to ask you a question and don't be involved at all. But then you can also ask provocative questions or as you have done so well, set up an environment that's conducive to their learning, like setting, you know, this book around polio or, you know, having time together as a family to do the dinner thing. I mean, the other thing that's really great is being around other children because, like, for example, your kids seem a little older. But if a child doesn't want to read or doesn't know how to read, but then they see other people know how to read and like, maybe I want to read. So that's why connecting socially can be good. So one thing, you know, I think could be helpful too is just having, you know, a little bit of a balance where 9am is study time and that's when we do our math, that's when we do our reading, that's when we do our writing, our core academics, and the rest of the day you're free and you can bring out, you know, and another thing too is that, you know, we don't have to center our lives around our children. If you want to watch a documentary about, you know, whale movements, you can watch that. And too bad they don't get to choose the documentary that the family is watching that night. So actually there's a really. I sent this to you in the email. But there's a really wonderful book called Free Range Learning about this woman. She's a poet and she pulled her four kids out of school because one of them got threatened at gunpoint. She just. That was the day they stopped going to school. And she just does a lot of. She has a lot of ways that she kind of gives encouragement to their learning. Like she, you know, wanted to watch this documentary about ancient monks or they'll go to a museum or just things like that. So I think that I would say a lot of parents feel really guilty. They're scared. They're not they're somehow like, you know, failing their children by letting them do whatever they want. So I think, you know, you could always just try it for a month, like, see what happens if I don't, you know, encourage anything for a month. Or you could try this kind of gentle approach to encouraging them to learn different things, like play around and try different things out, I would say, but your instincts really seem like they're in the right place and I give you permission to follow them if that's what you need.

Okay. One last thing. Do anybody else's. Any other, you know, online learning. Do your kids retain information? So my oldest child has always been resistant to math. Right. He's also a big picture thinker, gets frustrated with ixl, but we managed to get him in third grade repeating the year that he did in England. He went from 46 to 48 in third grade in America. And I was like, no, that's not progress. That's, you know, regression of anything. So nine weeks of IXL and HE. We took him to 67th percentile.

Great.

The fourth grade teacher took him to 88 percentile. So that. So he is capable. Because I thought, my God, maybe he has dysgraphia, you know. But now that we're doing online for the past, for two months, he seems. So he went from 43% mastery of sixth grade math to 79%. But then when we reset the clock because, you know, the accounts change, whatever, he went back down to 53 percentile. And this is the child that has no inclination to read. But his preschool teacher says he's ready. So I'm like, okay, you can play. But he is, he doesn't get frustrated with math. Anyway, so the 11th grade. Yeah. The 11 year old seems to have not retained anything he's done for two months using a mastery based online program. Has anybody else experienced that?

You know, I mean, I think it's just so tricky again because learning is not linear and it can go up and can go down. But I just, I don't know, everything you're saying to me is kind of suggesting to me that this might not be the right program for him and that you should try something else. I mean, and that would be kind of helping him move forward a little bit better at his own pace. He liked that idea. Great, Wonderful. Any question for someone who hasn't had a chance to ask a question so far? Maybe. Yeah, Someone actually just asked. When choosing a curriculum, are there reviews or ways to sample the curriculum? I have written reviews of all my favorite curriculum and I Sent them to all of you in an email. If you didn't get it, please email me. I'll just put my email here again and I'll send it to you again. But I think they're pretty good. But I've tried to kind of give an honest perspective on what I think about each of them. Jason, I don't know if you're willing to talk, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about your child and what their needs are. Maybe I could help suggest something.

Okay.

Hi.

Hi.

I've got two girls. One of them will be going into third grade. The other will be going into seventh grade. Older one is very artistic. Younger one, I would say, probably has.

A little bit more of the behavior.

Issues where I can see that that might be a more of a challenging challenge for the family.

Okay, so let me.

No ADHD or anything like that.

Yeah. One by one. So one of. Sorry, tell me again. I got a little distracted by the chat comments. One of your children has some behavioral issues.

The younger one just tends to aggravate.

The older sister frequently.

Again, it's. And tends to aggravate us as parents to no end as well, too. That could be fine in a traditional school.

Yeah. When you talk about aggravation, what are some of the behaviors that are aggravating to you? Is she copying her older sister? Is she deliberately trying to annoy you?

She threatens to spit on them. Her older sister's stuff. And it's just. It's just really uncalled for kind of stuff.

Yeah. How old is she?

Younger one is eight.

Eight, okay. And has she. She was in, like, a traditional school before you. The distance learning started. So generally, you know, I'm not a child psychologist. I've just been around a lot of children, and it sounds like it's not. It's just annoying behavior. It's not necessarily like you're scared of her, you know, doing anything harmful, you know. So I would say that it sounds like there's two issues going on. First of all, she's testing her boundaries. Am I allowed to spit or am I not? You know, what happens when I spit? What happens when I poke you? And then the other thing that it sounds like is going on is that she's crying out for attention. And that can often be the case when you have an older sister that the younger one kind of, you know, is a little bit in their shadow. She wants people to pay attention to her. Maybe she wants her sister to pay attention to her. She wants you to pay attention to Her. So I would suggest. And I don't know what your working schedule is like, but with siblings, it can be especially important to get one on one time with a parent and, you know, find that activity where you two really connect. For me and my stepson, it's going to the park. So every day we have at least like 30 minutes or an hour. And it's just the two of us. And he has definitely started spitting at me less so entirely since we've developed that special thing. I also am the one who always reads him a bedtime story. So maybe there's something special that you can do with her that you don't do with your older sister. Are there times that you carve out that kind of thing to do with her, or have you thought about it?

I probably need to do so.

All right, well, I think that might help. And then I think your original question was about curriculum. Right. Okay. So the older one is very artsy.

Yes.

What would you say are her. What does she like to do most in her free time?

She likes to watch YouTube and anime and draw.

Awesome. And what would you say are her strengths as a learner?

I think that she actually likes science, but she won't say that she does. Awesome. And I mean, she is. She's actually very compassionate as well too.

Oh, wonderful. Great. So, and you said. Did you mention that she liked art? She was kind of an artist. Okay, great. So I would just say Khan Academy, I think would be great for her, for all of her subjects. I don't think she needs extra. She seems. I think she'll do great with that. A lot of positive incentives. She can move ahead as fast as she needs. If she likes YouTube videos, she'll love Khan Academy. And then, yeah, I think that's. There's a really wonderful science curriculum called mystery science. I'll type it here. My favorite. Kids love it. That's a great one. And then, you know, give her a lot of time to play around on YouTube. There's so much you can learn. There's a whole field of homeschooling that's like YouTube and documentary schooling. So that's great. And so what are some of your challenges with the older one? What are some of the skills you'd like to see her develop.

Again? I don't think that she actually thrived.

During the.

Distance learning, so I don't think that I'm gonna have as much problems with my older daughter as with the younger one.

So how old is the younger one?

The Younger 1 is 8.

8 years old. Oh, that's right. You told me. I love 8 year olds. They're my favorite grade of all. Such an interesting age. It's really at that time and they can, can start asking so many questions. So what's. What are. And you mentioned some behavioral challenges. What are, what are the things that she likes to do in her free time or does she just want to do everything her older sister does that.

I think she seems to want to get into the older. My older daughter space. Yes. And again, my older daughter would like to spend just time by herself. She likes reading manga as well too.

What did you say she likes?

Oh, she likes reading manga. Like the Japanese comic books.

Oh, fun. So actually there is a math curriculum that's entirely based on comic books. It's pretty amazing. I think that she might really enjoy it. Actually. It's called, it's the one I mentioned earlier, Beast Academy. So yeah, they're like just little comic books for kids to use. So I think that would be a really fun one for her. And then, you know, she, I mean she, her sister does Khan Academy. She'll probably want to do it too. There's a math app I really like I mentioned called Math Tango. That's really fun. It's just playing games. And then I would say I don't know what your work from home schedule is like, but if you can make her, if you can give her like a solid half hour, that's just the two of you, like doing Beast Academy together. That's her time with you. And her sister's off doing something else. I think that'll be really important for her.

I'm actually planning on stepping down from my full time job.

Awesome.

And then less than a month now.

Great.

Yeah.

Jason, I actually have a suggestion. Jason, we have a little bit of trouble. My stepdaughter has a lot of, has a younger sister that's three years younger than her and she just wants to do. She's always in her stuff and wants to talk to her. And you know, sometimes she does not want to talk to her. So I suggest making. Okay, so we said her bed. Her bed is the safe zone. It means, you know, I cannot play with you right now. Do not ask me questions. And like, also there's a safe spot for her to put her toys that her sister just can't play with because those, you know, they, they want to have something that's their own. And so sometimes when a little one's coming in and wrecking up their stuff, why does she get to always mess with my Stuff. It's like, it'll help if she has like one safe area and you make it really clear to her, really clear to the younger one. And then she has one safe area for her toys and one safe area for, like, when she's there. She needs alone time. Okay, try that.

Defining boundaries.

Yes.

Yeah. And with compat. Yeah. And always with compassion. You know, I mean, if a child is spitting, like, you need to make your boundaries clear. I mean, what I do as I3 old is, you know, I say, like, I don't feel good when you spit at me. And I just take a moment, I say, how would you feel if I spit at you? And maybe she might not answer right away, but kind of with that consistent repetition, you can kind of start building a little bit more of kind of an other centered perspective. But I really feel like if you just give her a little bit of her own attention, a lot of these issues will disappear. All right, I saw. Any recommendations for kids? Sure, sure. My pleasure. And feel free to kind of keep in touch with me as this progresses. Happy to help. Any recommendations for kids who love to build things? So many. So as I said, this one for a curriculum blossom and root is great. It's nature based, it's art based. There's just so many things that you can do online to build. There's just like all these awesome YouTube videos. Legos are amazing. You know, just there's. It's just really great. I would say, like, robotics kits are really fun. Yeah. I'll let you know if I think of any other good building kits. But just, you know, get it. Using their hands, doing projects, it's just really focusing on that kind of learning. And I also want to mention other. Someone said like earlier that they didn't, you know, so their child didn't have any, you know, problems like dysgraphia. And I just wanted to kind of call out that there are so many learning differences in the way children learn. And I think one in six kids are dyslexic. And these have kind of been labeled in our school system as problems. Like they're not learning in the right way. And what, what they're. What it actually is. They're saying they're not learning in the normal way that we expect kids to learn. So we can start stop seeing these learning differences as problems or wrong ways to learn and start, you know, embracing all the different ways that children learn and process their feelings and discover the world and all their unique talents and types of intelligence and stop seeing them as negatives.

It's pretty good. Great.

All right. Anyone else?

I already asked a question.

Sure.

Can I ask another one?

Absolutely, go ahead.

Okay, so, okay, if we're gonna do deschooling. So since I've already started homeschooling, I'm a first time homeschooler. Already started. I'm starting my fourth week soon. But it, I've definitely now after hearing all this great information, it seems like I'm trying to model the traditional school setting. And there's not a lot of.

There's.

There's the free discovery time. Like free time, discovery time after our lesson. And so that's kind of what I just got the baby quiet and he's starting up again.

I love babies.

So.

So, yeah, so I kind of use that discovery time as like you do it after learning and it's fine. But when I. So we, we do Fridays. We call it, we call them Fridays, but because we didn't get a chance to cover one of the math lessons I had, you know, this past Friday, I said, okay, well let's just do the math lesson. And there was a ton of groaning and you know, like just I. A lot of shutdown towards, toward learning. And so I think I may need to even, I may need to even deschool myself. And so if I'm, if I'm gonna like embark on that journey. And again, this is for my first grader mostly.

How.

So how do I go about doing that? Do I just say, okay, for one month I'm going to just follow their lead on everything and not cover any math lessons? I mean that just thinking about starting to stress me out about not teaching them.

I know, I know. It's so. It's such a different approach and there's so much uncertainty and it's really hard to feel, you know, comfortable with uncertainty. But it sounds to me like your intuition is right on. You know, when you say that your child isn't wanting to learn, what they're really not wanting to do is to study in that particular way. And you know, if you're, if you feel like you need some de. Schooling, you know, you don't have to commit to a month or an hour. You can say, like, let's try it for the next 15 minutes and see what happens. You know, it sounds like, you know, you're interested in unschooling. Give it a try. You know, month, two months. At a certain point, maybe there's going to be something that arises in you that's not fear, but that's excitement. And we'll know what you want to do next. But, you know, I think a lot of parents who are starting homeschooling, what they're kind of asking for is permission to follow their own instincts. And you have really clear instincts about what your child needs and what you need as a family. And I would say that you should go forth and follow those interests. In terms of math in particular, I think that, you know, again, maybe you're not trying the right thing with him. Give him another math curriculum or just drop math for a while. What kind of things? When you let him have that free time, what does he tend to like to do?

Building. Yeah, it's just. I was the one who asked the question about the building. He just wants to build, and he. That's all he wants to do. That's all he wants to do. And so I was looking into something called, like, a kiwi crate. I know they have, like, those kinds of things.

He.

He just wants to program his. His robot and build things and all this kind of stuff. So he's. He's extremely, extremely bright in that. And I do feel like he may even just be bored with a lot of the math stuff. So I'm not. I guess it's just trial.

And what math curriculum are you using now?

I'm using Singapore math, and I. Yeah.

A lot of parents don't. I mean, a lot of kids find Singapore math to be very dry and boring. Some kids love it, but I would just. If he's not. If he's not liking it, I would just drop it. Try something totally different. You know, try. Try Math Tango if he likes apps. But I think that that's your problem right there. Singapore can be pretty dry, especially for a builder like your child. I mean, there's. So. You can learn so much about math through building robots. There's a gazillion great robotics kits I can recommend.

Oh, yes, let me know.

I mean, Minecraft is great for building math. Yeah, absolutely. But I think, you know, just the most important thing is definitely try out the unschooling and then just keep playing around with curriculum until you find the right fit for him, something he really enjoys.

All right, thank you so much.

You're so welcome. Cool. Someone had their hand up, I think. No. All right, are we good? Any more questions? I'm happy to stay on if people have things they want to ask. All right. Anything. Well, it's been such an absolute delight having you all here today. I just can't tell you how much I appreciate. Appreciate your curiosity about learning Your desire to innovate and give a really great education for your children and your enthusiasm, encourage enthusiasm encouraged for trying this new process. And just to reiterate, my team is here for you, to support you in whatever way you need. If you want to reach out and ask to call, have a follow up or if you need some more support, meaning other kids and want to join our kids club, whatever you need, we're here for you. And also really appreciate everyone who stayed on for the full two and a half hours. Yeah. So actually we do have two more questions. So Hazel, Math curriculums involving Legos building, but that would involve loss of parent involvement. It's not Legos, but right start. I would start with that one. It's very hands on, really solid, mastery based curriculum kids. It's really fun. Alyssa asked for a brief overview of our company. So Modulo is a social, emotional and academic support system for families who are learning from home. It can be used as a supplement or a replacement to school. So you can either register as a homeschooler or you can use it to supplement your distance learning. And we include a couple components. So when families register with Modulo we do an intake where we learn about their child's interests, their learning styles and recommend some curriculum to get started. And then we have our social emotional learning club which meets every day with a teacher. And that's really a facilitated hangout. It's less focused on teaching individual skills and more teaching kids how to get connected and build friends and then also do self directed learning together. And that's online. And then we're also building out electives based on children's interests. And then we have support from a teacher to help monitor their progress and see how they're doing. And it's a subscription based program. You can do just the curriculum, just the social learning, just the teacher support, whatever you need. And you can stop it at any time or start it at any time. So if you're interested, we'd love to have you in our group and I'm happy to share more. I can also send you a video link to our open house, but it's actually on the landing page too. If you want to watch our open house for Modulo, but I also run schoolclosures.org, which is a national organization to help families impacted by school closures. We're here to answer all your questions about meals, child care, learning apps, find you volunteer tutors, really anything to support your child's learning, including getting you access to learning devices. Because I know that's one of the biggest challenges of families who are doing distance learning overall is getting their children access to a free or affordable computer or other learning device. So thank you so much again, and I hope that your questions are relatively answered. I'm sure that you will have a lot more. But I will just end by saying that I honestly believe, after my 15 years of teaching and many years of working with hundreds of homeschoolers, that really, your child's best teacher is you and themselves. And you should trust your impulses, reach out for help when you need it. And I think you're going to have a really great time, and I'm excited for you. So thanks again for coming and for staying, and enjoy your afternoon or evening, wherever you're calling in from in the world. Thank you so much for coming, everybody. Have a great day.