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The Homeschool How To
I don't claim to know anything about homeschooling, so I set out on a journey to ask the people who do! Join me as I chat with homeschoolers to discuss; "why are people homeschooling," "what are all the ways people are using to homeschool today," and ultimately, "should I homeschool my kids?"
The Homeschool How To
#97: Integrating Family, Education and Livelihood- Can We Combine Them All for the Ultimate Experience?
What happens when a devoted father makes the unexpected shift to homeschooling? In this episode, we invite you to join our conversation with Keith Phillips, a dedicated homeschooling dad from Illinois, who reveals his family's remarkable transition influenced by a classical Christian homeschooling community. Keith shares the profound impact homeschooling has had on his children, contrasting the articulate, confident nature of homeschooled students with their age-segregated, screen-focused peers in public schools. Discover the personalized approach Keith has come to appreciate, despite his initial plans for a dual enrollment transition during high school.
Our exploration extends beyond education as we ponder the societal shift from work-centric lives to leisure-focused existence, leading to a sense of disconnection. Reflecting on historical and personal anecdotes, we delve into the profound satisfaction found in meaningful work and familial connections. We discuss how challenging times, like the siege of Sarajevo, brought people together and reveal the often-overlooked truths about happiness and fulfillment amidst adversity. Join us as we question modern affluence and uncover the essence of contentment through stories of individuals thriving through hardship.
Homeschooling is more than an educational choice—it's a lifestyle. We explore the vibrant family culture it cultivates, emphasizing hands-on learning and shared literary adventures. Learn how families like Keith’s integrate practical projects with academic pursuits, fostering strong cultural foundations and lifelong bonds. From overcoming socialization concerns through community engagement to balancing busy lives filled with homeschooling, business, and family activities, this episode celebrates the conscious choices that build a meaningful, fulfilling family life.
Kypper's Slippers- A Comfy Footwear Brand Driven With A Purpose: to give back to homeschooling families
True North Online Academy, offering 2nd- 12th grade live online and self paced classes as well as a cutting edge Dual Degree program, (students can earn a high school diploma and an accredited Bachelor’s Degree concurrently)! At TNOA you can find ebooks, testing, advising, workshops and more!
Keith's work:
https://heartlandbunkies.com/
Keith's Podcast
Keith's Substack
Let's Talk, Emergencies! - Cheryl's children's book, and don't forget
The Activity Book!
Instagram: TheHomeschoolHowToPodcast
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Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. I'm Cheryl and I invite you to join me on my quest to find out why are people homeschooling, how do you do it, how does it differ from region to region, and should I homeschool my kids? Stick with me as I interview homeschooling families across the country to unfold the answers to each of these questions week by week. Welcome With us. Today I have Keith Phillips. Keith, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2:You bet. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Now, you've been a homeschooling father for some time now, right?
Speaker 2:That is true. Guilty as charged.
Speaker 1:All right. So why don't you tell us about your journey, kind of how you got started on this path? Did you always think you were going to homeschool?
Speaker 2:No, we actually both my wife and I, I mean into adulthood thought we would never homeschool our children. You know, back then the homeschoolers were weird and that was actually true, at least some of the time. They were more or less weird Some of them, and most of them were weird. I was hoping it was just a rumor. It's less, it's more of a rumor. Now I think it's much. It has a broader appeal. So there's less weird people doing it. But that actually brings up a good point.
Speaker 2:There were really weird kids in high school and nobody or you know public school in general, and nobody ever said don't do public school, there's weird kids there, you know. So right, and then what we noticed is like those kids parents were weird too. So like the apples don't fall far from the tree and so whatever like you are, your kids are probably going to pick up on that and be similar. And it's not, it's not untrue with just being the weird homeschooler. They would have been weird public schoolers too.
Speaker 2:But then what got us into? It was my wife, like finding a classical Christian homeschooling community, which you can guess which one that might be but she saw these kids that were graduating high school and that they were just incredible, like they could speak so clearly, so eloquently, think on their feet, they weren't afraid to be in front of a crowd and they could talk to adults. A lot of what you're seeing now. Kids are so age segregated all the time and then when they're not in the school age segregated, they're in their screens, so they don't spend a lot of time talking to someone that's five years older than much less 15, 20 years older than them, and they don't know how to do it, like there's exceptions, but it's something we've noticed.
Speaker 2:But for us it was really a matter of the quality of the education was what got us going in the homeschool direction, and you know we're going to have one that's a junior in high school at this point. So things have changed since we started. We started when she was four and they haven't changed for the better. Now there's all kinds of more reasons to homeschool.
Speaker 1:Now, what state are you in?
Speaker 2:We are in Illinois, which, interestingly enough, has some of the most lax homeschool laws in the country, at least for the moment.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Yeah, I'm in New York, so it's very strict over here, but okay.
Speaker 2:So how many children do you have altogether? Six, from 16, down to six and 16, it'll be 17 in February. So she's she's closing in on adulthood.
Speaker 1:And so you've homeschooled the entire time, or were they ever in public school?
Speaker 2:Homeschool the entire time.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So what was that kind of moment that you and your wife said, hey, I think we have to kind of shift gears? You know, it was just looking around at the kids, or you know, was there an instant like we're not, we're not doing this, and did you know you were going to do it for the duration, or just give it a try?
Speaker 2:For me it was yes, dear, that's fine, happy wife, happy life. You go homeschool and in my mind and we discussed this I figured that we would be done by high school and that they would probably do dual enrollment in high school. To me I saw that as the most efficient course to being done with it all and having some marketable skill or credential. But then, as things moved along and I got to see this kind of education and see it from a different angle, particularly an education that is not just equipping you to be a particular cog in a particular machine, but actually just rounding you out and growing you as a human, something that can't be tested for, by the way. What is this kid gonna be good at? What are they gonna have a passion for? And how can we equip that child to worship God and enjoy God forever in all of life, in work, in play, in reading poetry, in playing music, whatever the thing is?
Speaker 2:Everybody's going to be different and unfortunately, you know the sort of conventional education system. I hate to call it the traditional education system because there's nothing traditional about it. I mean it's a very young tradition in all of history. Because there's nothing traditional about it. I mean it's a very, it's a very young tradition in all of history. The conventional education system is essentially stamping out two or three different molds, you know, and that there's there's way more individuals in that.
Speaker 1:You're so right, and that was eyeopening for me was learning about the history of our education system. And you're so right too, I never really thought about we call it the traditional way, but it's not so. You look at the timeline of humans in history and you can date it back to, you know, civilizations like 6,000 BC, right? So we've got, like you know, around 8,000 years. Maybe I don't know if that's accurate, but a lot more time than we think. And here we are about a hundred years ago was when, you know, yeah, back in the 1600s, with Horace Mann bringing over this model from Prussia of like, hey, let's teach everybody across the board. And then you had John Dewey bringing that into the you know, United States or in. I don't know if we were the United States, yeah, probably, Yup.
Speaker 2:And and it was the Massachusetts John Owen not John Owen, somebody, owen of the Owenites who started a commune in New Harmony, indiana, and he realized that you had to have a different kind of person to live in this commune, and so education was very important to him, and having an education that shaped people to live in this way. And it was actually he that went over to Germany and sort of introduced the model of education that would become the Prussian model that would then be brought back to the United States.
Speaker 1:Oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:That's so interesting and when you look at it it's sold to us, as so many things in politics are about this, good, little Johnny in New York City can have the same opportunities as Billy Bob in Montana and you know. But it's like when you look at how kids don't like to all learn the same thing, they don't have the same interests, they don't have the same way that they learn, it's really quite ridiculous. And then when you look at the backstory of it that yes, we want to stamp out these people that are, say, smart enough to do the job but not smart enough to question it.
Speaker 2:It's also command economies have, shall we say, embraced this more than any others. Well, no-transcript party is not arguing for 90% top marginal rates that Reagan inherited, for instance. That's not. That's not a command economy thing. But the command economy is like a degree of magnitude, order of magnitude beyond something like that. And what we're doing to our kids in terms of education is we're taking the failed principles of a command economy where a central body says these are the things we need to produce, for instance. So the Soviet Union's like we need to build more stuff than the Americans and beat them. They're producing a lot of concrete, we're going to produce more concrete. Well, by the time that really takes effect, the Americans are producing microchips and the Soviets are producing concrete they don't need because command economies don't work. It's the same way in education, no-transcript, and obviously the thing that we do ensures that. But having the freedom to pursue those things where they can really blossom, where they can really lean in, it doesn't exist outside of homeschool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I do see alternatives popping up, maybe starting to take hold in certain places, and I do think that maybe in a decade or two we'll see a lot more of that. It'll be a lot more commonplace. But we do live in an economy where things are heavily regulated and okay, well, you can't be a certified school and accredited and this and that, so there will be hoops to jump through. So no, you wrote an article and these kind of align a little bit. What was what even provoked you to write that? Have you been a writer? Is that your profession? Anyway, it's not at all my profession.
Speaker 2:I kind of wish it were, but it's. It started so that the article itself is on work and basically the idea that our concept of the good life that has been taught to us in modern society is one in which we don't work and we simply recreate. And we've been taught that quality time is time when you're not working, you're doing other stuff that's not worked together, which actually leaves us with very little time together, but it also gives us a wrong sense of humanity. So I think what it really comes down to is what are people for? And we're not made to entertain ourselves and glorify ourselves forever, right? We're made to enjoy God and glorify Him forever. We're not to enjoy ourselves, right. We're just to enjoy stuff. It's great to enjoy stuff, but it needs to come from the proper direction, from the proper lens.
Speaker 2:And there's all of these different sort of phenomenon in modern society and the thing that, like it was always for me. I was noticing them, but I was having a hard time putting my finger on it. You're at Disney World, you're having a really good time, but it's like I don't know, there's a piece of the pie that's not there. It could be that it's supposed to be the happiest place on earth. They don't say anything about Jesus, but maybe you know it's more than that, because I had the same feeling when I was stationed in Germany in the army. My wife was over there and we would just visit all of these wonderful, beautiful places. Our modus operandi was go find a little town, find a little coffee shop, sit down and drink coffee, go, you know, see the sights. And coffee shop, sit down and drink coffee, go see the sights. And it was enriching, it was great. But it was always like I'm just kind of being a leech in a sense, in like a universal sense, like what's going on here. This is not my ultimate purpose.
Speaker 2:And then, sometime after leaving the military, another veteran friend of mine had suggested a book called Tribe by Sebastian Junger, and he really pointed out the phenomenon with a lot of the data, the sociological data on the problems we have, and they're not quite as new as we think. They really go back to the mercantilist era where global trade essentially regional and global trade really starts to flourish and we become disconnected from the production of the things we use. We may even be producing something ourselves, and people that produce anything are much happier than people that don't. But there's just less and less of a connection. And then you sort of have this, this slow, you know, movement from being hyper being really very connected I say hyper-connected I'm going to save that one Very connected personally to not being very connected personally. And now we're hyper-connected electronically and we're very disconnected personally.
Speaker 2:So the problems, you see, there are, like you know, loneliness. Okay, so loneliness was not a word in use in any written language until not very long ago because people just didn't experience it. And to this day, in a lot of places people don't experience it. If you lived in Afghanistan, for instance, you probably would never be lonely because you live in a compound with extended family. It's just not a thing. Look up is actually experienced by a large population of Westerners and it was first mentioned by Rousseau. Nobody really had this concept before. But that's become like more and more of a thing and it's really what it is. It's sort of a fear of missing out, like you're not busy enough and connected enough to keep yourself engaged the way you need to be, and then all of a sudden, you're thinking in ways that you, you are really not healthy.
Speaker 2:So the big shift that I would say happened in American life in particular was after World War II. Because all these guys come back home and they are basically promised that if they leave the farm and go into some kind of factory work or financial work or whatever the case may be, that they will work just 40 hours a week probably. You know amount of time compared to what people would spend on the farm working Right, and they would have, you know, a pension or a 401k later on these different retirement things to give you security and their social security too now, and you would have more time for recreation than pretty much anybody who's ever lived in history. And people were like, yeah, let's do it. Being on the farm is a lot of work, let's go do this. And so if, initially, dad is going to work the factory job and America is the only developed country in the world that wasn't destroyed in a giant war, so we're just rocking out. Our pay is good, even at the lowest level, and that lasts for a little while.
Speaker 2:Pretty soon to to maintain that lifestyle, mom's got to go to work too, but it's not that bad. I mean, we're still living better than most people on the planet, materially speaking, and pretty soon you've got because of public education. You've got mom over here, dad over here, kid one, two and three here, here and here. For most of their waking hours they come home to consume food and, more and more, to consume telephonic entertainment. Maybe they did, you know, consume that entertainment together the television but now they're doing this while they watch television, if they're watching television in the same room. So the one thing that they're not doing together is working, and even the idea that they would work together at something more than just, you know, weeding the garden or something like that, is like a far out extreme idea, a foreign concept.
Speaker 2:But, that's how people have lived for a long, long time, and I think it actually kind of holds a lot of answers to the problems we're facing right now.
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Speaker 1:So whether you're looking for a cozy gift for your loved ones or even for yourself, you can feel good about where your money is going. Head over to KipperSlipperscom. The link is in my show's description. That's Kipper with a Y. Grab your socks and slippers today and know that your money is making a difference. That's kipperslipperscom. I a million percent agree, and it's stuff that I you know. I come from working for the government for the last 16 years and I just left my job to homeschool the kids.
Speaker 2:And it was very hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was so hard to walk away from that pension but it took some realizing things like you were talking about. You know some of it having to do with okay, well, what is the dollar? You know it's not attached to anything it's. You know it's. It's not attached to gold anymore, it's just a piece of paper that the Federal Reserve tells me what it's worth every day, you know.
Speaker 1:But going back to what you were first talking about, now that I don't have, I'm not in kind of that rat race from getting up every morning and drudging off to work and then looking at the clock to see if it's four or five o'clock yet and coming home to rush everybody to bed, to go do it all again the next day. Now I have time to look at nature. Okay, go outside with my kids, be out there. And it's mind blowing. You know I'm looking at the one day it just came.
Speaker 1:The realization came to me. I'm looking at the birds and the squirrels and different bugs and I'm like they all have the same goal. They're all looking for food, looking to stay alive and looking to procreate, and those three things they've literally taken away from humans. We I can call for Grubhub or whatever, to come deliver me food If I need food. They're telling me don't procreate Like who wants kids.
Speaker 1:They just suck all the life out of you. They suck all the money out, and then they, you know, blow out all this carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We don't need them. And then they, you know, blow out all this carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We don't need them. And then they, you know, they took away our survival because it's like you don't need a gun, everybody's safe here and there's nothing to worry about folks. Don't worry about any direct energy, weapons or hurricanes coming your way. You know, we don't need to worry about any of that. So it's like we feel very comfortable, and when you take those innate instincts away from us, we have no purpose. So it does make total sense what you're saying.
Speaker 2:And if you look at some different periods in history, difficult periods, people are psychologically thriving. So in that book Tribe, he points to the Battle of Britain, he points to the time after 9-11. Obviously, anytime people are in combat soldiers in combat, direct combat they are psychologically thriving and they are directly responsible for their own survival. So nobody's helping you. I mean, if they are helping you, you're actually there. It's not a system that's up there in the ether that's going to protect you, that's going to be there for you when you want to retire or whatever which retirement's a whole, nother issue. But you know, after the Battle of Britain or during the Battle of Britain, after 9-11, the insane asylums basically emptied or didn't fill up in the case of 9-11, I think, but they emptied during the Battle of Britain. These people that were completely non-functioning before are driving ambulances and they're functioning members of society and society's pulled together by this need to survive and when it's over, it goes back to normal. One of the things that he talked about was being in the battle or covering the siege of Sarajevo. And you've got you know. Years later he interviews the same people that he met then and they, you know 100%, all of them have this longing for those days, those wonderful days in a war, in a siege, where they were huddled around a fire made of their own furniture, playing cards with their friends at night, because that was all there was to do after they had scavenged for food. But they look back and think about how happy it was and how problematic it is now.
Speaker 2:Well, what's going on now versus then? You've got, for the first time in history, mere possibility, the potential for almost anybody to be somewhat wealthy and to really stop working, if you really wanted to. Almost anyone could work for about half their life and quit. It's possible, it's not an unrealistic thing at all. You just have to be disciplined, and that's seen as a goal that's worth having. It's not an unrealistic thing at all. You just have to be disciplined and that's seen as a goal that's worth having. It's this affluence. So then, if we're not pursuing that, if we're not going after that as hard as we can, we have a fear that we're missing out on it. But in the meantime, we're missing out on all those wonderful opportunities that you mentioned earlier of noticing things, about knowing what kind of trees are around your house, about having relationships that are developed, not just watching television or going to Disney World or, you know, the occasional walk in the park, but like actually taking on long-term projects together as a family and being responsible for each other's livelihood.
Speaker 2:We're in a very weird position. Our greatest problem is our affluence, our abundance, and we don't know what to do with it. I think we'll get past it because we're ultimately, you know, God made us to be this way. God created man, put him in the garden, told him to work it and keep it, Made woman said help him out. There's your gender roles, and if we can get back to that where we actually see that like no, my greatest happiness is not in pursuing these dreams of wealth and in going on these big vacations and having somebody else cook my food or clean my house or whatever, but actually the happiest life I can live is where I'm doing what God's called us to do on a daily basis with my family. What do you do when you go camping? You cook food, you build your shelter, you cook your food. It's inefficient, it takes a lot of time and we love it.
Speaker 1:Why? Because it's what we were made to do. That is so true. And even you were mentioning earlier about producing and you know I think my husband was the first person I ever met that actually likes his job. And it's so funny because I mean, I've seen him over the years now turn down promotions because he just doesn't want to be in that management role. He's like I don't want to deal with managing who goes where and who has a complaint, I just want to go work.
Speaker 1:He does commercial HVACs. He's on roofs of hospitals and jails and schools and sometimes it's zero degrees out in New York and sometimes it's 100 degrees out and he's on the roof and doing what he's got to do, carrying things up and down. But he loves it. He's somewhere different every day and I think what it is is there's a problem and he's got to get his hands dirty and figure it out and then, when he's done, he feels a sense of satisfaction Like I changed someone's life today. You know, now this doctor can operate in this operating room or whatever. These kids can have heat. There's a sense of accomplishment, and so many. I mean. Working for the government for 16 years. I can honestly tell you I never felt accomplishment. Okay, it was like just push the emails along and you know, go about your. You want to suggest something that's cute, but quiet it down and keep, keep doing what we ask you to do. You know so I do. You can't change it.
Speaker 1:It's the government. Yeah, I think that that is is huge is fine. So how does that guide how you homeschool your kids with what sort of job they might want someday? Cause, like you mentioned in the very beginning, why do we educate? Why are we here? What's the purpose of being a human? How does that guide you and guide them into, even knowing what careers are out there? How can I make a livelihood doing something I like and that's fulfilling? You know, that's a big, it's a big undertaking, and I do understand why a lot of parents say throw their hands up and say, let's, that's a big job. I'm going to let the government take over here.
Speaker 2:So, like in my family right now, I have a, an author slash songwriter, a farmer slash artist, a probably farmer slash lawyer, a mechanic engineer, not sure, sure what an outlaw. And a cowboy, hopefully more cowboy than ella uh, let's see here who else, who else am I missing? And then a princess. I, I don't know. I don't know what she's gonna do, but she's six or so. She'll figure it out. Uh, she's actually a great artist. She does every. She works really hard at everything she does our youngest does. She writes well. She has the potential to do a lot of things, but probably more. I would say she'll probably be more intellectual than like in the trades. But you know, they've got the time to look at it.
Speaker 2:We do live in the country. We live on a, on a pretty, pretty large piece of land up next to a national forest. We have horses, goats, chickens, dogs, cats, whole nine yards, and so there's ample opportunity to see what you want to do and look at it. And I myself am a musician and so music's a big part. There's all kinds of avenues of exploration for them.
Speaker 2:The other day, the one who is like the ex-builder, builder, mechanic, engineer, whatever Martin's going to be Actually, it wasn't Martin, it was William, the cowboy outlaw guy who's seven years old. He was with me building a banister over a stairwell in the cabin we're building right now and you know the pickets needed to be every four inches. So it's math time. All right, buddy, every four inches, tell me where I need to make the mark. I got the pencil. You tell me where. You know he's like okay, four, eight, 12, which he's actually, you know, been learning. Skip counting the fours and skip counting all these different numbers, right, which is just a shortcut to multiplication and the kids memorize it and it helps them out. But it was. It was an opportunity to see that what he was learning actually had an application, and that's. That's awfully nice. There's not a lot of public schoolers, unless they're, you know, in a very rural area where their parents are involved in the trades and so forth, where they really get to see the application of their, their education on a regular basis.
Speaker 1:So that's, that's a huge change in the game right there, knowing where you can apply this knowledge, this information.
Speaker 2:Beyond that, you know, we do so much reading and all of our kids have, thus far as appropriate, you know, as far as the age goes have experimented with writing something so like that. That gene's pretty strong and reading so much together has made a huge difference. I'm sure you guys have probably heard of Read Aloud Revival.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love Sarah McKenzie. She's been a guest a couple of weeks ago. Yep, sarah McKenzie.
Speaker 2:Oh really, Nice Huge fan Actually. She, uh, she held one of our children for like 20 minutes one time. It was a long time ago. I wasn't there. My wife was at something, she had a baby and she was like let me hold the baby and she held the baby for a long time. I give your baby the gift of story. A better person, Just kind of rub off on them you know yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah, the whole reading aloud thing like I think most people, I would have thought you know, like once you can read yourself, like we don't need to read to you anymore, right? No, no, you do, you absolutely do it will not only inspire a much higher level of reading in terms of enjoyment and deeply appreciating it and learning from it, but it also establishes also establishes what I think is a more important thing, which is a common family culture, and this is, you know, it's always easy to juxtapose this to public school, but it's not just public school Like it's private schools, where you're age segregated. That's a very new thing. There's problems with age segregation, but one of the biggest problems, I think, with age segregation is every grade develops its own sort of cultural personality and they have their inside jokes that nobody else gets and they're very distinct and then, because of that, they don't have the same common cultural touchstones that everybody else has, if everybody else even has them. So the ability to communicate and to have a cohesive, coherent culture is really just sliced up, whereas if you are reading great literature in your home, you're getting those same cultural touchstones.
Speaker 2:So one of the one of the series series that is is constantly being read in this house would be the Green Gables books, all of them. And so there are. You know, various things that are said in that, like last night she said, darn fool, my oldest did. And I said that came from Anne, didn't it? She just made this funny thing. But you know where it's coming from and you know why it's coming is one thing, but it's also building your worldview, like whether you know it or not. So the idea that your child would have ideas that you think are crazy and that you would have ideas that they think are crazy is historically strange. That's a new thing and it's very much a part of the education system that slices everybody up into these age groups.
Speaker 1:And when you do, that the education system that slices everybody up into these age groups. And when you do that, like we're from today, but even like back in the 80s, you know, like if I came home with you know, my hairspray all in my bangs and I was born in the 80s.
Speaker 1:So maybe it would be my sister, my older sister, coming up, but you know the hairs and the jeans, jacket and tutu on, like yes, the parents would be like what are you wearing? You know, and even to today you come home dressed as a cat. Hey look, I'm, I'm, you know, kitten now and call me, call me cat. It's the same thing, just at different degrees.
Speaker 2:Use your litter box.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so true, it very much is. And when you, when you separate kids and this is from a homeschool point of view like this is huge. The one-room schoolhouse works. The one-room schoolhouse makes your job as a teacher much, much easier. The little ones do learn from the older ones. They glean, they get the crumbs from the table, and it makes all the difference in the world. When you age-segregate kids. Their behavior goes to the lowest common denominator too. If they're all together, the older ones see the need to be leaders, leaders and the younger ones have something to try to attain. When you slice them where everybody's within the same year group, that kind of stops happening and people just act stupid. I mean, it's not that they don't act stupid, you know, regardless of what situation you put children in. But that doesn't help. It doesn't help at all.
Speaker 1:I totally agree with that. I mean we're taking the lesser road where we all watch Little House on the prairie, a lot of evenings on tv which we should be reading. We should be reading the books instead, but you know what?
Speaker 1:baby steps, I came from like I came from the other side, like so far in the matrix that this is good for us. But yes, so we'll have like ice cream and watch little house on the prairie as a family. And you're right, those little jokes, um, you know, something will come up in the day and, and my, my two-year-old will be like look, it's Laura. Like, you know, if she sees like a picture, if I'm reading to her and she sees a picture of a family with three kids, she points to the middle one. There's Laura. And so it's really cute that like, even at two years old, they're making these connections. And yeah, you're so right.
Speaker 1:And when Sarah McKenzie from Read Aloud Revival was on the show a couple weeks ago, she said something it sounds intimidating, like read to your kids every day, right, like, oh, my God, I can't, where am I going to find the time? She said you know, if you just do 20 minutes a day, like, the benefits that you give them are humongous. So it doesn't have to be this. Let's take a two hour block of time, guys and everybody sit down and trying to keep the kids quiet and everyone has to pay attention. It doesn't have to look like that at all it can be your kids running around playing with play-doh or whatever and just you reading to them. They don't have to look at it. You could pop in a question or two or oh my goodness, look at, look at.
Speaker 1:They're doing it in this picture and maybe they'll run over and kind of engage. But it also doesn't have to be the only time you ever read that story. They hear it again and again and they're going to start connecting dots and be getting more interested in it. So, yes, I do, I love that idea and it just it doesn't have to be this huge undertaking. 20 minutes a day, that's like a couple of little children's books or a couple pages, you know, in a larger series, and it really does. The benefits are astronomical. When you think about kids in school right now, where do the parents ever find the time to read for 20 minutes, even a day? You just rush, rush, rush, rush, rush everywhere.
Speaker 2:Have you heard of Sean and Beth Doherty? I think so. So they're really big, like the homesteading community, stuff, right, and I interviewed them on my podcast recently and one of the things they said and it really filled in a gap for me was that they produce their own entertainment. They produce everything Like they produce 90% of their own food. They built their own house and they produce their own entertainment. What's interesting is that Sean taught theater at college for like over 20 years and so like theatrics in a proper sense is like very much in the family, and so they put on plays.
Speaker 2:But your kids want to do that anyway. Like especially when they're young. They want to put on a play. They want you to sit down and do that. You need to have the time to do it. It's, it's worth it, uh, sort of in the same way that it's it takes more time to let the kid help in the kitchen than it does to just to do it yourself. But you're giving, you're putting that time. That time doesn't disappear. That time doesn't disappear. That time is sort of put in the bank. It grows with compound interest and you get it back later in the person that comes out of it that you now get to fellowship with for the rest of your mutual lives. So that's yeah, it's huge.
Speaker 2:Do that and you had to have time to do it. Well, what are you doing, right? I mean, it's most people, if they did cut out the things which they consider consumption, would then all of a sudden have the time to do these things. Yeah, for us, sort of the baseline in a day that we've got outside of like our homeschool rhythms is evening family devotions. It's 15, 20 minutes, it's really quick. It's sing, read, pray, sing, done, right, and at this point, if I don't, if it's, you know, nine o'clock when we get home and I'm tired, I want to go to bed, and we don't do it.
Speaker 2:One of my you know, six or seven year old says dad, we haven't had family worship yet. Shut up. No, just kidding, I don't do that. They make us do it, they hold us accountable. There's, there's time. You just have to make it and giving up that, getting that idea in your head that no, this is the good life that you should be working for. The thing that you're putting money in the bank for is not To get to that point, to where you can retire, not work, have healthcare paid for and hopefully not burn the 401k out before you die, is not the point. If you just gave all that up together, all of it, and then now you're actually working to build children that you will live with the rest of your lives, like most people did, where children are social security, don't fear that you're missing out on something that the modern world has concocted with these systems. What you're opting for is a luxury life.
Speaker 1:But that's funny too, because of the people that I know that are retired. They are either bored and looking for other jobs or doing something unhealthy with that time. Anyway, it's not like they retired and I don't know. Sit at the pool reading every day, you know. It's like. I look at my mother she's gambles and, you know, likes her boxed wine and is still looking for a job at 77 years old. She's like I wonder why I can't get a job. Well, I got a couple of inklings, but it's like why do you want to work? You're that bored. There's nothing else in this life that you could experience other than being like a receptionist at a nursing home. I mean, she probably walked in and they thought she was there to apply as a patient. I'll have to cut that out, but it's true. And there's lots of people, especially government workers, that retire at 55, 60, 62 years old and then they either still stay there or they go look for other work and it's like they just die because retirement kills people.
Speaker 2:That is true, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, in our case in New York, I'm pretty sure Cuomo was pumping something into the air that makes sure we, if we didn't kill ourselves, he was going to do it for us, but but, um, so okay. So what? What are some obstacles that you've seen? You know you have a wide range of kids and you've been at it for a while. What are some of the obstacles? You know everyone talks about the socialization. Has that been a problem with finding friends? Or, you know you're, you got some boys there. Are they at the age 16 level? Are they like, gee, I don't, I don't socialize, I can't even find a girlfriend anywhere. Is that like a worry of theirs? Do they feel the fear of missing out from not being in the conventional school system?
Speaker 2:I mean, so I mean we we're going to church like that. So that's a big chunk of it. But uh, we we do. We are part of a, you know, a co-op ish thing, actually a part of two co-op ish things, which is one too many. But yeah, so one day a week they're're with peers roughly the same age. Some of those are actually broken down into year groups. Some of the younger ones are a little bit broader than that, and so they're meeting people there and then they're spending time with a lot of different ages for at least an hour of that time that they're playing and so forth.
Speaker 2:So my 12-year-old son, who is the ladies' man there's way too many prospects right now. No, he has no issues, we just have to keep an eye on everything, keep the copacetic. But now my daughter, that's 16, going on 17,. You know she now has a job where she drives to. She bought her own car and she's doing well there's, you know they're socially thriving and you know there's more than one of them, there's more than two of them. So that helps right there. I mean there's six of them. So there's somebody to socialize with the house. But the socialization that you are getting in this kind of life offers. Really, I think more.
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Speaker 2:Because if you're being socialized in a completely controlled environment where an adult is making all of the decisions, where an adult is constantly refereeing everything that's going on, what are you learning from that? But if you're actually having to do the refereeing yourself and this is the situation it's not like the kids don't fight. No, they do fight a lot and, though it's a bit, it can be taxing on us at times, they're getting through it and they're learning how to deal with the conflict so that they will be more resilient, so that they will be people that realize that you have to persuade. You can't just use force all the time. You're going to have to figure out compromises that work for both parties and all of this. And that comes down to sports too.
Speaker 2:We have not done much in the way of sports. We train and resell horses, so we try to find horses that need a lot of work and put some work into them and sell them. So that's sportish. We do a lot of writing, but as far as team sports and stuff, we're having to travel away from the house. We haven't done that much we did just recently. The 12-year-old boy is doing a once-a-week homeschool basketball league, which has been very good for him. He's not very good at basketball, but he's getting better. So he's getting better, so he's getting that. But the games that they come up with on their own whether these are already extant games like football or basketball or baseball or whatever or something they're completely making up on the spot. Either way, they are the players, they are the coaches, they are the referees, they are the legislators of the rules, and those are the kind of skills, that's the kind of socialization that goes on to help you the rest of life.
Speaker 2:There is a sense in which and I think maybe it's good for homeschoolers to participate in some kind of sports, because there are situations in which you just need to learn how to be a team player and, depending on which person you are in the family, you might already be getting that, but if you're like the dominant personality, you might not be getting that. But if you're like the dominant personality, you might not be getting that. And so I think, particularly for this child that I'm talking about, he needs to just go out there and learn how to be a team player, because the MVP is not the person that's necessarily the greatest athlete. The MVP is the person who is at the right place, the right time to help the team, you know, accomplish the team's goals, not just to look good themselves. So there's that aspect too.
Speaker 2:So I'm not totally against sports, but I think the way we're treating sports now is, unfortunately, quite extreme. You get into the travel sports and all that. How much of it is about the kids having fun and how much of it is this about the kid being an idol, a tool and a machine? We're going to prepare you to be a really, really good pitcher. Are you going to learn anything else? No, but you're going to be a really good pitcher. Why? Because we need a really good pitcher for this machine to go forward, for our own glory.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sorry if I offended anyone, it's just how I feel. No, you're so right Now. Can you take us through quickly as we round out what does an average day in your life look like? Quickly, as we round out, what does an average day in your life look like? And for the kids, there's not one Chaos all the time.
Speaker 2:So I am generally getting up at about six o'clock and going and making coffee for my wife, because she has told me now over and over again that that is how she knows that I still love her, and so I get for her coffee. I get my coffee. I sit down, I read the Bible and pray a little bit, and so I get for her coffee. I get my coffee, I sit down, I read the Bible and pray a little bit, and then I will usually go to my computer and I will check all of the things that I need to check, because I do manage social media stuff. I manage an Amazon PPC campaign and for more than one business right. So that usually takes me somewhere between an hour or two in the morning, and then I'm looking to things that need to be done around the property. We have two vacation rental cabins on our property right now and we're building what will probably be like more of a long-term rental as well, and so there's all those things that need to be checked on. Phone calls made. Help the electrician have everything he needs? Do I need to go paint this or that or fix this? There's fences that need to be mended, animals, making sure the kids are doing their chores to animals, things like that, and that takes up a substantial portion of my day. And then, you know, go be on a podcast for a little while and maybe take a nap. And this afternoon we're going to go to meet our pastor, actually at a park in the town that our church is in, and we're just going to go play with two families together for about an hour hour and a half before we go to our Wednesday night service and hopefully we'll meet people out there that are looking for friends and we'll invite them to come to the free dinner at church. That's probably the most compressed day because we're going to church. Yesterday lasted a lot longer. Actually, I'm going to go ride with two of my sons as soon as this is done, because we just got a horse that they're starting to train. This horse hadn't been ridden in two years and my seven-year-old boy was on it day two, so that was cool. So we're going to be training that horse. Today we're going to be working with a couple other horses too. We're going to go on a little trail ride around the property and then we're going to go to that. So there's all kinds of little streams of income that are happening.
Speaker 2:But it's awesome because, like, not everybody in the family is always involved in stuff. If we're building a cabin and we're unpacking that, that bunkie kit for the, you know, then everybody all hands on deck because we we need them. We'll get it done fast that way. But with all of the things going on, we roast coffee too, right. So if it's coffee roasting, coffee bagging, training horses whatever you know maintaining cleaning one of the vacation rentals, things like that, there's a place for somebody to plug in and work. And probably the biggest challenge right now, I think, is that my 16-year-old, who's a very, very good student and dumps a lot of time into school, also has a job outside the home and we don't see her enough. But I think I'm getting her convinced at this point that she really does want to come home and do something for us pretty soon. So she wanted, she wanted to go prove herself out there in the quote unquote real world, and she's doing that.
Speaker 1:I get that. I get that. Now, how much time do they invest in their studies? Is there curriculum that your wife does with them, or are you guys more unschoolers? I mean, they're obviously learning so many things that you do anyways, but yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is. There is so much. We do classical conversations and so they're. They're gone. Basically, you know, half a day for the younger ones are almost a full day for the older ones with that.
Speaker 1:Is that every day or just once a week? What?
Speaker 2:they're doing every once a week, one day a week and then the other days of the week we are getting it started in the nine o'clock realm after chores are done. Everybody's done their chores, they've eaten stuff like that Somewhere on the 8, 30, nine o'clock realm, and everything that can be done together they do together. At that point, interestingly enough, from the 13-year-old, I think the 13-year-old, maybe the 12-year-old for sure, down to the six-year-old, maybe the 12-year-old for sure Down to the 6-year-old, are all doing math together and this is the first year it's been so integrated like that. It's called the Math Map and it's very, very different than anything we've seen before. But you're learning math like you would learn a language and you're starting out with a small grammar and so forth.
Speaker 2:I have a friend who is a computer scientist and physicist working on reprogramming. Actually, I guess what they're doing is they're rewriting all the existing programming to work in quantum computing, because now instead of zeros and ones it's zeros, ones, twos and zeros and ones, or zero and one or zero one. It's a weird thing. Anyway, it kind of you know, exponentiates the dimensions it's in and everything that exists has to be done again thing. Anyway, it kind of you know, exponentiates the dimensions it's in and everything that exists has to be done again.
Speaker 2:He looked at this program. He sat there and looked at it for 20 minutes and said almost nothing. He's just going through it and finally, cause he, you know he's, he's one of these brainy guys. You can just sit there and say nothing for that long and then he, he finally kind of sits up from, he goes I love this. So that's kind of cool. We're doing the math map and they're doing that together, which is great. There's other things that they can do together as well. They just kind of continue on, but then they kind of get to the stuff where they can't do together. There's the reading lesson for the individual kids and so forth, like that. And other kid needs to write a research paper, he's a study for this, needs to make a poster for presentation. They do presentations every single week from day one, four or five years old.
Speaker 1:This is something you're putting on your children, or is this the classical?
Speaker 2:No, this is part of classical conversations. Okay, so, and it's, it's not. I can tell you it's not hugely intimidating, other than the fact that you are standing up in front of the four or five, six kids in your class and you're you're doing it once a week. So the kids end up, especially by the time they're in their final years, they're bringing the lesson, they're teaching the lesson, and what's really cool is there, you know, because by the time you're a high school senior, like probably not everybody's at the same point in math, unless you just ended up with a weird group of people, and so you've got somebody that struggles in math and you got somebody that's killing it and they're doing, you know, calculus right. So this week, bob is giving his math, he's got the math this week and so he's presenting on this basic algebra that he did. And Jimmy, the next week, who does calculus, he's presenting on the calculus and he has to teach Bob how to do calculus, how to do the calculus. He just did All of the skills involved in teaching someone else to do math, especially more advanced math. Amazing, huge, great preparation for anything you're going to do.
Speaker 2:And I think this is a good point to make, because you get so much pushback, particularly from dads, about homeschooling or anything like classical and liberal artsy kind of stuff, that that's not practical. That's not. How's that going to help them get a job? Well, guess what? Just like in the command economy and the command education system, nothing they're learning is going to help them get a job. They need to learn how to learn. That's the only thing that's going to help them long-term, because most of the jobs that are going to exist by the time my eight-year-old I don't have an eight-year-old my seven-year-old or my nine-year-old are going to hit the job market don't exist right now. Correct, yeah, they're going to be learning it fresh. They're going to be the first ones that ever did the job.
Speaker 1:That's so true and that's, yeah, a huge thing about homeschooling and guiding your kids is learn how to learn how to ask questions. And you know, I'll catch myself. Sometimes my son will ask a question. I'll be like, oh, I don't know. And then I'm like, wait, no, you have to take the time to sit there and, even if I don't know, say, great question, let's research it later. Or, you know, let's take five minutes now to look it up and really getting them into reinforcing that asking questions is awesome.
Speaker 1:And even, as you were talking about with um, the giving presentations, just getting the kids used to um asking a question after it. We're so used to someone saying any questions and nobody will raise their hand. And I remember being in school thinking, gee, I have a question, but I don't want to look stupid, so I'm just not going to say anything. And it's not until I got older and was like, well, hey, if I have the question, most people probably do too, so why don't I just say it? Who cares if I look stupid? But that's huge too. So it's not just a benefit for the presenter but for the kids asking their questions afterwards too. I love that. Anything else you want to say, to wrap up or point people in your direction for your podcast or any of the work that you're doing, and I can include links in the show's description as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So our podcast is called the stay at work home, and the idea is that we want to question the prevailing norms out there and, instead of having work pull us in 15 different directions away from each other, we want it to pull us together into a unified, coherent family unit, and one of the ways that we have done that as a family is through heartlandbunkiescom. That's our website, where we sell cabin kits that are easy to assemble. Usually, you know, three or four people can do it in one to three or four days, depending on the kit, and we've built several of them now on our property that bring in income for us, which is great.
Speaker 2:But it doesn't just. It's not just that, it's that, it's also the project right. So my children have helped go through fairly large projects and seeing you know kind of what project management looks like. I don't know if it was very good project management, but maybe sometimes it's. Do as I say, not as I do, but they're learning. They're learning from my mistakes, they're learning from what we're doing right and we're doing it together. So instead of making memories goofing off, we're making memories building something together.
Speaker 1:It's actually benefiting us further down the road. Are your kids actually helping you build like the kit that you'll then ship out?
Speaker 2:No, okay, no, so, actually. So we don't have the factory. The factory is in Ontario and we were given this opportunity to sort of be the marketer or be a marketer, and I had no background in advertising or anything like that. I was a helicopter pilot in the Army, so it's like you know. But I can talk, I can run my mouth, you know, I can make some videos, learn how to do some video editing, run some social media stuff, cool, and it's kind of worked. So, yeah, that's the connection to it. But we have built several ourselves. At this point we're going sometime in December probably, to, yeah, western North Carolina, to, uh, what, yeah, western north carolina, and we're building one there at a camp that had quite a bit of damage but thankfully all the structures survive.
Speaker 2:But they need yeah, they need, but they they already needed uh, some extra staff housing. So the first one if this one goes well, they'll buy more, hopefully, but we're gonna go, we're gonna go help them build this first one. So we're pretty excited about that. It's gonna be cold, that's something I'm not excited about. That it's going to be cold, that's something I'm not excited about. They're like 5,000 feet, so it might be a little chilly in December.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's so cool, though yes, you'll get awesome videos for it. Hey everybody, look what you're doing. That's amazing. All right, so where can people find you if they want to check out this fun stuff? And I'll link it, like I said in this show's description.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so heartlandbunkiescom, bunkies, b-u-n-k-i-e-s, and you can see us on the socials, all the socials at Bunky Life, heartland and YouTube as well. And yeah, see what we got. We got some funny videos on there, particularly YouTube. We got some longer form stuff where you see the family really, really working together, having a good time.
Speaker 1:So cool. I want a cabin. I'm more thinking of it in terms of like just to have a little fort, but I guess we could probably do that at a lesser expense.
Speaker 2:Probably could. I mean, you know they're great. She sheds right. We got some smaller ones and make a great. She shed a place to just escape a podcast studio, a home office, anything that you're not going to use like all the time. I mean, even if you do use it all the time, it might still be fine. New York, if you're upstate, that's cold and our walls aren't very thick. But we do put insulation. It doesn't come with the kit. We always put insulation, a little bit of insulation above and below them, and for something that you're not using all the time, it does fine. It's such a small area to heat that you know much extra expense that you put into doing further insulation of the walls or something like. You'd take decades to get back if you're not living in it full time.
Speaker 2:But it's a great place to just house company when they come into town, you know things like that.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining us today. This has been such a pleasure. I love your insights and I hope you keep doing what you're doing and giving people inspiration. Alrighty, thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of the homeschool how to. If you've enjoyed what you heard and you'd like to contribute to the show, please consider leaving a small tip using the link in my show's description. Or, if you'd rather, please use the link in the description to share this podcast with a friend or on your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. Any effort to help us keep the podcast going is greatly appreciated. Thank you for tuning in and for your love of the next generation.