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
Curriculum Series: Homeschool Made Simple
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The Homeschool How To Curriculum Series
Access to Curriculum SeriesUnlock the secrets to a seamless homeschooling experience that thrives on simplicity and a love for learning. Today's episode welcomes Erika, a military spouse with a flair for educating her children through literature, wherever life takes them. Our enlightening discussion peels back the layers of the 'Homeschool Made Simple' curriculum, revealing how this Charlotte Mason-inspired approach can transform your educational journey. Erika's personal guidelines for selecting enriching reading material and her strategies for integrating learning into the fabric of everyday life provide a wealth of knowledge for parents eager to cultivate a relaxed and child-led learning environment.
Embrace the art of teaching history, science, and art with a page-turning twist and discover how to fold education into the day's chores, making every moment a potential lesson in disguise. We talk about similarities of 'Homeschool Made Simple' to other models, such as Treehouse Schoolhouse, and discuss the value of unschooling, where the world becomes your classroom. Our conversation with Erika serves as a beacon for those navigating the balance between guiding their children's education and granting them the freedom to pursue their passions, all while maintaining a sense of wonder and excitement for learning. Tune in for a trove of practical tips and inspirational insights that will reshape the way you think about homeschooling.
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Welcome to the Homeschool How-To Find my Curriculum, a series where we talk all about curriculum. I've been interviewing homeschooling families for over a year now on my main podcast, the Homeschool How-To, but I really wanted to zero in on curriculum. There's so much out there. How do I know what would work best for me and my child? How do I know what works for one child would work for the other? I might like the curriculum I'm using now, but how do I know there's not a better one out there, especially if I don't know all the curriculums? And what about supplemental curriculum? Should I be using that too? This series is to help you decide just that. I'm going to interview parents who are using all the curriculums so that you can decide the absolute best way to unfold your homeschooling journey. The absolute best way to unfold your homeschooling journey. Welcome With us. Today. I have Erica, thank you, so much for being here, Erica.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. So what state?
Speaker 1:are you in?
Speaker 2:I am currently in Michigan.
Speaker 1:Currently, so you move around a little bit.
Speaker 2:My husband's in the military, so we move about every two years.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, that's got to be interesting. Okay, so, as I said before we hit record, maybe you'll come back on and tell us all about the homeschooling journey with that, and that would be really fun to learn about with the traveling, so hopefully you will do that. I would be happy to Awesome. Today, we are here to talk about Homeschool Made Simple, a curriculum that I am not familiar with at all, so I'm really excited to learn about this. What ages are your kids that you do this curriculum with?
Speaker 2:So I have four kids. They're ages four, six, eight and ten.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And so we kind of do this with everybody.
Speaker 1:Like as a family style type thing, yeah.
Speaker 2:So Homeschool Made Simple is more of a like yes, it's a curriculum, but it's also a philosophy of homeschooling. I've heard it described as like Charlotte Mason light.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I know the listeners will have this question too, because I've been interviewing homeschoolers for over a year now and obviously people talk about Charlotte Mason all the time. I personally haven't like read any of her thing. The kids are learning like history through a story about that time period and the event that happened, kind of thing, and like more play-based versus rigid schoolwork. Is that kind of it.
Speaker 2:Yes, so Charlotte Mason is literature-based, literature-based Living book. I find kind of ambiguous because it's not a term that we use regularly, so it doesn't mean anything unless you're already doing a Charlotte Mason homeschooling. Essentially it just means that we're telling it as a story instead of just the rote facts about history or about science. It's done as a story particularly with the younger kids, so like as you get more towards the older grades, they tend to read more of like the primary sources. So instead of learning about like Benjamin Franklin, you'll read his autobiography. Benjamin Franklin, you'll read his autobiography things like that.
Speaker 1:All right, that sounds really cool. So Homeschool Made Simple is a light version of this. Can you kind of elaborate and just tell us about like the subjects and Anything about it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't even know.
Speaker 1:I don't even know what I assume reading. It covers reading.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's definitely so. It is a literature based curriculum. It teaches history, science, art, philosophy, so it does have an offering for Christian history, but you can leave that aspect out if that's not something that you want to do. So one of the biggest differences between Homeschool Made Simple and Charlotte Mason is it's a lot less overwhelming to teach. We were doing Ambleside online and I really loved it, but it was overwhelming. It was very structured and you can only read this many pages a day and you have to keep track of 20 books at a time. And then, when you're trying to do it for three different grades, you're keeping track of 60 books and you have to balance everybody and know what they're reading.
Speaker 2:And Homeschool Made Simple is just simple. So she has a daily structure that she recommends and it's about an hour of table work where you sit down and do like your phonics and math and writing and then, other than that, essentially you're just living life. She has a book list that she recommends and you read a book together as a family and encourage your children to read literature. And then one of the examples that she uses is say, you're reading Little House on the Prairie and your child comes to you and says you know, I want to do what Mary did or any of those things. Right, and a lot more play and let the children lead, and it's so much less overwhelming as a mom that wants a literature-based education but is intimidated by Charlotte Mason.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I definitely am. I did not grow up homeschooled or anything. I was like mainstream public school. I don't ever remember my mother reading a book to me. That has nothing to do with public school, that just had to be my mother she read. I remember her reading those romance novels, those big I see the word Clancy that was probably an author of one of her reads, but she never sat down and read nighttime stories with me. So it's funny and when I hear people talk about literature I'm actually I was like you know what. Erica's a good person to ask, because just the way you're speaking eloquently and seem to know a lot about curriculums Like, is there a difference in literature versus just like any book you take out of the library?
Speaker 2:Sometimes. So my general rule of thumb is if a children's book is painful for me to read to my child, I'm not going to read it, and there's probably a better option. There are some people that. So in the Charlotte Mason community you'll hear what's called twaddle, and it's a book that's just a complete waste of time. But I don't know. I, two of my children have dyslexia and so we're a Charlotte Mason. Somebody that's strictly Charlotte Mason would call like graphic novels twaddle.
Speaker 1:It might be the only way my kids with dyslexia will read, and so yeah, so a graphic novel, so that's like a longer book, but that has pictures.
Speaker 2:Uh huh, so it's. I mean they have books like the Hobbit in graphic novel form, so they just take a book and put it into comic book form. Interesting.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that that was a thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my particularly my kids with dyslexia absolutely love them. The pictures help them fill in some of the context clues that the words may not make sense with.
Speaker 1:I would think it would help anyone. I mean, my son is just like go, go, go, go, go, go go. So like he really likes the Tuttle Twins books that we read to him, which are a little, longer, but the illustrations are really fun. So yeah, I'll have to look into that for him because I bet he would really enjoy stuff like that. All right, cool. So is Homeschool Made Simple, open and go curriculum where you don't have to do a lot of prep work.
Speaker 2:So she teaches it as a seminar and that's about a four-hour listen to her seminar. But other than that, for the most part it's just read a book and live life with your children. So if you're reading a book and decide, hey, let's learn how to carve wood, you go and do that. There's no timeline that you have to stick to, you're never behind and you're able to allow children to thrive and like, interact with the books that they're reading um in their own way that they feel inspired to do okay so and I know I already asked you this, but the subjects that this covers it is maybe I didn't taught as you're going through history and you might say, oh, there was this famous scientist, what were they learning.
Speaker 2:But it covers history, science, art, music. It's all done through literature, so reading is definitely an important aspect.
Speaker 1:This kind of reminds me of I had done. I don't know if you're familiar with treehouse schoolhouse. A woman named Lindsay created that and I did a supplemental. She has like supplemental stuff, nature studies and, okay, um, a connected Christmas, which I did this Christmas time and that I'm wondering if that's along the same lines. Um, because she would weave in like a Bible verse that you talk about with.
Speaker 1:You know, my son is five, so we would talk about the Bible verse, he could write it you know where they can do the copy work of that verse, talk about it and what it means, and then she would present, I think, a picture of a you know that, like a famous, famous painting, and you know we would talk about where the artist was from. We would take a globe out, find that in the globe and compare it to where we are. Then she'd have us listen to a Christmas carol, and like it would be a different one each week and we would go through the lyrics. So is it kind of like that, where you're weaving in like the history, because you're finding on the globe where the artist came from, and then music, because you're listening to the lyrics and obviously those are going to rhyme. So now you're working on also the phonics and that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's very, very much just weaving it all together into one whole. So the way that it's structured is it just says these are the resources for this time period and you pick what you want to do when. So for my family we might we do better if we kind of focus on one subject at a time, so we might go through an entire book and then go, oh, now let's do the music aspect of this. She also includes, like, a few film recommendations with each history subject, and so we might go through the reading and then watch a movie or just whatever we end up doing. It never looks exactly the same because it's not scheduled out.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right. So as I'm envisioning your day, do you like, once everybody gets up and eats breakfast, do you kind of? How does that look? You're all sitting at a table or lounged out on an outside table or lounged out on an outside.
Speaker 2:We start out at the table and we'll do just a little bit of like I call it, book work. But we'll do like the phonics and for my kids that are still going through a phonics program and writing, and then math, and then that usually only takes us about an hour and then we'll move to the living room. So, carol Joyside, this is one of the tips that she gives in her how to structure your day, and I was like this is so brilliant. Why did I never think of this before? She recommends having your children, like you, get up in the morning and most of us start one load of laundry every morning, right, and then you rotate it to the dryer and when you're reading to your kids, have them fold the laundry. And it's been like life changing. It was so brilliant. But that's what we do. We move to the living room and while I read, I have my kids fold that one daily load of laundry.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Yes, because we all have this vision that, as mothers especially, that you're going to sit on the couch and the kids are going to cuddle with you and snuggle and just listen to you read that book. And then in reality it's not like. Even today, I know my son found a caterpillar and I was like, all right, well, we're outside, let's put a YouTube audio book on about a caterpillar. So I was like, all right, well, we're outside, let's put a YouTube audio book on about a caterpillar. So I'm like listen to the book, come back here. He's running around outside as he's supposed to be doing, and I'm like come back and listen. So right, so it doesn't run that way.
Speaker 1:But if you give them a task with their hands to do, and even if they're, like, not old enough to fold, they could still lay everything out nice and neat for you, because the things that have to get hung up are already now laid out. They're not getting wrinkled. That is awesome. So, okay, you mentioned a four-hour exercise video before a conference. That's for just the adults.
Speaker 2:So she does do in-person ones. She'll travel all over the country. Like on her website you can see where she's going to be and so when you do those like mom and dad and any teenage children and any nursing babies are allowed to go is how she phrases it. When you buy, like the audio, I just play it while I'm washing dishes.
Speaker 1:Okay, All right. So it looks like you have the book, work and stuff. And then it sounds like there's kind of an unschooling approach to you know if they catch a caterpillar and you know. Now you're like, okay, let's find some books on this, or like, is that kind of how that would go as well?
Speaker 2:absolutely. Um. One of the other resources that she gives is it's like four or five pages long um, how that inspire your children to want to dive into them. And so one thing that Carol says in her seminar that she does is that if you can get your child to love reading, you've already done it, they will gain an education on their own. Child to love reading, you've already done it, they will gain an education on their own.
Speaker 2:And I think that's something I particularly love about it, because so often we can force it onto our children and be like no, you must sit down and listen, and they're like mom, I just want to go play. And it does not inspire a love of the book. It inspires like tension and taking that like breath of like oh, it's not an emergency, I don't need to do this right now. If it's 75 and sunny, let the kids go play outside. There will be a snowy day where we want to sit inside and drink hot chocolate and I can be like ha, I have you captured, I'm going to read you a story now and I, for me, something with like Charlotte Mason and those schedules kind of makes me less willing to do that. I'm like no, we have to stay on track.
Speaker 1:Yes, my OCD is the same, like, ah, we have to do it because it's, you know, supposed to be done today and I'll feel not accomplished if we don't do it. And you know that is funny, I hadn't really thought about that before. We want them to have a love of reading, right, but in our minds we kind of interpret that as so I have to make them read all the time, I have to make them read with me all the time, or I have to read to them all the time. But like there is a delicate balance, isn't there? Like, if they're not wanting to do that, right, then like my son loves reading books before bed, because the alternative is you just go to bed. So it's like can you read to me? Because that's an extra 20, 25 minutes that we're in there with him and he doesn't have to sleep. So like that's kind of cool, because now he's associating that with like something good.
Speaker 1:But when I was nursing the baby today, she trying to get her down for a nap, that didn't happen until 6 PM. He was like well, what can I do while you're doing this? And I was like well, go read a book. He's like, oh, what else? And so, you know I gave in and I was like, all right, go play your game on your iPad. You know I do. You know I'm like, oh, I should just make him sit there and look at a book. But it's like what? That's not going to put a good feeling around reading and books for him if I do this. So it is a delicate balance. You want to give them enough exposure, but tiptoe around forcing them to do it too.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely, I think we all fall into that trap, sometimes, though, of being like no, if I don't make you, you won't do this no-transcript.
Speaker 2:So for the most part I use the library when I live. We have our library has free interlibrary loans throughout all libraries in the state of Michigan, which is really helpful because my library doesn't have most of the books, but a lot of them. I have been able to find places like on thrift books or things like that, for of them are there. I know she just updated her sheets with new lists of books that are easier to find, because some of her books that she recommends are out of print, but I haven't gotten the new ones yet.
Speaker 1:That's a good point to bring up for people that aren't aware because I wasn't before I started homeschooling that you, a lot of libraries do. Ours has this too a network of libraries that you can go on the app, put in the book that you want and then you know they'll ship it right to your library. Some people have told me that they send it right to their door, but here we got to drive a little bit, but that's okay. Um, yeah, so they'll compile them all for you and you just go pick them all up and you're good to go. So, and then the ones that I haven't been able to find. If I go on youtube and look for like someone just doing a read aloud of it, you know that has. That has worked as well. Obviously, you're not reading it. Some people will show the pages as they're doing it, but it's a good alternative for something that you can't find in the library, so okay. So that leads to the other part of the question. So you're getting the books from the library.
Speaker 1:You have children of four different ages here. They're all. How does the curriculum change from year to year? Because now you have like a four-year-old and a six-year-old hearing the same books as the 10-year-old. What about when they're all five, seven and 11? Is there a new list that you just cycle through, or are they going back and doing the same ones over again and a little bit more in depth?
Speaker 2:Yeah, one's over again and a little bit more in depth. Yeah, so the way that she has it structured the first, the kindergarten through third grade is done mostly family style. So my oldest is in fourth grade this year, but then the fourth through 12th grade it's done as a like I think it's a three or four year. Let me double check that it's a three year. It's a three year rotation and then it just kind of staggers the books.
Speaker 2:So another thing I really love about this approach is that it's written with the idea that you have multiple children at multiple stages that you're trying to teach. And one of the things that she talks about is well, you know, if you have a 10th, 11th, 12th grader, have them teach your fourth grader. By that point they've gone through it so many times and they'll learn more teaching the younger child. And I think a lot of homeschool curriculums forget that we have, you know, three, four kids at different stages that we're trying to teach and they're like, okay, you need to teach a full grade four times a day and I'm like, I'm one person, I don't have the time. And homeschool made simple is not that way. It's very much aware of the fact that we're families and doing this all together.
Speaker 1:I love that. I've always felt that way too. Anytime I've taught someone something, it just reinforces it for me. And if I try to say to my son, can you teach the baby? You know this, he loves doing it, and then he learns it that much more, so it is really cool. I like that, let me see. So what do you have to buy, like? What is the cost of the curriculum, if you remember offhand?
Speaker 2:So I actually am buying the new seminar with the updated sheets. So it's $60 and you get the seminar and it's probably a good 12 to 14 pages of book lists. Develop your own philosophy of education and kind of talking you through like here are some resources that you can look to to develop what you want for your homeschool. She does. She has a one that she's doing a webinar on June 1st and that was $60.
Speaker 1:So Okay, now supplements. Now you and I are also going to be talking about what you use for math in another episode. So obviously there is math that you supplement. Is there anything else? Any other phonics stuff Is what Homeschool, made Simple, has enough for learning to read.
Speaker 2:No, so it's pretty much just the history, science, art, yeah, philosophy, all of that. So, as far as reading and writing and math, well, the phonics, I guess, I should say, because once they're reading, but phonics, writing and math you're going to need separate curriculums.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, good to know, and then so do your kids enjoy doing this curriculum.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. So not every book appeals to each of my children just because they're different and have different interests. It's so much less stressful in our homeschool and that it changed a lot of the dynamics and removed some of that stress. And even though they may not like every book, we will have a book that everybody loves at some point.
Speaker 1:And are these like longer? Are you talking like picture books that are done in 10 minutes or like longer ones like the Little House on the Prairie?
Speaker 2:All of it.
Speaker 1:All of it, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:A mix. So the kindergarten through third grade resources that she has tend to be mostly picture books, with a few of the longer books that she says well, just hand this to your third grader that's reading on their own, and have them read it. But once you get to like the fourth through 12th grade, those books are definitely longer, but we don't do those as a read aloud as much.
Speaker 1:Right, okay, well, that makes sense, all right. Well, erica, thank you so much for talking with us today about Homeschool Made Simple. I'm intrigued. I'm going to look into this further because I kind of like. I kind of like the ease of that and this whole living book and Charlotte Mason like story, you know philosophy of learning, it really gives like an appreciation of learning.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Please consider sharing this podcast or my main podcast, the Homeschool how To with friends, family, on Instagram or in your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. The more this podcast is shared, the longer we can keep it going and the more hope we have for the future. Thank you for your love of the next generation. Thank you.