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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
#122: Homeschooling Learning Differences with Grace: Erin Cox on Dyslexia, Charlotte Mason & Classical Education
Dyslexia, auditory processing disorder, dysgraphia, dyscalculia - when faced with multiple learning challenges, homeschooling might seem daunting. Yet for Erin Cox, these diagnoses became the catalyst for an extraordinary educational journey spanning 14 years and culminating in the creation of a curriculum company that serves thousands of families.
In this illuminating conversation, Erin shares how her daughter who specialists said might "never learn to read" flourished through personalized homeschool instruction. Her approach - setting 15-minute timers to prevent frustration, incorporating movement through hopscotch sight words, and celebrating small victories - demonstrates how home education allows for the adaptation no traditional classroom could provide. "When you have dyslexia, it tends to take seven times longer to remember something than it does a neurotypical child," Erin explains, underscoring why the consistent, patient attention of homeschooling proved transformative.
The discussion takes a fascinating turn when Erin clarifies the misunderstood relationship between Charlotte Mason and classical education philosophies. As founder of Gentle Classical Press, she articulates how these approaches aren't opposing methods but complementary traditions that both emphasize virtue formation and living books. "Charlotte Mason was a classical educator," she notes, dispelling common misconceptions perpetuated by curriculum marketing.
Whether you're teaching a child with learning differences, considering homeschooling for the first time, or simply curious about educational philosophies, this episode offers practical wisdom and encouraging perspective. Erin's parting advice resonates with both seasoned and prospective homeschoolers alike: "You know your child better than anyone else... don't try to figure everything out in advance. Just do the next right thing."
Ready to explore Gentle Classical Press or connect with Erin? Visit their website where you can download complete teacher's guides for free before investing in any curriculum. If you found value in this episode, please consider supporting the podcast through the tip link in the description or by sharing with other homeschool families.
Erin is a veteran homeschooling mama to two graduates and two sweet little ones. She runs The Gentle + Classical Press and Good Oaks Farm from her family home in central Alabama alongside her amazing husband Danny. Erin's favorite things include dating her husband, learning about learning, embroidery, breadmaking, and all the books.
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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, and with us today I have Erin Cox from Alabama. Hi, erin Cheryl, thank you for having me. Thanks for being here. This is so exciting. You're in Alabama. How many kids do you have? We?
Speaker 2:have four. We have a big range of ages. So my oldest will turn 21 this year and we have an 18 year old and then a nine and eight year old. So we have kind of spread across a big age gap. So I had like newborns when I had high schoolers at the same time.
Speaker 1:That's fun, though, like I only have the four year age gap, but I like having a little bit of space, and my sister and I also had a seven year age gap. It was kind of cool, cause I don't know you just there's a division there of like responsibilities and friends, but you also are everyone's so helpful yeah. I, she did zip my lip in her jacket one time, but um so that's fun though. So have you been homeschooling the whole time?
Speaker 2:Or, just more recently, Just the whole time I started homeschooling my girl. So I have two girls and two boys. So I just refer to them as the girls and the boys because they're like our batches of children, like we had two in our 20s and we were like we're done, you know when we turn 40, they'll be out of the house and you know, cause 40 is old and you don't want to have kids at the house. Still, you know, when you're that age, that was my 20 year old brain. And then we got into our thirties and we were like, wait, 40 is not that old and this is going by really quickly. So that's why we had that big nine year gap in the middle. Um, and so then we have our boys.
Speaker 2:But when my girls were in second grade and would be would have been preschool, I pulled my preschooler out of preschool just to like I wasn't working at the time, so I brought her home from that and we were doing homeschool and, and so then my older daughter was like, well, I want to do that too, cause that looks more fun than what I do in school. And so we, we kind of played at it over. She had like a three week Christmas break and we just tried that out and we loved it so much and I was like we're not, we're not going back. And so, aside from a brief stint when I was pregnant with my fourth child, we've been homeschooling, for this is our 14th year, so what about?
Speaker 1:well, it's first. It's funny that you said like, oh, we decided, you know, later on to have more kids, cause I feel like most people they hear that story and they're like, oh so, two different marriages Cause that's when people have that big age gap. But I was like, well, I ask, I'm pretty open in what I'll ask people, but I was like that's a little too far.
Speaker 2:But no, he actually like had a vasectomy and we had it reversed to have more children. Yeah, so, it was like I was instantaneously pregnant. It was one of those like very successful surgeries. The fourth kid wasn't even planned, so that's how successful it was. But yeah, people ask all the time like why did you?
Speaker 2:you know, because it is unusual to have like a big gap because the girls are two years apart and the boys are 15 months apart. I found out I was pregnant with my fourth when my older son was six months old. So that was you know. That was a surprise, but it was a good one. Obviously, now we're done, we're totally done. We're 43. We're grandparents, we're totally at the baby game.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, oh, my goodness, I'm 41. I can't imagine being but like, yeah, when you start in your twenties, that's totally feasible, and not like outlandish oh gosh, time flies, time really flies, gosh, time flies, time really flies. It does, and so did. You said that you're one. The daughters are the older ones, right? You said that the one daughter wanted to be homeschooled because you started homeschooling the preschooler. What about the oldest?
Speaker 2:So that was the two. So the preschooler was the younger daughter, and then her big sister wanted to be homeschooled. She was in second grade at the time, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause they have a little bit, a few years between them too.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, cause they have a little bit, a few years between them too. Okay, yeah, so you really did start to and it really wasn't popular. Then was it? It was, it was growing.
Speaker 2:So I came across homeschooling in a very unusual way when I was pregnant with my oldest daughter. I remember sitting in her nursery rocking like this big belly, waiting for her to come and reading the Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola, and to this day I have no idea where that book came from or like how it came to be in my home. I guess I just saw it at a thrift store and picked it up when I was like thrifting for her nursery and stuff and I remember reading it and it was so everything about it, Like I didn't have a relationship with God at that point, like I was not a Christian, was not raised in a Christian home, so that was all very like alien to me, and then I didn't have a very like warm, loving, affectionate home and I don't know. There was just so much about it that was like completely from another dimension that I found it really interesting and it planted a lot of seeds. But I was like, well, I'll never be able to homeschool, like I was freshly graduated from college and I had a degree to pay for. And you know, I had, you know was going to be in banking and finance, that's what my degree was in.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, I just always thought I would be working, and so I just put all that out of my head and then I like randomly quit a job, like I just quit a job. It was one of those jobs that like, like you just can't even show up at. I don't know if you've ever had a job that's so stressful that, like to show up at it would make you want to cry. And so, like I would, like I was in sales at the time, which was fine, it was just this environment, and so I would just sit in my car and cry. And so one day I just quit, I just quit, and then I took her out of preschool the next day, cause I was like, well, I can't pay for this and I have to get another job. And that's literally where it all, like I just felt like God started being like you know, this is an opportunity to kind of play around with this. And I was like, well, that's fine, but I can't afford to homeschool. Like my husband does not earn enough money for us to get you know, get by, you know, without working, and um, and his income doubled in the next month after that.
Speaker 2:So it was really it very much felt like a God thing at that point and so I just kind of we just kept praying about it and just kept going and doing it and really fell in love with it. And I mean, the first thing that we did was we read Little House on the Prairie and everything that Laura did we did too, like we smoked meat and you know, like I used it for the spelling words and the grammar, like I just pulled everything out of there and to me it just felt like the most organic and intuitive way to learn was to read amazing stories and then kind of do what they did to experience the history side of things and just kind of learn everything we could from that one thing. And so that's kind of how we started out and I started reading a lot because I'm a nerd and read about more about Charlotte Mason. Obviously that was kind of my first introduction, but also like the well-trained mind, and then just kind of went from there and just got obsessed with education and my younger daughter ended up being diagnosed as like profoundly dyslexic and has multiple learning disabilities. So in hindsight I recognized why those seeds had been planted and why we had been called to it.
Speaker 2:Like you know, I just thought it was more fun and less stressful and I didn't have to go anywhere when it rained and they loved it. And but then, at the same time, like recognizing like she could have never, she would not have thrived in school, and even once I taught her how to read, we did school for a month and it was two weeks into it. It was just like no, this is not, this is not for us. I thought it's supposed to be easier to not be teaching them. I thought that this would be less stressful, to not have this responsibility. You didn't ask all that, but I'm just running.
Speaker 1:That's funny because I feel like a lot of parents would be like oh, my child's dyslexic, so they have to go into school because the professionals will know how to teach them I'm not capable. But what you're saying is exactly the opposite. She would have gotten swallowed up in the 30 kids in the class and the different temper tantrums going on or behavioral issues going on, and they wouldn't have necessarily pulled her out and said hey, she's learning. She needs a different way to learn. Let's work one-on-one with her. The resources might not have been there for another year, two years or three years or four years, you know if, if they ever found it, Um, so I really want people to like drill that in to their minds, that it's not leading up to the professionals because they could do it.
Speaker 1:But their classes are so big.
Speaker 2:They just don't have. You know, it's not about the teachers not, you know, being willing to do it, they just don't have the capacity to do it and with her there's only so much a teacher is going to be able to do with any one singular child anyway. And when you have a child that has auditory processing disorder, so classroom setting could not be worse. For her right Dyslexia, sh she dysgraphia and dyscalculia and her the her math dyslexia was prof is was profoundly worse than her reading and we didn't even know that for a few years and she had sensory processing disorder and stuff. And so being homeschooling her gave me the opportunity to see things that I would have never seen, that a teacher doesn't have the capacity to see in individual children and talk to different therapists and start like piecing together Like she did sensory integration therapy. She did a lot of different therapy stuff to kind of like help her senses work better together, a lot of eye tracking. She did vision therapy long-term and just kind of that would have never happened, I don't think, because I wouldn't have. I would have been like they're handling it and they're gonna tell me maybe what to do. Maybe I need to like listen to her read at home. But like they're the professionals and because I took ownership of her education, I took ownership of everything that I needed to do and could do to help her learn how to read, because when she was tested they said she may never learn how to read. I've been trying to teach her the sounds of the alphabet for two years with like consistency that is just out of character for me, quite honestly, and she still could tell me seven or eight letter sounds after two years of consistent instruction. Now, I mean, she's graduated high school and you know if anyone's listening to this and they're like that's my kid, like she's okay, like by the fourth grade, because of daily therapy, at home therapy and you know, in different places you know whatever it seemed like she needed, but just like being able to adapt everything.
Speaker 2:Not because the thing about dyslexia and all these other you know, adhd, all this type of stuff, is that every child with dyslexia is dyslexic in a different way. Like some of them, the words move around the page, some of them the words fall off the page, some of them reverse everything and some of them, like for my children, have extraordinarily poor working memories. So when you come to like, you know you need to sound out each of the letters. You have to remember that first sound by the time you get to the last sound to be able to go back and say what it was. And a three-letter word. They've forgotten that first sound by the time you get to the last sound to be able to go back and say what it was. And a three-letter word. They've forgotten that first sound.
Speaker 2:And so every day was starting from scratch every day. And then somewhere around the fourth grade, something just clicked and she all the labor that had happened up until that point just finally came together and she started reading fluently. And, you know, was a horrible speller, but I didn't care because she could read. But then, you know, like texting and playing Minecraft games and stuff online like that ironed out her spelling skills, ironically and anyway, like, and now she has stuff like ChatGPT to help. You know, if she needs to express her idea, she'd kind of say it and it has like bad punctuation because she can't remember all the rules, but it'll fix it and she's able to communicate effectively in that way and she has the intelligence to use the tools that are there.
Speaker 2:So I mean, there's just so many things. And I did put her in school for a month, like I said, and the real problems there were social type things that like when I put her in school I was terrified she was going to be behind and that it was all of my fault, right, like I like maybe I should have already put her in school, like I really didn't know what I was doing. I was just like doing everything as hard as I could and investing as much in her education as I could, but what if I was messing her up? What if it was all my fault in the first place? Right, and so I was just kind of lived in this constant like terror, of that tension, because I just didn't know. I mean, she had doctors and stuff, but it was still. You know you, you just don't know.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of fear, a lot of fear, especially when you're homeschooling your first kid or two and she was the first one I taught to read too, like my other daughter learned to read in school, so like that was the worst experience possible for me to have any kind of confidence. And um, and so when she was in school she had like the, the social problems that she had were. So the stress that caused me like I had worried about her academically but I didn't lose sleep at night. But when she was in school I started losing sleep at night because of the things that were being said. And then was in school, I started losing sleep at night because of the things that were being said.
Speaker 2:And then in the information I don't know, she's in the fourth grade but it was like it was gross. I mean it was terrible and she was in a really good school and it was just, and this was like before. I mean she's 18 now, so this was before. Fourth graders had, like, cell phones and stuff too. So anyway it was just really rough and um, and at the end of that month I was she, we had determined that there was no way that she could sit in a classroom and ever learn anything because all she did was hear everybody around her and not she couldn't hear the teacher, she couldn't focus, she's got ADHD and all that.
Speaker 2:So anyway it was very affirming to me, like every fear that I had about failing my child with learning disabilities was put completely away when I put her in school, because it just showed me first of all, she tested on grade level and they told me that if they had evaluated her for dyslexia at that point in her life, they wouldn't have diagnosed her with it. So that's how far we came from. Her not ever learning to read was what we were told to wouldn't even get the diagnosis in the fourth grade.
Speaker 1:Hey everyone. This is Cheryl. I want to thank you so much for checking out the podcast. I'm going to keep this short and sweet because I know your time is valuable. I want to ask you a serious question Do your kids know what to do to actually save their life in an emergency? The most important thing we can talk to our kids about is knowing their first and last name, knowing mom and dad's first and last name, mom's phone number, dad's phone number, their address, what to do if they get lost, what to do if someone who's watching them has a heart attack, a stroke, an accident where they fall and your child needs to get help.
Speaker 1:We live in a world where there's no landline phones anymore, basically, and cell phones a lot. Does your child know how to call 911 from a locked cell phone? It is absolutely possible, and my book demonstrates how to do that, whether it's an android, whether it's an iphone and, most importantly, it starts the conversation, because I was going through homeschooling curriculum with my kids, realizing that, gee, maybe they skim over this stuff, but they don't get into depth, so my child's not going to remember this should an accident occur, right? I asked a couple of teachers what they do in school and they said they really don't do anything either other than talk about what to do in a fire during the month of October fire prevention month. So I wrote a book because this is near and dear to my heart. I have had multiple friends that have lost kids in tragedies and I don't wanna see it happen again if it doesn't have to.
Speaker 1:We were at the fair over the summer and the first thing I said to my son when we walked through that gate was "'What's my first and last name? "'what is your first and last name? What is your first and last name and what is my phone number? And if you get lost, what are you going to do? You can get my book on Amazon and I will put the link in my show's description Again. It's called let's Talk Emergencies and I really hope you'll check it out because there's just no need to be scared when you can choose prepared. What did you guys use for curriculum? We used everything.
Speaker 2:What did you guys use for?
Speaker 1:curriculum. We used everything.
Speaker 2:Everything. I just threw it at the wall. It was just we very much. It was very adaptive. It was like, okay, what's the next right thing to do? Like what's the next right thing to do.
Speaker 2:So I just studied her and really just dove into learning everything that I could about how children learn how to read, especially if they have auditory processing disorder and ADHD and poor working memory. So we did little therapy things. Online there's different apps and games to kind of help with your working memory and help with your auditory discernment, and so we were doing those things and doing vision therapy. So we were doing a lot because to me the dyslexia was just like a symptom of some processes that weren't working properly Right, and so that was like the academic diagnosis for physical processes that were not working correctly. So really the solution for the dyslexia was to fix the processes that weren't working in congruence like they were supposed to.
Speaker 2:And, um, and her eyes were a big part of it an auditory processing disorder If your eyes like aren't, you know, converging where they're supposed to, and so things are a little blurry because they can't do it and glasses don't fix that, and then auditory processing is like your eyes and your ears kind of aren't working at the same time is how the sensory processing part of it works. So how can you remember what that shape sounds like if you can't look at it and think about what it looks like at the same time that you're hearing what it sounds like? Like for her to listen to me when I'd speak to her, she would look at the floor, she would have to shut off her vision to hear what I was saying, and so I mean I would. It's not a good joke, it's a bad joke, but I would call her like my little Helen Keller, just a little bit, because she couldn't hear me and see me at the same time. And so then you can't have a visual understanding of what's making that sound and it would never make it in, it would never like stick all the way. And so like, as far as curriculum we finally landed on predominantly that all about reading is really the go-to. I mean, it's what we like broadly recommend. I think there are other good things out there. Logic of English has changed since I tried it years ago and I'm hearing really good things about it.
Speaker 2:But what I've noticed with my other son because I've got another one with dyslexia they're not as profoundly as her and he doesn't have like auditory processing disorder and stuff, but just a bad working memory. Is that like at a certain point, even with all about reading, like there's just too many rules? Like there's a lot of rules in that Orton-Gillingham method of reading and that's fine to begin with, but then at a certain point, like you've got too many dance around in your head, you can't, and so really it just comes down to when you have dyslexia. It tends to take you seven times longer to remember something than it does a neurotypical child. So like, for example, when my oldest daughter was in school, she would learn 10 sight words or 15 sight words a week and she would know them by Wednesday and then I was teaching this child and we would work on 10 sight words for three months before she would be able to remember them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was just like just the consistency and the persistence and like with my son, just we don't need rules anymore. At the point he's at now, it's just reading and reading, and reading and reading, because the more he reads, the more the code starts to make a little bit more sense, and it just takes that seven times as long. And I mean it's been true with both of them. I just think that's very interesting. But it's like there's a. The Berlin wall is in there and we got to break through it, but once it gets there, it's there.
Speaker 1:Now, how did you work out, like, how much time you actually invested each day in working on this stuff? Because it's easy, especially when they're that young, to get burnout and to get, like you know, a hate of reading. Because it's easy, especially when they're that young, to get burnout and to get, like you know, a hate of reading because it's so stressful. Did you, were you aware of, like, how much time you were trying to put in and then not overdo it? Cause, like a lot of homeschoolers, we have to replicate school and make it eight hours, five days a week, and then that's really not the point, right?
Speaker 2:Well, well, I never struggled too much with having like an eight-hour school day, um, especially my girls were well, even now with the boys, like I never. I never struggled too much with wanting to do school at home. Now I have had to break out of the idea of like test scores or grades, things like that, um and and having different because they're all asynchronous. You know, like homeschool kids are never on one grade in any way and you just have to finally get used to the fact that, like my eight-year-old's, in second grade he reads. Maybe on third grade he's doing fourth grade math, but then his spelling's like kindergarten, but also he knows high school history and you know like they're all kind of like that. So I was never too caught up with that.
Speaker 2:But I will say that she has a very short attention span. These kiddos that kind of like have these learning differences. We call them neuro-spicy around here. We're all our own little version of neuro-spicy in this house. And so my husband he's just normal sitting up in the middle of all the crazies and um and I feel like her attention span being so short, demanded that I not make the mistake of trying to do too much, so we would do things like a lot of it was physical, like doing sight words.
Speaker 2:You know she would do hopscotch when she landed on the word she needed to read it, like so everything. We would go outside and we would ride it with chalk. We then we would wash it off with a sponge, like we would do everything as like kinesthetically as possible. That way she was moving and learning that way, and I had, like you know, the little wiggle balls and all that kind of stuff. So I didn't have. I learned not to expect her to sit still. I sit still to think, and if I'm moving it means I'm not thinking or listening to you. Still to think, and if I'm moving it means I'm not thinking or listening to you. And I had to learn that that was the opposite for her and her moving meant she was listening better. And then we would just set timers. I'm a big fan of timers when it comes to reading instruction, especially with children with learning differences, because whatever attitude you leave a lesson with is the mindset and the attitude you'll enter that lesson the next time.
Speaker 2:So, if you end in tears and frustration, you're bringing that energy into the next time you sit down to do that reading lesson. And so if my child can read for 20 minutes before they start to break down, I'm setting a timer for 15. And no matter where we are in the lesson, no matter if we're happy, sad, whatever, it's going great. When the timer goes off, that lesson's over with. Hopefully we've ended in a positive way. If things have gone downhill, I'm going to give them easy work that I know they can do, like I'm going to give them, like here's, five flashcards that I know they can have some confidence and do it and get them to read those. That way they walk away with that feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction so that they bring that into the next time that we sit down. So I would just do with her too.
Speaker 2:We had a little bit of therapy that almost felt like play, so that wasn't too big of a deal, but we would have two reading sessions a day for 15 minutes. And I've done the same with my son. Like we have his instructional time which is at at that fruitful frustration like he's. It's hard, but he's like he can do it. That's 15 minutes, and then in the second half of the day he reads to my husband, well below his level, for 15 minutes and that's just to practice fluency and get like a little bit more. You know natural sounding in his reading and stuff. I love that. I don't think there's a lot of stuff, you don't need a timer.
Speaker 1:but when you think about the classroom, how many kids are getting that time to read one-on-one with an adult? And we know that it probably does. I mean, I don't know, maybe a lot of households are reading with their kids at night, but I don't. I didn't grow up in one of those. We had two working parents and I don't ever remember my parents reading a book with me. I don't think their parents did it with them. It just didn't fall down the line.
Speaker 1:And so when I think about parents working and kids in their, you know, before care, after care, sports, dinner on the table and everyone needs to get homework done and everyone needs to get a bath or whatnot, when is the time to sit and read together, Like that, 15 minutes of just read to dad or read to mom, it probably doesn't happen in most households. I mean, we homeschool and it's hard to even say like, yeah, okay, we got to pull out a book. Now, guys, Come on. So yeah, when you just think about how much that's doing for them. I mean, right there, anybody who's having like anxiety about homeschooling their kids I was thinking about this today Don't compare what you do to the homeschool moms. You know that you know, or that are on Instagram, compared to what they would be in the classroom, I don't know, but I was going to post that. But then I'm like, oh, it sounds kind of mean too for anybody, that whose kids do go to school.
Speaker 2:I've always said it kind of the opposite, in that, like you cannot compare them to a system that you've opted out of, but you can compare them to the benefits of like what their day-to-day life would be like. My daughter had an IEP when she was at school and that meant she got 15 minutes of instruction three times a week independently. 15 minutes three times a week and that was it, and so the rest of the time that she was there it was just babysitting her. She was not learning anything.
Speaker 1:Such a good word for it. You're so right. Yeah, so I was thinking about that today and it really is. Just when you're in the rush of the day even homeschooling and you just feel like, oh my God, did we even sit down and do that? Even just 15 minutes, that counts for so much. And when they're little, there's just I love what you said about doing the hopscotch there are things that we just can do to play with the kids, or you know, I remember and I don't I'm not super creative, so I but when I see something, I do try to replicate it as best as I can. And I remember, I think, Lindsay from the Treehouse Schoolhouse. She had told me just put letters on rocks with paint and hide them in a big sand pile and have them go excavate, and then, when they find all the rocks, have them, put them in order in the alphabet. And I'm like that's genius. I still don't think we've found all the rocks and it's been two years, but it was fun while we did it, Painting it and finding them.
Speaker 1:So I love that I have more questions for you too. But the one off the top of my head you said that you went to school for banking and finance. How did you ever get creative and finding all these creative ways to do the hopscotch with the words? Where did you go for those resources?
Speaker 2:So that's interesting. I was a banking and finance major because I had really no guidance whatsoever and I went to college for no good reason because that was what you were supposed to do, right, and I knew I wanted to make money. That was I wanted to make money and I took a lot of different classes and I changed my major like 47 times, which wasted a lot of money.
Speaker 2:And those were the hardest classes I took and that's why I decided I wanted that to be my major. Like 47 times, which wasted a lot of money, and those were the hardest classes I took and that's why I decided I wanted that to be my major. Just because I like a challenge, like I was like this is interesting, I want to, you know, feel like this is hard so that I just that's what I did and I've not used it a day in my life. I graduated from college and got a job as a graphic designer. Like not a day did I even apply to work in the industry that I have a degree in which just says a lot about college and you know I can get all into that.
Speaker 2:But I've always been creative and I would use Pinterest a lot. Like Pinterest used to be homeschool mom heaven and then it got kind of sketchy there for a little bit for me. But now it feels like it's having a little bit of resurgence because Google doesn't find stuff anymore. Like I can't stand even trying to Google anything. So I have started actually getting back on Pinterest and there are so many brilliant ideas and that's what I would do. I'd be like you know ways to learn the letters without sitting down just studying them and just you know all these different brilliant moms putting their ideas on their blogs back in the day, and I guess people like now it's all reels and YouTube videos and stuff, but I don't like, I'm not even on social. Well, I have a social media and there are people there and somebody manages it, but I don't get on social media and scroll through and all that.
Speaker 2:So I don't know. I guess that's probably where the good ideas are now instead of Pinterest.
Speaker 1:Well, and even chat GPT you were talking about your daughter using it before. That's great for it too. Like I, I did a reel where I said like hey, do you want to do a springtime unit study? And I, you know, recorded me talking into chat GPT. Like I have a two year old, a six year old, you know. He's crazy active and she just follows along and they like mud and all this stuff and it made like a two week unit study for springtime, you know, incorporating different things.
Speaker 1:We can watch books from the library to take out different activities to do outside. So I have that actually on my Instagram page when you click the link. But yeah, it's never been easier to homeschool.
Speaker 2:But also it's never been more overwhelming. Yeah, I talked to a friend the other day and it was just kind of this like she began homeschooling after like COVID, right. And so even when I look, think back to the first couple of years that I was a homeschooler like that was over a decade ago. That feels like so long ago, because the world has changed so much and there are all these really amazing and creative ideas, but it's almost like gluttonous the amount of it. You know what I mean. You almost need chat GPT just to give you the plan so that you don't have to sort through all of the brilliant anime, because there's so many good curriculum options and there's so many, you know, in in many areas you can't throw a stick without hitting a co-op or a play date, or you know what I mean. Like there's a lot of stuff to do because there's so many people homeschooling, which I think is phenomenal, but it is a little overwhelming to get started now because you know it's like what? What philosophy do I want to have and does it really matter? And how do I decide these things? And so sometimes you might overcommit to different activities or you're like, oh, my kids aren't getting socialized, I have to do more stuff, and there's just all these voices, and a lot of the voices on social media are very not all of them.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of like great gracious accounts, but some of them are very like strongly opinionated. They're very young to have such passionate opinions about it. It's like you know your oldest child's seven. What are you talking about? Like calm down. I mean, you can have an opinion with your seven. Please don't state it as if it is a proven fact, because you've done it for two weeks with your seven-year-old. Like you know.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I just always having adult children and having gone through the teenage years and gone through some hard times in the teenage years, I'm just very keenly aware of like eating your words, and so most of my words that I thought about things were not recorded on a reel to live into perpetuity, unlike what some of these sweet ladies are saying. They're going to look back in 10 years and be like, oh no, I can't listen to these things. But anyway, I mean, I love the opportunity that's there, but it is. I feel like there's a lot.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of opinions and methods and strong kind of like ungracious opinions in some way that kind of make you like, feel like either you're not doing enough or you're missing out or you know I'm doing it wrong, like all that kind of stuff, and it can just create a lot of I don't know. I feel like uncertainty and that in doubt. That's what we deal with, like from a customer service standpoint. Most of our customers coming in are preschool and kindergarten. They're the new moms that are getting started and they're like I have no idea what to do. There's 5,000 different curricula, and just do the next right thing. That's just all you can do. You're not going to iron it out perfectly, and that's okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so tell us about your business and how you even got into it.
Speaker 2:Sure, so the name of it is the Gentle and Classical Press and we are, I guess, like a little bit the odd kids out, because anyone that's been a homeschooling for very long, I'll just say that, will have noticed that there is some staunch and passionate opinions about classical education and also Charlotte Mason education and they're kind of like a lot of people think they're very similar but some people would say, oh, they're not the same at all and you could never say that they're similar and so they have their little camps or whatever. And so I was seeing that online, I was seeing that like in Facebook groups and in the companies, right, like things are very classical, you know, doing our Latin and our logic, and they're in a pretty graphic to be seen anywhere or a very Charlotte Mason nature study and artist study and narrations and all these types of like very beautiful, you know. And then this seems like great, but also like maybe a little harsh, and it just seemed like that it would work if they were together. And I filmed through my own personal life, like being in a co-op and all that kind of stuff, that almost every mom that I knew that considered themselves to be a classical educator used a lot of Charlotte Mason's principles and a lot of the Charlotte Mason mamas used a lot of classical education type philosophy and and different things. And so I was like, okay, even though that the, the companies, seem to be like completely separated, everybody that I actually know blends, blends it with some unit studies and different things thrown in, and and that was me.
Speaker 2:And so I just never could find exactly what I wanted, because there was like these staunt, like these camps or whatever. And so when my boys were pretty young, I had the. You know, I had the advantage of having a nine-year gap between kid two and kid three, and that gave me a lot of time to think right, like, oh, if I ever got to go through these ages again, what would I do differently? And so then when I had my boys, I knew that the time went very quickly, and so I developed this little outline like preschool and you know, charlotte Mason, people that are hardcore would be like don't do anything before age six, no matter what, you know. And I was like, well, I am, I am going to do stuff before age six because they want to and I want to, but it wasn't that. I wanted them to sit down and know their ABCs and write their names and their letters. I wanted to go ahead and start writing scripture on their heart as early as I could. I wanted them to have little catechisms. We're not Catholic, but that's a beautiful tradition, that's known in the Catholic tradition, and so little you know who is God and who made everything and all those things. And I wanted to focus on character development and so, and sure, like, yes, you know, letter of the week or whatever, like that was fine.
Speaker 2:But that was never my intention and I couldn't find anything, even though the books I was reading about classical education, like norms and nobility and the liberal arts tradition and everything they talked about the core purpose of classical education being about the development of virtue, like to love what is lovely and to dwell on what is good, and and that your mind be set upon virtuous things to propel you toward right action. And so I was like, where's? Where's the virtue training, where's the scripture, where's the catechism, where's these things that we want our kids to kind of like, have on their hearts from an early age? And I just, I just couldn't find it, especially in a preschool program. And so I just pulled together what I wanted them to do. And the reason I felt like it needed to be a program was because I was very busy and I had not slept in years and I've been pregnant for two years straight and I knew that if I wasn't being intentional about it then those years were just going to fly by Like I had the perspective of how fast it all went and I didn't want to lose those opportunities of sowing those seeds and spending those times together.
Speaker 2:And so I made a little like little memory statement cards that were all cute and everything and it had their little Bible verses and their catechisms and stuff and I shared the kind of the outline of it on my blog for free, because at that point seven people a month came to my blog and those were all family members and bots. So my friend was like, hey, why don't you make this like one of those lead magnets on your blog? And this is like seven years ago and maybe people will sign up for your email list or whatever. And I had 10,000 people download it in the first two months and I was like, well, apparently I've like kind of hit on something here the gentleness of the Charlotte Mason with the longstanding tradition and the virtue focus of classical education together and they want it in a you know, not to make Charlotte Mason roll over in her grave but they want it in a way that is a system. She, you know, was like don't make education a system, it's philosophy. And I very much agree with that. Like you got to have a set philosophy of education, because when you do it makes education not overwhelming anymore because you have confidence.
Speaker 2:No-transcript, and so that's where our preschool came from was just the idea of mama's tired, but she knows these days are precious and she wants to be intentional about her time. And so, you know, we've had a second edition since then. That's like way much improved, based on lots of feedback from customers and our own experience with using it. And so once we got done with preschool, we were like, hey, we want the next thing and hey, we want the next thing. And so just kind of like developing our own brand of things that you know.
Speaker 2:Take even unit studies we have, like these on mission, cultural unit studies where you, you know, do a country at a time. You're learning their history and you're reading their literature and you're learning about their music and all of those things all together, but you're immersing yourself in the people, which is how you learn geography. Because, like, learning about people without learning about their geography means you don't understand them, because you can't understand their history. And learning about geography without learning about the people like doesn't even matter because God made the world, put people on it, like, so mountain doesn't matter if we don't know about people that live on the mountain and so anyway. So that's kind of like our like where we came from and how things kind of developed over time. And I continue to be a geek and read everything that I can. I am prayerfully and hopefully going to start working on my master's degree in classical education, hopefully next fall, and in the meantime I'm taking courses through the Charlotte Mason Institute. Have you heard of them? Before CMI? They have the Albury curriculum.
Speaker 1:No, I didn't know. They had an institute.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So they have these great courses for moms that are super affordable to learn about the Charlotte Mason philosophy of education, and you know they do them during the summer and all year long. But they have like certificates that you can kind of earn, because sometimes you feel like you need a little something right. You know you want to sit at someone else's feet and help them or have them help you better understand what you're doing, and I have a certificate, so it's not a teaching certificate but I kind of know what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:I feel like that helps when you're struggling with confidence about getting outside the school system and everything.
Speaker 1:You guys know I am a big fan of the Tuttle Twins. I had Connor Boyack, the writer of these books, on episode 24. I reached out to his company asking to let me be an affiliate because I strongly believe in their books and their message. In the H5-11 book series, which I read to my son all the time I mean, he actually asks us to read these books with him. Book five, road to Serfdom, talks about what happens to a local town with local businesses when corporations start moving in. Book six, the Golden Rule, talks all about Ethan and Emily's experience at summer camp through a series of cheating and manipulation on certain races that they're required to complete. It talks about how the golden rule of treating others how we want to be treated ourselves is how we all should be conducting our lives. Education Vacation talks about John Taylor Gatto and the creation of the school system and what it was actually intended to do, which you get to learn about by following Ethan and Emily on a trip to Europe. And book 11, the Messed Up Market, takes you through the journey of kids trying to create small businesses as they learn all the laws and rules that government has put in place to actually make it very difficult for them. You learn all about interest savings versus borrowing, low interest rates versus high interest rates and supply and demand, and these are just some of the books in that series. Use the link in my show's description or at the homeschoolhowtocom under the listener discounts page. I also want to let you know about some other books that the Tuttle Twins have out America's History, volume 1 and 2, which teaches all about the inspiring ideas of America's founding without the bias and hidden agendas that's found in other history books for kids and most likely in the schools. There's also books on how to identify fallacies, modern day villains all stuff that we want to be talking to our kids about. Whether you homeschool or not, these books bring up important discussions that we should be having with our children. Use the link in my show's description or like, like I said, at the homeschoolhowtocom under listener discounts.
Speaker 1:I hear more about the Charlotte Mason. I think she's definitely like the staple of the homeschool and my understanding is you know the living books, which is, you know books that have that leave you feeling something you know not, not just okay, here's some words on a page, but that really had a message. You know whether the kid picked it up or not, but it had something there. Um, and also people who were, for instance, we were reading like the Rachel Rachel Carson one. I think that would be like a good example of showing who she was.
Speaker 1:But in a children's book, um, you know her impact on on education and nature, um, putting nature in education. Actually I get her confused with Anna Comstock, but I think we have both library books right now and they're both good and they're both Charlotte Mason. They are both worth reading, especially in springtime. But, um, yeah, and then the I and then I've interviewed a few people that do the classical and I've listened to the song, like the 12 minute song about the timeline of history, and is that kind of throughout, like the music throughout. I know, like you mentioned the Latin, but it seems overwhelming, so I haven't actually dived in to classical myself with my son.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty passionate about the subject. I actually just sent an email out and posted a very most recent blog post. It's discerning the difference between classical conversations, the curriculum, and classical education.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I didn't know there was a difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see, there are so many people that didn't know there was a difference. Yeah, see, there are so many people that don't know there's a difference. And so I actually realized this was a problem, because I had a sweet friend. We were at a birthday party a couple of weeks ago and we were talking about educational philosophies and she goes well, classical education and Charlotte Mason are the complete opposites of each other and you can't like both of them. And she's like a new friend, so she really doesn't even know what I do or what kind of like geek I am about these things. And but a good friend of mine was standing beside me and she looked at me and then she looked at her. It's like, how are you going to answer that? And I was like, why do you think that? You know? I wanted to get like behind her logic there. And she was like started talking about classical conversations, and so the blog post that I just wrote really just talked about, okay, so classical conversations is a brand of homeschool curriculum like Memoria Press or Classical Academic Press or even the Gentle and Classical Press that has like classical underpinnings. They are seeking to implement a classical education as they have interpreted it, okay, and so classical education has been around for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, since antiquity, and it is a philosophy of education that is wholly different than classical conversations. Now, is classical conversations a path toward a type of classical education? Yes, it is, but it is not classical education.
Speaker 2:So there was a, there was a, an essay written by the author Dorothy Sayers. She wrote this in like 1947. And if anybody knows anything about Dorothy Sayers, she's an incredibly talented writer. She was not an educator, it was really just a thought experiment. It was like she was just sharing some ideas. She'd been thinking about classical education and she'd read some this thing and this thing, and she just wrote this essay because it was just on her mind.
Speaker 2:And she compared the three disciplines of the trivium. So you know, we've got seven liberal arts. I'm not going to get too deep in this. I promise you got your seven liberal arts, so you got your trivium and your quadrivium. So you've heard grammar, logic and rhetoric, right? Okay, those are the three disciplines of the trivium and they are not developmental stages. So what Dorothy Sayers did in her thing was kind of like lay those ideas upon developmental stages Like, oh well, little kids are like sponges, they remember all the little pieces of things. So that's like the grammar stage. And then your middle schoolers are argumentative and they're really thinking and working things out. So that's your logic stage. But then your high schoolers they're getting to where they can articulate a little bit better, they can argue their, their points and things. They could follow through with those thoughts. So that's the rhetoric stage and she just it's a beautiful essay and it was brilliant and it had a lot of really cool ideas.
Speaker 2:But it was written in 1947 when classical education and the trivium itself has been existed for like I don't know since before Christ really. And so since, like Aristotle and Socrates and all those guys and really kind of what that did was, there were, you know, a couple of different companies that took that kind of platform and they created a curriculum out of it. And so in classical conversations in the early years you do a lot of memorization of these statements that have their pegs is how they use the term. So you have like dates and names and all those types of things and things they wrote their program like from the top down. So what they have you memorizing in the grammar years is designed to help you handle the rigor of the middle school, their challenge programs, their upper level programs, the logic and the rhetoric stages, which is also very smart. But there are different things, like traditionally there would be a lot of books in classical education, there would be the great conversation, and while they may like encourage people to read books all the time, it's not a part of their curriculum. Their curriculum for elementary is memorization of stuff and so when people have exposure to classical conversation and they see that there's memorization without maybe a prepared book list or like a context for that, right, Like you know, this is not one of their statements.
Speaker 2:Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, right, like that's, you know, a handy thing for our kids to remember. But in classical education and in a Charlotte Mason education, we are learning that contextually. So we are learning about Columbus and when he sailed and on the ships, because we're going to read some amazing stories about that and it's going to tell us all about Columbus's trip and why he went and his experiences there, and maybe we take it from his worldview, some of his diaries, and then maybe from the natives worldview, and that's a classical education. And so not to say, you know, people will listen to this, I'll get hated on for saying like but CC is classical, but it's a.
Speaker 2:So classical education is a garden is how I put it in the thing, and classical conversations is a path in that garden. But there are a lot of paths in the garden and Charlotte Mason was a classical educator. She read and quoted broadly from people like Aristotle and Milton and people like that who had, like you know, that they were the fathers of classical education and she even, you know, later on, does Latin and things like that. So just I can talk about that for like a whole podcast by itself. But I just want to clarify to anybody that's listening that if you have experiences with classical conversations and for any reason whatsoever, you're like that's not for me, that does not mean that classical education is not for you or that it's the opposite of Charlotte Mason is not for you or that it's the opposite of Charlotte Mason. Just throwing that out there.
Speaker 1:That's so interesting. No, I love that because that does make a lot of sense. And I always saw. I mean, I've talked to over a hundred homeschooling families and that distinction was never, you know, made to me. So that is. I think most people don't realize that. So, whoever the marketing strategist is for classical conversations, you're doing good at your job because you've got the monopoly on it. No, but that's so cool. Yeah, all right. So so if people want to dive into your curriculum, you actually mix the Charlotte Mason with a classical education, the authentic being of it, and it really I love that.
Speaker 1:When you were saying about Columbus and reading books about him and then reading the perspective of the natives, I mean that is just like what every conspiracy theorist is like. Yes, can we just see one more perspective? Because school only gives you, you know, this is. And then Columbus, you know, landed in Boston, it's like, or wherever they say. But it's like, oh well, no, if you, if you actually look a little further, he didn't really land, right, right, he didn't land in the United States. Part Um wasn't like Bermuda or something, or yeah. So um, it's where the Dominican.
Speaker 1:Republic is Okay. So you know that's what we're all thinking like. Well, if we had another perspective, we might be able to see a couple of different sides, and I mean that's that's like what we want to teach you. And I know that's like with the Tuttle twins books too. It's like trying to show different perspectives of it, and I think that's a huge reason why people want to get their kids out of the school system too. I mean, I know it's the the social aspect because of what's going on in the schools and what they're teaching, but it's like only having that one, the one way it's got to be, and you can't question it. Like, oh, whoever wrote this textbook was the genius. They know everything. We have to follow it.
Speaker 2:They know everything we have to follow it.
Speaker 1:They know everything. Yes, yeah, that's huge. I love that. So I'm going to put links to your curriculum in the show's description so people want to check it out. They can do that. And then do you want to tell people right now, even just as they're listening, where they could follow you or find your curriculum?
Speaker 2:Sure. So if you just Google the Gentle Classical Press or shop Gentle Classical Press, our teacher's guides are completely free, even still. You know I talked about giving that preschool away back in the day. But our preschool, our primer, which is our kindergarten sequence, one which we get into Columbus and we have, we have memorization for families that want memorization. We like memorization. It helps with kids that have like any kind of memory issues or stuff, so we use it almost therapeutically in our home.
Speaker 2:But then books, lots of books, amazing books, copy work and narration, and we have nature programs as well, agricultural science. We have a lot of stuff out there and you can download the complete teacher's guide for free. So you know whether our philosophy of education and what we're going to be covering that year is a good fit for your family, because nothing stinks better more than getting curriculum and being like this was not what I thought it was going to be like. We want you to know before you order it and get it. So, yeah, shop gentle classicalcom and you'll see like free teacher's guides right there at the top. You just put your email in and there's a whole page. Just download all of them and happy reading.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so awesome. Thank you for that. So I'll put links to everything in the show's description. And then what would you just kind of like to round out the hour on, Like tell that mom or dad that has a kid in school, or about to enroll them, but might want to homeschool? But it's also a little terrifying and you know, some people might be walking away from the, the, the degree kind of that they are still going to be paying for for a few more years, Um, and maybe that job isn't exactly what they're going to be doing If they decide to homeschool. What would you kind of say to that?
Speaker 2:I usually tell people that everything that their child has learned so far, that they've taught them they just didn't realize it. They had this classification system in their mind of this is parent teaching and then everything past this is teacher teaching. And it's just not true. You know your child better than anyone else. You can teach them well. And look, even if you can't teach them well, because maybe at some point there's a personality conflict or something and you're kind of worried about that type of stuff, there are so many communities available, there are online classes, there are tutors, there are amazing resources, no matter what the path is. So really do not try to figure everything out in advance, like, especially if your child's in elementary school. It's a long road, like it does go by fast, but I mean you have a lot of days between now and when they graduate and you'll have more good days than bad when they're at home. I just almost guarantee it and you just need to do like the next right thing. So just kind of obey, like what you believe the next right thing is.
Speaker 2:And as a Christian, I believe like God has a calling on our lives to like for us to home educate our children, and so I always tell people, like he doesn't call you into it and then abandon you right. Like you have this Holy Spirit in your life and so obey that first step and he's going to be there. He's going to help you find the group, the community, the curriculum, the class. Like he's going to help you with all of that stuff. You just have to trust and obey. I think there's a hymn that's named that trust and obey and then he'll work out everything else. And it's really. It's messy at times and the beautiful moments that you see on Instagram that's just some of the moments that happen, and there are other moments that are not pretty like that. That's, most of the moments aren't beautiful and worthy of a photo, but they're all still good and it's really holy, sanctifying work that will make you and your child better for it. You just have to like trust and obey at the beginning.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you so much. I and I agree too, I'm we've been going over like trying to learn how to read for my six-year-old and it was try this curriculum, try that curriculum. And we actually landed on. What we're doing now is reading horizons, and it's online, but it's that. I'm like you know, it's okay, I we're. It's something that he does not fight me on.
Speaker 1:And when you were talking before about quitting before it gets to that rough hour, and he said to me today well, mom, it's been 20 minutes, so I'm moving on to something else and I thought, well, you're not frustrated yet. You should maybe sit back down and keep going, get more of that until you're frustrated. And it's like what you said clicked so much. Oh, and you said one more thing too that I loved. I just wanted to bring up before we close. You said something about when your kid was in school, or if your daughter was in school, you would be waiting for the school to tell you that something was wrong or that something needed to happen or that you needed to go forward. And I've been thinking about that for the last hour, like isn't that so funny that you know, we just we send them into this system and we wait for someone to tell us, like, what's next for our kid, like we can't manage to do that on our own but we absolutely can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're handing over ownership of their academics and a lot of times, their character development and we're handing over ownership of their academics and a lot of times, their character development and we're handing over ownership.
Speaker 2:And it may be for eight hours a day and obviously they don't have ownership for real of your children. But like when you, when you are putting them in school, you're like, ok, that's, that's their thing, like I'm going to do the rest of the stuff, but that's their thing. And a lot of times you just you stuff, but that's their thing. And a lot of times you just you wouldn't because that's their job, you just wouldn't take it on unless they told you to right, like you're not going to dig until you recognize there's a problem for real. And then mama instincts kick in like okay, I've got to fix this. But it would have gone on, like I recognize there was a problem in kindergarten and I guarantee she would have been first or second grade before it really would have come up at in a school setting if she was there the whole time. So, um, anyway, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's important, that's exactly why I wrote, I wrote the children's book that I did the let's talk emergencies Cause I was like, oh gee, what am I supposed to be teaching you about this stuff? At you know, four or five years old, six, seven, eight, nine years old? Like we're supposed to be going over what now? And you know, talking to police officers and teachers and what are you guys going over and what do they need to know? And it was like there's this huge gap.
Speaker 1:Parents think that, yes, I hand you over and everything's covered other than dinner and hanging out on the weekends and making sure your homework's done. But it's like and then teachers are like we're not going to teach your kid your phone number, that's your job, you're the adult. But there's no meeting of the teacher and the parent at the beginning of the year saying this is what I'm going to do and this is what you're expected to do. You know, we all kind of like throw the hands up. So yeah, that's why I and I love that you kind of took it upon yourself to like, oh, there's not a curriculum, I'm going to create one and obviously there is a need for it. So that is awesome. Kudos to you. You had the banking and finance degree. You didn't use that, but it definitely went towards something wonderful, so that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you 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.