#176: What If Your "Imperfect" Homeschool Is Actually Enough? | Jennifer Pepito

Are you constantly wondering...

"Am I doing enough?"

It's one of the biggest fears homeschool parents carry—and after nearly 30 years homeschooling seven children, Jennifer Pepito has a very different perspective.

In this episode, Jennifer shares why perfect homeschool days aren't the goal, why family connection matters more than checking every academic box, and how her oldest daughter—despite what she describes as an "imperfect" homeschool experience—graduated summa cum laude, earned her law degree, and was preparing to take the bar exam.

We also discuss:

• Why many children don't need to read on the same timeline
• How read-alouds, audiobooks, and rich conversations build lifelong learners
• The surprising connection between movement, outdoor play, and learning
• Homeschooling multiple children with family-style learning
• Homeschooling a child with special needs
• Why trying to recreate public school at home often creates unnecessary pressure
• How to build a homeschool filled with curiosity, connection, and joy instead of comparison

If you've ever worried that your homeschool doesn't look "good enough," this conversation might completely change the way you think about learning.

Connect with Jennifer:
https://thepeacefulpress.com/

Instagram: @jenniferpepito

Facebook: @thepeacefulpress

Pinterest: @thepeacefulpress

Podcast: @restorationhome

Resources from Cheryl: 🎓 

New to homeschooling? Grab the free 30-Day Quick Start Guide  

📚 Knowing exactly what to teach is the hard part, so I broke it down for you in plain English! Grab this today — What Do I Actually Teach? 

💻 Want to Homeschool but still have to work? Check out my course on how to do just that: How to Work and Homeschool course

Transcript

Why Cheryl Chose Homeschooling

SPEAKER_01 0:02

I didn't plan to homeschool. I started asking hard questions, realized how little control parents actually have, and made the hard decision to leave a government job to homeschool my kids. Now I interview other homeschooling parents to learn how this all works. I'm Cheryl, and this is the Homeschool How-To podcast. Let's learn this together.

Meeting Jennifer Pepito

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Welcome. And with us today, I have Jennifer Pepito. Jen, thank you so much for being here today.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

I'm so excited to be here, Cheryl. I've so enjoyed reading your Instagram posts and watching your work. It's been so inspiring.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Likewise, and you just sent me your book, which I can't wait to get into, but the inspired homeschool. So I can't wait to talk about that with you. But before we do that, what even got you into homeschooling in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Yeah, I started almost 30 years ago. I had my first child in 1993. And I, you know, I was just really intentional about parenting. I was so excited about it and reading all the stuff. And before it was even time for her to go to school, I had decided that we were gonna homeschool. And I remember my sister, her daughter initially started in a cardin school, and my sister-in-law initially started in like a local preschool. And pretty soon my whole family, like there's five children in my my parents have five children. So most of us homeschooled our kids most of the time. And I just love that we've had this family culture around that. I think that one of the things that really made me intrigued by homeschooling is we went to church with some families, and and so some of the families I most loved the way they interacted, most loved the relationships between the parents and kids were homeschool families. And so I think seeing how homeschool families are just often so much more connection and love and enjoyment of each other inspired me to want more of that in my own family.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I I can definitely see that. So this was the 90s. It did you feel at the time like it wasn't that popular, or was it like, oh, well, we have our church community, lots of people do it.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Yeah, I didn't really care that much. Like my parents had pulled me out of school in junior high in the 80s at some point because they'd listened to Raymond Moron, Focus on the Family. And so my parents were always kind of like, you know, don't be in the system, or they're always a little coun counter-cultural that way.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

I like them already.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Yeah, yeah, you would like them. And so I wasn't too concerned about what people thought of me. And then we did early on find a church community that was very much aligned. Like it was basically this big hippie homeschool church. Most people were homeschoolers, most people like a lot of people were having home births, and um, it was a really easy place to get started then because there were some wonderful older moms who really were willing to speak into our lives as younger moms. I'm so grateful for that season in my in my life and my parenting, it was it set up the trajectory for our family in so many beautiful ways.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

You know what kind of struck me as you were saying that you said, you know, a church group with hippie moms, which it's funny because I see that now, but I when I typically think of like church and Christianity in the 90s, I do not think of the hippies as being part of that. What was that? I mean, today I can post COVID where it was like there was like the rage against the machine prior that was raging against the machine and now they are whatever the machine tells us will do. So, but like, you know, you had those hippies before that didn't like big pharma, but now it seems like those are the people that are like, no, if they have a white coat and they tell you to inject it in yourself, go ahead and do that. But we don't like any other capitalist Right.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

And these weren't these weren't those hippies, these were more like trad wife patriarchy, you know, patriarchy, like long skirts and long hair and no makeup, and but just you know, very much about family and about uh raising your own kids, like passing on values to your kids. So so hippie in terms of drinking raw milk and raising their own food and wearing, you know, used clothes or whatever, but not hippie in terms of burning their bras and protesting against the establishment, you know.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Okay. All right. No, I gl I'm glad that you like made that disconnect, I guess, between the two because it it always intrigued me. Like, how did we go from one to the other? And maybe it was that they were always kind of separate, but I lumped them in until I was part of them.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Then I'm like, Yeah, and and I I'm surprised too, Cheryl, because you know, so many of the people like my my mother-in-law was more of that kind of hippie, like the rage against the machine. She protested NAFTA, which I'm I

Starting Homeschooling In The 90s

SPEAKER_00 4:48

think probably was a good thing to protest, honestly. But then and she passed away before COVID. But I think it was a lot of those people who were very idealistic and against like big corporations that then did weirdly line up and trust big governments. I didn't understand that at all. I was very, very astounded by that.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Crazy psychological experiment that we were all a part of. So, how many kids do you have?

SPEAKER_00 5:12

I have seven. They're ages 32 to 17. And my youngest, my wonderful youngest son is away working at a Christian camp this summer doing whitewater rafting and rock climbing. And so I am like, it, you know, it's a quite a new season because I still have an adult son living in an ex in like an exterior apartment that we own and rent out, and and then I have an adult daughter with disabilities and a 19-year-old daughter at home. But it is like this weird season of kind of in between.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yeah, because you're not actually homeschooling right now.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Yeah, I mean, he'll be a senior next year. So we've just been talking about that because we live in California. Do you live in California?

SPEAKER_01 5:52

No, New York, so equivalent.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Okay, similar. Yeah. So we live in California. Yeah, where there's um there's charter schools. So in high school, he did a public charter school for a couple years because I do like my high schoolers to have lab science. I like them to have passionate math teachers. Those are two things that I'm not good at teaching. And so we did those at this public charter school. So next year will be his senior year, and the only classes he still needs are American government, which I don't really trust a charter school to teach, and Spanish, which I can teach. And there's one more English literature, which I can also teach. And so, you know, hopefully we'll just homeschool or maybe he'll take a couple of college classes. We haven't decided. Anyhow, next year will be his senior year, so his last year, and he just has a few classes left.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine that for doing it for 30 years, that's really like I don't know. You're obviously moving forward with the next chapter of your life because you're writing books and, you know, now welcoming yourself into kind of like helping us with the younger kids into this process. So let's go back to what was it like homeschooling seven? There's a lot of people listening that are probably like, how do you even do that? How do you have all the different levels and manage seven kids and educate them at the same time?

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Yeah. And a big part of our story is we were missionaries in Mexico for four years of those, you know, of our 30 years of homeschooling. And that was when we moved down there when we had five kids who were like 11 and under. And then we came back when our oldest was was like 15. And uh, so maybe maybe she was a little bit older than 11 when we moved. But anyhow, she was 15, we came back, and we birthed a baby while we were down in Mexico, and then we had another one right after we came back. So we were doing like Charlotte Mason style homeschooling, but also we were moving, we were serving in orphanages, we were camping in San Felipe, we were traveling back and forth from Northern California to see family. So we had a lot of interrupted school days, a very interesting school experience because part of the time we were like building a house in Mexico, and part of the time we were, you know, taking this cool field trip out to see New England. So we had a lot of experiences in our homeschool, but I did early on have a very clear vision. I write about that in the Inspired Homeschool about how, you know, when you know it's important to you, then you can curate the homeschool of your dreams. And thankfully, I didn't have the internet. Like I remember, I think when we finally came back from being missionaries, I had like a dial up internet or something really slow. And and so most of the time homeschooling, I didn't have that distraction. I could really focus on enjoying my children in the mornings and reading to them. And I would bring like a big bowl of apples out in the mornings and I'd read out loud to them, and then we'd do some math and language arts and just had this really sweet atmosphere that was very, it was very easy to just enjoy it and be fully present. Sometimes as a mom who was young and and um sometimes a little bit immature, I did some of that comparison. I did that. I did some of that, you know, wishing my homeschool room was more beautiful or whatever. But my oldest daughter ended up going into like graduating Swimakum Laud from a state school and then going to a university, getting a jurisdoctorate. And so early on, she's my oldest child, early on, all those worries of like, am I doing enough were pretty, pretty taken care of because I knew how I'd homeschooled her and it was somewhat haphazard even. Lots of books read, lots of discussions, a great work ethic. But because we were moving and I had a special needs daughter and I had a bunch of other children, an emergency C section, I had all these other interruptions to my life. It was never perfect. It was never all these perfect homeschool days and these full long days and absolutely perfect everything. And she still was able to grow up and get a jurisdictorate and she's gonna pass the bar this summer. So I think that definitely cured me of that, those that self-doubt because I could see wow, children are learners if they're motivated, they can learn, and to some degree, we just have to create the right conditions for learning.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yeah. And it's so easy to fall into the like, well, we didn't spend two hours on schoolwork today. And even that, you know, they say isn't a lot because kids are in school for six hours, but I know we never spend two hours even on schoolwork. My kids are my son will be eight in a couple weeks, so he's technically like finishing up his second grade year, and my daughter's only three. So um I'm like, all right, you know, we'll get in some math and we get in some like formal reading instruction from an online program. Uh Reading Horizons has actually been around for like since I don't know, the eighties or nineties. But uh it it's definitely not every single day. But what I do have with them every single day is I try to read to them every day. And um discussion. Like we're like doing for instance, just now I just came in from I was fishing with him, or he was fishing, and I was just kind of standing there and taking some videos because I don't touch the fish or anything like that. But you know, he's seven years old and he caught five fish in the neighbor's pond and he's re-hooking the worms, he's taking the fish out of there, and I'm like, all right, I I think I am doing enough because I I know I don't know how to even do this stuff. And right now he's outside filleting the fish with my husband. So I guess what I'm asking is like, and you kind of reiterated it, but when we look at the whole, you know, all second graders should know how to read, like, you know, this many words per minute or this many, but like how important is that stuff, or you know, how to do this much math by the end of second grade or fifth grade? How important is that as your daughter, you know, graduated summa cum laude?

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Yeah, well, I think partly we just have to look at progress because, you know, in the Finnish schools, they didn't even teach reading until age seven or eight, and still they had really high scores, you know, educational scores. And I think that what's happening in our American schools is that they're pushing academics earlier and earlier. Like kindergarten used to be about play and cutting, and maybe you learn your letters in kindergarten. You didn't have to learn to read in kindergarten for sure. And they pushed it earlier and earlier. But many studies show that all the gains even out by junior high. And so if your child learns to read at in grade four or learns to read in grade one, it all evens out. And when you're reading to your children and discussing the books, there'll really be no delays because the only reason to learn to read earlier is so you have a little bit more time to build that vocabulary and build the critical thinking skills that comes from reading and build the imagination that comes from reading and build the composition skills that comes from reading. But if you have a family habit of reading aloud or a family habit of listening to audiobooks, then those gaps will be filled. And so you really don't need to worry about, you know, is my child reading yet at seven years old? You just work on progress. Like I believe in consistent progress, consistently review the phonograms, consistently read aloud, consistently do some math. But I don't think we need to be filling our children's days with tedious workbooks and feeling all this pressure to keep up with the public schools. The public schools are not doing a great job. Like so many kids are, you know, graduating without real literacy or not really knowing how to enjoy a book or read a book or have any character or virtue. And I think there are more important things for children than being a skilled reader in the early years, if the sacrifice is connection, joy, learning to enjoy learning, like your son, learning those motor skills. Like if he can track a fish on a hook or a knot on a hook, if he can track those things, those will strengthen his ability to read. Whereas if you were excluding that and you're like, oh, you didn't finish your homework, you got to stay in here and do more homework. You're not gonna go fishing because that's too fun. You're actually sacrificing some really important development that will help him be a better reader. So good job, Mama, for making that choice.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Well, that really warmed my heart because he definitely did not finish his reading of Simon. He pulled a whole like, I think I have to throw up, Mom. I have to I have to go lay down. I'm like, it's just because I asked you to sit and do your reading. But yes, and then lo and behold, a couple hours later we're out fishing. Yeah. And I and I think even just back to like

Homeschooling Seven Kids Through Big Life

SPEAKER_01 14:08

survival skills. Like these are things I did not ever grow up learning in school. And and you know, when I think of of school, I feel like there were times throughout my career in the education system that I was like, I really want to be smart, but I honestly don't know how to get there. You know, like I I I like I wanted to know things, but then you open a textbook and you start reading and you fall asleep. You know, it was just like I don't even know where or I turn on the news because I'm like, well, they say watch the news. And I'm like, well, I have no idea what they're even talking about. Like, can I get news 101 or like news for dummies? So I even know what these broadcasters are talking about. And then, you know, now I look at it and I'm like, it was probably good I didn't watch the news. But but isn't it funny that like even kids that wanted to be smart still kind of like couldn't get there in the school system? Did you do family style learning with your kids? Where, like, hey, we're gonna learn all about, you know, springtime or you know, caterpillars together, but we'll all have different levels, or like, how did you manage getting it done with all the kids? Or was it really just kind of like we're learning through life, like a more unschooler approach?

SPEAKER_00 15:15

No, I'm definitely not an unschooler. I'd be more in the Charlotte Mason camp. And so we did do family-style learning, though, where I would read, you know, we we did history in cycles. So we would do world history, ancient history, European history, and uh American history. And so in the PeaceLox, we have cycles for all of that. So each year we'd have a different history focus, and that's kind of how we, you know, formed our year. And then the science that we studied that year would often go along with it. So it's like if we were studying American history, we might be studying machines to go with industrialization, or we might be studying minerals to go with the gold rush. And so a lot of the the, you know, science, language, poetry, art, a lot of that was coinciding somewhat with our history. And then we would just gather together in the morning. We would read the Bible, we'd sing, we'd look at art, we would read literature, we'd read some history. And meanwhile, the kids would be either maybe drawing timeline cards, coloring or writing in a map, writing a notebook page. So there was a lot of their own levels of production. So I could read something that might be a little bit over the heads of the youngest ones, and they could still draw a picture about it. And then the older ones would be writing a more involved essay or writing a more involved notebook page or drawing a more involved picture. So it was easy to adapt. And I don't feel like, you know, sometimes for sure the information might have been a little heavy. Like I read The Hiding Place out loud to all my children, and we, you know, we might have had some preschoolers or early elementary wandering around. I don't remember that that ever was a problem for them. We read the Chronicles of Narni, you know, so there was there was definitely a wide age range, listen to these stories, but we've never seen that that was a problem for the younger ones. But what it did do is create this like rich family culture around books and imagination. And my daughter actually credits like even going to law school, having the imagination to go live overseas and go to law school as part of the result of all of the great books and biographies and memoirs and stories we read of people who did amazing things.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Okay, so as you're reading, are you the one reading the story, even to the older ones that know how to read?

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Yes. And, you know, partly I looked at it as developing a culture of learning. So even, you know, I had actually a rule because at some point my high school students were taking college classes or they had jobs. And so my rule was that if you're home in the morning, if you're not already to college class or you're not already working, then you also join our morning time. Because also morning time was like, you know, if you were in a monastery, for instance, or you were in a, you know, a boarding school, like if you were in some other situation, there would be usually a mandatory meeting of some kind, you know? And so to me, it was like a mandatory family meeting. And I think it's tragic that so many people who homeschool through high school automatically let go of those family meetings. And and then the thing, the problem is kids are lonely. Like high schoolers do need connection. Maybe they don't like you very much, maybe you're not their favorite person to connect with, but you'll you could become a better person to connect with if you would insist on, hey, let's let's get together, let's talk about this. Tell me your thoughts on this book. Like we had some really great discussions, and I would also have my older ones lead sometimes in that. Like they might be the ones who played their guitar and sang for our morning singing time, or they might be the ones who read the Bible for us, or we might take turns reading poetry and having them contribute. So I would have them contribute and take some leadership role sometimes because I did have, you know, high school, even sometimes there might be a college student around in the morning who would come to that family meeting. And so it was like a, it was more of a, I would compare it in some ways more to it like a church service than necessarily a class. Because the thing is we think about classes nowadays as like only to first graders. And we did do this little dumbed down lesson. And then, you know, it's like even in in church Sunday school, they do these cartoons for little kids and they have to do a puppet show. Everything has to be so, so big. But kids have a better attention span and will develop an even better one if we give them a chance. And so this gave my younger children a chance to develop a deeper intellect and deeper learning. So it's not lacking in rigor, this like Charlotte Mason literature-based education. It's not lacking in rigor. It's just that you're discussing things together. So it also builds connection, it builds a family culture. Like we developed a culture around these stories we read. I remember one of my like a very fond memory of parenting. My husband and I had gone out for the day. We were on a date or something, and we'd left our son, who was maybe somewhere between 12 and 14. Like, I don't think he was that old. We'd left him babysitting, his his little brother and sister, who might have been like four and six or six and eight, something like that. And we came home and they were all in our tree house, and he was reading Tolstoy to them. And so, like, you know, it's just it's such a gift. Like the the books that my children have read have really shaped their imagination. They're very brave as adults. And I think it's it is in large part to just being raised on the idea that people in history have done great things, have done brave things, have have had adventures, and we did read a lot of adventure stories, and so they can be adventurous too.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

That's so cool. You mentioned the peaceful press, and this is your curriculum, is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Yes, it's um we just are celebrating 10 years this month. So 10 years ago, I I had been homeschooling already for 20 years, and I just because we had a daughter with special needs, I really started studying occupational therapy and child development and neurodevelopmental therapy. And I realized that a lot of homeschool curriculum was really just copying the boxed public school curriculum, which is honestly pretty anti-child. Like if you have to medicate a child to get them through a school day, that's anti-child. And so, you know, doing some of that research, I realized that most children need a lot more motor skills development than they're getting in school. And so my first resource was the peaceful preschool, which is a preschool resource that does teach letters and numbers, but also really strengthens and reinforces those large and fine motor skills, along with some practical life skills, which also build those motor skills.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Okay, but that wasn't your curriculum, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:33

The people that is yours, that's where you started. Yes, that was the first one.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

All right, so you're developing this as your daughter kind of you saw what she needed, and and then you're using it, and then you're developing kind of the rest of the years as you're going. Can you tell us what are for because I do get that question a lot. Like I would love to homeschool, but I have a child with special needs, so people feel like they have to push them into the system as if they're going to. Get the services that they actually need in the system. But when I talk to people whose children are in the system and need the services, the services actually are not really available, or um, they have to go through so much testing that it's like missing the mark.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Yeah, and this was a long time ago. This was like, you know, because she's she's 30 now, and so she's one of my older homeschool kids. And it was a little scary sometimes because homeschooling was new enough that, you know, we were going to neurologists because she was having seizures and having motor problems. And so there was some I I did have some nerves about it, but one of the neurologists was like, Well, I have no problem with homeschooling. I wrote that in my journal. I was so happy, you know. But what I found is that homeschooling is actually a lot healthier for kids who are on the spectrum, kids who, and and I think there can be exceptions to that, obviously, if your family atmosphere is so chaotic that you you're not going to meet their needs. But we were using something called the neurodevelopmental approach. And so we would meet with someone every three months and she'd give us a list of activities that would strengthen those motor skills. And that is what we incorporated into the PeaceLo-school is a lot of that, like visual tracking, auditory awareness, uh, motor skills, fine and large, brain coordination, and all of that can easily be done at home, often easily with the practical things you're already doing. Things like organizing the socks or you know, swinging on a swing, all of those things really help with brain coordination. And a child's gonna have a lot more of a chance of getting that attention and care at home than they are in a special needs classroom with 10 other kids, many of whom also have really intense behavioral issues. Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Yeah. So, okay, and then how did you develop the like what took you from I, you know, I'm homeschooling my kids, but now I want to make a curriculum? Like, were you not finding exactly what you wanted? So you decided to just develop it? How did that, how did that unfold?

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Yeah, so the preschool, you know, I I had seen that there really wasn't something out there that included those important motor skills. So that was the first curriculum I wrote. But then also I loved the idea of Charlotte Mason homeschooling. And at the time there wasn't much besides Ambleside Online, which is a wonderful free resource. It's wonderful. But it was really hard. I had seven kids, and so they, you know, they've worked now on a groups option, but at the time they did not have that groups option. And so trying to figure out like which year do you do? And and then a lot of the books are really old. Some of them are wonderful, but some of them are a little more tedious for they weren't, they weren't our interests as well. We had this vision for family mission, so I loved reading a little bit more like some multicultural books or some biographies of missionaries, things like that. And the other reason, so so I wanted to write something that would pull families who were the same as me. They wanted to do something like Ambleside Online, but it's too complicated pulling all the pieces together and printing everything out. And so I created like an all-in-one The Playful Pioneers was the first one. And it's based on the Little House on the Prairie books as a spine, and then you read all these wonderful history, like American history picture books and nonfiction as you go through the year. And then, but I also included the art, I included the poetry, I included the handcrafts because it was those things that were doing me. And as a mom, like I could get to reading and math and some language arts, but then I wasn't getting any handcrafts in, or I wasn't getting any art done, or we weren't reading any poetry. And so just having it all in one very easy, visually very comfortable parent guide helped me. And I know it's helped thousands of other families as well. But the other reason, so I wanted something more simple for Charlotte Mason families. The other thing is I had family members who are doing classical conversations, which is, you know, very great structured program. Like if you don't know anybody and you want to find a homeschool community, that is a really easy way to do it because they're, you know, if you find a good campus with some good teachers, it really depends on the campus. It's like a simple, easy little program, kind of pricey. But but the problem is the people that I knew who were doing classical conversations, then they weren't reading aloud to their kids and they weren't looking at art and they weren't doing handcrafts except for the very, very simple ones they do at co-op or what at the campus. So Playful Pioneers was also written so that like all of my peaceful press history cycles are in a three-year history cycle, which is how classical conversations they have year one, two, and three. So they match the history cycles of classical conversations, and they are also four days a week. So any family who's also doing a once-a-week co-op can easily use the peaceful press. Now, you could also use that fourth day or that fifth day of the week to just clean your house or take a field trip. Lots of lots of great reasons to homeschool just four days a week.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Okay, so the peaceful press, it's it's literally every subject, it covers everything, or do people have to add in a math or a science?

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Yes, yeah. I don't write math curriculum, so they have to add in a math and they then they need to add in like grammars, phonics, or spelling. So there's a lot of language arts included, but in the early years you might add explode the code to just reinforce the phonics, or you might add in, you know, Institute for Excellence and Writing to reinforce grammar. Your dog wants to be on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

I yeah, he's not supposed to be down here. Hold on one second. I had him locked in the sunroom, but there are these like little window sills. They don't have anything in them, they're just kind of like shelves, and he must have jumped through them.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

My gosh, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

Okay, so we'll get back to the the math and science and grammar. Okay, yeah, so I do use explode the code with my son. I know exactly what that is, and it's a very cute little like supplemental program. Okay, awesome. What about the science?

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Okay, so science is included. And and there was an author named Jay Weill who wrote the Apologia Science curriculum, which was kind of the homeschool curriculum that every homeschooler used, especially literature-based homeschoolers in the day. And what he taught, he was a nuclear physicist or something, and what he taught is that you don't teach science through textbooks until I think he said at the beginning high school. Since then, the company that produces his books, Apologia, also has like an elementary science curriculum. But the the point of that is that in the early years, and you when you look at the lives of scientists, is very true for scientists. There should just be a lot of experimentation happening, like, you know, building things, building Legos, building connects, building, you know, any kind of building, any kind of project should be emphasized in the early years, along with reading stories about science concepts. So in the peaceful press, we include lots of projects. At least once a week, there's some kind of project from making a windmill or a water wheel or baking bread, planting a garden, so many life science, physical science projects, along with beautiful picture book stories about scientists,

Reading And Math Pressure Reframed

SPEAKER_00 28:56

about, you know, the moon, the face of the moon, or about books like nature anatomy, things like that are included as our science for through the elementary years.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

Okay, cool. Yeah, I'm thinking of like you writing this, and it seems so overwhelming to like make sure that you include every subject and this and that. But what I also try to think about and tell people that are just looking into homeschooling is that like the subjects intertwine. It's not like you're taking, you know, 39 minutes for math and 39 minutes for writing and 39 minutes for reading and 39 minutes for geography and 39 minutes for science, like in in history. It's like, no, we're kind of like talking about the moon, but we're talking we're we're reading about it, and then we might be writing about it, and then we might be doing like a science experiment about it, and maybe we're doing history as far as like, well, what did they used to think of the you know, what what the moon did and what what its purpose was, and like how did that change over over time and different cultures? What did they think of it? So so you're really kind of including all these subjects. Is that sort of what the peaceful press does?

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Yeah, and you know, we we're not we don't try to be too obvious or too like Charlotte Mason had a problem with people going to any great lengths to create unit studies, but really children make so many connections when you know, when you read The Playful Pioneers and Paws going down into the, he's like digging the well, and then that guy passes out because there's bad gas in the well. And then we, you know, make an experiment about the about the lack of oxygen, how it puts out a candle. And then, you know, maybe that same week you do some kind of like looking at rocks, or maybe you bake something, or we made dirt cups as one of our like recipes for the week. And so there is, there are these like small connections that happen that just expand the story and make our children so engaged with it. And I think that joy is this important component of learning. When you look at neuroscience, many neuroscientists talk about how joy sparks learning, whereas fear and stress and anxiety squash it. And so the more fun we can bring into our learning, the better for our kids. The more they're going to be excited about their own rabbit trails, the more they're going to be engaged with the subject matter. And so there is a lot of like real delight in the Peace Well Press resources through those connections.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

Yeah. And then, so like how do you do the literature? Do you say, like, this is the book list? You know, see if your library has these books or order them from your library, or you know, you can purchase them here.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

Yeah, yeah. I wish I had uh one of the curriculums here to show you, but I'll send you a sample you can link in the show notes. So basically there's a weekly grid, and in a weekly grid, it will tell you the like we our elementary resources have a Bible component people can use or not use. So there'll be a Bible or devotional book to read out of. There'll be a chapter, so it's usually like a chapter a day of whatever the book is. Then there'll be a language arts activity. So it might be copying a quote or copying a poem or like writing your own sort of part about an Aesops fable. So there'll be some kind of a writing project. Then there'll be history or science. So we loop history and science. So uh it might be reading about somebody in history and they're making a notebook page or a timeline figure. It might be filling in a map, and then there'll be a space in the grid for you to write in what you did for math and what you did for phonic spelling or grammar. And then we loop through the beauty subject. So Mondays we look at art, Tuesdays we do one of those projects, Wednesdays we do a nature walk, and Thursdays we do a recipe or baking. So it makes a really beautiful rhythm, but everything is laid out for you in a daily plan. And then you just write down what you, you know, what math lesson. Because it's an all-in-one family-style curriculum. If you are trying to teach math to a bunch of ages at once, that doesn't necessarily work. Although I do believe in combining close ages. And you can't necessarily, you know, a first grader might need phonics and a sixth grader might need a grammar lesson, but you certainly can read the same books and have them all notebook at their level. You certainly can look at the same art and have the different children, the older ones and the younger ones, give you their ideas or their impressions of the art. You can read the same poetry to all of them, and you can make the same recipes and do the same projects. Obviously, an older child, if they're doing a project that involves like a tin can lantern for example, an older child's gonna have an easier time, the younger one's gonna need a little more help. But it just became it becomes part of your family culture, this atmosphere of learning and creativity and just absorbing so many beautiful ideas.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

Yeah, I love that. Um so how long does it take to get there? Like when you like tell me a typical day, you know, from the time that the kids wake up or even you wake up, because I'm sure there's stuff to get done before everybody else is up.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

Yeah, I love that day in the life. In the restoration home community, we talk a lot about our morning habits. So for me, you know, I would get up, I was breastfeeding or having, you know, I had a baby for a lot of those years, but I would get up in the morning, I would try to do a little bit of Bible reading and maybe some chores or something. And then I would start saying, make your bed, brush your teeth, clean your room, read your Bible, or I'd start saying something like that as like a little morning call to the children because they might wake up a little bit earlier than me or a little bit later. But at some point, usually around nine o'clock in the morning, we would have had breakfast and we would start our morning time. And then we'd do that for like an hour, hour and a half. Then we'd have about an hour of language arts because you, or or an hour of math. We'd usually do math first. And teaching math when you're homeschooling multiple ages can be pretty intense because you're, you know, trying to like go to the different levels and help different people with the problems they're having problems with. So those were those were some of the hardest moments, is probably that math hour. And then we'd have an hour of language arts, which might have been filling in like an explode the code workbook. Maybe I would have given them a spelling test. It might have been doing a rough draft for an institute for excellence in writing lesson. And then in the afternoon, we would be free for projects or maybe music lessons, or a lot of the time they would just play outside in the afternoons. We had really made it that ambition because our family was so into living in the country and having our own, growing some of our own food. My daughter had a horse, and so because that was our lifestyle, we spent a lot of afternoons just like playing in the yard, playing by the creek instead of running around in the car.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

Yeah. And and I I just posted about that today. I was like, you know, talking to people who've homeschooled, you know, one of the biggest regrets is overloading that schedule because you think that you're not giving your kid enough. But really, when you look back at it, it's like, man, I wish we kind of had relaxed a little bit more and just enjoyed those backyard afternoons.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Yeah, I think, you know, every family is so different, and people's tolerance and people's children's like some kids need a lot more social activity and some need less. And so I think the main thing is knowing yourself and your kids because you've got to have enough margin. Like some of the worst times for me as a mom was when I was overscheduled and I was trying to get all the kids in the car for choir practice or something, and then yelling at them because I couldn't find the baby's shoes, or you know, it's like these moments where it's just so intense usually happened when we were a little bit too rushed. So I think the main thing is make sure you have enough margin that you can do everything with peace.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

And how did you deal with when like the kids just didn't want to do, you know, the morning time and the math hour and the language arts hour? I mean, out of seven kids, you must have had some pushback at some point in time, especially if they haven't been to the traditional school system. It's not like you can hold that over your head, like, I'll send you back. You know how bad that was.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

Yeah, that's we I never used that threat. You know, we were we started our family in the 90s in a very kind of strict authority, authoritarian parenting style. And so early on, we taught our kids to obey us, and we never untaught that. So we never, you know, we we became more relaxed as parents later on, and you know, our values changed a little bit. So I would say the hardest student I had to homeschool was my youngest because we had become so much more relaxed. Like it's the older ones, we did a lot of um like practicing. Like we would, we would practice just sitting quietly on a couch somewhere. We would, you know, we did there was no phones or devices. We would go to weddings, we'd go to church, they'd sit with us in church. So they actually had a lot of practice sitting. And I think it is something important to practice with your kids because you you can't always have a device in your hand when you're bored. You know what I mean? I think it's so easy for modern parents. As soon as a kid gets fidgety or bored, they just stick a device in their hands, but it's not a super good practice because then they're always overstimulated, they're always expecting to be that stimulated. And it is good for kids to learn to sit quietly and be bored. But, you know, so we with the older ones, we taught them to sit still and it wasn't that hard to do morning time. Now, with the with the youngest, I think there was a lot more chaos in our family. Like we had seven kids, there was adults coming and going. And and I think that also because I was a little bit more um ambivalent in a way, we'd had our oldest daughter had an eating disorder after she'd been on some heavy antibiotics

Morning Time And Family-Style Learning

SPEAKER_00 38:24

for a climbing accident. She'd got an infection after a rock dropped on her. So there was a lot that went into that season in our lives, but it really shook me up as a parent and made me less confident about being sort of the authority in my kids' lives. And that, and so it took me a little while to get back, to get to get healed from that. Cause I think our children feel much safer and much happier when we are in charge. I think it's very scary for kids when you, as the mom, are unwilling to enforce any boundaries. And so that that experience, like I did experiment with my youngest child with like saying yes to everything and being a little bit more hands-off, but I feel like that was hard on him. And so, you know, he was the only one who was a little bit harder to homeschool. Like he would be more fidgety, or he would have like not wanted to sit still for as long, things like that. But I still just followed through. Like I would, I would say, okay, because at first I was thinking, okay, he's a boy, and so he just needs to move more and we'll do more phonics activities while hopping, or we'll do more, we'll, you know, we'll practice other ways. But then I started to realize, like, oh, this kid is just so smart. He's playing me like a fiddle. And and I need to enforce a little bit more boundaries with him for his own sake because he's really smart. And it's not fair to him to have him, you know, not be able to write legibly because I didn't reinforce him sitting there and writing legibly. So there was a point where with this child, I would just like, okay, you have to write at least one word. And if he didn't do it willingly, I would just hold his hand and write the word with him holding his hand. You know, and so it there was more of those struggles, but I think the struggles would have been less if I'd just been more consistent with that child earlier. So if you're listening right now and you have young children, don't be afraid to be the boss. Like, don't be afraid to say, this is our and and start in small increments. Like children are capable of so much more than we think. And it doesn't have to be this big scary authoritarian thing. It's more about consistency. Like if you consistently have, you know, everyone sits down for one picture book a day, then later on you can add a chapter book. But if you don't enforce any kind of order, it's gonna be really hard to homeschool. And it's a little disservice to the teachers to send them off to school. Like they've never sat through a meal with you, they've never gone to bed when you told them, they've never read a story on their own. Like if you have no ability to direct your children, it's gonna be hard to homeschool. And how it's gonna be hard for them in life, really. If they, if they're unwilling to listen to anybody in authority, it's gonna be hard for them to get a job, to go to college. Like, I think we're doing our kids a disservice when we don't teach them at all to follow somebody's instructions. And you look at the thing that really changed my heart about this, Cheryl, because I was, I was like, you know, maybe I was reading things like Love and Logic or whatever, and like, maybe, you know, we should just let people make their own choices. And what really changed my heart, I read a little bit of Alfie Cone. What really changed my heart though was reading the book Shackleton's Endurance. And it's an adventure story about this South, like South Atlantic Antarctic shipwreck, and this whole crew of men get shipwrecked and they they're out on the ice and really they would die if they did not obey the captain. There was a captain of the expedition, and if these men did not obey the captain, they would 100%, 1000% die. And I thought, like, you know, in a time of crisis, like it is hard for us as Americans to believe, to trust any authority. And then I think it's hard for us to be an authority. But really, if you want to make big progress in life, it does take knowing how to develop a team and have a leader. And so being willing as a mom to be a leader in your family and, you know, to lead your children is gonna give them leadership skills that might help them someday develop a team that really accomplishes something great. But if everybody's just an individual doing all their own thing and nobody's willing ever to submit to somebody else's will, it's gonna be hard to accomplish those big things like saving yourselves from a shipwreck or building a rocket or whatever the big project might be.

SPEAKER_01 42:26

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it even kind of makes me think about with, you know, we when you homeschool a lot of the homeschoolers, it's like let your child do dangerous things safely. And, you know, so but that's a hard line to kind of walk to. And I know my son, he's seven, he's got a dirt bike, he's got a four-wheeler, and we have neighbors who um, you know, they go to public school, but like the kids in their 12, but they still get along really well. But here my seven-year-old is trying to kind of be at the level of the 12-year-old, so they're on like a four-wheeler or a dirt bike together, and I'm like, I didn't grow up this way, I grew up more in the city, so I know nothing about them, and it's hard to know the boundaries. Like, what is a logical boundary with something that could potentially kill a child, you know? I and I struggle with that all the time of you know, they have to learn what's safe for them, but you also have an obligation as a parent to make sure your child stays safe as they're learning their boundaries. It's very hard.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

It's so hard, Cheryl. We we have there's a family that we know whose child was experimenting with making explosives. I don't know what this is this is for part of the problem of the internet, like experimenting with making explosives, and they they blew their hands off. And it's like, you know, I love my kids experimenting. I love you know, my daughter rock climbs, she climbs like multi pitch big rocks in. Yosemite and it's so terrifying to me. She's taken some of my kids on climbs with her. But I think, you know, for me, it partly is about discernment, just like, you know, praying. I mean, what does it look like to be a leader in this situation? Is this a situation where I have to say, sorry, this is not not going to be something we're going to participate in? Or is this something where I have to deal with my own fears and trust that they're going to be okay? And so I think it's everything's so individual, homeschooling, education. It's so much about what's important to your family, which is why for me, cultivating my relationship with the Lord is so important because it does, it does take like a natural discernment. Do you know what I mean? Like we either just obey what everyone tells us to do, you know, do the normal thing, put them in school, put them in the classes, or you know, you have to have discernment. And and there is, I mean, there's danger in everything. Like there's, you know, your kids could play sports and break their ACL or their leg or their neck, or you know, your kids could yes, there's so many dangers in life, and just weighing that out and listening to your own gut, I think is so important.

SPEAKER_01 45:04

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, as we wrap up, let's talk about your book a little bit. What made you want to write this? And it is called The Inspired Homeschool. What made you made you start this?

SPEAKER_00 45:15

Well, I love I love history. It's one of my favorite subjects to teach. And I've noticed so many homeschoolers, like even families who want to use the peaceful press. Like it sounds really fun to them to read more books to their kids and to do more projects. They love that idea, but then they get scared. They think, oh my gosh, but what if I'm not keeping up? Or like the public schools are doing, they're doing so many more hours a day of schooling, and this seems like too much fun. And so I just wanted those families to see how history was homeschooled because historically people were not in sitting in desks all day. Like the great minds in history had a lot more freedom to pursue their interests, they had a lot more time, they had a lot more create creative outlets, and schools just stifle, like especially schools today, it's heartbreaking. Like not only do they take up your child's whole day, but then they send them home with homework as well. And it's and it's busy work, and kids are are growing up and graduating just so burnt out with no moral character and just like zombies. And I I didn't, you know, I wanted families to break free from that fear. And I think when you read the inspired homeschool and you see like all these people, and I had to narrow it down. There are so many people who historically were homeschooled and were brilliant. And so I had to narrow it down to, you know, not so many people. And there's all kinds of stories like people coming out of slavery, people who did not have a mother or a father, or people who, you know, maybe they were homeschooled in their best years and then they had to be in boarding school for a little bit. So there's a wide variety of examples in there that you can apply to your own family, but just there's that hope that you don't have to do it the same way as the public schools. And that isn't historically the best way or historically the norm.

SPEAKER_01 47:00

Yeah. And uh when I just think back to like my experience, I had no time to even figure out what I enjoyed doing in life. And and my mother, you know, she's almost 80 and she's like working in a library just because she doesn't know what else to do with her life because she never really sat down and thought about her interests, you know, what they could be. And the world is so endless with the possibilities of things that could bring you joy, but it's like she's just so ingrained to think, like, well, if I don't have anything to do, I have to just sit and collect a paycheck. It's it's crazy. So I love this idea, and it is how history's heroes light a path toward joyful, confident learning. And of course, you have the key and the kite and uh a few different examples right on the cover. I love that. What is like a message that you would like to send us off with today for parents who maybe are thinking of homeschooling but afraid to take the leap or just started homeschooling, but their kids are young, so they're not really delved in yet?

SPEAKER_00 47:54

Yeah, I I think really take the leap. And and especially if you are someone you're listening to this podcast and your kids have already been in public school for a little while. So they already maybe they have a foundation in language arts, or maybe they have a foundation in math, or or maybe they're just like in tears all the time and that and they're threatening to put them on on like a on a medication to get through school, just take the leap. Just do, you know, do like a sample of the Peaceful Press. You can go to inspired homeschoolbook.com and get our book list, get a free um workshop. There's lots of free uh samples on there. But when you when you take a break from that like institutional learning and just explore a little bit with your kids, read books together, there's so much that is healed. Our nervous systems are healed, like your children sitting under fluorescent lights at a desk all day, not the healthiest thing for their bodies. And so there's so much healing potential in bringing your kids home, even if it was just for one year, like you don't have to make a forever decision. Taking them out for a year, they're not gonna fall behind. You know, we've we've had lots of different stories of families who they homeschool at the peaceful press for a little while and then their kids go to public high school, and there's no problem transitioning back. We found the same thing when our son went into the charter school. And so there's, you know, you have the world is your oyster, and it's not gonna hurt you to take a year to just really love learning with your children and really enjoy being together as a family. But what could really help is developing those bonds, developing some joy and and really connecting as a family.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

Yeah. And where can people find you if they want to check out your book or the peaceful press?

SPEAKER_00 49:31

Yeah, so you you can go to the peacefulpress.com or if you go to inspired homeschoolbook.com, that's where you can get more information about the book as well as access those free pre-order bonuses. But the peaceful press.com, everything is there.

SPEAKER_01 49:45

Awesome. I will link that in the show's description. Jen, thank you so much for being here today. This has been so interesting just to hear about your wealth of knowledge with you know 30 years of homeschooling and and even with um you know having a child with special needs that it can be done. There's nobody that loves your child more than you do. You can offer them anything and you don't have to do it all yourself. There are other resources out there that can help you. And I I really just you know want parents to take take that you know leap that they're the best ones to do this.

SPEAKER_00 50:17

Yeah, wonderful. Thanks for having me, Cheryl. What a delight to talk to you today, you as well.

SPEAKER_01 50:23

Thank you for listening to the Homeschool How To podcast. If today's episode helped you, please be sure to follow the show and leave a review. It's the best way to support the podcast. And if you're just getting started or need a reset, head to thehomeschoolhow2.com and grab my free 30-day homeschool quick start guide. Until next time, keep learning, keep questioning, and thank you for your love of the next generation.