Latest / Motherhood Alliance Podcast / How to Effectively Choose a Homeschool Curriculum w/ Tina Hollenbeck | The Homeschool Loft
Transcript
- speaker-0: Welcome to the Motherhood Alliance podcast, the podcast dedicated to empowering moms and families on their health and wellness journey. I'm Brittany Sutner. speaker-1: and I'm Andrea Rankes. Together, we're here to explore holistic approaches that go beyond conventional medicine. speaker-0: Each week, we dive into topics that matter most to you, everything from nutrition and mental health to alternative therapies and natural living. speaker-1: We'll bring you the expert interviews, insightful discussions, and practical tips to make motherhood a little easier and help your family thrive. speaker-0: Please keep in mind that this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, and is not intended to replace the advice, diagnosis, or treatment plans you have with your personal healthcare team. Please have a conversation with your trusted healthcare provider prior to making any changes or implementing any strategies or advice you learn from this podcast. speaker-1: Whether you're a new mom navigating the early stages of parenthood or a seasoned pro looking for new ways to support your family's wellbeing, you're in the right place. speaker-0: Here at the Motherhood Alliance podcast, we challenge the status quo, ask the tough questions, and offer a supportive community for moms who want to make an informed, holistic choice. speaker-1: Thank you for joining us on this journey. speaker-0: Let's get started. Hi, we are Britt Andrea from motherhoodalliance.com and we're excited to welcome you to a four episode series with Tina Hollenbeck, the founder of the Home School Loft. Through the Home School Loft, Tina provides support and encouragement for current and prospective home educating parents through free at one-on-one consultations, workshops, homeschooler gatherings, a bi-monthly podcast, and a very extensive community calendar, which lists a plethora of activities available to homeschool families. Tina is a former public school teacher and a veteran homeschooling mom. She's also the curator of the Homeschool Resource Roadmap, which is the most comprehensive curriculum database in existence. She's the author of Eight Great Smarts for Homeschoolers and an occasional speaker at major homeschool conferences. Her work is all about helping families feel confident, informed, and supported in their homeschooling journey. So whether you're considering homeschooling, are knee deep in it, or are simply curious, we're excited to share options and opportunities that exist for families all over Wisconsin. Let's jump into today's episode. speaker-1: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Motherhood Alliance podcast. We are back here with Tina Hollenbeck with the Home School Loft. Welcome back, Tina. Thank you. I'm so excited for these episodes because it's definitely different than what we're usually talking about with like health and wellness and things like that. But this is, you know, kind of goes along those lines of just that, you know, taking care of your family and giving your options. Right. So in episode one, we talked all about just. the different options for schooling, homeschooling, details, all the things. Like we answered some questions that people tend to ask. And if you haven't listened to that, definitely listen to that. But in this episode, we're going to kind of take it a step forward and kind of keep the conversation going from the first episode in talking about curriculum and the options. And it's just a massive amount of information to take in, especially when you're if you're considering homeschooling. Like you said, this is something you're paying for. So you want to make sure that you're doing the right thing. And it just can be a big analysis paralysis. with so many curriculum options, you actually have come up with a homeschool resource roadmap. You've made it. Tell us all about it. Tell us how parents can use this to help them with these decisions. speaker-2: Absolutely. Absolutely. I kind of fell into it totally by accident in 2013. So I don't know if you guys know what the Common Core Standards are. Some people have heard that term. It's a pretty old thing. In about 2009, 2010, it was a standards initiative that was promoted for public schools. And it went through and a lot of states, including Wisconsin, adopted those standards for public schools. And being a former public school educator, I kept my ear to the ground of all of that. So I was very aware of what they were. But most homeschoolers, especially if they knew from the beginning they were going to homeschool, they didn't know what it was. And that's OK. And then in 2013, there were a few big name homeschool curriculum providers that announced that they would be aligning their material with Common Core. And if anybody wants to go back and listen to podcasts from 2009, 2010, Common Core can be very controversial. There are people who thought that it was a really good set of standards. There are a lot of people who were very disturbed, even if they had their kids in public school. They're like, this math is weird, you know, that kind of thing. And when it came out into these homeschool providers, ooh, the parents were like, what is that? We don't want that. What if every curriculum is Common Core? And so I moderate a group on Facebook that we had massive discussions about this. And some of the parents were like, we need to find out which ones are Common Core and blacklist them. ⁓ boy. And I understood it. I'm not a fan of Common Core personally myself. But I'm also about parental choice, like we were talking about before. And if there's somebody that says, want to use Common Core with my kid, I'm not going to tell them they. I might say, well, can we talk about that? Because I don't think it might be the best choice. But it's not my choice. It's not my child. And so I wasn't all about that. And they were also making assumptions. This one's Common Core. This one's not. And said, okay, I'm a no drama mama. We cannot do assumptions. Somebody, famous last words, somebody has to contact the curriculum providers and ask. Of course, that somebody became me. And I don't mind it. I'm kind of a data wonk. I've discovered over the last, you know, 13 years how much of a data wonk I am. And I thought there'd be about 300 companies to contact. And I'm like, that's a lot. But my girls were middle school age at the time, pretty self-directed. And I'm like, I can do this. I can start this process. speaker-0: Are curriculums ⁓ specific to a state? speaker-2: No, that is a really good question. Not for homeschool curriculum. If you're using the virtual public school, those kinds of things, oftentimes, yes, it's like state by state by state. speaker-0: All these companies you're calling, these are like nationwide. speaker-1: And that's probably why they went to that Common Core standard because speaker-2: Some of them did for that reason. Actually, the reason that most of them went to Common Core because there is no state that mandates the use of Common Core for homeschoolers, even to this day, 13 years later. But some of the curriculum providers also market to the online charter schools or the brick and mortar specialty charter schools. And sometimes they can get their material into conventional public schools as well. So the companies that wanted those other market areas started to align with Common Core. And then some of them looked at the Common Core approaches and said, we really resonate with this approach and we want our curriculum to be that way, even if we're only a homeschool curriculum. And so it was really ran the gamut. But I started sending out emails. Again, I wasn't calling per se because I still had kids at home and I needed to have some time, but I'm like, I can do email, right? And so I got those responses and I said to the people in the group, I am not blacklisting. I'm going to share information and everybody who I know about and that you tell me about, no matter what they say, I'm going to make a general list and parents can decide if they want to use Common Core related curriculum or not. And eventually the list grew to be so long that we were just sharing it in the Facebook group and that became a little ridiculous. And so said, I'm going to make a little website about that. And that's kind of how it started. And again, because I'm a data wonk and I guess I'm obsessive about things, but my goal became if it's out there and homeschoolers can use it, I want it on the database, which is called the Homeschool Resource Roadmap. And so I keep my ear to, you know, homeschool groups, you know, this new curriculum, that new curriculum, and I go through my lists every year. If a company has closed up shop, I take them off. I kind of scrounge the curriculum or the homeschool convention websites. And if there's new providers that are exhibiting, I send them letters. speaker-0: said you originally thought there may be about 300 how many have you actually found? speaker-2: As of early 2026, we are at nearly 7,000 companies. Those are the active ones. There have been 1,500 that have come and gone over the last 13 years. speaker-0: you speaker-2: It is. It is a free resource. It is a free resource. Yeah. So it's a database that the URL is homeschoolroadmap.org and parents can browse around on it. The most useful section probably is the tab that says Deluxe Charts Project. And if you click on that, you'll open it up to PDF lists for if you're looking for math, there's a list for elementary math, there's lists for algebra, there's lists for whatever, there's lists for spelling, every subject under the sun. There's lists for a whole bunch of foreign languages because if I found a curriculum that offers something, I made a new subject category as well. speaker-0: Okay, so kind of to go 10,000th of you on curriculum. I know, cause I have some friends that went through the transition from public school to homeschooling recently. And I remember kind of discussing this a little bit with them and they're like, okay, I've heard of this. I don't want to say brand, kind of a brand company for homeschooling resources. I'm going to do math from this company and then English from this company and then social studies from this company. Now that in my head even complicates it more because it's like, if you could just find one company that would Now you're researching 7,000 companies with math and then 7,000 companies. So how do you break this down? speaker-2: That's an excellent question. ⁓ And on my lists, I've got two main sections when it's coming to subject areas. The first one is I call it multi-subject. So here are all the providers where you can get every single subject or most of them with one provider. And I actually recommend that most new homeschoolers start there. Yeah. They probably, and some people pick one and they're like, this works for my family and I'm just going to do it all the way through. speaker-1: start with. speaker-2: Some families, most families will be like, I'm starting with a package program. But after a couple of years, they learn the ins and outs of homeschooling more. They learn their kids as learners better. And they end up becoming eclectic and saying, I now I'm going to pick and choose from the different providers. But I do recommend go to the list of the multi-subject options. There's still a few hundred there broken down by different styles. And we can talk about that too. So we mentioned in the last episode, unschooling, right? there's actually resource providers that will give unschooling parents kind of a general framework within that realm of giving kids choice. So on the roadmap, there's a section for providers that will guide unschooling parents. So that's one option. Another style option would be what I call traditional, things that kind of mirror what we're used to in conventional school. So textbooks with quizzes and tests and things like that. There are an awful lot of providers that offer that. And you could get print-based options with traditional curriculum. You could get online options that are, you pay for it, so it is homeschooling because you're private paying, but your child would be online more or less of the time. You still get to customize that a little bit more as homeschoolers. Some of the other main styles that you could choose from are project-based learning. So there are kiddos that really just want to be hands-on with their learning. There are curricula designed around kids like that. There's curriculum for Montessori for homeschoolers, and that's a big one that a lot of parents with young kids especially like. There's curriculum that is classical style. So if you like the idea of a classical school, but you want to do homeschooling, there's a bunch of classical homeschool curricula. And then two other really big ones would be unit studies. I love unit studies. You pick a subject. One that we did with my girls was horses. Like every young girl, they had this obsession with horses at a certain time, and so I found a unit study. based on horses, and what happens with unit studies is all your subjects get addressed through your main topic. So when we did the horses unit study, we were learning the history of horses and how do horses contribute to history. So you're not getting like a whole chronological history, but you're getting chunks of it, right? Science, the science of horses, language arts, all the reading and writing was about horses. The only thing that isn't included in a lot of unit studies is math, because math is kind of its own little thing, right? But that was really fun. And then the other one that's really popular, the other style that homeschoolers will hear, parents will hear, is Charlotte Mason. Charlotte Mason was a 19th century British educator and she had some really cool ideas about using real books instead of textbooks to educate your child. So instead of getting a science textbook, Charlotte Mason homeschoolers will find a book written by an expert in horses or whatever it might be, trying to make it more like literature, even if it's nonfiction. Charlotte was also very big on nature study, so getting your kids out in the world and not just sitting in a classroom. And there are hundreds of curricula that are written in each of those main styles. And so that's one of the first things to think about is what style would resonate with my kid and going from there. speaker-0: than if you have more than one kid. speaker-2: Yes, yes. And you know, there's a balance point there, right? I am not a radical unschooler where I'm going to try to drive myself crazy, completely customizing for each child. I think that makes, that takes the joy out of homeschooling and it's supposed to be, not every day is heaven, but it's supposed to be an overall joyful process where you enjoy it and like being with your kids. So there's compromise, right? I'm going to try to address each of my kids' learning styles, but yeah, in life we have to do things we don't want to. So yes, if I have a child who really likes Charlotte Mason and another one who's really traditional learning, well guess what? You're going to have to do some of each. Because a lot of homeschool curricula is also family integrated, where you can do some of the subjects together as a family. And that's one of the beauties of it. So you don't want every child off doing their own thing. And it's good to learn compromise. That's just a character trait that we can, by making our kids compromise in a certain extent. speaker-1: them. speaker-0: Yeah, how do you recommend that families balance? Let's say that they have three kids that are in three different like age groups. How do you actually navigate this? Because, you know, while a kid can be like listening to their older siblings lesson and maybe getting some head start on learning, you don't you can't spend 30 minutes on math with all three kids independently and then 30 minutes on. mean, maybe you can. Like, how do you navigate multiple children? speaker-2: So with a lot of those multi-subject packages, they are written with family integrated learning in mind. And so for subjects that are not skill subjects, so history, science, if you have Bible component, art, anything that is not a skill-based thing, so reading would be separate, math, probably spelling, but everything else is done as a family unit. And what the curriculum writers have done is say, OK, so here's our base lesson, let's say history lesson, right? they've probably written it to the middle of an age range. But then they say, if you have a high schooler, so your high school might even listen on your own. When my girls were in high school, they were kind of doing their own thing, but some families just include all their kiddos together, knowing it's not super challenging on its face for the high schooler, but it's a foundation. And then the curriculum writer will say, now, if you have a high schooler, here's some extra research that the high schooler will do on their own after getting the foundation of the lesson. And then maybe the lesson is written toward upper elementary and middle school. So that would be like, here's some extension activities, but that was the perfect age range for them, right? And then for the younger kids, you still have them listen. knowing that they're not going to get everything, but they have another chance to go around it because a lot of these curriculum are cyclical so that you might do it again in four years. And so that youngest kid will come around and be that like perfect age range kid in the middle, but they're still learning. They're still participating with their family. And then there's follow up activities that will say, okay, so your child listen to your five year old listen to this and you had them tell you back one thing that they learned. Now draw right that sentence out that the child told you have them use penmanship practice and then draw a picture. So there are ways that these curriculum writers, you don't have to come with it on your own. That's the thing. I'm not creative like that. I so appreciate the curriculum writers who have done that hard work so that we can all glean from it. But they really do customize. And that leaves you time to do the reading, the math, the spelling on an individual basis. My girls are Irish twins, 11 and 1 months They use the same curriculum for those skill subjects, but never combine them. because one might pick up this faster, another one might need more time. And it was just so much more efficient to say, I'm gonna spend 15 minutes with you on your math, and then you're go off and do the worksheet or whatever, while I then customize for your sister. And I know people who have four or five kids who can still do that, if you can organize your time, which is a whole other question. speaker-0: Well, yeah, that's something to expand on too is, you know, if you're going to a regular school and this wouldn't include like bus time or anything like that, but the actual school day is probably like six to six and a half to seven hours. Right. Yeah. Maybe this is experience from you with your girls, but also just experience and how homeschooling is going now today for other families. But what would like a common day look like for homeschooling family? speaker-2: This is kind of a funny question because if you ask 10 homeschoolers what their day would be like, you'll get 15 answers. Because we're so unique. But a lot of homeschoolers will plan to do what we call the book work in the mornings. And it doesn't have to be that way. If there's somebody who works second shift or something like that, or dad works second shift or whatever, you can arrange your school day any day of the week, any time of the day. But maybe it's a general rule. A lot of us will try to do the book work in the morning. you know, eight to noon, nine to one, because a lot of the extra activities are scheduled for the afternoon and the evening. Or jobs for teenagers, right? So you kind of open that up for the rest of the day, or maybe for self-directed studies. So when my girls were younger and they were still very dependent on me, our book work time was nine to noon. And we tried to organize things so that all of the main subjects that I wanted to address could hopefully get done in that timeframe. They didn't always, but try to get done. And then what I would say for after lunch would be science experiments or like art projects, because those could be open-ended. And if they really wanted to go to town on it, I didn't have to be like, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up so we can get to the math. I did the more structured things. And I think a lot of us do that kind of thing too, where, and I was doing some in-home childcare. So I had little ones in the house. I'm like, when those little girls are napping, then you can do your art project or whatever it might be. so families with multiple kiddos, that tends to be how they arrange things as well. speaker-0: Now I know that we, in our last episode, we talked a lot about resources in the area and like co-ops and things like that. If a parent is looking at curriculum and they're like, okay, I kind of like the book work type stuff. I can see handling that, but I am not an artsy person and I really want my kiddo to learn from like, like go to an art class or go to a, a whatever these different types of skills, I guess that they can develop like tech ed, things like that. there opportunities in the area and then how would they utilize your website to find them? speaker-2: Yeah, really good question. The answer is yes. ⁓ So my other website, the Homeschool Loft, which is the Northeast Wisconsin Parent Resource Center, and I would say the roadmap, my database is kind of a subsidiary of that if you want to think of it. One of the things I have on there is a connections tab, and that will lead you to a calendar of activities for homeschoolers for every county in Northeast Wisconsin, because I'm based in De Pere. So I try to serve everybody from Pembine down to Fond du Lac and from the Lakeshore over to Wapak. and everybody kind of in between. So I've developed a calendar for each county. And if you click on Brown County, for example, you'll see all kinds of things. The libraries, a lot of the libraries have homeschool specific group meetups that, hey, we're gonna do a STEM focus this month, and we're gonna do an art focus the next month. So you have to look at your libraries, but I've got those on my website. And then... I mentioned in our prior episode, there is a homeschool music program in Appleton that their people drive all from all over Northeast Wisconsin for this program is called Valley Troubadours. It's truly an amazing, amazing program. As I mentioned, 600 children from ages five to 18. They have everything from a children's choir for five year olds and tin whistle all the way up to show choir, concert band, marching band, full length musicals. And there's also different homeschool groups will offer their own. homeschool choir or musical or things like that. One thing in Green Bay is Einstein Project. That is a full-scale STEM program that offers daytime homeschool classes. Let's see, there's something called Made on Main in Oconto that is just homeschool art classes. And so they're all over the place and most every county will have something for some of those areas or... close enough driving distance that you can get. If you live in Shawano County, you could drive over to Oconto and you could do something that they have. So one of my goals with the Home School Left website is to be that resource center so that parents who are busy homeschooling their kids don't have to find all that. There was nothing like that when I was homeschooling my kids. I really, there's so many cool things that they could have done that I didn't know about. And so I really want parents to know that. ⁓ speaker-1: We feel that. speaker-0: I'm even thinking right now, anybody who's listening to this that does not live in Northeast Wisconsin is like, is there a Tina in my area? speaker-2: Sometimes there are, I've connected with some. There's a really awesome one in the Twin Cities area. There's an amazing parent resource center in Washington State, Lake Seattle area. And I'm sure there's others, but yeah. speaker-1: So if you have questions, reach out to Tina anyway. speaker-2: See if I can help you. speaker-0: Well, let's take a minute to talk a little bit about you and the homeschool loft. First off, if somebody is listening to this and they're like, I have thinking about homeschooling. I have questions. I want to connect with Tina. Everything you do through your website is free. Right? So do free consults with families. Tell us about how they would book that. speaker-2: Yeah, so the website is homeschoolloft.com and there is a tab there that says one-on-one. You click on that and I've got a scheduling app where I typically, so I could have used this as my fun fact. I'm actually a grandma as well. My younger daughter is married and I have a three-year-old grandson and I babysit him. So my appointments are typically Monday nights and Saturday mornings. They can be in person, they can be via Zoom or phone depending on where the person lives and people can just book that. And if they cannot make any of those dates, They can just communicate with me and we can see about getting a different day or a time within my time constraints. But it usually works out pretty well and they are free. One of the things my husband and I really felt strongly about because when my girls graduated, I said, should I go get a job, you know, whatever. And he said, no, I want you to continue to help homeschoolers. And we had been able to do that. and then my grandson came along. So I'm really glad that that worked out. speaker-0: Okay, but then how are you funded? How are you able to... speaker-2: Yeah, overhead is not a whole lot, but it's self-funded. So basically my husband and I are paying for our web hosts, our site and everything like that. It doesn't amount to a whole lot, but we do take donations as well. And those are always much appreciated. know, my husband is the reason I'm doing this is because he has been so committed to homeschooling and wants to help me to be a resource. But, you know, I feel kind of bad. like, I would love to help, you know, cut that off. So you're not pouring out that to financially. speaker-0: Okay, you guys, are you hearing this? Every, all of this knowledge that Tina is sharing, all of these resources, she has connected with 7,000 different curriculums and put together a national roadmap for curriculum. She's doing this all for free. So if you utilize homeschool loft, if you've asked questions to her, if you just haven't your heart to donate, I would, mean, she has a gem, you guys, this is amazing. Thank you so much for what you're doing. speaker-2: Yeah, no, it really is a joy. mean, it's, know, when when you get something that God's given to you on your heart, it's a joy when you do it, you know, and so that's what I feel. But yeah, no, I would appreciate the donation to speaker-0: Yeah, for sure. And then one other thing I do want to mention is that you've written a book. Is that right? Tell us about your book. speaker-2: So it's called Eight Great Smarts for Homeschoolers, and it is on Amazon, published by Moody Press. And it takes another piece of that trying to find curriculum for your kids and addresses that. I don't know if listeners are familiar with the concept of eight great smarts, also called the Three of Multiple Intelligences. It's been around since the 70s. The idea is that each of our brains is wired in eight distinct ways. Word smart, logic smart, music smart, people smart, self-smart, picture smart. body smart, I'm going to forget the last one, nature smart. So every human being on the planet, we can learn it eight different ways. By the time that we're early teenagers, we've kind of settled into the top two or three that our brains are hardwired to learn at, but we still can access all eight. So the idea behind the theory and then behind my book specifically for homeschoolers is if you have a body smart kid, they maybe don't have ADHD, maybe they're just body smart and they literally learn by moving. So how do you accomplish that and accommodate that within your homeschool? Within reason. It's not okay to bounce around and distract your siblings just because you need to move to learn. But the book addresses how do you address homeschooling within those eight ways to be smart. speaker-0: At what age would you say you're able to start identifying these? speaker-2: Probably around eight. Like you can see the propensities in younger kids. I knew my older daughter was body smart from maybe almost birth. But you don't want to categorize a kid and put a kid in a box probably until age eight. And then you can start to see. And the idea is don't ever limit them just the two or three that you see are their strengths because there are going to be times in life that we kind of like we said before, you have to do something you don't want to. You have to be able to do a task in a strength that is not your own. So you have to be able to function in that area. But one of the really cool things about homeschooling is if we want to maximize our kids' learning, we literally can adapt and customize any curriculum to get those top two or three strengths as the main way that our child learns. And again, within reason, because sometimes your body smart kid has to tone it down, and sometimes your very quiet, picture smart kid who would just sit there. has to go out and move, you know? And so it's always a partnership within a family. But the idea behind the book was to give parents another way to kind of see who their kids are as learners beyond those homeschool styles that we talked about. speaker-0: This is great for any family, whether they homeschool or not. speaker-2: Yes, yeah, yeah, and you could find so my book is based on a book by Cathy Cook called eight great smarts and that's like the general parenting book and it will kind of give you a really deep overview of those styles based on the research of the gentleman who came up with it by studying brains in the 1970s and then mine is a specific application to homeschoolers but if you do any kind of after schooling summer schooling with your kids just you know you want to help them even address their homework from school in a way that more matches their style, my book should help with that too. speaker-0: Well, we're going to link to that in the show notes. Yeah, great. Yeah. I'm excited to check that out. Whew. All right. We got two more episodes coming up. These are just jam packed. This is such a great conversation with you, Tina. I am excited for our next one because we're going to be talking about balancing homeschool along with everything else. And then like, can you be a working parent and do this too? And how do you balance all of these tasks in life as a parent? Right. And then in our fourth episode, we're going to be talking about homeschooling high schoolers. I can't wait for these next two episodes. Stay tuned, you guys stay on the edge of your seats. They're going be coming up next. If you enjoyed this episode, would you consider leaving a rating or review or sharing it directly with a friend who could benefit from the information? We know that you're a busy mom or caregiver, and our goal is to make your life easier by bringing tips and tricks directly from experts into your earbuds. 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