Latest / The Christy-Faith Show / Ep. 5 - The Surprising Benefits of a Charlotte Mason Homeschool // Julie Ross

Transcript

Ep. 5 - The Surprising Benefits of a Charlotte Mason Homeschool // Julie Ross · The Christy-Faith Show

• The words that we speak to our children affect the atmosphere of either encouraging them or discouraging them in learning often times it's kind of really subtle till I read her teaching on atmosphere I never even thought about it I was like right wait that's a tool I actually have for Learning and that totally changed my thinking cuz it was like how I'm showing up every day is affecting my children way more than what math book I use welcome to the Christy Faith show where we share gamechanging ideas with intentional parents like you I'm your host Christy Faith experienced educational adviser and homeschool Enthusiast together we'll explore ways to enrich and transform both your life and the lives of your children I am thrilled to have Julie Ross on as our guest today if you don't know her you should she believes that every child needs a feast of living ideas to grow intellectually emotionally and spiritually Julie was a former public school teacher curriculum cour coordinator assistant director of a Homeschool Academy and has homeschooled her own five kids for over 20 years she also developed the amazing curriculum a gentle Feast that provides parents with tools and resources needed to provide a rich and abundant Charlotte Mason education to their families at home thank you so much for being here today Julie I'm going to start with a really the question I really want to ask you today I want to hear cuz you've been homeschooling over and I did not send this to you early because I have some surprise questions okay the first question I want to ask you cuz we're going to go there is I want to hear your number one biggest homeschooling regret that's really good that I didn't trust myself early on I even though I had been a school teacher even though I had all this experience even though I've helped other parents I was always second guessing myself and fearing that I was going to mess up my kids and I was going to ruin this whole thing and as I've grown older and I think that's part of it you have to learn some of this through experience to have the confidence to believe in myself and trust that I'm getting the answers trust my own judgment intuition whatever you want to call it Divine leading to go I know what's best for my kids I know what I'm doing and to make decisions from a place of confidence rather than always trying to find some other expert to tell me what to do I think that's powerful I think every mom struggles with that why do you think in our society homeschooling is that one piece where all of a sudden when our kids turn five we're not qualified anymore why do you think that is um I don't know if this is you know I have no data to back this up this is just Julie's personal opinion here but honestly I think it's a lot of companies trying to sell Us St so and I it's funny that I'm saying this because I run a homeschool company where I provide resources and tools for parents but my goal in creating my curriculum was to be where it was a tool and a resource to empower parents to use it as they see fit as a tool and not a box to put them in and so but I think because it has become like when I first started girl there was like there was like some Yahoo group that I was a part of where I could get like homeschool ideas right and I've watched it just kind of expand and grow and so a lot of these companies a lot of their marketing is like fear-based of you don't know what you're doing you can't do this but we have the solution for a hundred bucks BL blah blah blah blah that you can buy and it's like oh you're right I don't know what I'm doing and so it's it I've seen that change because when I first started it was like your homeschooling like is that legal that's weird what is that to now we all know what it is but it's still so foreign it's like well you couldn't possibly know what you're doing so here let me help you I have this product for you so I could be wrong but that's just been my observation well and I think that's fabulous and you know what don't be ashamed of that because that's why I love you and I've enjoyed getting to know you is you are offering something amazing I use it myself in my home school I absolutely love your morning time but one thing I love about it is exactly what you said I don't do every single piece every single day but it's there for me and you've done it for me which I appreciate I don't have to spend 10 hours Googling to try to find the next composer to study you've already done that work for me but I can pick and choose I definitely think you are helping mothers be the heroes in their hom school really and you're not telling us what to do and I want to talk a little bit about because there are listeners here even though Charlotte Mason homeschooling has been around a long time and Charlotte Mason was in the 1800s so she wrote her volumes they are long I must admit I know a lot about Charlotte Mason but I have not personally read every single word of her volumes I bet you have I have yeah of course you have but I want to hear from from you just in your own words what is a Charlotte Mason education and why do you think it is so appealing to homeschoolers today home provides such a special environment for children to learn about all of life and so she was training govern to go into people's homes and then it started spreading throughout the British Empire and a lot of moms who were overseas didn't have governesses so they're writing to her can we get your book lists can you help us and so she started teaching moms to teach their own children now as schools saw the success of these students who were being trained by governesses and then eventually going to higher level schools especially the boys they started seeing like these amazing results and so schools started growing up in England based on her philosophy so that's why she's popular with homeschoolers I feel like because it really is valuing her first volume is called home education for a reason the way I explain it in kind of simple terms is that Charlotte Mason had such a high view of children and she said that children need to be fed on a steady diet of ideas those ideas can come from books music art being out in nature and that that is the only thing they can actually process and their minds need those to grow and expand we try to stuff them with information instead and she says that's what actually like kills the Curiosity and love for learning out of a child she also said that the only education is self-education and that we as teachers our role is to provide all these living ideas and all these resources but only a student can come to these and claim them for themselves and so they do that through a process of what she call narration which is really easy it's just telling back what you've learned yes but it allows the student to synthesize it and make it their own so from a very young age they are self-starters they're lifelong Learners they're learning that I know how to learn and take an information which makes it so to me revolutionary from a lot of the educational models that are out there fantastic and she talks a lot about in her volumes education being an atmosphere and I find this idea so abstract and hard to explain have do you have the secret sauce of saying how is this practical what do you mean educate yeah an atmosphere what does that mean exactly and I I love how you distill the Charlotte Mason abstract ideas into a practical way so what does that mean well I kind of you know atmosphere air right so think about like your thermostat on your house right and how that you know can make it really hot and uncomfortable or like okay this is we're setting the thermostat correctly I believe us as moms we're setting that thermostat the atmosphere is what we're creating sometimes it's based on our emotions unfortunately our moods can really affect the atmosphere the words that we speak to our children affect the atmosphere of either encouraging them or discouraging them in learning often times it's kind of of really subtle like you don't even until I read her teaching on atmosphere I never even thought about it I was like right wait that's a tool I actually have for Learning and that totally changed my thinking because it was like how I'm showing up every day is affecting my children way more than what math book I use or if I'm using combining my two kids for geography like people ask me these kind of questions all the time and those are so important but it's what I'm creating through the words I'm saying through the things that we're doing in our home that is going to have a lasting effect she says there's nothing as important that's going to have a lasting effect on your children as the atmosphere of home and so and we all know that and maybe that's like some of your experiences growing up right you go into like someone's house I had a friend down the street and her parents and her dad yelled so much all the time and I was like scared to go in there because as soon as you walk in the door you could feel like that tension and then you go to other people's houses and it looks like a museum and it's like don't touch this don't do that you know children are better seen and not heard you know and then you know you go to other people's houses and they're really fun and vibrant and they're loud because everybody's talking and sharing ideas and like you know other people are really studious and their houses are like have classical music and everyone's reading like your home environment your atmosphere is going to be different than someone else's so don't try to make it based on what you see on Instagram or someone else's home environment really think about who you are as a person and how you want that to show up in the atmosphere of your home because your children are going to live in it they're going to breathe it in so you might as well be intentional about creating what you want instead of unintentional you're going to create an atmosphere no matter what so it might as well be a positive one yes and I tell parents all the time your kids are being raised whether you're doing it or not whether you're letting a TV Do It video games do it a grandparent a nanny your kids are being raised and I think that's such a powerful message about atmosphere and that we need to be intentional about the environment that we have for our families but don't you think that this is per mission to dream like to dream up we want yeah it's so exciting and it can be little tiny things like starting your morning time with classical music even if you don't know anything about classical music I had a time where I was doing that and right we light a candle and yeah my kids fight over who's gonna light the candle which drives me crazy let's not just at my house okay that's good to blow out the candle that's even more of a fight yep yeah yeah who's gonna blow out the candle exactly and then the little fingers can't click it so then there's tears because you can't click the lighter yeah but no I think that's so great and I I truly believe that there is a an epidemic in our country of parents thinking that life happens to them rather than deciding and designing the life that you want but I'd like to transfer that to childhoods we can design our kids childhoods and yeah it's not going to be easy and it requires working on ourselves and being the best teachers and mamas that we can be but that is such a powerful message and Charlotte Mason said it first and she used the word atmosphere to describe it I want to ask you because I think this is something that you've really nailed with your curriculum is teaching multiple ages it's one of the primary questions I get on my lives in social media because we have this mindset in society that there are different grade levels and you teach different things for different grade levels and how do I even manage that all day when moms aren't homeschooling that's what they're envisioning themselves doing is juggling in front of a a whiteboard what is the key that you have five kids what is the key to managing the multiple ages to making sure and making sure that your older ones who maybe are closer to leaving the nest and maybe are College Bound them still getting what they need and why you might even have a a young one if you have a lot of kids who's still learning to read how do you manage all of that well several things Char so Charlotte Mason used forms instead of grades so there's not 12 grades so that makes it a that makes it really easy to begin with because you're going to combine some kids no matter what so she had a little bit more forms than I do it but I do it in three grade chunks so grades one through three are together four through six are together seventh through nth are together 10th through 12th so that already makes you're gonna be able to combine some kids right there yeah uh but even then there was a time where I had three different forms I was doing I had kidss in form one I had kids at form two and I had kids in high school form four you know all five of them at one time and doing all that so it makes it easier but you still are having you know several different books and those kind of things so morning time really helps with that because it's something that you can do all together with all the kids in different ages like charlott Mason said we're providing the feast and each small guest is going to assimilate what they need and so obviously a high schooler is going to get a lot more out of a composition lesson especially since if they've been doing it for a long time oh that that piece reminds me of composer so and so that we learned two years ago or something whereas like a little little kid is like I liked when the drums come in at the end and you know I mean they're getting something totally different but you're still providing the same piece so morning time really helps with that so I kind of saw our days as like bookends where we have our morning time that we're doing together and again you have to be flexible so as you know I have high schoolers and they're working at Chick-fil-A till midnight you know I don't make them get up at 8 o'clock in the morning to come join us for morning time like they can come hear some of these things as they wish as you know I let the kind of rains go a little bit as they got older but then we ended our day together too so we would have like some kind of read aloud at lunch or some tea time or something like that where we could just so I kind of saw like a book end as long as I'm we're all touching base together the beginning and the end that works really well um but then fostering this kind of Independence where they don't need to be sitting there with me to do everything now I had some kids who were independent at second grade and I have another child who now at seventh grade is working independently so it really just depends on the kid and I think it's so important to realize that and not go oh well now that they're reading they should be doing all the work by themselves and here's your list for the day and go off and come back to me and then in four hours they did absolutely nothing because they weren't ready so it's a gradual releasing of that Independence but that really helps because then you know your older kids can be reading something on their own and you can be working with the kid that you might have that's still learning how to read and they need your undivided attention the other key that I think Charlotte Mason really helps with multiple ages is the concept of short lessons so they're not doing a 45 minute grammar lesson or a 50 minute history lesson so they might be reading by themselves for a shorter period of time our reading lesson's only going to take 10 to 15 minutes so I'm not spending hours working with this one child where everybody else is off doing who knows what right so in 15 minutes I'm doing a reading lesson I need this child's undivided attention people have enough to do for 15 minutes on their own and then I can check back in with everybody I'm not kind of leaving them for long periods of time if that makes sense right yeah and I think that is the key and that is hard for people to Envision how do you manage when your kids get older and maybe they're not as interested in morning time anymore yeah we have a Learner in our house where it's it's kind of optional right now but I still have special time with him and quite frankly there's such an age Gap that even his mind reading is a little is a little bit different if you're enjoying the show and don't want to miss out on future episodes hit that like And subscribe button and show us some love with your reviews those five star reviews really do help us reach more people but I want to talk about Charlotte Mason homeschooling in the high school years a little bit because I don't know why it's one of the criticisms for Charlotte Mason homeschooling and I'm thinking these are the optimal years to be discussing Big Ideas so let me what will you share with our audience what it looks like to homeschool High School in the Charlotte Mason style and why I'm sure you believe that actually adequately prepares kids better and I would love to hear you speak on that yeah I so I think that kind of misconception comes from a couple places so during her time boys would have gone to University pretty early on like 12 to 14 so her programs that were written up through age 18 would just been for girls in the early 1900s so we can kind of get the mess conception from that but if you look at what she had for the upper forms for high school it's harder than my highest level of college classes like it's mind-blowing the amount of work and the things that they were reading I'm like what is this you know and then you can read samples in her volumes of students work she had for forms five and six being like our equivalent like 10th through 12th grade and you know you read samples of these girls essays and you're just blown away away and so it it's very very thorough so I think it comes from that misconception I think the reason a lot of people abandon this approach as they get towards High School is fear so it's what can I use to check off all the boxes and here's your textbook and here's your workbook and I can check it and I see that you've got nine out of 10 right so I know that you're really learning this and so I feel better and I know we can put this on a transcript and so it's all this fear too that drives it a lot and really it's so easy to do it in high school I mean obviously it depends on where you live and all this stuff but like I just looked at the colleges that they wanted to go to and I made our transcript the things that we were doing fit into those categories and gave them a credit for whatever so it was very easy to do I think it's so powerful like you were saying to have this approach in high school and I'll send you links because I have two one-hour classes I did all about using the Charlotte Mason method in high school because it's so wonderful but yes just to touch on it here because like you said they're reading very complex books and they are putting them into their own words through narration at this age they're doing a lot of it written or you know in high school I let my kids use their devices and they would record a video of themselves giving me an oral narration and text it to me I mean this the world we live in people learning to communicate complex ideas and so my girls when they were in college well first of all they like Mom can't believe you made us read all that hard stuff because the stuff we have to read in college is so much easier than you know lay Miz or the Winston Church Hills history volumes or whatever it was they're like this is so much our English 101 textbook has Google articles I'm not even joking and so I was like we see why you're so prepared aren't you so grateful and then my one daughter was like I was like asking her about one class and she's like oh Mom it's so easy I was like really she yeah every week all we have to do is read and write a summary about it and I was like that's easy she's like yeah this is what I've done my whole life I was like oh okay perfect so um It prepares them because they're able to Think Through really complex ideas and be able to communicate with that with other people and I get this question all the time in my talks so now I include it because when I first started giving talks on Charlotte Mason people come up to me afterwards and like this sounds really nice and everything but you know is this actually really going to work like is my child actually going to be able to get into college and get a real job and all that and I L I would always ask like oh how old is your child and they're like four let's back up a little bit here like this has been around for hundreds of years not hundreds of years but over a hundred years it's been used in hundreds of schools families Etc and so yes if this was something that was not working it was not still be around but then I started digging a little deeper because I was like you know how do I answer this question and so Google came out with a study of their top employees you can Google it it's called Project Oxygen and what they did was they were looking for what skills their top employees had and they went into the study expecting that their top employees would have stem skills as their highest skills you know science technology engineering mathematics what they found was their top employees scored the highest on what we consider soft skills and the skills the top eight skills were some like empathy being able to Think Through complex ideas being able to communicate well with others and all the things they were talking about my mind was blown because I was like this is what a Charlotte Mason education does because it's not telling you what to think it's teaching children how to think and so they're able to Think Through complex ideas they're able to communicate well with other people because that's what they've been doing their whole life by narrating and telling you back what something's about rather than checking off a bunch of worksheet Pages they're able to have empathy because they're reading living books and they're putting them M El in the shoes of all these different historical characters and all these different scientists and things so they can think what it's like to look at the world through a different lens and it was like this is what a Charlotte Mason education does so you know will this prepare them for the real world I think even more so than a traditional education because they're learning how to think for themselves again that work of self-education it's building that mental muscle to develop those skills of being able to learn and and think through complex ideas on your own that's fantastic and I think a lot of it is fear-based and I think you actually in that answered my next question which is what would you say to people who feel that Charlotte Mason is out of touch drove the point home that she's not out of touch you know it's interesting that you said that because one of my son's Latin teachers was homeschooled herself and she went to Stanford and I remember talking to her last year and she was telling me how easy Stanford was she got there everyone was struggling they couldn't figure out how to plan out their day plan out their semester they were thrown by the idea of a professor assigning reading and then them having any type of responsibility for it after I mean this sounds crazy that you're ster but no she said that they were thrown by simply having to teach themselves through Reading they were thrown by that yeah they want someone to tell them what to think exactly and tell them what to do so that they can get the grade that they need so they can get the job that they want later but actually what do we really want for our kids right is is education utilitarian what is it I mean that's the big question I ask in my book homeschool rising in the very first chapter I asked myself that question over a decade ago and it led us to sell our business move States homeschool our kids me get on social media I mean it led it completely changed our lives when I asked myself that one simple question what is an education because if a parent really asks themselves that the answer is frightening because they will if they are thoughtful people they will realize that it's more about cultivating a human being that is thriving and resilient and yes has hard skills but the soft skills are probably more important than the hard because and I think what Charlotte Mason does do so well is the skills you learn in a Charlotte Mason education are the ones that are transferable yes right it doesn't matter what you do being able to do those things is so important I'm going to read to you one of my all-time favorite Charlotte Mason quote because I think it relates to what you're saying so much she wrote the question is not how much does the youth know when he has finished his education but how much does he care and about how many orders of things does he care in fact how large is the room in which which he finds his feet set and therefore how full is the life he has before him and charotte Mason asked that question what is knowledge and she all those volumes that's the big question right and her conclusion is exactly what you're saying she actually used that word it's not utilitarian it's not a factory system we put in a we get out X and you know at the time she was writing I mean the Industrial Revolution was very much in full force right and it's okay we're just training employees and she's like no no no no we are raising people who are going to have a full life I love the word she used she says magnanimous we are raising man magnanimous citizens and that's someone who has a large scope of Life they're people who are generous who care about lots of different things who care deeply about other people because like I said they were able to have all these living ideas their whole lives in empathy because they're reading about all these different people and not just being told what to do what to think here's the correct answer they don't ever get to think about oh I wonder what it's like to be this person and so they care about people and they care about knowledge and exactly what you were saying before we continue I want to share with you a program that has been a game Cher for our home school at our Learning Center we instructed and taught pretty much every math program out there on the market so we know firsthand how important a solid math Foundation is for our kids Futures finding the right homeschool math program that didn't compromise academic Excellence but also one that didn't put me and my kids through the ringer was a challenge till one day I tried CTC math you guys the rest was history first off it's a Mastery based program which means your kid gets a solid grasp of the material it's also loaded with mixed reviews ensuring kids never forget what they've learned and the questions are adaptive which keep students confident and progressing at their own Pace but the best part all the teaching and Grading done for you with CTC math there is no compromise on Excellence your child gets a top-notch education and you just made your homeschool life easier visit CTC math for your free trial today I want you to speak a little bit on how she honors children I think that we are it's a good thing about some of the movements in parenting today I think it's one of the assets of the gentle parenting movement whether you consider yourself in that Arena or not one thing I love about that particular movement is that children are listened to they are honored parents are trained to look for okay what does my child need right now and that is rather new uh our parents did not raise us that way and our parents were certainly not raised that way themselves and I feel like this is a such an important idea particularly if you want adult kids that still call you and text you and want to hang out with you and you have adult children and I would love to just hit play on you right now to express what she said about honoring children and then how you've seen the fruit of that in your own life with homeschooling your own kids yeah so her first principle she has 20 principles of education and the first principle is children are born persons and that sounds very simplistic right because obviously they're not born like dogs or something but what she means by that is they are born with fully equipped brains Souls bodies that we are helping to guide and direct and encourage as they grow but they are born full people and the time she was writing that was so revolutionary to start off with that principle because in the Victorian time period you know children are better seen and not heard that you know someday when they grow right and they're capable of having adult conversations will bring them to at the dinner table I mean it so revolutionary to say that children are born persons and so she believed that children were able to understand and comprehend way more than we give them credit for so for example she had them listening to not reading because they wouldn't have been able to read this but listening to Pilgrim's Progress at the age of eight and I barely made it through Pilgrim's Progress in college and so but she believed because and it's true because I've done this with my own kids we started reading progress when my kids were eight and we read like one page and i' be like did anybody understand what happened I mean the unbrided version like did anyone understand what happened and we're like not really and we would keep going and then my kids started being able to like pick up all these things I think it's about this and I was like oh I think you're actually right like it was huge for me what they were able to actually stand that we don't give them credit for another way that she respects children as a person is through narration because what happens is again it's not I am the Fountain Head of all knowledge I am the grown-up and I know everything about XYZ so now I'm going to impart all my wisdom to you instead let me bring you to this Feast can listen to this story for example and then you tell me what you thought was important and we sit and we listen to our kids and we respect their opinions and that is huge because you know what that does that builds their confidence that I can learn for myself what I have to say is important I can articulate my ideas and we are giving them that gift multiple times a day and I don't think parents even those in the Shon World realize what a gift this is like that your children feel seen and heard on a regular basis and like Charon said we're not going to jump in and correct their narration and be like oh no no no no no that's not right you're going to listen and then afterwards if you want to guide them to something you know you can or add some more things or whatever but just listening to them Express themselves all day long builds their confidence so much and I've seen that with my own kids and so yeah I mean that was always my goal through home swiming it was like I want this connection I want this relationship and I think it's important for parents to Think Through like what do I want my adult kids to be like what do I want our relationship to be like and it's not just that they like got this degree and got this job and they move out of my house because you know what my oldest daughter did graduated from college and she's back in my house and she works for my company and it's awesome I love it I love waking up in the morning and getting coffee with her and like this morning the Spotify wrapped playlist came out of like your top artist of the year and we just sat and ched coffee for like an hour and we're laughing about different musicians and stuff that's what I want so it's not the goal to get them out like actually this is really great and so but it's that connection piece and that confidence piece that I think is so key and I think the other part of this that it always annoyed me in education and I bet you this annoyed you as well when you were a teacher and it's that we're always asking kids their opinions but the opinions are based on zero knowledge at all like like really you're seven and you know nothing about world events I don't really what do you actually no I mean this is edgy but what do you actually have to offer if I haven't given you anything to base your opinion on and so I also think there's a humility to that because when you're exposing your kids to these abstract Big Ideas they realize there are maybe people out there that have thought about this longer than them more than the two seconds but but no and yeah we value their opinion but also learning that we can form our opinions and our beliefs based on knowledge that we gather and that there's a purpose for gathering this knowledge and then we can form our opinions but often in the education space you just anyway there's this trend of asking kids just you know writing an essay on your thoughts on this it's like I don't have any thoughts on this and and I think that's the key I'm glad you brought that up because I'm not saying you know they're necessarily telling especially when they're little and they're narrating it's not opinion based it's exact what happen in the story so if my kid you know adds in whatever it's like well did that actually happen in the thing you know so they're narrating based on something that they're describing that actually happened in the story yes yes as they get older then they start as they start narrating they'll naturally start adding in some opinions or oh that reminds me of this other book or that reminds me of the character and such and such they start making those connections all on their own it's not a force thing and I know when you taught school we probably you probably did the same thing as me where we had to like make them make connections and they couldn't make the connections because they didn't actually have any ideas to connect it to yes yeah there you said it better than I did yeah you need to have ideas to connect to even have something worth someone else listening to right and if all I read is a textbook with some bare facts in it I don't have anything to connect that to that that person that wasn't even a person I just like I read some fact about you know William the conquerer did blah blah blah and I don't know who William the Conqueror is or what you know but if I read a story and I learned about how they like buried him put him in a coffin but he was so fat and all this like gases in his stomach made the coffin explode and that's like the coolest story ever and I remember that now like now I have something to connect it to about William the Conqueror right it's a real person a real event right s randomly popped in my head I know that's the most random history fact ever but but I think what's so important is listeners right now think back to what you remember in your education when you were little and growing up I can guarantee that your what you remember about your education is connected to an emotion either sadness surprise or something else that is why humans remember things it's when we have that's why story is so powerful that's why living books are in my opinion the best way to teach history because why teach history if it's just facts I'm gonna teach history because I want to be changed and I want my kids to be changed otherwise why study it it's not worth it no and I think that's so key for and I love that she does that for every subject like um that's about about high school too so one of the books I use in high school chemistry is a book called Napoleon's buttons and it goes through the chemical compounds and um chemical reactions found in all the parts of his uniform right like the rubber that was just com being invented and how that was using the buttons and the silver all stff wow and so I just want went and saw the Napoleon Movie it's not for children it's for adults but I just went and saw that over Thanksgiving and the whole time my brain is running through oh he's wearing this and I that reminds me of this and like I actually understood chemistry for the first time other than just a bunch of random formulas that I had to memorize that didn't mean anything at all like I was like oh that's what causes that to happen oh that makes sense like I actually understood it because it was taught in a living way absolutely I I've been wanting to see that movie I'm yeah but I saw the director I forget is it scors ory Scott yeah Ridley Scott and it's like okay it's GNA be violent but I that's fine hisory there were lots of scenes where I went like this yeah yeah so I want to ask you you know we all in The Homeschool space we all are passionate about what we're doing I'm passionate about Thrive homeschool community and helping moms just you know tame this very complicated process of homeschooling kids I want to hear why you started a gentle Feast what did you see in your space that was a problem and what problem does a gentle Feast solve so when I first started homeschooling I wanted to give my my kids a Charlotte Mason style of Education I had read the book for the children's sake by Susan schaer mccol which everyone should read and I was like and I was actually teaching public school at the time and I read it and I actually wept as I was reading it because that was the kind of education I wanted to give my public school students but I knew I couldn't in the constraints of what we were allowed to teach and what we weren't allowed to teach and that's actually the what made me quit teaching and want to homeschool my own kids and um but there was nothing like I said there was literally a Yahoo group and like nothing or reading Charlotte Mason's volumes and I didn't know how to actually implement it in my home the book for the children's sake is very inspiring and she does give a lot about the philosophy really breaks it down and really easy to understand ways but there was no like what do you do on Monday morning was in there and so I was just very clueless and I was always trying to put things together and I felt like I was just running in circles and so I very easily went back to like what I knew from Public School teaching I was like okay this is safe this is this works but after several years of homeschooling I've in spending way too many hours on Pinterest trying to find things and printing them out at midnight I realized that something I had to give or I was never going to be able to sustain this I was so burned out and discouraged and just wanted to throw in the towel and so I was like I really have to dive into what Charlotte Mason said and that's why I started reading her volumes for myself and started you know talking to people and working through things and kind of developed my own thing that I was doing in my home and I remember I actually had a friend who came over one day and you know I'm showing her what I'm doing and stuff and she's like this is incredible she's like you need to sell this and I was like nobody would buy this everybody can do this and she goes yeah if they want to spend like a 100 hours and whatever finding all this stuff and you know the internet was much better then but you know she's like not everybody wants to spend all the time doing this and you put it together and so for me it was a passion project of yes this is what I've been doing in my home but also what would I wanted back then when I was first starting I didn't want to just buy a book at a Homeschool Convention and go home and on Monday Morning open it up and be like I actually have no clue how to use this it's gonna sit on a shelf and collect dust um I really wanted someone to like hold my hand and be like okay here's how you actually do this come Monday morning let's schedule things this way oh you're discouraged about this okay here's some answers for you and so I really created it as not just another curriculum that you could buy but really as like a whole comprehensive program to really help parents understand the philosophy because if you don't understand it you could have the best Charlotte Mason curriculum in the world and hate it so let's have the underpinnings of really understanding the why and then I can give you the how yes and that is where fear will be crushed because it can make parents feel uneasy like oh there's a chemistry requirement I got to write for the high school transcript but when you actually realize why you are doing this a different way and you're saying no to theal system and that your kids can still get to where they want to go with this style of education is extremely powerful but getting past that fear I think is is super important I love that you get at that why I also personally find your the the way you have structured the curriculum to be very user friendly that was my goal and I'm glad you spoke about you know the fear to a lot of people say homeschooling is easy and I just flat out disagree I think at times homeschool can feel really hard and part of it is the weight of the responsibility to not mess up our kids we are often riddled with self-doubt second guessing and feeling overwhelmed with excessive amounts of information out there and all of the options and at the same time we love our kids we don't want to mess this up so how do we build a home school that our kids will thank us for later on down the years when they are adults well the first step is joining Thrive homeschool Community where you find the eight step homeschool success framework this helps you build an undeniably successful homeschool that gives your kids what they need now that also prepares them for their future and helps you in the daytoday as well each year and each kid presents us with Uncharted Territory but with the right plan you can rest in the security and confidence that you are doing a great job the path is easy join Thrive say a quick hello to all your new friends start right away the eight-step homeschool success framework and kiss anxiety goodbye it's risk-free no contracts you can cancel any time no questions asked you know as a life coach that's something else I really work with homeschool moms on so it's not you know I have a gentle Feast but I also provide courses where I bring moms into little small groups and I coach them through some of this mindset stuff as well to kind of give them the confidence to go oh no I can actually make this decision I can actually try this I can take risks it's okay yes I can make mistakes you know we we hold ourselves to such a high standard and we can there's actually quite a large margin I think right before kids's ruined for life I want to hear just on a personal level I like asking everybody this what is one thing just in your own life right now you are a working homeschool mom what's one thing that you personally are working on in terms of self-growth well I'm always self-growing that has been like even in high school like the books that I would buy to read were always like um personal growth books I have always been super fascinated with this topic and so you know I'm always being coached myself on a variety of different things and I always have a stack of like books that I'm working through and they're not just like education books or like fiction like they're really like okay I want to improve this area of my life I'm super big into goal setting so I'm actually working on a goal setting course I've taught this three-step process of how to write goals for the past 10 years and so I'm working on getting that going for the end of the year because I've just seen how important it is to set an intention to set a goal and then how to make that actually happen in your life has been so key and so I've I've accomplished so many different goals and it's so funny to you ask me that because I was just thinking about that this morning I was like what would be my next goal because I've I've I've accomplished this and I've done that and I've done that and I've done that I'm always like learning new things and trying new things and so and as we get older so I just turned 47 and one of the things that happen as we get older you know our brains can start to go and one of the ways that we can keep that neuroplasticity happening is by building new synapses by doing new things and so it's not just like I do crossover puzzles or you know those kind of things to keep our minds active like we actually have to be trying something we've never learned before so I always set a goal every year to to try something I've never learned before now a couple years ago I tried guitar it was actually way harder than I thought it was I thought I could just pick it up and be like Taylor Swift or something but that was not the case and so it it's very actually very frustrating so I've tried it for a couple months and I was like oh I don't want to keep doing this and that's okay that's the key we don't allow ourselves to play because little kids do that right they'll try some hobby they don't like it they'll play with this toy they don't like it they you know and that's part of what helps them grow and develop when they're little and we don't realize as adults we still need to be doing that so I recently started playing pickle ball do you love it it's so much fun but I am so bad I am so like my hand eye coordination has always been bad and so yes I am taking lessons to my goal is to actually be able to hit the ball I love that you know right before because you know my story is I accidentally like HIIT it on Tik Tok I wasn't even planning that but my you know what I was consumed with before that and I actually put it down because I really real that I had like this Heavens open Epiphany like Christie this is what you are now doing for the rest of your life it was like one of those moments from God I'm like all right well what I had to put down and I really want to pick it up in the new year is I was learning how to knit oh that's cool and that was really one thing I struggle with is staying in the moment I am such a planner and I love going a million miles an hour and I love living on the edge of the wave but it was forcing me to be in the moment that monotony was was really healthy for me and so in the New Year my girls are now learning to knit my mom is teaching them perect and in our morning time in our morning time we knit two rows and that's kind of how we start we light our candle we knit two rows before we dive into our Beauty subjects and um so in the New Year I'm going to be picking up my knitting again and I'm really excited about that I love that so encourage everybody who's listening pick something that you want to learn this year and make that your goal yeah I love that and we'll put all of these links for how to find your life coaching those courses that you mentioned we'll put in for the children's sake book in there too everything that we've mentioned we will have in the show notes and you already answered my next question which is what projects do you have going on I'm really the goal setting course can I be in it of course yes very excit awesome awesome we be an excuse to spend more time with you this episode was action-packed and I'm sure parents are going to be hitting your web page and wanting to know all the things about what you offer and even looking at your curriculum which I really hope they do because I know it's been a gift in our morning time specifically please let us know where can our audience find you so I have two sites right now A Gentle Feast is the curriculum that you were talking about and then the feast life.me is my podcast and my courses in the coaching program awesome and we will put both of those in the show notes I want to ask you the juicy question okay what's the juicy question what yeah I know what in the Charlotte Mason world can you not get behind so that was that was no that was a great question I loved it actually because I feel like um there has been some things that I've been very frustrated with with the Charlotte Mason world and one of them being that this is the box that you must fit into in order to provide your family of Charlotte Mason education and if you're not doing XYZ and if you're not doing it this way or the way that you know Charlotte Mason wrote about on page 47 of blah blah blah and you shouldn't be doing it that way then you're not giving your children a Charlotte Mason education and I've seen so many people who have given up on this philosophy I talked to them at The Homeschool conventions because they felt so much pressure under the weight of having to do it all right and I I mean you what I'm gonna get up on my desk right now girl because that is like my Soap Box because that is so not what Charlotte would have wanted and this philosophy is so empowering for moms it's so freeing it's so revolutionary but then there are just certain teachings where it's like nope you have to check off this box and this box and this box and this box and this box or you're not doing it right and I'm like no no no no no what's the heart of it well Charlotte Mason said that we have to be outside for four hours every day and we have to have an object lesson about something in nature and should we use colored pencils or watercolors in our nature notebooks and I'm like what I'm like no no no what's the heart of it Charlotte Mason wants your kids to be outside observing the beautiful creation and making connections among complex ideas by being outside and here's all the things they can learn by playing outside and being that's what's important so you don't have to do it this XYZ and all these different ways in order for it to be right can you just go on a nature hike once a month and let your kids explore and talk about about it as a family yes in my opinion yes right and it's not like well Charlotte Mason taught plutar starting at grade blah blah blah blah and if you don't do plutar then you're not doing it right and I'm like no I think what's the heart of it she wants your kids to be learning about historical people in being able to think through here are some things that person did that were really good here are some things they did that were not really great can people be both and and start having complex discussions about that that's more important than what plutar volume you're reading and what age you started at and blah blah blah and so yeah I I'll stop because I can go on about this for hours girl well and I love it and you're talking and I was like oh crap I haven't done plar yet it's okay I know I mean I'm serious because we we read modern books about different historical and like diverse people that Charlotte Mason didn't have access to and we talk about those people instead and I think that's what matters right right and you don't you know your kids don't need to be the Von traps doing this you know they you don't need to you can you can if you want to you can that's not going to be how I do it though so you know we yes music appreciation yes learning to fall in love with music that is written in such a way that elevates our minds and our hearts absolutely but there are certain things that you don't have to do if you don't want to do them if they're not resonating with you that is perfectly okay I would love for you to end on that quote that you wanted to yes so this comes from the Times article that was written in memorium after Charlotte Mason passed away and it says others will write of Miss Mason's work from the point of view of the trained teacher but how much greater is the debt of a mother who without any training at all could teach her children through the method that Miss Mason had worked out it was she who made the impossible possible who showed us term by term what books to use and how to use them who taught us how to take the children straight to the Fountain Head and let them learn from the books themselves it was she who realized what home education might become who changed the whole atmosphere of The Homeschool Room who inspired us for our work and gave us the power to carry it out a Pioneer who blazed the trail that many of us followed with Keen enjoyment and grateful Hearts thank you so much for joining us today I can't wait to share this with all of my heart.