Latest / 5–Minute Parenting: Tips to Help You Raise Competent, Godly Kids. / 10 Things I Wish I Knew as a Beginning Homeschooler (Part 1)

Transcript

10 Things I Wish I Knew as a Beginning Homeschooler (Part 1) · 5–Minute Parenting: Tips to Help You Raise Competent, Godly Kids.

• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another session of five-minute parenting.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Today I have a special guest, Trisha Pohl.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: She's currently home educating her six children in grades five, six, seven, nine, ten, and eleven.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: She has used a variety of teaching approaches because different kids have different learning needs, she says.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: She believes that school customized to the individual student is one of the great strengths of homeschooling.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Trish has a bachelor's degree in oboe performance and music education, and her favorite hobbies are music, University of Kansas basketball, tea, strategy board games, and running.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: And one of her vices is home renovation TV.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome, Chris.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much, Sandra.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm super glad to be here today.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: And Trisha, you're going to share with us 10 things you wish you knew as a beginning homeschooler.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: And this will be part one, and we'll conclude part two next week.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I will turn this over to you.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds good.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a lot I didn't know when I started homeschooling.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was actually tough to narrow this down to 10.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: But here, here are the top five.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think I could spend five minutes on every single one of these, but we're going to move pretty quick today and let these sink in where they need to sink in.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to refer you to our website, hswithconfidence.com.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I work with Chris Cox at homeschooling with confidence.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to refer you there to kind of go deeper with some of these ideas.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, how hard and messy this process of homeschooling my kids would be.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing I think I didn't really understand when I got started.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, in the world of the internet, it's so easy to see perfect, rosy pictures from other homeschool sources where everyone's happy and above average, bookshelves are tidy, pencils are neat in their canisters, and the conversations are all very deep and meaningful.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: But in our house, people cry and they're selfish and unpleasant and they're sinful.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: They make accusations, they're lazy about their work, they're impatient, sometimes they're perfectionistic.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: The artwork hangs a skew on my dining room wall, the dishes are unwashed on the counter, and the floor is unswept under my feet.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: It often seems um like everything is kind of in a in a tizzy.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's messy.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Our environment, our physical or emotional state, it's all kind of messy.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't understand that.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I also, number two, didn't understand how good homeschooling my kids would be.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um, I saw a quote when my kids were very little.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: It said, parenting is the hardest job you'll ever love.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And as hard as it is, it is also so, so good.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I love being with my kids and learning with them and sitting with them, reading and celebrating and sharing inside jokes from the books we read together and from the antics of our day.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I get to be there for their milestones and their losses and their victories.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And nobody appreciates it more when a child learns to read or finishes an algebra text, which just happened today in my house.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're in this together, and it is really good to be together.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Third thing, we don't have to imitate anyone else, including schools.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: The first year that we homeschooled, we had an extra bedroom in that house, and so I set it all up like a perfect little school with tables and chairs and cute decorations on the wall and calendars.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: That first year I homeschooled, I had a kindergartner who was six, but I also had four other children underneath her who were younger, and I was pregnant with our sixth.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that setup was really impractical because the baby needed to be changed.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And where was the baby's room?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Upstairs.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Kids needed to eat food.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Where was the kitchen?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Upstairs.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that was kind of part of our regular run of life was upstairs in the house.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And here we are, tucked all five of us in this tiny little room, trying to do school the way that I really thought school should be done.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I learned a few lessons.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: The second year, my husband and I had moved in temporarily with my in-laws when we started that second year of schooling.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And in that home, I had a bedroom to live in and to run our house from.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so I learned to school that year around the kitchen table with a big metal board as our basically our only tool besides our books.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what I found?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: I found that was just better.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't have to do it the way somebody else did it.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so we still to this day live in a different home now, but we still school around the table.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And my dining room wall is a cork board and it's got whiteboards, and there's algebra problems and spelling words scribbled all over those whiteboards and those walls, not the actual walls, but the whiteboards on the walls.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I've just learned that you don't have to imitate anyone else, not the schools, not your neighbor, not your fellow homeschooler.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: You need to do it the way that works best for you and your family.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: The fourth thing I've learned over these last years is that reading aloud is one of the best things you can do with and for your kids.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't do anything else in a school day, reading aloud is what you should do.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: It builds relationships, it gives you a shared story.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Your kids can listen at a much higher level than what they can actually read at.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so it helps them learn to develop that listening and thinking at a higher level just by reading to them.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: It often helps connect history and other subjects to the outside world.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we're reading a book that's happening in the 1930s.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's really fun if you're studying the president, say, who was president at this time?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: What else was going on?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: What else marked time in this in the era that this was written and that it's taking place?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so it really helps them to make those connections.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of really great resources for reading aloud out there.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: We primarily use Toney for a Child's Heart, but the Enchanted Hour is another great book about reading aloud and that offers great resources.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, Sarah McKenzie's Read Aloud Revival is a fantastic place to start with reading aloud.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can just crack a favorite book and get started reading.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: The fifth thing that I'm going to share today about uh what I have learned and um in in the years of homeschooling is that there is no perfect curriculum.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: No matter how much you research, no matter how much you figure it out, no matter how well you know your kids, there's no perfect curriculum.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it's good to do all those things.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to research and to learn and to study both curriculums and your kids.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: But that curriculum isn't the answer to fixing all that ails your school and your kids.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's true that it can sometimes help turn lights on that were dark, but there just isn't one perfect answer.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, whether it's in curriculum really or in any other way, even if you were to get that right for your first kid, I can almost guarantee you that it won't work for the kid who's next.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think letting go of some of those expectations that if we just find the right curriculum, that will solve the problem or that will make things easier.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: It certainly can do that.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I think we also just need to free ourselves, and I'm gonna end where I started, to allow this process of homeschooling our children to be one that is messy and imperfect and to allow God to do the work that He does in that and to allow it to be beautiful, despite the fact that it's imperfect and messy.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Sandra, that's it.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I got for today.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's great, and we look forward to your part too.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: But let me ask you a question, I'm sure.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Parents considering homeschooling with multiple age kids, how do you do it with so many different ages?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: That is a great question.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that varies with where you're at in each stage of life.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: When your kids are young, you do it when little kids are napping, you do it in between, wedged in here and there.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and in some ways, that aspect doesn't change.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: You do it with a lot of flexibility, one kid at a time.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Kids learn to wait, they learn to be patient.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you learn to juggle a couple of things at a time, you learn to help equip kids so they can help each other.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's just a lot of ways uh that you can go about it, but you also just to learn to accept that it is hard to meet all of those needs.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it is good for you to fall short as a mom because that means my kids need Jesus and I am not their savior.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it means that sometimes they figure something out on their own.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas if I wasn't there standing, if I was there standing right beside them, they would not have that opportunity.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a lot of planning and a lot of juggling and a lot of mistakes.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's great too that you shared about, you know, they learn to help each other and serve each other.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um kind of like the old-fashioned one-room schools.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they did it with all ages.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it worked.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: They did.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I look at them and I think, how did they do that?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think they helped each other for sure.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, be sure to check out uh Trisha's website, which will be at the end of today's notes.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: And stay tuned for part two next week.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Five more tips of what she wished she knew as a beginning homeschooler.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you again, Trish, for being with us.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.