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She Homeschooled 7 Kids—Here’s How They Learned to Teach Themselves » Michelle Jones · Outside the Box Education Podcast

• Outside the Box Education: Welcome to Outside the Box Education Podcast, where we believe education was never meant to be a one size fits all. I'm your host, Melissa Whittaker. Whether you're homeschooling, considering homeschooling, or simply looking for a better way to educate your children, you're in the right place. Together we'll explore how to homeschool with confidence, let go of the pressure to do it perfectly, and create an education that truly fits your family. So take a deep breath, think outside the box, and let's learn together. Okay, today we have Michelle Jones. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you. It's fun to be here. Yeah. Okay, so let's get started. Tell me a little bit about your family. How many kids do you have? How old are they? And tell me how long you've been homeschooling. All right. So my husband's name is Shane, and we have seven children, one daughter and six sons. And they are all adults now, ages 33 down to 21. we had seven kids in 12 years. And the spacing is what I really loved about our family. I I didn't grow up with brothers and sisters close in age. There was a six-year gap on either side of me. And so I really wanted our kids to be close in age so that they could grow up together. So we had four kids in four years, boy, girl, boy, boy. And then I took five years off because it was a lot. And then we had three more boys in four years. And we started our homeschooling journey about thirty-three years ago when our when our first child was only two months old. And we are actually still on that journey, just in a different role. I currently teach an online class called Oma Hour twice a week to our grandchildren and Shane and I host a lot of homeschool family festivals for our kids and grandkids. That's amazing. Okay, so so tell me how things started. How did you what what led you to start homeschooling? Well, I actually didn't even know people could homeschool. Okay. We We moved to a new home in 1993, just a couple of months after our first child was born. And I met this wonderful woman there who one day, not too long after we met, said to me, Now don't think we are strange, but we homeschool. And she kind of put her hand up in front of her face, like I was going to attack her. And and my first thought was, Whoa, that's so cool. I didn't know that was legal. And so I I had actually majored in elementary education in college, but I really didn't like what I saw happening in the school system. Plus, I just really wanted our kids to have a more personalized education. So I started reading everything I could find about homeschooling, which it was back in nineteen ninety three and there wasn't much even written then. And I decided I really wanted to homeschool our kids. And Shane supported me in that decision right from the start. It would have been so hard to homeschool without him. Giggled a little bit because because she held her hand up like it's funny. It's funny. We get some of these responses. When when we tell people we homeschool. Okay. Was there a particular person, book, curriculum? What what is your approach to homeschooling? So I actually went to my first homeschool convention when our oldest was three or four, and I told my husband that if I got there and the other parents seemed socially awkward, I would just give up the idea of homeschooling and never mention it again to him. But I will never forget one of the classes at that convention. The teacher was a a really warm, delightful, down-to-earth woman with a large family of children, and they all played. instruments. And this woman loved poetry and had taught her kids all kinds of fun poems that even her youngest kids could recite from memory. And I loved that. And I came away from that determined that I wanted to develop our own unique family culture. But I when we started homeschooling, computers were just barely becoming a household staple. And the internet was still in its infancy. I was still Sending away for catalogs by mail to mail order workbooks to get from our kids. So I didn't know anything about homeschooling methods. We just figured out what worked for our family, mainly through lots of trial and error. If something wasn't working, we just tried something else. But I did, however, do a couple of things that really provided a helpful framework for our family. And the first thing was that I built the foundation of our homeschool on the subjects that I love the most, which is music and literature. Why? Because doing things that I enjoy makes me happy. And that tends to make my family happier. And happy kids learn more. So for example, I love reading good books. So every night after dinner. I would read my favorite chapter books allowed to shame the kids while they cleaned up dinner and did the dishes. It was a really great arrangement. But it was also our favorite time of day together as a family. And I believe it was an integral part of their education. The second thing that I did that I think really helped to guide our journey was to make a list of all of the practical skills that we wanted our kids to have before they left our home. And I guess you could call it the Jones Family Core Standards. But that list included everything. I mean, I'm talking about learning how to bake bread and how to cook a pot of beans, how to sew on a button, how to iron a shirt, how to lead music and read music and sing parts like soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. Shane is really athletic, so I wanted the kids to know how to rollerblade and swim and snowboard and fly kites and and how to play different teen sort sports like dodgeball and baseball and basketball and ultimate frisbee. And and I didn't want them to play competitively. I just wanted them to learn how to play those things for fun. Our kids learned how to play chess and how to write in cursive and and to recite poetry and do origami and And magic tricks and tableon animals. And yes, even how to change a tire and change the oil in a car. And and that's just a smattering of what was on there. I I truly made a massive list. But it included every single skill that I thought our kids needed to step out into the world and function successfully on their own. And I some people might wonder why I included things like Tying balloon animals and flying a kite. And I'll tell you why. We wanted our kids to have a wealth of life experiences and to really feel confident in their ability to learn how to do anything. And that meant showing them that learning isn't just about academics. It's also about joy and curiosity and play. If you can teach yourself How to twist a balloon into a giant octopus, or how to build a campfire and set up a tent, which that's two more items that were on the list. You realize that nothing is too intimidating to figure out. We wanted our kids to step into adulthood knowing that whether they were facing a a broken engine or or a broken nose, which one of our sons actually had at one point. That they could do hard things and that they had the ability to learn and to figure out how to solve problems and to find joy in the process. Awesome. So I just have to ask, did you start when they were young? Did you start with curriculum or were you kind of just homeschooling in the things that you wanted them to learn from the beginning? Were academics started early or did you kind of wait on that? So at the beginning I approached homeschooling with this top-down dictator mentality. And I controlled the curriculum and I was teaching from textbooks and the the kids were doing workbooks and everything was scheduled out. Help this child here, this child here, this child here. And it was really stressful for me and truly it was drudgery for the kids. I realized I was trying too hard to replicate public school, which was so funny because you know, about the one size fits all approach was one of the things that I didn't like about public schools. But I I think it's just human nature for us to stay with those things that are familiar. But luckily I had two experiences that really changed my paradigm. So I grew up having weekly spelling tests, which I think anybody who went to public school did. And so, of course, that's what we did in our homeschool. Everybody had their little workbook and we'd work on it. And on Fridays, we had our spelling tests. Actually, we had them on Thursday, but then if they didn't do well, they had to study and redo it on Friday. And the problem was that two of our kids would just breeze through the lessons and ace the spelling test every week while the other two kids really struggled with spelling and hated their spelling workbooks and the tests and they Just didn't seem to be getting any better at spelling no matter how much we practiced. Same workbooks, same teacher, but very different results. But luckily during that time period, we went to visit some relatives back east. And I found myself one evening playing bananagrams with the husband and one of their kids. I'm a good speller and I love bananograms, but I was feeling just a little bit nervous playing with this relative because he is really brilliant. He has a doctorate from Harvard and is very successful in life. And I honestly didn't want to look bad in front of him. And it was just it was just kind of funny because as the game progressed, he kept asking me how to spell words. And at first I thought he was joking or that he was just trying to distract me so that he could win the game, but I kept winning the game. And finally this little light bulb went on in my head, and I realized that people could be really smart and really successful and still not be great spellers. And that gave me the confidence to go home and throw away the spelling workbooks. I think I realized that the two kids who were good spellers were just visual learners and they could naturally spell well. And so they really didn't need the spelling workbooks. And the other two kids were kinesthetic learners. And they the only thing that they were learning from those workbooks was that they hated spelling. They they just really needed something different. So that little nudge Caused me to look at each one of our children and to ask, what does this child really need? And it started me on the path to personalizing their education. The other experience that I had that totally changed my perspective happened around this same time. I'm a piano player, and some of my earliest memories are of seeing my mother play the piano and just wishing that I could run my fingers over the keys like she did to make music. And because I love playing the piano, I just assumed that all of my children would grow up playing the piano. But our oldest son had other ideas. And he and I were in this constant battle over practicing the piano every day. And one day after we've had this heated discussion, I said, Fine, you don't have to play the piano. And then I just kind of yelled so Everyone in the whole house could hear. Nobody has to play the piano. And if anyone wants to learn to play an instrument, just let me know and I will help you. And that was actually one of the best things that happened to our family. And I'm so grateful that our oldest son put up a fight and defended his right to be himself. As a result of that, our kids learned to play all kinds of instruments. And we had amazing experiences that we would never have had if all of them were piano players like me. Pat yourself on the back for listening to your son. Like that's amazing. I smile because I hated playing the piano and my mom had me play the piano. It was not my thing, still is not. A lot of kids experience that. And and because of that experience, I really moved from being that homeschool dictator. To being a learning facilitator. It took years for me to completely let go. I'm one of those people who wants to be hands-on, right in the middle of things. But over time I really learned to say, What do you want to do? And I will help you figure out how to get there. You're you're a good listening mother. That's amazing. Okay, so did you along the way, did you find a certain method that you really wanted to stick with? We did find certain textbooks that we liked. We used Saxon math for our math textbook and we used Apologia for our science. But other than that, everything was very loose and flexible and it changed from year to year. There were so many times when I would lie awake at night. I mean like the first I'm gonna be honest, like the first 13 years until my oldest son had made it through his first year of college, I would lie awake at night and I would just be like, Am I ruining my children? It's it's a very real fear for homeschool moms. I guess and and I learned to listen to the spirit. I learned to pray and say, this is the challenge that we're having right now. What does this child need? And invariably I would get answers that would say, do this, do this, do this. And so our homeschooling changed. Every year and multiple times a year, because as the children grew, they each needed something different and they needed something that was different depending on the the season of life that they were in. So if you could give one piece of advice to a homeschool parent who is struggling right now, what would you want them to hear? So my advice to a struggling homeschool parent would be To find what is working well and to do more of that. If you have a child who refuses to do math but loves to play games, then just ditch the math book and play games instead. Play Domino's and Yahtzee and Sumswamp and Quirkle and and Chess and Settlers of Catan. And then go bake their favorite cookies with them and eat those cookies while you play games together. And then go bake the cookies again, but double the recipe and then do it again and triple the recipe and take some cookies to their friends, draw mazes and cut out snowflakes and do origami and and build something amazing together, like a like a potato cannon or a skateboard or a trebuchet. Weave math into real life. And here's the important part. While you're doing it, build a really great relationship with your child. Because that is what matters most in homeschooling. If a parent and a child are butting heads over schoolwork, the child will just learn to hate learning. And the parent will just have a headache all the time. And there is one caveat to all of that. I realized pretty early in our homeschooling journey that technology is addicting. And and that was long before gaming and social media became a thing. If I let our kids watch too much TV or play too many computer games, then they just wanted more and more and more. And they just whined and argued and pestered me for it all day long. It would just drive me nuts. But that was the sign that they were doing too much technology. And so we made a rule that we only watch TV for entertainment as a family. And that their time playing computer games was limited each day to playing educational games for a set amount of time. And the closest they ever got to gaming was playing Mario Kart at grandma's house, which meant they loved going to grandma's house. Okay, so you had so many kids close together, but then there was a gap. Tell me how you mastered educating on so many different levels. So that's an interesting question because Yeah, I not only had a lot of kids, but a household to manage, which we all do. You you've gotta do the laundry and the dishes and keep food going and and with six boys, let me tell you, it takes a lot of food to fill six boys. but on top of that, I also had really hard pregnancies. They would put me down every time, just about through the whole pregnancy. And I also had some other debilitating health problems that I was navigating simultaneously. So I really had to learn how to slow down and simplify on several levels. First, I really looked at what we were doing and decided, okay, which of these subjects really need individualized instruction? Because that takes up a lot of time in your day. For example, learning how to read is is crucial. That is one of the most crucial things you can teach your children. And it is so important that they know how to read. because that's going to determine how much information they'll be able to get for the rest of their life. And so a child who is learning to read needs personal practice time with mom every day. And so that personal instruction time had to take priority. And that I learned that the earlier I could do it in the day, the more likely it was that it would get done. Second, we had a routine for our day that consisted of academics in the morning. And then a quiet time right after lunch. You didn't have to go to sleep, but you had to be quiet. And the little kids had to be in their room because otherwise they weren't quiet. And then we used our our afternoons for personal development time where the kids could do basically whatever they wanted, follow whatever interests they had and and just just enjoy being homeschooled. And then family time was every evening. And like I said, most evenings we were reading together as a family. And having this routine really helped all of us to avoid burnout, which happens when you're just trying to do too much too fast for too long. So third, I figured out that, like I said, reading is really important and that kids would learn way more from reading books on their own than they would ever learn through direct instruction from me. So every three weeks, We checked out 60 high quality junior picture books and junior nonfiction books from the library and brought those home for the kids to read on their own. And they loved it because they were new, it was a novelty, and they would just spend hours reading those books because they knew that those books would disappear again and go away. So it wasn't like something that they could go back to later, get around to it sometime. They knew there was a deadline. And they had to get it all done before those wonderful books left the house. Fourth, we made it a rule that with the exception of music lessons, everyone did the same extracurricular activities together until they were old enough to drive themselves to their own activities. So at one point, six of our seven kids were taking Irish dance classes, which required just two trips. A week to the dance studio that was across town and a Saturday competition every couple of months that our whole family went to. It became a family outing. And this cut down drastically on the amount of time we all spent in the car, which just gave us so much more time for more important things. And then the last thing I would say, number five, is that as the kids got into their teens, we transitioned from learning with mom. To learning on their own from textbooks and from other sources. And this really lightened the load on me and helped prepare them for college. Yeah, definitely. Okay. So they're grown now. Tell us how you juggled, homeschooling teens, college admission, college attendance. How did that all work? Tell us your tips and tricks. well, I think I think it would help first to understand our philosophy on education. We don't view education as a conveyor belt to a career. We we aren't studying just to build a resume or to get into a specific college or to make a lot of money. those things might happen as a byproduct, but our primary goal was for our kids to grow up to be happy, capable human beings who make the world a better place for being in it. But it's really one thing to say that. And it's another thing to live it out in a homeschool setting. To make that philosophy real for our kids, we we just really had to completely take the fear out of making mistakes. So when our kids were about 10, I started having them grade their own textbook assignments and tests. I wanted to take the fear out of that red pen that most students in a traditional setting just hate. So much. I kept reminding our kids that the the number at the top of the page didn't matter. What mattered what was what happened after the mistake. I used to tell them if you don't stop to figure out why you missed that question, then the last 20 minutes that you spent working were just a waste of time. You you might as well have not even done the assignment. Tell me really quick, pause you right there. How did how did they correct it? Were your that's a good question. So so it was with textbooks. They all had a math textbook. And that's how we always started, was with the math textbook. When they would get into Saxon math five, four, the answers are in the back. And I think it's if I remember right, it's only like the answers for every other question. And so our kids would do every other question, whatever there were answers for. And then they would go to the back of the book and they check their answers. And if they were struggling to do a question, they could even go check the answer and and see what the answer was and see if they could work towards the the question. And I was still helping them at this stage, math five, four, I would still help them along with it. But we just really wanted to make it so that they didn't worry about making mistakes, that they knew that. Getting the good grade was not the end goal. That the end goal was that they learned and grew from it. And so that just really helped that just really helped them to not stress over is this problem right or wrong, but am I doing this problem correctly? Yeah, how do I get to the answer? I think that's brilliant because sometimes I'll flip to the back and look at the answer and I try to figure out, okay, what am I doing wrong? How come I'm not explaining this right? It has never dawned on me that I should have my child also do that with me, that they can get the answer. How did how is the answer this? What's the process of getting there? I that's brilliant for me. Well, and when you start thinking about kids who are correcting all of their own work, I mean what's what's one of the things that takes up most of a teacher's time? It's going through all of the assignments and correcting them. And so this This was really helpful for me in managing that balance of I've got all of these different ages, they're all in different stages. It it was something that helped them. It's pointing them towards being independent learners. Cool. Yeah. So the learning really doesn't happen when you get it right. It happens when you fix what went wrong. You can't build a skyscraper on a on a cracked foundation. If the child moves on to advanced math or complex history with these giant gaps in their understanding, then the whole structure eventually collapses. And so that's why we also emphasized that they they needed to have a solid foundation of knowledge. And that's worked right back into that why we're correcting. We're not correcting to get the good grade, we're correcting to build that solid foundation of knowledge. It's not about memorizing facts for a Friday quiz just so you can forget them on Monday, which I certainly did in school. It's about understanding the core concepts. And when our kids understood the why behind the basics, then it really gave them confidence to build upward. And there was one time when I was standing at the sink with my son. We were washing dishes together and And he asked me, So mom, do you know the math that's behind guitar fret spacing? The amount of space that's between the guitar frets. And I'm like, okay, I know a lot of I know a lot about music and I l know a lot about math, but I have no idea what he's talking about. And so he explained it to me and it I mean it honestly it went right over my head. It had decimal points in it and all of this and this and this and but Because he had that solid understanding, he went on to build several folk instruments in the next few months, including a banjo. And I just thought that's so cool. He had this strong foundation that that gave him the tools to teach himself about how to build folk instruments. And so that's really one of the primary goals of education: that they're able to take that. foundation and go forward and teach themselves about anything in the future. So then the next thing that we we would do is we would create time and space for our kids to become independent learners. And to share how this worked in reality, I I have to give you a bit of our backstory. I have dealt with vestibular migraines my entire life. But in 2012, I had a massive attack that completely changed our world. I I couldn't walk for about six months. Wow. And I was largely homebound for three years. I'm so sorry. And it was really hard. It was a really hard time in our life, especially since we didn't actually know what was causing all of this. For me. We didn't know it was vestibular migraines or how to fix it or what to do. And the the doctors had no idea. But looking back, this whole experience actually turned out to be a really great catalyst for our homeschool. Like I said, I like to be very much in the middle, hands-on and and helping the kids with things. But because I physically could not be hands-on, I was really forced to step back. From that whole daily learning process. Our older kids, they were 16, 15, 13, and 12 at the time, were instantly thrust into this process of becoming independent learners. And so I essentially just handed them their textbooks, one of which was chemistry that year. And I told them, you're just gonna have to help each other and and just do the best you can. And and they did. They Whenever they would hit a wall, they they knew they couldn't come to me because I just could not. I just I just physically could not. I just couldn't figure out chemistry. so they they had to talk to each other and they would reread lessons to find things that they'd missed and they'd go to the internet to research solutions. And in short, they really learned how to learn. And our younger boys were only seven. five and three at the time. And they actually really they really benefited from this this experience too because the only thing that I could do was sit in a recliner all day long. That was all I could do. And and the recliner had, you know, an arm on each side and I had three boys. So one boy would perch on one arm, the other would perch on this arm over here, and then one the little one would sit on my lap and we would just read and read and read and read. And I had so much time that I could just read with each one of them. And out of that experience, they became really fantastic readers. So fast forward a few years later, and those same younger boys faced their own unexpected retreat from the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. But because independence was already baked into our family culture, they didn't panic. They they use that lockdown as their own dedicated window of time to really dive deep into their books and and build a rock solid academic foundation. So what started out as a family crisis for us actually turned out to be one of the best blessings for our family as far as moving forward in life without a mom to hold their hand. The next thing that we did was We guided our kids toward self-discovery. We wanted our kids to figure out who they were and what their own unique gifts and talents were and what their life mission was. And we did this in a a couple of ways. First, we relied on what what I'll call micro conversations. It it wasn't a formal sit-down session. It was lots and lots of little spur-of-the-moment check-ins over the years. What did they love doing? How could we build on that? Where did they want to go next? What experiences now would benefit them later in their lives? And I think these types of conversations helped them explore who they were and where they wanted to go in life. And it it didn't happen overnight. Our third child was very quiet and he would often just like disappear into his room when he thought I wasn't paying attention. And I mean with seven kids a lot of times I was not paying attention. And so he would he would go hide in his room and and he would read books. And he was supposed to be doing his schoolwork, but yeah, he was reading books. And and that caused me some private frustration. And this pattern just Continued until his junior year of high school. When all of a sudden it was like a switch just flipped in his brain, and he went into hyperdrive and worked on his math and science like crazy. And I didn't discover the reason until I read this story in one of his college application essays. And I was so embarrassed because it made me sound like it was bad mom. But he said that one day he realized. That the outcome of his future was up to him and that he had to take responsibility for it. And wow, he did. By the end of his senior year, he had completed the calculus textbook. And keep in mind, he was doing it on his own. He had to figure out calculus on his own. And he did it because he wanted to be a civil engineer. Another son. loved reading and writing but really did not enjoy doing math. And he was working through the algebra two book, but was taking forever every day to get his lessons done. And I finally asked him, so how are you feeling about your math? And he confided that he he really did like it, which I mean obviously I knew that because it was taking him so long to get his lessons done every day. But he said he just didn't see a lot of use for it in his future. And so we talked together and and decided that he had an adequate foundation. If he wanted to go back later on, if he changed his mind about what he wanted to do in life, he could pick it up again. And he really just needed to be done with math and move on to the subjects that he loved the most. And so he did, and he was so much happier. He was a happy boy to begin with, but he was just so much happier when we got rid of that math book. And now he's two semesters from graduating from an elite advertising program that is considered one of the best in the nation. And I'm just so glad that I trusted him to decide that for himself. So the the second thing that we did to guide our kids towards self-discovery. was that we would encourage them to find what excited them. And then we would encourage them to gain both depth and breadth in that passion. So our sixth son, he loved playing the violin. He loves playing the violin. He practiced intensely for eight years and graduated from the Suzuki School of Violin. And by the end of it, he was really, really good. He had depth. He was genuinely exceptionally good at his craft. And that level of expertise just does something powerful for a teenager. You know, you think about it, that's a time of life when kids are just really prone to comparing themselves to everyone else and and comparing their their abilities. I I can't do anything well and and and developing a real talent. Or a real skill builds an unshakable self-confidence in kids. It it helps them realize that they don't have to follow the crowd to fit in. They can stand out as an individual. But we didn't want that talent to just live in a vacuum. Once he had the depth, then we encouraged him to pursue breadth, which to us means. Taking that gift and using it to serve others and make the world a better place. So he took his violin out into the community. He played in church. He joined our local orchestra. He joined a b a bluegrass band and and played for seniors and senior centers and and at schools and at folk festivals. He joined a international folk dance team and ended up touring. The US and Spain with them as a fiddler and as a dancer. And and he eventually opened up his own teaching studio because other homeschool parents would see him playing his violin. They'd be like, Can you teach our kids too? And so this is what breadth looks like. And it teaches a child, it builds really deep confidence. The depth builds their confidence. And then breadth teaches them to look outward. To find their mission and to realize that their gifts are meant to be shared. And whenever people hear our story, I always get the question, yeah, but how did they do in college? So we've had four kids that have graduated from college, and our three younger boys are in college right now. And honestly, even I was surprised. You know, I told you that I Laid awake for those first 13 years until my oldest son got through his first year of college because I was so worried about how that first year was going to go. And and I'll tell you right now, I made it a rule all the way through to not ask our kids what their grades were in college. Because it was not about the grades for me. It was about them learning and growing and developing their knowledge and their talents. And That first year I did not ask. My son let us know that he had been offered a scholarship and that he was on the dean's list. And then his economics professor sent him a letter saying, We'd really love to have you join the economics major because you did so well in the class. And after that, I was just like, I am not gonna worry anymore. I am done worrying. That was a relief. But In talking to our kids, they told us that college just felt like homeschooling, except that they had more resources. Mm-hmm. And because they were already used to teaching themselves from a textbook and managing their own schedules, they completely skipped over the the typical freshman burnout and they didn't struggle with that problem that a lot of the kids have with unstructured time. Because they've been managing their own time for years. But the most beautiful thing to witness was was their attitude. They were really surprised that a lot of their roommates or classmates didn't go to classes. And as we talked about it, we realized that, you know, maybe their thinking was that going to classes was more of an obligation or chore. They I mean they'd had to go to classes, they didn't have a choice. They didn't have a choice. And homeschool kids do. Yeah. And and so because of that, our kids didn't view college as an obligation or as a chore. They they had ownership over their learning for so long that they really saw higher education as a privilege. And while a lot of traditional students felt forced to be there, our kids walked onto campus just hungry to learn. Because they loved learning and they knew how to do it. Mm-hmm. So in the high school years, your kids were learning how to take control of their own lives and their own education, which quite often when kids go through the public school system and then all of a sudden they're in college, they have to learn how to navigate, how to control their own education, their time, all of these things. That's beautiful. That's so obvious to me as you tell this. That they were learning while they homeschooled how to navigate the things that quite often kids will learn later in college. That's amazing. That's awesome. Do you want to talk about admission at all? College admission, how you navigated that. So with admissions, they basically look for academics and they want people who are not just focused on academics, they want people who have talents and skills and who are out in the community doing things. They have leadership qualities. This this is something that that most schools look for. But that's that's the first thing you want to do is look at the schools you want to go to and see what those schools are looking for. And then and I would suggest doing it very early on. I looked when our kids were still in junior high, and that became part of our our plan was okay, we need to make sure that we have this many years of. English and this many years of math and I mean obviously we weren't doing it just to get in. We wanted our kids to have that solid foundation so that no matter where they went or what they did, trade school or no school at all, we wanted them to have a good solid foundation of knowledge. But it helps when you're filling out an application to know what they're looking for and to gear your application towards those requirements. So that was the first thing. And then And second, most schools, if you are a homeschooler, they want you to do a college assessment exam, like the ACT or the SAT. And so we went and bought an ACT study guide and our kids practiced taking the ACT test, which I'll tell you right now, one of the hardest things about that test is that they had to sit in the desk for three hours and our boys range in height from 5'11 to 6'5. That's hard if you have not grown up sitting in a desk for that long. That's it's difficult. And so they they needed to practice. And then we were also very careful to make sure that they started taking the test as soon as they were eligible. And I don't even remember remember what the age is now. That I I it's all, you know, it's gone. It's not necessary knowledge for me anymore. But let's say they can start taking it when they're 15. So our kids would take it when they were fifteen so that they could get a baseline of where they were on the ACT and they would know these different subjects I need to work on. We had one son that scored really low in reading, and he came home and he put himself on a strict reading schedule of reading great big thick books like Glame Is and And Charles Dickens and the Count of Monte Cristo and all all of those great books he just read a ton. And when he went back to take the test again the next time, his score shot up. And so just knowing I need to work on this area, that's a real motivator for kids to do better in a certain area, to put more time in on studying for this area. Yeah. They would take the test as many times as they wanted until they got the score that they wanted. Not the score that I wanted, the score that they wanted. And sometimes the kids would just they'd be like, okay, I've taken it twice, I'm done. I'd be like, okay, as long as you think it's high enough to get you to where you want to go. I'm good with that. So that was how we handled the standardized test. Let's see. And then the other thing that really was helpful, I mean, I talked about that depth and breadth. That is such a powerful way to present yourself to a college. They see so many applications come through from kids who've got really great academics and This kid's been in the marching band or this one has done great over here in this activity. But to see kids who come in who are really good at something, but then they also take that and they go out into the community and they're serving other people. And and when you when you have something like that that you're good at and you're serving other people, people pay attention and they they want your kids to serve in leadership roles because they become really good mentors to their peers. And so that's something else that schools are generally looking for. And so those three things solid foundation of knowledge and the ACT test you know making sure you know what the school wants so you've got that good solid foundation of knowledge. Taking the ACT test often early and often and developing depth and breadth. Those are really important. But then you have to take all of that and you've got to package it in an application. And that application needs to shine. And so our kids would they had like five or six essays that they had to write, just little short essays on different prompts. And our kids would write their essays and then they would take their essays and they go around to people in the family. Will you read my essays and give me some suggestions? And and so they got lots of feedback for how to improve. And it worked really great for our younger boys because by then our four older kids had all been through college and one of them majored in English. And so it was really, really, really beneficial to get that feedback from other people. For people who don't have that kind of a network, look out into your community. There are resources out there that are free. So those are that's pretty much how we approach getting into college. Wait, I love that because you know, I feel like a lot of homeschoolers worry that if they homeschool all the way through high school that when they get ready to go to college, that they don't have the the classic grade point average and that But you're presenting it in such a way that I'm like, gosh, homeschoolers actually have an enormous advantage. Absolutely. They stand out. Yes, they stand out. They're they're not I don't mean this in a derogatory way necessarily, but they're not run of the mill. They're not doing the exact same thing that all of the other applicants are doing. They they're totally different. They've done it in such a different way that it gives them a lot more dynamic. I don't I don't know if that's the right word. Yep. Okay, so tell me you obviously are very passionate about homeschooling the fact that your kids are done and you're still doing it, but tell me what you love about homeschooling. So I think I would have to say the memories and the connection. looking back, I have had an incredibly rich life full of these beautiful experiences that I would have missed out on had our kids been away at school all day. Our family really built a a shared life together. We worked together, we played together, we overcame challenges together. We developed our own unique family culture, which was one of the things I really wanted to do right from the start. And we we really developed a a deep, unbreakable bond that's built on shared memories that has really outlasted their school years. We we live in a world that is designed to isolate people, and homeschooling counteracts that it really builds community and love. I'll never forget. A moment in time that happened many years ago. Shane and the boys were were building our barn and I was picking berries with our daughter. And she and I were visiting and laughing and we like to yodel together. We we both picked that up as a little skill. And and I could hear the boys over at the barn with Shane and they were all singing at the top of their lungs. while they worked and and the sun was shining and the bees were humming and the birds were singing and all I could think was, this is what heaven is going to be like. I loved being a homeschool mom. And I consider the choice we made to homeschool as seriously the most influential decision of my life right behind choosing my religion and my husband. And I would do it again in a heartbeat. That's that's what it's all about. That's beautiful. I think I think once we have a few years under our belt, we all reach those moments where we're like, okay, can I just pause time? This is the moment that that I dreamed could be. That's beautiful. I love it so much. Well, thank you, Michelle, so much for being a part of Outside the Box Education. You are such an important part, and I'm so grateful to hear your story and and the wealth of knowledge that you are. Thank you. Thank you. It has been so great to revisit these memories from my life. I I love talking about homeschooling and this has just been a wonderful opportunity to do that. So I really am grateful for that. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today for this episode. If you would like to see more of this homeschool content, like and subscribe to our channel.