Ep 17 - Put Curriculum in its Place!

Music.

Natural learning is in. Hey there, I am Kelly Edwards, your host of this podcast and creator of the 90-Minute School Day. This is not your typical homeschooling podcast. Here you will find out-of-the-box stories from the trenches, trainings, tools, and tips to guide you forward. Music. Yes, I like alliteration. We will also share results and mindset shifts to support you in your journey of living and learning alongside your out-of-the-box, neurodiverse kids. I'm so glad you're here.

Hello, and welcome back to the 90-Minute School Day, a podcast where we reframe education in just about the time it takes for a school bus ride. I'm your host, Kelly Edwards, and today's episode is all about putting curriculum in its place. Music.

As home-educating parents, we often find ourselves tangled in the web of curriculum. curriculum. But what if I told you it doesn't have to be that way? Join us today as we explore how to navigate the world of curriculum with confidence and discover the power in letting go of rigid structures and embracing a more organic approach to learning.

In this episode, you're invited to listen in on a recorded live conversation between my good friend, Leona Francisco, Cisco and I and some fellow homeschooling parents as we talk through this topic of how to put curriculum in its place. From defining curriculum to debunking myths, we cover it all. So buckle up and get ready to rethink education as we dive deep into today's episode. Music.

Party rolling. I feel like we're going to like scratch the surface today and leave everybody wanting more just because this is such a huge topic. So I wanted to get right into it. Would you like to kind of introduce yourself, Liana? All right, that sounds great. Thank you so much for getting us started, Kelly. So my name is Liana Francisco, and I do this room once a week, usually with Kelly Edwards. And we like to talk about how to make homeschooling really easy.

Easy. That's the point of this room. And, you know, my background is that I'm a grown unschooler. So I was unschooled from birth until I was 16 years old when I started college. Really, you could argue I continued to unschool after that because it was, you know, all student-driven, all my choices about where I wanted to study and what I wanted to study and how I wanted to study it.

But I did at that point begin like actually going to a community college and then transfer to to university eventually. And then in my 20s, I also went ahead and got a master's degree in public administration as well. So I went along to do quite a bit of formalized education. But until I was 16 years old, I pretty much just ran wild with my brothers and our friends and learned through life.

So I have that background and that perspective to share with all of you that, Things can work out, even if you do things in a pretty radical way. And then now I'm an unschooling parent. So I have a five-year-old little boy that I unschool. And then I'm also a foster parent. So I always have one or two other little kiddos with me as well in my home, usually under school age. And so I'm doing that along with all of the working in the world.

I'm sure many of you guys can relate to the hustle. We've already been up to the town near us, up to Tacoma, to deliver breakfast sandwiches for the business I own and all of that. So we are always doing the work hustle and the homeschool hustle and all of the above. So I'm excited to be in this room with you guys here today, mostly because I like sharing the inspiration from my childhood, but I also need the support as the parent.

So it's so great to be able to have both things happen at the same time in these rooms. That's really about me. I do just always about three or four different things at once, but it always seems to turn out just fine. So that's a little short intro about me. What about you, Kelly? I always love your intros. Yes, I am Kelly Edwards, and I am the creator of the 90-Minute School Day.

And that business stemmed out of my own relationship with bringing my child home from the traditional school system, starting homeschooling. And I repeated everything that I knew from my own experience attending traditional schools. And it didn't work for us. I know that that works for some people, and that's great. Right.

But if it's not working for you, that is really where my my passion point is, is to help other parents who are finding themselves in that place where I was or something similar. And just like Liana said, to kind of for us to gather together, for us to just listen and be inspired by someone else, to be able to maybe capture some good tools or resources to use or maybe a mindset shift that needs to happen so that we can enjoy our lives.

Career homeschooling, even if it's just for a year, or if we're going to be like lifelong homeschoolers, what does that even mean? How do we do that? So that's a little bit about me professionally with where I am now in my career. I have had sort of like a jack of all trades, colorful background on different careers, but two large ones are corporate event planning. And also I was an energy trader. I traded energy on the electrical grid.

So that's kind of a random fact about me. I have three children. They are kind of spans and different age groups. They are 14, eight and four years old. So I've got a preschooler, an elementary schooler and a high schooler. So that's a little bit of an interesting fact. And then we've been homeschooling for eight years. We live in the Shenandoah Valley here in West Virginia. And I am also a foster parent. We don't have anyone that we're fostering right now.

But we do have one of our former foster youths, who's also the biological sister to my eldest. They unfortunately were split up, but she is living with us for two weeks, sort of as a summer break, and we're enjoying her. So I'm ready for this conversation today, Liana.

How do we put curriculum in its place? So what should we talk about first, do you think? I think we should talk about what we mean by curriculum, right? Because I think that that could be interpreted in lots of different ways. Do we we just mean like those big box curriculums that, you know, kind of give you every little detail of what you need to accomplish? Or do we mean resources? So let's let's do a little bit of that first. Do you have I know you love to have definitions for things.

So I'm wondering if you have a thought on like what you mean by curriculum? Yes. Okay. So I think first of all, I'll talk about when we say curriculum, and please feel free to jump in with your own definition of curriculum or what you think about it in the chat, everyone, and we'll kind of read those out.

But when I think of curriculum, if I'm just talking to someone on the street, I understand that I'm talking with that person about sort of the scope and sequence of a particular grade that a child needs to know. And it's something that's laid out in kind of commonly understood subject areas like reading, writing, math, social studies, and science. That's kind of, I think, what is kind of the street definition of curriculum.

And then how I would define it, actually, I looked it up. I looked it up in the dictionary before this conversation. And it was interesting because it's derived from kind of a new Latin term out of the Middle Ages that's kind of derived from the original Latin root word. And it means a course of study.

And that course is referring to like running a race. And I just thought that was so interesting because to me, the minute I heard that, it just seems to speak to the walk and pace and course of life. And so the course of study to me, by that word, means to kind of learn as we go. And we're certainly biologically engineered to do so. The human person is geared to learn from birth all the way until death. death. And we are like learning animals, we are learning all the time.

And so when we have that as our definition, it kind of changes what we're even talking about. So I think today's discussion might be in a large way, kind of talking about those two mindsets on how we're viewing curriculum, how we're using curriculum, and how we can find a way to kind of use what is sold to us as curriculum in a kind of scope and sequence bookish type of way and use in our homeschools or not use in our homeschools.

So that's kind of how I would lay up this conversation, Liana, on kind of those two ideas. That's kind of how I frame it out in my head. What about you? And anyone else, feel free to jump in the comments. Sorry to cut you off, Liana. Yeah, absolutely. And also feel free to raise your hands, folks, because it's so fun when you guys all come up and talk with us if you're you're able to.

I understand that you're not always able to. There might be dishes to be done and children to be hanging out with and or work to be happening. But if you are able to, please do raise your hand and come up and hang out with us up here as well. I love your thought that there's the scope and sequence, like everything your kid is supposed to like, supposed to know, I say in air quotes, right? I think that's a really important element of the curriculum.

And I think that's why there's so much pressure and stress around it, because you get concerned that, well, if I'm not doing it, then they're not learning what they're supposed to know. And this is going to get us into trouble down the road at some point or another.

So I love that definition of curriculum. And then it's true that like when I think of just the word curriculum, I always think of, you know, like that course syllabus that you get at the beginning of a college class and, you know, all the reading and everything. So, you know, it can be really specific to a discipline as well, to a particular area that you're seeking knowledge in. That can be the curriculum to go down that that path as well.

So we can talk about that as well. But I do think the biggest piece that most people think of, homeschoolers think of when they think of curriculum is that big, everything my child is supposed to know this year to be a well-rounded third grader, etc. Yes. Yes. Okay. So I think we've kind of touched bases on a lot of terminology and ways to look at curriculum and that term and how we view it as a society and then maybe how we view it personally or in our homes.

I know you and I wanted to talk this week about this, Leona, because we are kind of starting a new school year in the sense of like many people go back to school, whether they're going to a brick and mortar school or they're restarting their homeschools. And this is a really big stress point I find from my own experience. And then also having conversations in real life or online with other homeschooling parents about like, did I pick the right one?

Do I need to have this? Did I not order enough? How much should I spend? Do I get a grade level for each of my children? How can I simplify this? Do I have to study? You know, there are so many questions here. And we definitely want to make sure that we're bringing the attention where everybody wants to discuss it today. So feel free to put that in the chat. But maybe we can just talk about some common mindsets and mistakes.

And using the word mistakes isn't maybe the right terminology, but like when you feel like you're making a mistake or you're fearful of this is not the right move or you feel like you might need more, like that's what I kind of mean by mistakes, this kind of fearful mentality around curriculum and you're not comfortable, you're confused. Right.

Let's talk through some of those. Yeah, well, one of the other things I want to just mention, too, is this, you know, all those questions you were bringing up about, you know, am I getting the right curriculum or do I need different ones for all my kids or can they work together on the same ones, even though they're different ages? You know, all of this sort of thought. There is so much out there right now that the overwhelm of research for curriculums

is just so real. I mean, I just want to acknowledge when I was a kid, there was a handful of curriculums that you could buy. I mean, it was just a handful. That's all there was. And you basically pick them based on your family's educational philosophies. And that was it. Like there was one or two available for each type of educational path you might want to take. And it was just so easy to choose those things because there wasn't that much out there.

And now it is literally just endless how long you could do research for, how long you could agonize over which curriculum to pick for your children, whether you should have different ones for different kids, all of all of that. So I just want to acknowledge that if you're in this pit right now, I'm trying to find curriculum.

I feel like once June rolled around, like all the Facebook groups I'm involved in, all of the online stuff with homeschoolers, it was just everything just started getting bombarded with questions and comments about about curriculum. Because people have that. You're not alone if that's where you're at right now and if that's what you're going through.

So, you know, I think this is a kind of a funny conversation for me to be having, Kelly, because I've never, when I was growing up as a homeschooler, used a curriculum, literally never. And you turned out okay. So I hope that just freed some people, like you don't necessarily even have to have curriculum. No, absolutely. I think that's really important for people to realize is that

it is not required and your kids can turn out fine. Now, my family would have resources, which, you know, I would say we would have some math books on the shelf. We had a beautiful set of world book encyclopedias. We had, you know, subject matter books on specific subject matter that we were interested in learning at the time. And we also had what would like music curriculum for the different lessons we were in and stuff like that for music. music.

But we never had the full scope, you know, that you were supposed to learn for third grade, for example. And that always worked out for me. But you know, the biggest thing that I see with families with the curriculum, that biggest pitfall is that they think they have to do all of the curriculum. What's your thoughts on that, Kelly? Oh, totally. I was that lady. I was like, we have to finish the curriculum. We have to do all 36 weeks, all five days, and we want it done.

My daughter and I, our first year, we had it done by March because we decided we were just going to double it up. So, I mean, it was just ridiculous. Half the time we were having a good time until we weren't. Just because that type of pacing is not natural and it's not set up for sustainability.

Whether you're doubling it up like we were, getting gangbusters on it, or if you're just struggling to keep up with whatever the pacing is set for you in that curricula, which I think is a great question, Liana, because it really, we have to kind of pull ourselves back and remind ourselves of whoever's written this curriculum, you know, whatever their background is, they're writing the curriculum for.

A very specific type of age of learner, developmental place that that learner is, where they think, it kind of gets back to what you were saying with the shoulds, where they think those kids at that age level and developmental level and neurotypical level should be. And then they've broken it out according to them.

And they may not even have ever homeschooled. They might might be like educators, or they might have these can also be for like, there's a lot of really great resources out there made by homeschool parents, which is wonderful. But their homeschool is different than your homeschool. And so it's about understanding that first of all, and then and then being able to know how to use the curriculum to work for your family. And a lot of that is to remind ourselves that the curriculum is a tool.

And it is not the the master, it is not not the expert. You are. Your child is. You guys understand yourselves the best. And so it's about looking at it in a different light. So I've kind of gone away from your question, but I kind of feel like it relates back to it.

No, it absolutely does. It's saying, how does this actually work for you? And not trying to do every little element of it because the curriculum says it. It's really, there's a confidence there, right? There's a confidence and knowing that you can evaluate material and you can make choices about what's most important for you and what's not most important for you. And it does require some, I don't know what the right word is.

Yeah, confidence, guts, ability to say, I don't need this element and that's gonna be okay. Or I can, my kid can learn this another time or another way. And I think that's kind of the core of the difference. I feel like when you get the brand new homeschooler that's feeling real nervous and the confident homeschool parent that's a little more experienced. Absolutely. I agree with that 100%. One of the first steps, the baby steps I took away from how I was allowing, I bought a box curriculum.

I bought a grade level box curriculum. I did a bunch of research just right out of the gates. When we started homeschooling, I interviewed a bunch of homeschooling moms I knew. I did even more research and I finally decided on this one box curriculum, which is great. It was a good starting off point. I felt very safe because I had bought all of it. But even on top of that, I added like Spanish and I kept adding things.

I added a health curriculum because I wanted her to understand about her body. And I had kind of lost track in my desire to not. Support my child in every realm, I'd lost track that she's in second grade. She doesn't need to learn everything right now. And that there are other avenues to take to learning alongside her that are more developmentally appropriate than just sitting at a desk and doing desk work all day.

So I think one of the biggest steps that we took, it was a good first baby step, was she was an excellent speller. And I was using spelling words and drawing attention to her. Spelling and we would have like a spelling test on Friday. And about, I don't know, four to six months into this, I realized this is ridiculous. She doesn't need to learn how to spell. She's naturally good at spelling. But that was kind of something that was coming from inside of me because I was not a good speller.

And I wanted to make sure that she didn't like miss out on spelling. But actually what the science and the research says is that like some people are are naturally good spellers and some people aren't, but your brain absorbs spelling and by and large, you've got it by the time you're in high school. And that's just like a developmental leap of your brain. And there's always going to be those words that you struggle with, like they are there, theirs, whatever it is.

But by and large, that developmental age of the teenage years is able to assimilate spelling in a way that we don't need to put that pressure on younger children. Yes, I love that.

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Good morning. Can I say all of the above? Absolutely. So when we started homeschooling our only child, she's now 10. So I guess we officially started when she was going into grade three pandemic. And where I live, which is in Alberta, you can follow the Alberta program of study, which is the curriculum that is in public school. And I believe there's 1,700 points that you have to address throughout the school year.

Or you can have parent-led, you submit a learning plan for the year and there are 22 points to make. I chose the 22. I could figure this out. However, we still did order. It's a Canadian curriculum book that got vetoed within a few weeks because nobody was happy. Nobody was happy. It was tears. It was fights. It was at the kitchen table. So we started the curriculum of life. What are you interested? Let's follow this. And it's been eye-opening.

My sister, whose daughter is starting homeschooling grade one. She looked at the curriculum for our area for grade one, 35 pages. It's grade one. It has things such as, can you hold a paintbrush? Check. So she went through and checked everything, and I think there's only about 10 things that her daughter cannot do. Not started grade one yet. So a lot of it, I think, is perspective, what you expect. I have not looked at the grade five program of study for our province.

I know there are things she doesn't know in that. However, her goal this year is to learn three languages. That's not in the program of study. It's in her what she wants to learn. Oh, Carrie, I love that. Thank you for sharing. She's so ambitious. Three languages. That's amazing. And I think you're so right about, you know, when we look at kind of those lists. Right? Everybody likes a good list. And we kind of look down the list.

So much of those lists are so arbitrary, made up by, you know, their science behind it and everything. But it's just just also not, it's there to be a benchmark, not, you know, a test or some sort of evaluation. It's like a pass fail. It's kind of like showing you where the average is. And so your child might be accelerated or ahead in so many areas, and then they just might not have gotten there yet. And that's okay. So it's kind of a good guidepost and that's how you're supposed to use it,

right? I think that's a great point to bring our attention to. And that's really what curriculum Curriculum, in my mind, is how I look at curriculum is this is a tool. Someone on my Instagram feed yesterday did a great, had a great little one-liner and she said it was, she looks at curriculum as a tool and not a path. So again, I think it's like you maintain your own agency in this.

I see that Cindy's up here too, Liana. Before we get to Cindy, we had a couple questions that popped up in the chat. Did you see those? I thought there were some good questions. I didn't see them yet. Let's read them out. Okay. Okay, so Angela, and I hope I'm saying your name right, Angela, she just started her first day today. And she said, curriculum freaks me out. In a sense, all I think about is books, books, books, and brick and mortar school.

It's our first day today, and I'm kind of winging it with what they want to do. So would you like to speak to Angela? Yeah. I mean, I think that that's amazing, Angela. I'm glad that you feel confident that you're able to do it. I think that's a huge mark of your ability to be successful as a homeschooler is just diving in like that and giving it a try. And, you know, as Kelly was saying, you know, I grew up without curriculum and you really can, quote, wing it.

And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing, as long as you're paying attention to your children, you're aware of their interests and you're helping them discover resources and find ways to learn those interests and to continue to move forward in them, then you're good and you've done the work of it. So if I were you, I would embrace that instinct and continue forward. And you'll know if there starts to be an issue where you need to call in more resources, you'll be able to tell.

And there's plenty of time to get caught up in childhood. For example, I'm just going to give an example that many of you have probably heard before. When I was growing up, I chose not to study math most of my childhood because I just wasn't super interested in it. I wasn't bad at it. It wasn't hard. There was just so many other things I would rather do with my time as a child. child. And so I just did other things, much to my mother's deep, deep concern.

But she allowed it because she was bought into this concept of unschooling. And the relationship was more important to her than me making sure that I memorized my multiplication tables at a certain age. But when I was a young teenager, I finally had a reason. I had utility to learn math because I wanted to get into a college program where I had to pass into intermediate algebra. And so at at that point, I learned math. It took me less than one school year to get caught up.

I think I started in about long division and then went through to intermediate algebra. I did about a grade a month and it was just not hard. And so I just, I want to give you that little story as an example of. There's so many different ways to acquire the knowledge and the facts that we think children need to learn, the sort of stuff that's housed within curriculums. And there's so many ways to gather the critical thinking skills and the learning confidence, the ability to be good learners.

That's what's actually required to be successful as an adult. So I would say keep at it and you'll keep finding your way. I love that. I really do. I think I always love that story of you learning math in one year.

Like that I think is one of the best stories that you share and I think it's so empowering to parents especially when we kind of we get pulled into this and just when you've kind of come to peace you go out to your next homeschool meetup and all the other moms are like asking you what you're doing for the year and they're telling you what they're doing and they're telling you why it's so good and you need to try it because you said little Johnny is not doesn't

know his multiplication tables yet and then all of a sudden you're you were confident going in and now you're second guessing yourself. So there's a lot of that too, that we have in society at large, but we have that even inside of our homeschool communities that I know can really be a tripping up point for everyone. So Angela, it sounds like you've got a good start going. I love that you're winging it and you've got to just make it fun. Like what a great, fun first day.

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Guides follow and cheer you on as you lead the way. Get the guidance you need to guide your homeschool. Learn more about guide training and join the wait list by clicking the link in the show notes. All right. So I wanted to talk to Cindy and I think Cindy would be great to kind of like read David's question and then Cindy, have you introduce yourself and then we can chit chat because he always has such a great point of view.

And David writes, my first instinct when I hear curriculum is a system of learning that is set up to keep kids at grade level. So welcome to the stage, Cindy. Will you un-mic introduce yourself and then tell us what you you think about that? Sure. My name is Cindy Gaddis and I unschooled my children from the beginning, starting in 1992. They are all adults now. My youngest is 21 and I now run a, an unschooling school.

As for David's question, Hey David, David and I are getting to know each other off Clubhouse. Anyway, I kind of, I think that's probably what curriculum was created for. Why? Right. Right. Was to. Well, as Carrie was saying, those little lists that are there, a curriculum was created to achieve all those those standards. Right. I agree. That's probably what curriculum was started for.

And then, as Leanna had said, starting in 1992, when there was not as much curriculum available to homeschoolers, maybe curriculum has broadened a little bit more in the homeschooling world. Old to, I mean, they still may be standards-based as well, but maybe not as much as curriculum you find in school. Like when I see the school curriculum, there's no way I have any interest in that kind of curriculum. But homeschooling curriculum tends to have maybe a little bit of a different

flavor to it. Maybe. I'd like to know what everyone else thinks. About that. But really, I actually, Leanna, I was trying to clap for what you said, but I realized I looked like I was raising my hand. But maybe we can't clap when we're in the audience. I don't know. When you said you have to be brave to go off curriculum.

And it's so true. It's kind of like what I'd said in a previous clubhouse, I think, when I said, we're all so so afraid of the secret thing that's in our house, looking over our shoulder that tells us we're being, doing it wrong. Whether it's the principal's office or the teacher, you know, the A, there's something that we took with us from school that makes us think somebody's watching us. So an example of what Leanna was saying, I had used the 100 easy lessons to

learn reading with my oldest. this, I felt like it actually matched his thing, but it is a scripted program. And when you read the how to in the book, it very much says you have to do the script. You cannot go off script or it won't work. Okay. And it kept reiterating that. But I remember seeing some of the little exercises in there. And I said, okay, my son would think that's really stupid. I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that.

They had said things like, you have to cover up the picture first and let them read it and then uncover it. And I thought, oh, he's gonna be mad saying, why are you covering up something I want to see? So I disobeyed. I disobeyed the script. But you know, what's funny is there was a little something in me that felt like I'm disobeying. So I think it's acknowledging acknowledging that we carry something. We do carry something that makes us feel.

Like we're cheating, you know, that whole thing that we carry with us from school. Someone's watching us doing it wrong. And I've got to make sure nobody knows. And yeah, I'm by myself in the house. Nobody knows I'm cheating. But anyway, it still was a little thing in my head, right? So I did it. And of course, it did work. Guess what? It worked. Not only did it work without following the script, I only did half the book. And then he was done with it. And he became a reader after that.

App and because he just kind of needed a kickstart and it worked for what he needed. And so guess what? They want you to believe certain, maybe it's they're covering their own behind. I don't know what it is. So people can't come by and say, well, it didn't work. Well, you didn't do it right. You know, that whole idea that there is a right way. There's so many things I could say. So I'm just going to quick jump to the other thing that I wanted to say.

I'm a big left brain, right brain brain person that, you know, the right brain people are creative, holistic thinkers, global thinkers, and left brain people are sequential. The three R's is exciting to them. I'm a very left brain learner and left brain people, you know, okay, I am an avid curriculum collector. Because curriculum excites me with my left brain side. I love school. I love getting worksheets and filling it all out. It's like who I am.

It was enjoyable because it's my left brain sequential side of me. And, but it sits on my shelves for many, many years collecting dust. I just can't help myself to collect, you know, and because I find it exciting, even if I don't end up actually using it that much, but I did like it. Was it said, somebody said that somebody said they use it as a tool, not a path.

And I'm saying that what I did was, because I love school, because I'm left brain, I feel like you don't have to throw out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to schoolie things. As long as what was said there, it's a tool, not necessarily a path. Understanding that curriculum, and even me as a left brain person can see that curriculum tends to be shallower. In my opinion, it's kind of shallow and there's much more rich ways to learn than a fill out a worksheet kind of thing.

And there's a lot of curriculums out there trying to bring in group dynamics, recreating, you know, play acting out things. Things are a guide for you to bring in something more interesting. And then the last thing is developmentally, I think five to 10 years old curriculum is very, is not very essential. essential. 11 to 13 is, I think shift starts happening and having formal academics can be useful. And as you get older, like Leanna said, when she finally decided, Hey, I should learn math.

She probably took some kind of a resource and learned it. And we do tend to as adults, when we want to specialize, you know, when my son wanted to do computer program, he was using computer programming books. It wasn't a curriculum, but it was still how to, you know, C++, how to do C++, how to do this, how to do that. He was using book resources to teach himself. My son was learning book resources to teach himself Japanese.

So there's times in developmentally when that can be a way to become specialized. There. That's so good, Cindy. Thank you so much. Everything that you always bring to the table is so worthwhile. And I just love it so much. especially the bringing attention to how older kids enjoy specialized learning.

And I'm finding that to be true with my oldest, like, her favorite thing to do is to go into the adult section of the library and pull out like, nonfiction manuals on things she's interested in, like she must have read, I don't know, like, maybe eight gardening manuals over the winter, just because she was really passionate about gardening. And so I just, I just think that that's. It's something to point out too, I can speak to from my own life because we're all learning from each other here.

So I just wanted to kind of put that in there before we speak to David. Liana, did you have anything else you wanted to say? Yeah, I just wanted to say that Cindy, what you were saying about collecting all the all the curriculums, but then never really using them. I think so many people can probably relate to that. And for me, I can relate to it from the perspective of like of cookbooks and recipes. Because for me, I am I'm an avid cook.

It's part Part of like what I do for work is a food business and I love food. I love cooking, but I never follow a recipe. I mean, like I never follow a recipe, but I love looking at recipes for inspiration and ideas and to clarify thoughts and answer a little question that I have about a technique or something like that.

And so I'm sure that many people that are the curriculum collectors, they do that as And it really does add to their life and add to their ability to be the, you know, the teacher leader in their family, because they they are collecting information and resources and concepts and ideas from the curriculums, even if they don't follow it, you know, step by step. up. Oh, totally, Liana. That's what I do. And I think that that's what we all do, right?

That's kind of very Montessori. It's like she was very big on like mixed stages. And you teach by and Charlotte Mason talks about this too in her method, like narration and repeating back information that you've learned helps you as you teach someone else or you're just in dialogue with them of something that you know that reinforces the learning.

So if you the homeschooling parent enjoys reading these curriculums and you're enjoying this subject, your enjoyment is going to transfer over because of the relationship. As long as you've got a healthy relationship with your child, it's going to transfer because they're going to be interested in some capacity over what you're interested in, just like you're interested in what they're interested in because of the relationship. So that's so great. Okay. David, welcome. David, welcome.

How are you today, my friend? I am doing well. Can you hear me? Loud and clear. Okay, great, great. Hi, everyone. Hi, Kelly. Hi, Liana. Hi, Carrie. Hi, Cindy. So I'm going to try to stay focused because anyone who knows me knows like, yeah, I can go there. So my brain kind of goes all over. But for curriculum, yes, I collected curriculum. I have young kids. There's seven now. And for the first like for like 18 months, we did exactly what you were talking about, Kelly.

We did like the double up on curriculum. Like we would just, we were by the end of their kindergarten, quote unquote year, we were done with first grade curriculum. We had gone all the way through it. And I just kind of wanted to talk a little bit for maybe people who have younger kids and are just starting off like Angela, I don't know the age of your kids, but you're on your first day, which is super exciting.

But I've had a couple experiences recently that were really made me reflect on curriculum and so I wanted to come up here and just kind of share like a just a couple little things where I was really into curriculum I took all of the professional development courses that I could find for math and for language arts I was in the classes with all the teachers of elementary kid at learning all the best ways, the most hands-on ways to teach everything.

And I had really hands-on curriculum. And one of the things that we would learn in like the math curriculum was telling time. And, you know, they would do analog clocks and digital clocks. And this is how you tell time. And this is the minute hand. This is the hour hand. This is the five-minute segment. And, you know, they work up from like hours.

Hours, and then they would take it down to like, then you would learn half hours, and then you would learn 15 minutes, and then you would learn five minutes, and then you would learn it to the minute, right? And it's all very structured, like this is how you do it. And by the time you get to second grade, you're telling time to the minute. And so this is how I was teaching it, you know, and it was a bit of a trudge through the mud with it. But that's what we were doing.

And also they would have you learning like calendar, like so days of the week, month, you know, all these types of things. And they would have you like schedule things on a calendar as you got up into first and second grade. So you were like making keeping your own planner, all this type of thing.

So over the past so we let go of all curriculum a year ago just completely stopped all curriculum and i just let my kids go and i've been observing and observing and observing for the past year and what i have seen in the past six months is so mind-blowing and it's like they're learning All of those things that are on those curriculums, but not in that same order. And it's happening. And maybe, yeah, they'd be in like they're going would be going into second grade now.

And they might not be exactly the second grade thing for this specific telling time thing or calendar thing, or whatever, or reading, but they're way ahead in other areas. So for example, telling time. My daughter, my mom bought her a clock, a digital clock for her birthday three years ago when we started learning to tell time. She threw that clock around like a toy for like the first three years.

But recently, over the past two months, she has asked me to set the time on it and she checks it every morning now when she wakes up to see what time it is. And this has happened after asking me over the past year about time in her own way, her own time, all those types of things. And. My son has been doing the same thing on, you know, on his own time. So anyway, they're learning to tell time their own way. And they both can tell time now.

And just the other day, my daughter was sitting down and she showed me like, oh, let me show you something on my tablet. And she flipped over to her calendar. And she said, on August 24th, I put that Star Stables releasing new horses.

Horses and she had and she showed me and on august 24th she had typed in star stable releasing new star stable colon releasing new horses had the names of the horses and i said oh did you put in when we're going on vacation and so then she's like when is it and i told her the date and she flipped over to the date she popped it in and then she typed in leaving for hawaii comma and then colton yells over oh remember to add sand angels we want to make sand angels and then she wrote comma

make sand angels and she is this is on her own so she's learning the days of the week and so is my son and the month and how to plan and how to schedule because she's finding things in her life and he's finding things in his life that they find important and want to schedule and understand they are involving in a time so anyway it's just a way of saying these curriculum i think And again, you know, anyone who's going to think about a lot, but like they're a way of

just taking learning that has happened natural and then trying to segment it out into exact steps and how they're going to happen. But the problem is, that's not actually how learning works. And if the child doesn't find a need for it, it's going to take a billion times longer to learn that thing. Whereas if you just allow them to find the need in their life, they will learn the same thing in such a deep way and so much faster. I'm done. Thank you.

David, thank you. I'm like, just like clapping. I'm like, and we're done here. That was such a beautiful example. Storytelling is so powerful. Thank you for sharing that story with us of like, where you started, how much work you did. You did such a great job of like breaking down that math curriculum. It sounded a little painful. And then just the natural way your daughter learned time without any teaching and instruction. It reminds me of my middle daughter. her. She learned how to tell time.

I've told this story before, just because like all of a sudden, we didn't, we weren't trying to teach her time. That was not even on my radar. And then she was just like telling me the time one day. And I was like, that's right. How do you know? And she had taught herself by looking at the stove clock, the microwave clock and the coffee clock in our kitchen. Her, we have an Eden kitchen and her chair faces those three.

And she'd just been staring at them for months, unbeknown to us, like trying to figure out the sequence and patterns of those numbers and what they meant. And then it clicked one day and she was very happy to tell us that she knew how to tell time. And one of those is military time. So she was doing these conversions in her head at the same time. The coffee clock is in military time.

So that's just another example to kind of like back up what David was saying from like our real lives of how these kids are just wired to learn and to teach themselves. Liana? I was just going to say that what I'm hearing over and over again is this piece about utility. And I like to talk about that a lot too. too, like when a kid has a need to know something because it's important to them, then they're going to do it. Right. And it doesn't. And, you know, maybe the.

It's important to you and your family for your kids to remain mostly grade level. And you'll be able to find opportunities within your curriculum to emphasize the parts that they're really enjoying, to speed through the parts that they're maybe not enjoying so much, to go back to those pieces at later times if you really feel like it's important for your kids to learn those pieces.

I like what Cindy was saying about when kids are older, they oftentimes are more excited to engage in something that seems more like curriculum, like a deep dive of learning. And that certainly was true for me. And I noticed with other homeschoolers I grew up with around that middle school age, it was much more interesting for me to consume more detailed information about stuff. I was less interested in a survey and I wanted the deep dive and going to school

and reading several books about something. you know, when I was 16, 17 years old was super, super fun for me. And even when I was probably about starting around 14, it was easy for me to learn in that sort of organized way. But again, I still needed to have utility to learn it. I needed to have the motivation either because it was a prerequisite for something I desire to learn that was true with math for me. I didn't really want to learn the math, but I had to learn it to move forward.

Or the content itself was was super interesting to me. So the piece about utility, you know, how can we use these curriculums that have super valuable information in them to actually, you know, capitalize when our kids want to learn the things? I think that's a really interesting question as well. I mean, I've never used curriculums myself, so I'm not really sure, but I can imagine there's a lot of opportunities to do that.

I think the question I get to want to talking through, okay, I've spent $800 on curriculum and I'm loving everything people are saying, but what do I do? You know, I can't send it back or, or, you know, how can I, how can I approach curriculum or our curriculum works for this child or, or how do we kind of like use curriculum appropriately if we have time maybe maybe towards the end of this.

We can talk through that a little bit because I do think that that I think there's a place for curriculum in homeschools and that you don't have to have a curriculum. I think that that's also very, very appropriate. It comes down to and I think Robin said it beautifully, Robin Kay in there. It kind of comes down to aligning with your family's values, who your child is, what your child needs. Like you were just talking about, Liana, and that utility aspect is beautiful.

So we can kind of dig into that at the end if it hasn't already gotten answered by speaking with you. Tawanas, welcome to the stage.

Go ahead and mic and share with us. welcome everybody welcome liana kelly carrie cindy david i'm already loving what i'm hearing i know i just came in here but i just heard cindy and david and i'm already hearting and and you know hand-fiving digitally over here so i love it i love it i'm glad that i'm part of a space where i can talk about homeschool yes so i homeschool uh four of my six children and And throughout the years, I homeschooled for over eight years. My oldest is now 17.

So I went with curriculum. You know, I learned how to do curriculum. I'm also an educator. I have, you know, I've been in the brick and mortar field and teaching online. So that alone helped me how to plan, you know, over time. But I think when my family started expanding, I started to be more flexible. And my approach is that children learn when they have fun every child is intelligent and.

You know, there's no such thing as a child that, you know, usually when they struggle with something, I find it because they're because perhaps it's not being taught in a way that like that is acclimated to their hobby or something that they love. For example, my middle child, he loves art.

He loves it so much. so when it comes to like spelling what have you he loves it when like for example at first i'll introduce all the spelling words then the second day i will say okay now we can take each spelling word we can draw the spelling words we can write a sentence behind each flash card you know and they love it they love to get out big markers and crayons and draw the spelling words and i also did this and as a teacher as well i also use gamification you

know i like they love tic-tac-toe for example with spelling this again i will you know they will play a game and if they spell the word right they they can put the x or o or we'll play like a you know a red light green light but with spelling words or for example with reading we will have a hunt you know they have words flashcards all around the home and they will you know read as they go as they pick up a card my.

Oldest he's more acclimated into technology he loves technology and now he's 17 he's he's so good on animation he's doing so well in programming and he primarily taught himself self with that learning can be it can be approached in so many different ways and just like david said if it's if it's something that you know when you're when you're allowing them to explore you'll be surprised how much they can learn and it's not have to be focused on a curriculum or doing

worksheets so that's all i wanted to say about like children learn when it's fun on and when it's hands-on, you know, pertaining to real life. And thank you so much for allowing me to be on this stage. Thank you. Kawana, thank you so much for coming up. That's some really awesome, awesome words of wisdom.

I'd love, it fits so well into what we're talking about here, which is, you know, you had curriculums that was important to your family to have those pieces and you used them, how it worked for your family, particularly as you came further along in your homeschooling, you're juggling lots of things, lots of different kiddos at once, right? Right. And so you but I love that piece of making it fun. And it sounds like you're able to adapt the curriculums to take what was useful to your family and,

you know, sort of release the rest of it. I love that. Kelly, do you have anything you wanted to say? Just echoing what you said, Liana, thank you, Tawana, for coming up here and sharing so many good practical stories from your own kind of arsenal of experience. And one thing you said at the beginning was just how intelligent children are. And I wanted to just double down on that is we should always assume competence. Working with neurodivergent children, that's one thing that is so important,

but it's important for everyone. one. And that is to assume competence. Even if they're expressing something differently or they're not fully verbal or they're not where you think they should be, they are right where they need to be for them. And that they're going to naturally seek out what they need. If they need some sensory inputs, they're going to seek in that sensory inputs. They're going to be swinging around and just take them outside.

If they want to tell time, they're going to figure out how to tell time. If they want to read, they're going to learn how to read. And so really, I think kind of to wrap up the discussion for me, at least, and then Leanna, I know you'll probably have some other words of wisdom for us. But like, for me, it's looking at curriculum as a resource that we have as a family to augment the learning because the learning is going to happen anyway. way. And my job as a parent is to get out of my own way.

That's what I've learned. And to get out of my own head and my own shoulds and to recalibrate myself when society or someone else has kind of pushed me off my moorings with questioning and I start getting back into, I think it was Cindy was talking about that kind of authority figure, that invisible authority figure.

And to recognize that, to get myself back onto what I truly know, what I've witnessed in my my own children and to use curriculum as something to help them with something that they already want to learn. So that's kind of where I would leave curriculum for me. And it's different for everyone. You ultimately need to do what's good for your family. And if you're having friction and you're, battles and uncomfortable relationship-breaking moments in your homeschool,

that's a signal to relook at that particular area and rework it. So that's it for me. Thank you, everyone, for coming up here. This conversation has been on fire. I've loved it so much. Liana? Yeah, I just want to say thank you to everyone for coming up. Thank you guys for coming up and hanging out with us on the stage too. Those of you who are able to raise your hands and talk talk with us up here. So many comments, so much engagement in the comment section.

I really appreciate that as well. It makes it, you know, Kelly and I can stand up here and talk amongst ourselves for an hour. We love doing that. We can talk for way longer than an hour on the phone. We have to be careful, but we love hearing from you guys as well. So thank you for joining us today. The big things that I, oh, and my son just said he loves you too. We love him. The big things that I take away from this room is, you know, the curriculum is for you.

It's for your family. It doesn't, it's not the boss of you. There's no one looking over your shoulder and telling you that you did it right or did it wrong. Even if you have authorities that you report to in your area, you are still calling the shots and you just have to work within their little framework and you will make it happen. And that's super flexible. And there's so many different ways to get that done and to meet those requirements.

And you're the expert on your family. Kelly likes to say that. And I love echoing that as well. And also this thought that there's always time to catch up. I think that's a really important thing to remember. Like even if your family does have some change and your kids need to get to quote grade level quickly, they can do that. It's all doable. And so there's really no reason to be fearful that you have to follow your curriculum if it's not working for your family.

You can take what you want and then you can release the rest of it. So that's all I have to say for today. day. Kelly, should we go ahead and close out the room? And that's a wrap for today's episode of the 90-Minute School Day. We hope you found inspiration in our discussion on putting curriculum in its rightful place. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast for more thought-provoking conversations on education and homeschooling.

And if you enjoyed today's episode, please take take a brief moment and leave us a rating or two moments and write a review. Your feedback not only helps others find the podcast, but it also helps us to continue to bring you valuable content. Until next time, remember that curriculum is just one tool in your educational toolbox. So go forth with confidence, embrace the. Music.