RAR #250: Relaxed, Bookish, and Ordinary

Sarah Mackenzie (00:00): I'm willing to bet the odds are quite good that you like the sound of a homeschool that's relaxed, and bookish, and ordinary. So, do I, and, in fact, I think that our kids thrive, and we do too, as homeschool moms when we are relaxed, bookish, and ordinary in our day-to-day homeschool lives. (00:21): Those three qualities, being relaxed, being bookish, and being ordinary are the three qualities that over 726 experienced homeschool moms told me are the most important. (00:34): Yeah. I'm serious. Let's talk about it. (00:42): Welcome to The Read-Aloud Revival. This is the show that helps you make meaningful, and lasting connections with your kids through books. I'm your host Sarah Mackenzie. I'm a homeschooling mother of six, the author of Teaching From Rest, and The Read-Aloud Family, and several picture books, including the upcoming picture book Dear Duck, Please Come! illustrated by Charles Santoso. You just have to see the cover for this one. It is to-die-for. (01:15): Okay. Today, I'm sharing a session I did at a series of homeschool conferences earlier this year, and the session was called Relaxed, Bookish, and Ordinary. If you're hoping that your homeschool can be any of those things, or all of them, keep listening. I bet you're a lot closer to it than you think. Enjoy. (01:42): Today, we're going to be talking about relaxed, bookish, and ordinary, how to create a homeschool you love. To start, I want to read to you a little snippet from The Year of Miss Agnes. Anybody in here, have you read The Year of Miss Agnes by Kirkpatrick Hill? (02:02): Okay. A few of you. It is a middle grade novel set in Alaska. Here's what you need to know, backwoods of Alaska, a small village, and they have a one room schoolhouse with teachers that just come in for a year to teach at this one room schoolhouse, and then leave, and then a new teacher comes in. (02:25): Kirkpatrick Hill really was a teacher in the backwoods of Alaska for many years. So, she wrote this novel based on her experience, and I want to read you just a part from chapter five. (02:37): "After we'd looked at all the books, and stuff, Miss Agnes told us all to sit down. Little Pete and Roger pretended like they were going to sit in the same chair by Marie, and they pushed each other, and wrestled. I waited for the teacher to holler at them, and hit her desk with a ruler, but she just looked and looked at them with her eyebrow up, and her mouth a little pushed to one side. (03:02): It wasn't a mean look. It was a smart look, if you know what I mean. So, they stopped, and sat down. It was no fun trying to get this teacher upset, because it didn't look like she could be upset. Miss Agnes was different in some way. She told us to take all our old books out, and put them on the desk. There were geography books, and history books, and reading books, and penmanship books you made little circles in. They were pretty beat-up. They weren't even new when we first got our school. Just hand-me-downs from another school that didn't need them. (03:37): She had us put all those books away in cardboard boxes, and she told little Pete and Roger that after school, they'd have to put them in the cache where we stored everything we didn't need. She even put the ugly old grade book in the boxes. 'I don't believe in grades," she said. Boy, was that good news. (03:54): We sure never started school throwing books out before. We didn't know what to think. Then the teacher put a big box on the long table, and we gathered around to watch while she unwrapped it. When she opened the box, it smelled so good, like new pencils, and that was because there were pencils in it. Not just the yellow kind we always had, but boxes and boxes of colored pencils with every color of lead you could think of, and there were big yellow boxes of crayons, 48 in a box, the skinny kind, not the fat kind we had before. And a box of green pencils with dark lead, and lots and lots of tin boxes of paints. (04:35): Each one had a little brush in it, and there was another bunch of little brushes tied together with a rubber band, and there was a wooden box with little metal tubes that Miss Agnes said had paint in them too. (04:47): I couldn't believe she was going to let us use all these beautiful things, but Miss Agnes started to lay the things out on the long table, and then she brought out paper from another box, medium-sized paper, and some big paper, bigger than we ever saw before. (05:02): "The first thing you must do," she said, "Is to brighten this school up." She really did have an English accent. I'm not just doing that for fun. (05:09): "Everyone will make a picture for the wall.' Miss Agnes showed us how to rule a margin for our picture, so there would be white space all around. This was for a frame. She told us we could use the big paper, or the little paper, and we could make a picture of anything we liked, but we had to fill in all the white space inside the frame with color. Miss Agnes said that was the difference between a fine painting, and a drawing. (05:34): She showed us how to wipe our brushes carefully while we were painting, and then she helped the littlest ones, Selena and Charlie Boy. They took the big boxes of crayons, and made a dark line with every single crayon. They held the crayon so hard their fingers turned white. They wanted to know the names of every color. They had funny names, not like the plain names on our old fat crayons. We laughed, and laughed when Miss Agnes said the names, burnt sienna and magenta and periwinkle. Flesh, that was very funny. (06:06): We all put the flesh crayon by our hands, and laughed, because our skin and that crayon weren't anything like the same color. Even when we put it by Miss Agnes' hand, it wasn't the same color. We didn't know who would have skin that color. Miss Agnes snorted, and said, "No one." (06:21): Pretty soon, everyone just got quiet. We were so happy making our pictures. Miss Agnes put a record on the record player. It was singing, only the voices were really high, and sliding around like. Once I heard that same kind of music in town. Dominic Carlotti, who owned the store there, played it on his record player. Only Dominic's was scratchier than Miss Agnes' record, so it seemed old. (06:48): This seemed new, and bright in some different language. The sunshine was filling the room from those bright windows, and that music was going up, up, up in some kind of way. I felt excited inside, like when the sternwheeler is coming up the river for the first time after the ice breaks up. (07:08): "Dominic has that kind of music," I told her. "Yes. He does," she said. "Dominic likes opera. It's the favorite kind of music where he comes from. He's Italian," she said. (07:21): I looked at the big map. She walked to it, and said, "Here, this one that looks like a boot. That's where Dominic comes from." I had never thought of people coming from anywhere before, and now I knew two new places, English and the boot. When all those pictures were on the wall, we couldn't stop looking at them. Every place we looked was some bright color." (07:45): I'm going to stop there, because I'll just keep reading, if you let me. What's going through your mind after you hear that passage? Does anything come to mind for you? (07:54): I know when I hear a passage like that, I think ... You can just feel the main character coming alive. Right? We put all the dusty old schoolbooks away, and the world comes out from these colored pencils and paints. (08:09): To me, it very much feels like the same thing we're doing in our homeschools, because we have this opportunity to do something better than maybe we experienced before, better than our kids might get elsewhere. (08:21): It inspires me, and it gives me this idea that, "This is what I want my homeschool to be like." I want it to be beautiful, and inspiring, and uncovering new interesting things. (08:32): Also, though, want to know that at the end of my homeschool day, I've done a good job, that we've gotten to the most important things, that we've been successful. I bet we probably all feel that way. Right? (08:47): We want our kids to be prepared for whatever comes next, which is this thing we're doing when we're homeschooling. We're excited, we want to give them this beautiful education, and we also really, really want to give them what they need for what comes next. (09:00): So, what do they need? You're like, "That's why I'm at this conference." But here is a spoiler alert, I can't tell you what your kids need, and nobody at this conference can tell you what your kids need, because God made you unique, and your kids unique, and your family unique, and he's put a unique vision in each of their hearts. (09:20): Now I'll introduce you to my family in just a second. My husband and I have six kids, and we've homeschooled them all the way through. Our oldest are 22, 20, and 18. So, they're all graduates. Our oldest, in fact, just graduated from college last month from Franciscan University of Steubenville. She did a semester in college in Austria, and visited nine different countries in Europe. She did a couple weeks in France. (09:44): Last summer, this is the picture up here, she ... Not through a school program, or a college program, or anything. She just decided to go on a mission trip to Uganda, and spent eight weeks living in a little village in Uganda on a mission trip, and she is headed to Scotland for a graduate degree next year. (10:06): Audrey just graduated with a degree in English. And our second daughter is working on a degree in illustration, and our third is working on a degree in philosophy. So, they will all be working at a Starbucks near you, I'm pretty sure. (10:19): Okay. So, what did she need? Well, I'll tell you what. When she was 10, 12, 14, 16, I had no idea that she needed skills to be able to travel all over the world by herself. She went to Uganda on this mission trip knowing nobody else who was there, and she is going to Scotland to grad school next year knowing zero people in Scotland, the entire country. Right? (10:40): How do you know what your child needs? Well, actually, what she needs was different than what this one needs. This is my art student. She's 20 years old, and ... (10:49): Okay. So, this is from last week. I had to throw this in the slide deck. So, she just finished her sophomore year at art school, and she came home for the summer, and my husband and I wanted to go on a walk after dinner. So, we're like, "Hey, Allison. Can you keep an eye on the kids?" And she's like, "Yeah. Do we have any sidewalk chalk around here?" "Sure. So, there's some in the garage." My husband and I leave, 35 minutes later, we came back to Van Gogh on our driveway. (11:13): What Allison needed was very different from what Audrey needed, and I didn't know this, we didn't know this. She had no formal art training. We had no idea. We'll get into it. (11:24): And then our son, who is 18, is also very different. So, he's double majoring in philosophy and economics. Neither of which I prepared him for. We'll get into that too. (11:36): He went to college as a freshman this year, and beat two all-time school records in track. Right? What he needs is very different than what Allison needed, which is very different than what Audrey needed. (11:49): One of the things that we do as homeschooling parents is we think like, "I need to make sure my kids have all the things they need before they leave," but I can tell you, and anyone who has homeschooled for a while will tell you, "All of your kids are different, and you don't know what they need." (12:03): So, there's something else that we can do instead, and we're going to talk about what we can do instead. The key, though, and the key that I'm going to keep coming back to, again and again, all weekend long, in fact, is that homeschooling is an act of faith, and we say that, and we're like, "Yeah. It's an act of faith. Got it. I would just like assurance that it's working," which is what the faith is for. That's the faith part. Right? You don't get to plant seeds in a garden, and then dig them up just to make sure the roots are going down, because if you do that, you kill the plant. Right? (12:36): In the same way, homeschooling is an act of faith, we don't get to dig up those seeds, and see if they're working. We don't even really know what it's going to grow into. That was never our job. Our job was to plant the seeds, to tend them, to water them, to weed, to cultivate the garden, and let him turn our garden into whatever it's meant to be. (12:56): You can't plant a seed, and then dig it up to see if it's growing. What we want most of all in our homeschools, usually, is we want assurance that it's all going to work, and that is the one thing we don't get, because there's no guarantee that just because we homeschool our kids, they're going to hold onto our faith, they're going to grow up living our values, or believing the same things we do, that they're going to succeed. There's no guarantees. (13:26): The good news is you were never asked to get perfect results, or to get specific results. You're asked to tend this garden, and we're going to talk all about what it means to tend that garden today. (13:38): Let me back up a little bit, and introduce you to my family. My husband Andrew and I have been married for 23 years. I mentioned that he was not super excited about homeschooling. (13:49): So, I had heard about homeschooling, read some blogs, read a few books, didn't know any real life homeschoolers, but I was pretty excited about this idea of not sending Audrey to school. I really felt like by the time they're five, they're nice to be around in a new kind of way than they were when they were three. (14:08): And I was like, "So, now that she's nice to be around, I'm supposed to send her off all day, and get her back tired at the end of the day? I'm not sure I like this bargain." Right? (14:16): But my husband knew one homeschooling family growing up, and they were super weird. And he was like, "No. You're going to start dressing weird. The kids are going to speak their own language." That does happen sometimes. Right? At the dinner table, I'm like, "Not in front of Dad. Keep the weird part tucked in." (14:40): I should have asked this, how many of you are new to homeschooling? Like, you've been homeschooling for a year, or less, let's say. Oh, excellent. We're all super normal here. We will spend the whole weekend convincing you of that. (14:56): We got into so many arguments early on, because I was like, "I want to homeschool," and he was like, "No. We will be weird." And I knew, there was no way God was calling us to different things. So, I just was like, "I've got to stop fighting my husband on this. I'm just going to pray like crazy that God changes His mind." Actually, I really was just praying that, "Okay. Make me feel peace about this decision, and I'll just follow his lead." (15:22): So, I looked up schools, we decided which public school we were going to put her in, and two weeks before kindergarten registration, he came home from work, and he does not remember what the catalyst was for this, because I've asked him recently, he doesn't remember, but he came home from work, and he said, "All right. One year. You can have one year to homeschool. Just kindergarten, that's it." And I'm like, "I'll take it." (15:43): And then we're halfway through kindergarten, and he's like, "Okay. One or two more. Maybe through second grade will be fine." And then we homeschooled her until she graduated. Right? (15:52): So, clearly, back in those days, when I was like, "God wouldn't call us to two different things," one of us was wrong. Just saying. (16:08): Oh, let me tell you about the kids too, I already did. Audrey is the oldest in the white top. She just graduated from college. Drew ... Allison is the next one. Oh, she would have hated that. Let's not tell her I did that. Allison is the next one. She doesn't look like it. Does she? She's in the pink dress, and she's 20. She's the artist. She's going to Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. And Drew has just finished his freshman year at Franciscan University in Ohio. (16:33): And then we are still homeschooling three of them. Clara is 12, the twins are 10, they're identical 10 year old twins. I'll tell you a little quick side note about them. (16:46): When Clara was nine month olds, I found out I was pregnant again, and my husband says that I started giggling, and then sobbing. And he was like, "I don't know how to respond to that." To me, I'm like, "Sounds like a pretty accurate reaction to finding ..." Right? (17:06): So, I go to the doctor to find out my due date, or for my first initial appointment. Still don't even know what my due date is, or anything, and he's like, "Let's just do an ultrasound, and we'll see if we can figure out your due date from there." Does the ultrasound, and he's like, "Sarah, there are two." I was like, "Two what? Two arms? Two legs? I have a baby at home that cannot walk. What do you mean two exactly?" (17:32): So, there was a couple of crazy years, and this is a very ... I paid a lot of money for this picture. Please admire it. I put it on my Christmas card. This is actually what homeschooling looks like. Does this look more like your home too? Yeah. You can't tell, but in that top picture on the left, I'm like ... On the left, the baby that is crawling toward Audrey with her, I can't tell if that's a math book, or what, but has a Keurig cop that's open, and spilling coffee. Yeah. You can just imagine. Fill in all the gaps. They're all accurate. (18:10): And here's the deal, what my biggest struggle in all these years of homeschooling has been is that my ideals never quite match my reality. Right? When I was new to homeschooling, I had visions of sitting on the hearth reading Heidi. Like, my children are scattered around me whittling. I don't know. Crocheting. My children did none of those things. (18:38): This is what my homeschool actually looked like. I think now it's actually ramped up, because what we do is we scroll Instagram, and people are really good at showing you really beautiful slivers of their homeschool. Aren't they? And then you see one person who has got towers of books that are as tall as their children, and they're like, "These are all the books my kid read this year." Another one is road schooling, taking their kids to all the national parks before they turn 18. Yeah. (19:05): Everybody has chickens. Everybody. Everybody has chickens. Sourdough? Anybody? Yeah. Homesteads. You're all gardening, and then we all look at this, and we're like, "This is like 45 seconds, and then you look up at your kids, and this is what you see, and you're like, "Maybe I'm not cut out for this." Right? Has that thought ever run through your mind? (19:30): My husband used to tell me ... Oh, so he had a really big change of heart, because then he would tell me, when I had all six ... So, 12, 10, eight, one, and newborn twins, and everybody in my life was so kind to let me know they thought I was probably making a mistake by homeschooling. I was pretty sure that was true, but I felt also very convicted that, "No. We're supposed to keep doing this. Pretty sure I'm ruining them, though," but I wouldn't tell that to anyone except my husband. Right? (20:01): So, I'd be texting him at work like, "I'm ruining your children," as I'm in the bathroom eating chocolate. That should be the most important tip you take from here, by the way. Keep your chocolate in the bathroom. It's the teachers' lounge. (20:19): My husband would say, "Your worst day homeschooling is still better than their best day at school." Very sweet. I was also like, "You have no idea how bad things are around here." (20:37): I wish there were things I could tell myself, like, 17 years ago. I was so worried about so many things, but recently, I surveyed over ... I sent out a survey, and asked moms who had been homeschooling for, at least, 10 years to answer a couple of questions. What do they wish they had done more of? What do they wish they had done less of? What would they tell their younger homeschooling self if they could? (21:02): Well, 726 women answered this survey, who have been homeschooling over 10 years, over 100 of them had been homeschooling over 20 years, and I'm weaving what they said in their results into all three of my sessions all weekend, because it's just gold. (21:19): This is the stuff we cannot see when we're in it. I have never once, ever, met a mom who's homeschooled, and graduated kids, who when you say like, "What is the most important thing?" And I've never heard them say that, "My fourth grader could read at the fourth grade level in the fourth grade." (21:37): But if you're here, and you have a fourth grader who is not reading at the fourth grade level, I bet that's your number one concern. So, we need their perspective, we need to hear from them. What matters most? What doesn't matter? What do I think matters that doesn't? And what do I think isn't that big of a deal that kind of is? (21:57): That's what we're going to be talking about. I'm going to be weaving them into all three of my sessions, but I wanted to start here with this talk, because these three big rocks can really form the foundation of a simple peaceful homeschool, and you're probably already mostly doing them, or it would just take a little turn of a dial to do them more, and those three things are being relaxed, being bookish, and being ordinary, and we're going to unpack all three of those things, because I don't think we need to spend so ... (22:31): I know actually that we don't need to spend so much time worrying whether we're doing it right, or doing enough. But being relaxed, and being bookish, and being ordinary goes a really, really long way. (22:45): It comes down to these, because if you can build your homeschool in a way where your homeschool is mostly relaxed, and bookish, and ordinary, you will enjoy it more. And I am 100% convinced that the key to a successful homeschool is a peaceful content mother, who can put her relationships with her kids above everything else. It takes a lot of courage in today's day and age to be able to do it, but we're going to talk about how. (23:19): Let's talk about the first bit. Most of us don't aspire to have a relaxed homeschool, but I think maybe we should. A lot of us will hear the word rigor, and I think, "I want to have a rigorous homeschool." It was one of those Latin guys out there in the curriculum hall that told me that rigor actually means stiff with death. Isn't that interesting? That's what we want for our ... We want them to be ... That is probably how our children feel at the end of their math lesson when we're like, "You knew this yesterday." Right? [inaudible 00:23:52]. (23:52): There's something we can do that's a little bit better, that sets the stage. Imagine with me that you walk into a classroom, imagine that you're a high school English student. You walk into a classroom, and your teacher is at the front, and is like, "Okay. Everybody, backpacks down, pens out, we got a lot to cover today, and we've got 45 minutes. Let's go." That's what my high school experience was like actually. (24:17): Or imagine you walk into a high school English class, and the teacher is at the front, maybe sitting cross-legged, maybe The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn open on her lap. She's like, "Oh my gosh. Everybody come in. I cannot wait to read this passage I just was reading in this Mark Twain book. I can't wait to dig into this with you." (24:41): Which class do you think you're going to learn more from? The way that we approach our learning with our kids makes a huge difference in how open they are to learning, how much they remember. We know this from studies that when students are stressed ... This is why timed tests are the worst. We all know that timed tests are the worst. Right? But we actually know that kids learn better when they're relaxed than when they're uptight, stressed, feel pressured, and yet, so often, in our homeschools, we create the same exact environment that they would get at school where they're pressured to move up, pressured to keep up with some fictional average fourth grader based on no actual human fourth grader. Definitely not one living in our house. Right? And so, we get all stressed and worried about it. (25:34): One of the things that has been really, really helpful for me is when I think about curriculum, or lessons, or covering things in my homeschool is actually not to think of covering at all. That's not actually what we're ever doing. We're never covering anything. Really, I could say, "This year, you should cover the Civil War," and you can't cover it. You can learn some things about the Civil War, but people could dedicate their entire life to the study of the Civil War, and still cannot cover it. Right? (26:07): It's a weird word, if you think about it. "To make hidden." I don't know. When I cover a casserole, I cover my sourdough, I hide it. Right? Like, that's not really what we want to do. What we want to do is uncover things with our kids. (26:22): What would that feel like if I was to say, "Hey, kids. I wonder what we could uncover about the Civil War this year?" That feels like an invitation. It also doesn't feel like you're done at the end of the year. So, we could come back to this later, or when they're adults, they can be reading a novel set during the Civil War, and be like, "Woah. I had no idea about this whole thing," and that's exciting, because you're uncovering things. (26:46): Even just that little tiny shift about thinking about ... It doesn't even have to be something content-based like the Civil War. We could talk about math. What are we going to uncover in our lesson today? "We're going to spend the next half an hour doing math. I wonder what we'll uncover today" is very different than, "We are covering Saxon lesson 65, and we got 30 minutes. Let's go." You won't get it done in 30 minutes, by the way. Saxon lessons take forever. (27:13): Okay. My second daughter, the one with the chalk art was really good for me, as a parent. I like to say I'm spontaneous. My husband uses the word, "Impulsive". I'm a little fast. I like things to be done quickly. (27:34): My second daughter would say to me ... I remember this so clearly, I can hear her little voice. We were walking out of a MOPS group at church back to our car, and she said, "Mom, slow down. You're moving too fast for my insides." And I reminded her of that recently, and she was like, "That's still true most of the time." (28:00): But I remember it, because I remember thinking, "Yeah. What am I in a hurry to do?" Especially, if you have all little kids. You're just in a hurry. What? To the next diaper change? What was I in a rush to do? (28:11): But I did always feel like I was trying to keep up, or trying to keep up with something. We're not really sure what it is. But I would bet that your kids learn more, and mine do too, on the days when we're relaxed, on the days when we're not moving too fast for their insides, on the days when we're not trying to get through such a big, long list of school things. (28:36): Here's the deal, at the beginning of a new school year, I'm always making a plan, and thinking, "This is going to be the best year yet." And when you walk into that exhibit hall, you're going to be like, "Okay. Look at all these things I didn't know existed. We're going to do them all." Right? (28:58): And then ignore the fact that some of it that you bought last year when you were here is still in its shrink wrap. That's okay. This year is going to be the best year yet. But our kids best homeschooling days, and the best learning does not happen on the days when they're rushed. I guarantee it. (29:16): One thing I'm going to point out before we move on is that the survey moms, the 726 moms who have been homeschooling more than 10 years, overwhelmingly said, when I said, "What do you wish you had done more of?" There were two answers. I'll tell you the first one in a minute. The second answer was, "Nothing. I wish we had done less, not more." (29:39): Now that can be an overwhelming idea too. Like, "Do less? What do I do less of?" We're going to be talking about that more tomorrow in my session. I always think of it like ... I don't know. I'm not a great cook, but I use a recipe if I'm cooking anything, and my least favorite recipe instructions are, "Add salt to taste." Like, to taste like what? That's why I'm using a recipe, because I don't know. Right? I was making meatloaf a couple of months ago, and it was, like, ground beef and it says, "Add salt to taste." I'm like, "Just checking, but I'm not supposed to taste this now. Right? What kind of instructions are these?" (30:19): Okay. Saying like, "Do less" feels a little bit like, "Add salt to taste." Right? You're like, "Do less of what exactly?" We're going to talk about that tomorrow, but for now, I want to talk about the other number one thing people said, these survey moms told me that they wish they had done more of, and that is read-aloud. (30:35): And these are moms who are on the Read-Aloud Revival email list, which means that they're already very likely reading aloud, probably a fair amount, and still, overwhelmingly, almost unanimously, the number one thing they say they wish they had done more of was read-aloud. (30:52): So, there's two things here. There's reading-aloud, and there's also just time for your kids to read on their own. The power of books to transform a homeschool cannot be overstated. I don't want to spend too much time here, because if you let me, I'll just sit here for a while. (31:06): I have a whole podcast about this. It's called The Read-Aloud Revival. I'll put it up on the screen a little bit later, but for now, I want to run through just a couple of things, because even if you do read-aloud a lot, I think sometimes we forget how powerful it is. So, I want to remind you. (31:23): This is what reading aloud does for your kids. Number one, it is the single most important thing you can do to help your kids have academic success. Studies are clear on this. Private tutors, private education at an elite school cannot touch it. Reading aloud is the single most effective thing you can do to help your kids academically succeed. (31:46): Jim Trelease, who wrote the book The Read-Aloud Handbook, he would say, "If you could put that in a little pill, if you could put the benefits, academic benefits alone of reading aloud in a pill, parents all over this country would be buying that pill to give to their children, and we have all these free books on our shelves and 10 minutes. It's so incredible." (32:08): That's number one, that's academic. Number two, it helps our kids grow in empathy and compassion. We know that kids who read a lot, and who are read to a lot when they are young, when they get older, they are more compassionate kind adults. This makes so much sense, because every time we read a story, our kids are stepping into the shoes of a character, and seeing the world from someone else's point of view. (32:35): So, if they do that again and again and again, it's so much easier for them to see that person who cut them off while they were driving, or the person sitting on the side of the road, as a whole person with a whole story. Of course, they're more empathetic. Right? (32:47): Well, not only are they getting to slip into the shoes of another, and walk mile after mile after mile, but they're also getting to watch characters overcome obstacles, because every story, no matter what, whether it's on TV, in a movie, a video game, a book, doesn't matter, every single story is about a character who has to overcome obstacles to become who they need to be. That is what a story is. (33:11): So, when you read hundreds of stories aloud with your kids, you've given them a front-row seat to bear witness to characters overcoming seemingly impossible odds, again and again and again. (33:24): Now they're not just growing in empathy and compassion and getting academic benefits, but they're also growing in fortitude. They're growing in virtue by seeing virtue lived out, over and over and over again. Even when characters fail, and they see how the lack of virtue works out, over and over and over again. (33:41): So, they are getting academic benefits, they're growing in empathy and compassion, they're growing in fortitude and virtue, and they're connected. This is the thing that blew me away when I started reading aloud so much with my own kids. This is the real reason I started The Read-Aloud Revival podcast is because I was floored at the connections between myself, and my kids, and then by the kids, and each other when we would read-aloud. (34:08): We had this inside language. We had jokes. We had a different kind of understanding. It would snow a bunch, and it would be like The Long Winter, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Even though, it's nothing like the long winter, or Laura Ingalls Wilder. Right? As we're drinking our hot chocolate by the heat in the heater. Whatever. It's fine. You can pretend. (34:30): It's like this warm connectedness that I had no idea was available to us, and then we built those relationships that are the key fundamental piece of a good healthy education, and strong family ties. (34:43): Tell me what else you can do, that is free, in 10 or 15 minutes that gets you all of those benefits, those academic benefits, those social/emotional benefits, growing in empathy, fortitude, compassion, connectedness. There is nothing else. It doesn't exist. (34:58): So, the power of your read-aloud, I know it doesn't feel like you're doing much. You sit down, you're reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Your kids are kicking each other with their feet. They're not whittling, they're not crocheting. Right? You're telling your kids like, "Don't move off your cushion. Do not touch your sister." This one has to pee again. The doorbell just rang. The baby threw up. Yes. I understand. Totally get it. (35:21): Even so, I was going to say it doesn't matter. It matters. It feels hard. That's not what I mean. I don't mean to dismiss the hard part. I mean that even so, even with all of that mess, those are the benefits that you're swapping. It's unbelievable. I think if we started to think about reading aloud, not as just another thing on our to-do list, but as the thing on our to-do list that takes 10 other things off, we would realize that's the trade we're making every time we read-aloud. (35:52): So, that's why it's as fundamental as being relaxed, and we'll get to the ordinary part. But the stories we share through books when we're reading aloud do so much heavy lifting. They just carry so much of a good education. (36:06): So, every minute you spend reading aloud with your kids is worth it, but, also, the time that you spend carving out time for them to read on their own. I was just talking with someone this morning about how one really prominent homeschool speaker will say that when her kids were in public school, or I think they went to private school, they hardly had any time to read for fun. They just really didn't read for fun. They had assigned reading, they had a lot of homework, and the biggest benefit she saw when she brought her kids home was, all of a sudden, they had time to read for fun. (36:41): And I did a whole session on this a couple of years ago, but the reading that our kids do for fun is actually far more influential in their education, and their personal growth than the books that we assign to them. So, carving out time for your kids to read whatever they want, within your family's boundaries. Right? I always say, "Whatever they want," and feel like I'm like, "Let's just make sure I'm super clear. I don't actually mean whatever they want. Don't just take your kids to the library, and let them read whatever they want." (37:13): But for the most part, reading their own free choice books for a good amount of time, I'll tell you what, especially when I had three babies and three older kids, I would walk down the stairs with my twins after naptime, and see my kids on the couch reading, and that should make your mama heart sing, but when your house is a mess, you're like, "Could you guys put your books down, and do some chores around here?" And then they'd be like, "Are you going to say that on The Read-Aloud Revival Podcast?" You're like, "How about listen to an audiobook while you sweep? Can we do that, at least?" (37:52): Being bookish carries a lot of weight. So, you can let reading independently, and reading aloud do a lot of heavy lifting for you. (38:03): Okay. Let's talk about this last piece, ordinary. This is not what we think of when we think about the kind of homeschool that we want. Like I said, we have pictures in our head. They look something like the front of the Sunlight catalog. Right? Or Instagram. (38:22): And I can imagine my kids, we're reading Men of the Mississippi, and then we're catching tadpoles at the creek, and I'm teaching my children how to make bread. None of these things are what my homeschool look like. Right? Again, we're up against this fictional composite woman, usually, who we pulled from Instagram, who doesn't actually exist, and we're comparing ourselves against an imaginary person who does not exist, who doesn't have the same situation, husband, finances, house, circumstances that we do, and we feel like we need to be extraordinary. (38:56): Do I have any Sally Clarkson fans in here? Okay. So, Sally once told me that when her kids were growing up, she homeschooled kids, four of them all the way through, and she said that for years and years, they would have these family dinners, and they were a nightmare. Kids were complaining about the food, one kid always got sent to his room every single dinner. It was just contentious, and frustrating, and she would always finish it like, "This is not what I had in mind." Right? (39:27): And then now they're all grownups, and she said, she'll ask them like, "What was your favorite part of growing up?" Their happiest family memories, they're like, "We had the best family dinners." She's like, "Really?" I'm like, "Just keep it, Sally. Don't tell them the truth. Don't. Don't. Let them keep it." (39:47): The way they remember it is different. I remember my husband asking me early on like, "Did you guys go camping when you were growing up?" I'm like, "Yeah. We did. Wait. Did we? We went once at a KOA. There was a movie theater." I was sure we'd gone camping, but when I thought back on it, I was like, "It was an amazing camping trip." (40:11): Dr. Meg Meeker, I love her so much. She has this fabulous book I'm going to read from tomorrow called The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers. Excellent read. And she says that, "If you do something for about 10 minutes a week, that's the way your kids will remember you." So, if you're a fun mom for 10 minutes a week, your kids will probably grow up, and be like, "She was super fun." This is good news. Right? (40:33): My friend Sheila graduated her three kids. She homeschooled her three kids most of the way through. I guess she put them in when they were a little older, or she pulled them out, I should say, when they were a little older. (40:44): Anyway, she homeschooled her three kids, and she was the person who I always asked for advice from. Poor thing. I remember one time, we were at church ... I'm super post-partum. I am, like, post-partum times three, because I have three babies who are not even two yet. Right? (40:59): And she's like, "How's homeschool ..." This is just after church. Small talk. She's like, "How's homeschooling going?" And I just burst into tears. She's like, "I'll come over tomorrow." So, she did. (41:10): She had twins, and her twins were graduating, and they had these photo album memory books that she had made of their homeschool years, and I'm looking through them, and I'm like, "This is so interesting. They did so many hands-on projects," but I know Sheila. She's the one who's been mentoring me, and she was like, "You don't need to do that many projects. Read to your kids, talk to them, they'll be fine." (41:38): So, I'm like, "What the heck?" Feeling like maybe I got some misinformation. So, I'm looking through these, and I'm like, "Sheila, I thought you didn't do a lot of hands-on projects," and she's like, "No. Here's the deal. Do one, or two a year, and take a million pictures." I started thinking about this. I'm like, "You could change your top halfway through. This could really work." (42:05): What they really need is books, and a chance to connect with the ideas, and characters in books, and a chance to connect with you about those ideas. A place where relationships take precedence, that's what they need. They need a home that is relaxed, and bookish, and ordinary, and just like we plant seeds, and we can't exactly tell how it's going to grow, or how deep the roots are going to go down, or how this tomato plant is going to produce, we don't know the end story, but that was never our job in the first place. (42:40): Our job was to plant the seed, and let him do the miracle. But if we're teaching our kids, and homeschooling our kids from an anxious place of, "I want them to do enough, and be enough, and perform enough ..." And I do it too, where, like, grandma and grandpa come over, and I'm casually asking my kids like ... I don't know. Like, the preamble. "You want to say that for grandma?" (43:03): I remember when Clara, our 12 year old, was like, I don't know, seven or eight, we went into this bookstore, and she found ... I don't remember if it was a bookmark, or a notepad. It had all these famous authors on it. She's like, "Who are these people?" I'm like, "Well, that's William Shakespeare. That's Edgar Allan Poe. That's Emily Dickinson." And she's like, "Hope is the thing with feathers," and she recites the whole poem, and I'm looking around like, "Anybody catching this? I did that. I want to be very clear. Does anybody want to ask me where she goes to school, or no? Okay." (43:36): We want that affirmation, but really the truth is that we don't want to get our affirmation from the way our children perform, because then we're putting our faith in ourselves instead of in God. (43:47): Andrew Peterson. Do I have some Andrew Peterson fans in here? He's a Christian musician, a fabulous musician. You've probably heard some of his stuff. Chris Tomlin ... What is his name? Yeah. I'm like, "Why am I second-guessing that now?" Has optioned some of his songs. Anyway, he makes beautiful music. (44:04): He also is the author of The Wingfeather Saga. He talks about how when he was in school, he overheard his mom having a conversation with one of her sisters I think about how worried she was about Andrew, because he was not doing well in school, couldn't write an essay to save his life, his grades were really lacking, and all he wanted to do was sit around in his room, and strum on that dang guitar. And that has served him awfully well, as he's salt and light to the world with his music. (44:35): So, we don't know what God wants for our kids, but we do know our marching orders are, and we do know that our kids don't need to be extraordinary to be extraordinary. They're already extraordinary, because they are images of God. (44:50): C.S. Lewis has this gorgeous quote that I should have written down where, "You've never met an ordinary human, because every single human that you meet is an image of God." We say that. Again, it's like that parlance that we're used to. So, we don't really think about what it means. (45:07): But our children are so much bigger than they could be in a fourth grade checklist, or a sixth grade checklist, or a high school transcript. We can't contain them to that, and we have this beautiful opportunity in our homeschool to let them shine with the fullness of that image of God, but we have to get out of the way for that to happen. (45:28): It's not about lowering our expectations. It's about living up to the expectations we were actually created for. Not expectations to get a certain SAT score, not expectations to finish a certain math book in a certain year, not expectations that our kid could diagram a sentence, or read at the third grade level in the third grade, but expectations that are much bigger than that, and much more unique than that, and nobody ever will ask your kid when they're a grownup, and they're applying for a job, "Did you read at the fourth grade level in the fourth grade? It's very important to us." That's not a thing. And we can't see it, because we're just in it. (46:11): Okay. Before I wrap up, I want to let you know about some free resources that I've put together in case you were attracted to this idea of a relaxed, bookish, ordinary homeschool. (46:24): First, The Read-Aloud Revival Podcast, I mentioned that before. This is free. It's in your podcast app. It's in whatever you listen to podcasts on. It's on YouTube. It's also at www.Read-AloudRevival.com. So, you can find it really readily. (46:36): This is the podcast that I started when I got very excited about what reading aloud was doing in my homeschool. I started it 10 years ago. We just had the 10th anniversary of the podcast, which is crazy. (46:48): So, this is in the heart of those ... My twins are 10. It was a weird year. But this is when I was like, "I cannot believe the impact that reading aloud is having on our homeschool. This is amazing." (47:02): So, this podcast, you can find for free anywhere you listen to podcasts, but the first episode I would listen to is ... If you go back five episodes, there's a new one that just dropped today, but if you go back about five episodes, there's one that's the top 10 episodes in the first 10 years, and if you're new to the podcast, that's a great place to start, because it's the most popular episodes. (47:22): The podcast has been downloaded over 14 million times in 167 countries. So, I think families, when we get the sense of what reading aloud can do for our kids and our homes, we get very excited. Right? And so, that's why I think that's a great place to start that episode. New episodes published there every two weeks. (47:40): And then I also put together a free sample of RAR Premium, which is Read-Aloud Revival's relaxed, bookish, ordinary program for homeschooling families. It really focuses on mentoring homeschool moms to create a homeschool they love, and help their kids fall in love with books, because we know books are the foundation for all good ideas, and good interactions within our families. (48:02): So, if you want a free sample of RAR Premium, you can get that by texting GHC to the number 33777, or you can just scan that QR Code. That'll also do it. The idea is no digging up seeds, no box checking, no frantically trying to fit our kids into this little checklist, but, again, allowing them to flourish as images of God in a home that is relaxed, and bookish, and ordinary, and, therefore, where learning grows, and God can do whatever he wants with our kids' lives. (48:33): Most of all, this is what I want to leave you with from today that you have everything right now. If you notice, nothing that I mentioned about being relaxed, or bookish, or ordinary costs a penny. You can't buy any of it in that exhibit hall. You can't get it from my website. You can't package it up, and put it in a curriculum. (48:53): You have absolutely everything that you need to raise kids in a homeschool that is relaxed, and bookish, and ordinary, and that reminds you of that picture that I might have painted when I read a little bit of The Year of Miss Agnes at the beginning of our time together today, that ignites that wonder and excitement, and a little bit of, "Ooh. What can we uncover in our homeschool?" Rather than, "What do we need to get into our kids' brains this year?" (49:20): Tomorrow, same time, this room, we're going to be talking about the five habits of happy homeschoolers. We're going back to the survey of what those experienced homeschool moms say they wish they did more of. That's what tomorrow's session is all about, the five things that came up again, and again, and again, again, again, and again, and how can we work those into our homeschool in a way that feels very doable and simple and where we like our kids at the end of the day, because that's the most important piece. (49:47): Thank you so much for coming, and welcome to the conference. (49:58): I hope you enjoyed that recording from my conference sessions earlier this year. Hey, I'm not going to any homeschool conferences during 2025. That's a first for me in almost a decade. (50:11): I do sessions just like this for our Circle With Sarah Retreats, and the whole Circle With Sarah program inside RAR Premium. My Circle With Sarah Podcast is a weekly private podcast you get every Monday morning to start your homeschool week focused on the most important things, and then, also, in RAR Premium, you get access to Circle With Sarah Live, which is a live mentoring on Zoom where you can ask questions, fall more in love with your homeschool. We also have a couple of retreats each year live on Zoom that are a lot like the session you just heard. So, if you would like to find out more, go to www.RARPremium.com. (50:54): Okay. Let's hear from the kids about the books they've been loving lately. Speaker 2 (51:03): Hello. My name is Jenna. I live in Alaska, and I'm 11 years old. I recommend The Dogs of Winter, because it's based on a true story about an orphan going to live with dogs in the city. I do recommend this for older kids, because it is violent. Speaker 3 (51:24): Hello. My name is Kiara, and I am eight years old. I live in Alaska, and I recommend The Hero's Guide series, because it has witches, and goblins, and giants, and it's also funny, and it has a princess from fairytales, and princesses from the same fairytales as them, and it's very funny. Speaker 4 (51:57): My name is Sebastian, and I live in Alaska, and I'm 13 years old, and one of my favorite books is The Star Wars: Legacy series, and I love it so much, because it is very adventurous, and it's very thrilling, and there is some violence, and I really like the Audible versions, because it has a cast, and it has sound effects, and music, and it's just really cool. Speaker 5 (52:28): Hello. My name is Hejek, and I'm six years old, and I live in Alaska, and we're going to be talking about The Sugar Tree Kid. Do you know why I picked this book? Because it talks about divas. Speaker 6 (52:44): Hi. My name is McKayla. I'm 11 years old, and I live in Cheyenne, Wyoming. My favorite book is The Wingfeather Saga, and I like it, because of the weird creatures. Speaker 7 (52:56): All right. What's your name? Speaker 8 (52:58): Violet. Speaker 7 (52:59): Where are you from? Speaker 8 (53:01): Florida. Speaker 7 (53:02): What's your favorite book? Speaker 8 (53:05): The Lupine Lady. Speaker 7 (53:07): Miss Rumphius? Speaker 8 (53:07): Mm-hmm. Speaker 7 (53:09): Why is that your favorite book? Speaker 8 (53:10): Because she has lupines, and I love lupines. And my favorite book is about 101 Dalmatians, and all different kinds of little creatures on the school book. Speaker 7 (53:27): All right. Speaker 8 (53:29): It's my favorite, because I love 101 Dalmatians, and there's a 101 Dalmatian picture in it. Speaker 7 (53:37): All right. (53:38): What's your name? Speaker 9 (53:40): Ali. Speaker 7 (53:41): What's your favorite book? Speaker 9 (53:42): The Mixed-Up Magic one. Speaker 7 (53:48): Why do you like Mixed-Up Magic? Speaker 9 (53:50): Because I like Maddie. Speaker 7 (53:52): You like Maddie? Speaker 9 (53:53): Yeah. Speaker 7 (53:53): All right. And where are you from? Speaker 9 (53:53): Florida. Sarah Mackenzie (54:03): Thank you, kids. I always love hearing about the books that you love. (54:09): Show notes for this episode are at www.Read-AloudRevival.com/250. Whoo. This was our 250th episode. That's exciting. I'll be back here in a couple of weeks, but you know what to do in the meantime. Go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.