Episode 2 – Trish Corlew, Co-Owner of Hip Homeschool Moms, Shares Her Homeschool Story

Today I share my own homeschool story. Why I started, how I started, what I love about homeschooling and candidly share my personal struggles. The reason I started homeschooling, is not the reason I continue.

Show notes are below.

This episode is sponsored by Apologia. We are HUGE fans of Apologia and we both have used this curriculum throughout our homeschool journeys. This series is literally our favorite science series offered in the homeschool arena. We encourage you to spend a few minutes visiting their site to see why. Or visit our website to see the many articles we have written about it.

[00:00:00] Trish Corlew: Hey everybody. It’s Trish with  Hip Homeschool Moms… and Homeschool Road Trips… and Only Passionate Curiosity… and Love These Recipes. Yes, Wendy and I are co-owners of quite a few websites and you never know, we might have more coming.

Today is going to be a little bit different Wendy is not here with me. Because it’s just me, Trish talking to you! Welcome to the show. And this is my homeschool story. First, let me say, it’s a little hard for Wendy and I to get together sometimes,  even though we both are extremely active in the company… we are doing vastly different things inside the company. And with Wendy being in Southern Mississippi and me being in West Tennessee we are not even [00:01:00] remotely close to each other geographically. So it makes it a little hard for things like this.

The first  thing that Wendy was going to ask me is: How and where my homeschool story starts … so I’ll just start there. My boys were in a Montessori school – I have three boys. If you did not listen to the first podcast, I’ll give you a little background on me. I have three boys. My kids are 19, 18, and 15. Yes. I had three boys in four years. The younger years were insanely crazy. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I get that.  As a matter of fact I literally found out I was pregnant with [00:02:00] Gage, when Chase was like seven or eight months old.  But it all works out. God has a plan and I really do believe that!

My kids were in a Montessori school and there was a significant downturn in the late 2008 / 2009 time frame. I had a recruiting business, I placed Information Technology people. We called ourselves headhunters, I had that company for about 20 years, but the economy was turning down.  Our kids were going to this little tiny Montessori school out here in rural, Tennessee. I was so involved in their education literally from the very beginning.  Even though I wasn’t necessarily thinking of homeschooling yet (although it was in the back of my mind) 🙂 [00:03:00] I was the chairman of the board for the Montessori school… so that tells you how much I was still involved, even though I wasn’t actually teaching them. I believe Montessori is the closest thing to homeschooling – our little school only had about sixty two kids total.

We had an economic downturn and we were paying a lot of money for the kids to go to school there. It was about $5,200 per child and I had three children going there. If you’ve ever been in a private school, you know that the tuition is just the tip of the iceberg to be perfectly honest. They continually ask for funds through fundraising and all the different auctions and all the different fundraisers. Anyway, you know, you get it.  So that was becoming more and more unrealistic for us to be able to do that with the economic downturn. [00:04:00] So we brought the boys home, and I thought I was going to homeschool part-time and work part-time… but, I fell in love with homeschooling.

I absolutely loved everything about it! EVERYTHING about it. We’ll cover that in a little bit but everything about homeschooling I loved. At that point in time, my best friend had also decided to homeschool, she was the head of the school at the little Montessori school and she pulled her son too. And so we actually homeschooled together for a couple of years, which was amazing. She had an only son and I had three boys. As a side note, when you have an only – the dynamics are very different than when you have multiple kids. You would think it would be easier, but it’s not necessarily easier – as a matter of fact, it can be very lonely.  It can be hard on Mom. It can be hard on the child. So if you have [00:05:00] an only and you feel like you’re struggling and you feel like you’re alone in that struggle, you’re not! That’s very common. Each homeschool has their own challenges and onlies certainly have challenges. We actually have a couple of articles on our website from one of our good friends Leann who wrote about her only – the struggles and the rewards of homeschooling an only. [You can find the articles I mentioned here  How to Homeschool an Only Child ] My best friend ended up not continuing to homeschool. She put her son in a very, very, very expensive (and I thought Montessori was expensive – very expensive) kind of scholl and needless to say, we couldn’t do that.

So we continued to homeschool alone. Backtracking here a little bit – what helped me decide to homeschool: besides the economy [00:06:00] and besides the fact that my best friend was going to homeschool too. And I fell in love with Montessori Montessori it was something that I felt was perfect for my kids. It’s a great way to educate if you haven’t done any research on Montessori. I will actually put some links in the transcripts but Montessori is essentially following the child. It’s harder when you’re homeschooling because there’s a classroom dynamic that’s pretty amazing in a Montessori school, but we actually had it because I have three kids and they were not all on the same grade.

And so I sort of recreated that Montessori dynamic (essentially what it is – is you have a senior child who’s at the head of the class, you have a middle child who is not the leader yet, but is the up and coming leader, and then you have the youngest [00:07:00] is sort of sponging off of the older two. And so the older one is essentially project leader and helps with education and everything else. The middle one will help the younger one, but will also still be mentored and taught a little bit by the older one. And of course, you still have the teacher. But for me, that was a perfect dynamic for my environment and my kids because they already knew it and for us to continue the Montessori aspect it was a no brainer.

I will tell you a funny story…. When we first started homeschooling, my oldest was going into the fourth grade. His name is Chase and I will never forget one of the comments he made to me. He said “Mom what makes you think you can teach? These teachers up here are certified. Why do you think you can do this?” And of course that made me feel completely unsuccessful and [00:08:00] incapable. I mean, you can only imagine. Of course, I just put my smile on and said “Well, we’ll see. You’ll just have to watch and see.” His youngest brother Blake was not reading yet. I had to teach Blake to read and so one of the things that we started with was reading, but we also started with telling time and he quickly, for whatever reason, grasped telling time and I will never forget Chase coming back to me and saying… “Okay, so maybe you can teach.” This child is the child that now is in college and is a straight A student. He just started – this is his first year. He’s taking a pretty heavy load too. He’s got calculus and computer science and English (and honestly, that’s probably his hardest course) and he’s taking Old Testament religion. He’s going to a Catholic School. Even though we are not Catholic we are Messianic [00:09:00] but that’s where my husband works and we get tuition remission, which means we get free tuition! It’s one of my husband’s benefits. Yah, my son is going there for computer science – and actually today he declared his minor which is going to be electrical engineering! Yeah. homeschooled kids can rock it!

You are going to hear something here in a few minutes when I get to that question where I am honest with you about my style of homeschooling. I think you’re going to be shocked. But anyway, my faith and my belief in the Montessori system, and if I’m honest, my belief in myself. I feel like I can do anything I put my mind to – so why couldn’t I teach them, right?!! I already got the concept that we are facilitators of education. We are not necessarily the owners of all information [00:10:00] and this dispenser of all knowledge (and if you’re looking at yourself that way and you’re teaching your kids that you are that – it’s a really really hard show to pull off). We never did that.

I was always the mom that said well, let’s look it up. I don’t know and I always told them I was learning right along with them. We always looked at me as being the facilitator and if I didn’t know it I told them I didn’t know it and we looked it up, it became a project.

I did believe in myself and I believed in my kids. I really thought that my kids could do it. I don’t regret it.

So what excites me about homeschooling that would be the next question that Wendy would ask. Hey Wendy. I miss you. I wish you were here asking these questions. But you’re not so I’m going to keep going! So early on when I first started homeschooling the things that I fell in love with were [00:11:00] things like

the “aha” moments

and the relationships

and the closeness

and I love teaching them science.

Oh my gosh. I’m going to talk to you about my science curriculum here a little bit, but I love teaching them science. I don’t know why.  I guess it’s because boys have always loved to get messy and maybe y’all, I was always a girly girl and so this was a lot of fun for me because I never thought I’d enjoy it. I don’t know but I totally love science. It was Apologia science. My reasons and the things that excited me about homeschooling changed and they changed pretty drastically! I’m going to give you my top 10 list, but I’m not going to unpack these. I’m not going to go into them too deeply – we’ll do that on a later podcast because I think they’re too juicy not to unpack them. So I’m going to gloss over them right now and I might not even unpack them with myself. It might be a different person I’m [00:12:00] interviewing or that Wendy’s interviewing.

Top 10.

 

Number one is I love the relationships. It was probably the biggest surprise for me was that I didn’t have the best relationships with my kids when they were at the Montessori school. I honestly was completely oblivious to the fact that we were not uber, super close. I know that may be surprising to y’all but I think that’s one of the things that when I think of public schoolers and you know, what they think about homeschoolers, I always say they don’t know what they’re missing. Because I was one of them, Even though my kids weren’t in a public school. They were in a Montessori school. I just don’t think they get it. I don’t think they even understand how different their relationships could be. So I cut them a whole lot of slack. Because they don’t know they really have no idea.

Number two reason that homeschooling excites me is we’re very rural. Honestly the thought of getting in the car and taking my kids especially when they were really young on an hour’s drive because our little Montessori school did close because of the economic downturn. I would have had to drive for an hour – over an hour – almost an hour and a half into Memphis to go to another Montessori school. I know they didn’t have to go to Montessori school, but that was what I loved and that’s what I wanted to do. So just being so real I love being here. [00:14:00] I love raising kids in a very rural environment. I think it was one of the best things I did but I was not wild about driving essentially three hours a day with young kids in the car. Actually. I love the fact that because I’m rural and it sort of forced me into homeschooling. I know that’s a weird way, but it’s true!

Number three – You’re going to die when I tell you this one. So I might,  I might save this one for last. I am going to save that one for last. I’ll come back to it.

Number four my faith. We are Messianic – I already told you that and we study the Hebrew Bible. Of course, we study the New Testament and we study the Old Testament, but we do spend a whole lot of time in the Torah, which is the first five books of the Bible. For us that was very foundational. When I told you that I had different relationships with my kids, one of my kids had a [00:15:00] – He was saved and he kept coming to me for a month confessing things that had happened over at the Montessori school that I never knew about. I’ll cry if I go into  too much detail, so I’m not going to go there but it was a big deal. It was a really big deal. So our faith actually grew exponentially once we started homeschooling and that’s something that I mean, It’ss the best thing to ever happen to us.

Number five although I did Skip One. So I’ll come back to it … number five is the ability to travel. You know, we own Homeschool Road Trips, so we do a lot of traveling. As a matter of fact, we’re getting ready and that’s why Wendy can’t be here – We’re getting ready to go on our road trip to New Mexico. Which is going to be amazing and fantastic and we will be doing all kinds of lives and taking all kinds of pictures and so y’all get to see all of it, but we do get to travel and [00:16:00] that’s one of my favorite ways to learn. So that excites me about homeschooling.

It doesn’t have to be extensive travel.

It doesn’t have to be huge monster trips, like what we’re taking – which is a thousand miles for me to drive and yes, I am driving! Because I’m taking my boys and all the stuff that goes along with these Homeschool Road Trips.

Number six I love the pace. We get to set our own speed, our own pace, our own tone, our own Rhythm. I guess we are not big on schedules, but we are big on rhythms. And there is structure even though it looks chaotic if you were to visit my homeschool. Yes, that’s another conversation too but the pace that we work at is a good pace for all of us – and it’s working because like I said, my number one child is now in college and he’s pulling straight A’s!! it does work what we’re doing and the way we do it is [00:17:00] working. Tut it’s very unorthodox and we’ll talk about it one day.

Number seven is it feels safer. I hate to bring that up. Oh my goodness. If there are any public schoolers or private schoolers listening, please know that my decision to homeschool is not any reflection on you. You do what you have to do. You do what works for your family. I’m not talking about you. I am talking about me and my homeschool and my family and my children. So, please please, please don’t take offense to this. It has nothing to do with you.

You do you

I’ll do me.

For me, it felt safer . All the whole shootings and all the violence and all that had not really started exploding – I hate to use that word – but exploding the way it has in recent history. But still it felt safer. [00:18:00] There were certain instances that happened out here in our little rural America where our school was on lock-down and the kids were in the center of the hall because there was a person running around in our little rural town with a gun.

Number eight is they got to follow their interests and passions and we got to explore  them. That was one of the things that I felt really strongly about homeschooling was that I thought it was my job to introduce them to a lot of different things, especially in high school that could be a career or could be something they fell in love with or it could be a pastime. For Chase my oldest I’ll tell you about one for [00:19:00] him. My dad was a photographer. I did not catch that photography bug. I’m not really great at taking the picture nor am I really great about being in front of the camera, but he is a great photographer and I actually, there for a while, was wondering what he was going to do with this gift and this talent. It turns out he used it. He was on the yearbook staff for our homeschool High School group in Memphis, Tennessee. We have a high school yearbook, which is really cool. And Chase was the editor one year. He was the assistant editor one year. He was on it for four years on the yearbook staff and he took a lot of pictures and a lot of photographs for that. So he still uses it but it is definitely not something he is going into for a career. Like I said, he’s going into computer science and electrical engineering, but photography is still a passion of his and he’ll probably [00:20:00] use it in his personal time but still it was something he developed and that was exactly what I wanted to do.

I wanted them to find things that would help them decompress and de-stress. Even if it didn’t end up being something that they were going to use as a career.

Number nine positive peer pressure. We don’t do a whole lot like we’re not in the coop. I’m not a co-op girl. We don’t really do a whole lot outside of our homeschool. We did do dual enrollment and things like that. And of course they play sports, but the peer pressure that they got was typically from other homeschoolers and honestly homeschoolers tend to rock it. Their peer groups were people that were driving themselves hard too and so I felt really good about them being around other homeschoolers and being around folks that [00:21:00] had some really positive peer pressure on.

Number ten, which is really number nine is I learn with them. Remember I told you I am not the owner of all information that we actually did a lot of research together and I actually love that! History was one thing that I felt like I never did a great job of learning in school and honestly, I question if they even taught some of this. Did I forget it all or did they not teach it? I have no idea, but I can tell you one way or the other it’s not in my brain. It is gone. It has evaporated. So actually having that going back and relearning was fascinating for me. And honestly, I think even if they did teach it, I think some of the things that they taught were may be taught in a way that wasn’t either full disclosure or had an [00:22:00] agenda – whatever you want to call it. I love learning the way we’re learning and being able to jump into those rabbit holes and dig as deep as we want to go and we did regularly.

Okay. So now I’m going to go back to the one that I skipped, Number three. And this is the one that you all are going to want me to do another podcast on and I will I promise I will …

It’s easier. I know y’all are shocked and I know some of you are saying “What?” Yes. I really honestly truly do believe it was easier for me to homeschool than it was to send them to school. And I will talk about that later. But some of the things that I felt were easier were that we are rural and it was going to be a challenge to get them back and forth because again, there’s nothing near us. I talked about the pace, our pace, I don’t do homework. Honestly y’all I [00:23:00] did not even do a whole lot of testing up through middle school because that’s not my style. That’s not the Montessori style because honestly, I don’t believe that even standardized tests really are a great reflection of a kid’s knowledge because it’s stress-inducing and most of us freeze up under stress! Some of us are not at our best when we’re under that kind of pressure. So I really don’t believe that standardized testing is the perfect way to determine a child’s intelligence or their knowledge.  And so I didn’t do a whole lot of that … now to compensate for that, they had to take the ACT every single year and they still do every single year of their high school years. We keep taking it. Not because I was expecting to get a better grade because. [00:24:00] honestly Chase my oldest took it for 4 years and three of those four years he made the exact same score. Can you believe that? It was a good enough score to get him into college. So it was fine. It didn’t even matter if he got better and honestly, I think that was what made it easier for him to get better at it. There’s also something else. I’ll do a podcast on it = it’s speed reading and it was amazing. Chase literally went up four points on his ACT. That was his senior year. Too bad that wasn’t his junior year when it would have made an impact on his scholarships. Anyway, live and learn right? But yeah, so. We do we did and still do, of course, take the ACT every single year because I felt like it was a life skill that they needed to learn and I felt like the more they did it the more comfortable they would be by the time it really mattered. So yeah, [00:25:00] even my ninth grader last year jumped in – literally he had none of the math and he rocked it. He got a 21 without even having his his math in place. So we do a lot of ACT testing.

Wendy, I wish you were here so you could ask now what are your biggest struggles? Because I have a lot of them y’all! I can’t tell you how many people have said to me that I’m like the mama hen or the mama bear but I probably struggle more than some of y’all. You would be surprised to hear some of the things that I struggle with.

One of the biggest things. I struggle with is follow through – finishing a subject. When I interview some of the publishers and authors of homeschool curriculum [00:26:00] something that always made me feel so much better was when they said they didn’t finish their own curriculum and that it was okay to skip chapters. That it was okay to not do every single chapter in there. They always challenged me to think about when we were in school…did we ever finish a book? Honestly y’all they don’t even hardly cover half of the book now in school. So why do we put so much pressure on ourselves to finish the book? So that’s one thing that I struggle with is that follow through and finishing the subject and I’m just living with it. And this is what it is.

Organization. I tend to be really organized in some things and not so much in other things. Some of the things that have helped we’ll talk about later but organization is one that is a big struggle.

And this is going to surprise you if anybody knows me in person they’re going to die when I say this – a couple of my friends know it, but not many other people know it. I’m a very big [00:27:00] driver in every aspect of my life except homeschooling and parenting. I’m not a driver mom. I probably would be even called a pushover. My kids probably get away with murder. Although I hope and pray they’re not spoiled. Hopefully, they’re grateful that I’m not a driver, but I’m not a strong driver and I think that can be a negative.

Mom bright shiny objects would probably be another one. I called them BSO’s – I get the squirrel syndrome where things look great over there that you know, the grass is always greener on the other side and being one of the owners of homeschool moms. We have a lot of access to a lot of [00:28:00] curriculum and I want to try them all. I’ve gotten better lately about turning some down and not just not taking it. Even though I would love to, I just have gotten to the point where I can’t take it all. We will offer it to other people that are on our team. But that was a big struggle for me.

Another thing that I struggle with is working and homeschooling Wendy and I already told you we have these four businesses that we are running Homeschool Road Trips, Hip Homeschool M and Only Passionate Curiosity – the three biggie’s that are all on the Homeschool side, really take up a lot of time. As a matter of fact, I am sitting here taping this podcast at one o’clock in the morning. Don’t feel sorry for me!! My next point is I’m a night owl and. That’s when I’m at my best. I really think better at night [00:29:00] and ironically Wendy is an early bird. It’s another reason why Wendy and I can not seem to be able to get on a good schedule as far as doing things like this. So it’s usually going to be me doing a podcast or Wendy doing a podcast… us together on a podcast is going to be unusual. But one of the worst things that’s happened… well maybe it’s not the worst, but for me it is worst – is my kids are night owls too! So that means I have to stay up later and later and later to get my time alone to think and work. I try to get up earlier in the morning and although I do get up, I’m not as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning. For me that’s hard. So I struggle with this whole night owl thing and going through menopause and having Hashimoto’s – I think all of those things lend themselves [00:30:00] to making me even more of a night owl.

How do I overcome some of these struggles? Honestly some of them I don’t! Some of them I just navigate and I work through and I just accept. For instance not being a driver and not finishing. There’s not a whole lot I can do about it. That I just roll with.

Organization. I have found some fun things, I’ll talk about later when I get to my favorite things. I do have some products that have a really really really helped!

The bso’s – those bright shiny objects and how I work through those  is having a limited budget helps and, even more so, having limited time. That really has helped me say no. I’m really learning how to say no on some of those.

The night owl thing, I still haven’t figured that out. I’m not I ever will … well maybe when the kids are gone, and I don’t have to stay up so late to get my alone time, maybe. But I don’t want to rush [00:31:00] that thank you very much. I’d just as soon they stay here and I just have to stay up till wee hours of the morning to get everything done.

So do I have in real life homeschool support know? We’re very rural. My best friend, that I told you did home school with me,  not only did she not homeschool for the whole time…. she moved to Memphis. She left me! [laughter] I joke about it… but I wouldn’t even go see her house while it was under construction because I thought if I went to see it was going to be real. Well, it was real, it didn’t matter whether I went to see it. And yes, she moved.  We still see each other but she’s about an hour away, but we don’t see each other as much as we’d like and she wasn’t homeschooling with me. But she was my biggest support system.

My mother-in-law is about 2 hours away. She is a big support system. Although we don’t talk that much and we certainly don’t talk about [00:32:00] homeschooling because she does have her ideas and her ideas do not always mesh with my ideas. And I really believe that I don’t need her ideas to homeschool. Well, I probably shut her off really too quickly, but it probably saves us a lot of arguments so I don’t regret shutting her down on that. But no, I don’t have a whole lot of homeschool support around here. We don’t fit into the co-op scene, I’ve got too much going on. I can’t spend a whole day there doing whatever they need me to do and I can’t afford to spend $3,000 or $4,000 for my kids to go there. If I was going to do that. I would put them in a private school and they’d be in a Montessori school – thank you very much. No that doesn’t work. So I don’t really have a whole lot of support.

I get my support in Hip Homeschool Moms community and now with the neighborhood. Our neighborhood is on our website. It’s neighborhood.hiphomeschoolmoms.com. [00:33:00] And honestly, that’s our friends. Our members are my support system now.  Of course Wendy is a big support system and Leanne, she’s another best friend over in Nashville. She used to be with us here at Hip Homeschool Moms. She’s a big support system, although I never talk to her anymore either. Truly the virtual homeschool support group y’all are my peeps, my Tribe. If it wasn’t for y’all, I honestly I can’t tell you how much y’all have helped me and I’m thankful for that. I can’t even begin to tell you. Honestly I joke about maybe that was one of the reasons I was supposed to be here at Hip Homeschool Moms was because I found my support system here.

Some of my favorite things. This is my favorite part. I actually used to have a blog myself before I started with Hip Homeschool Moms and especially before I bought in. It was called Live and Learn Farm. It’s still there. It’s ugly, but it’s [00:34:00] still there. But anyway some of the curriculum that I love you can quickly ascertain which ones they were by what I was writing about. One of the things I’m going to talk about is Trail Guide to Learning. It’s by Geography Matters or Geo matters is what they go by now and it was literally my favorite curriculum. I think I have 18 different articles on that blog about Paths of Exploration. It fit very very well with by Montessori style of homeschooling. It was a great spine and I used it as a spine and then we would leap off and go do a lot of hands-on stuff because Montessori is very hands-on. So I just Blended my Montessori philosophy with the Trail Guide to Learning series. The one I was actually did was Paths of Exploration. That’s one of my favorites.

The other favorite – because I actually added two things to Paths of Exploration  and only two things because it’s an all-inclusive curriculum. The two things that I added were math and science.

My science was Apologia. I actually used to work for a Jeannie Fulbright. I still do some things for Jeanne and I truly felt like I was working for a rock-star! Her curriculum is amazing. It was exactly what I needed for my kids. It was actually some of the few books that I actually finished not because I felt like I had to finish everything but because we loved the books and we loved doing them. We did all of Jeannie’s books. They are elementary level and they are called [00:36:00] Exploring Creation.

Montessori is an extremely strong provider of math. My kids, really got an unbelievable foundation for math, but once we got past that Montessori elementary level math, we have struggled with finding one that fit. I can’t tell you how many curricula we went through. (I’m not going to list them all…) It doesn’t matter whether it worked for me, even if it did work for me it might not work for you. Even some of my favorites that I’m listing here might not work for you. What works for one family doesn’t necessarily work for another so I’m not going to dog them. But what we actually did end up landing on [00:37:00] for at least for two of my kids that has worked extremely well has been Teaching Textbooks. It’s been a blessing for us.

One of the other things that I absolutely love is IEW, Institute for Excellence in Writing it has been truly one of the best things that happened to our kids as far as writing goes. Chase who is the one that’s in college, he was taking a dual enrollment class, it was actually a government class and the professor was a doctor of law. I didn’t even know you could be a doctor of law. Maybe that’s what they all law degrees are. But anyway, she went by doctor whatever her name was. She actually wrote a note to Chase and told him that she had never taught another student that expressed themselves better than Chase. I get no credit for that whatsoever. That was totally IEW. If you’re looking for a great writing curriculum, I can’t sing their praises high enough. [00:38:00]

The last thing I want to talk about is All About Spelling. It is another favorite. One of the things that I think Montessori does extremely well, I told you, was Math and Science because it was very exploration oriented and very visual so it helps them see things. But one of the things they did not do great, in my opinion, is spelling. Because they focused on phonetics and phonics they read early, which I love. But when your kids learn to read phonetically, they usually are not great spellers. And that was absolutely the case with my kids. All About Spelling literally was a game changer and it was very Montessori because it’s very tactile.

Let’s talk about my decision to [00:39:00] homeschool.  It was literally one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I can’t tell you all the things that have changed in my life, all the things that evolved that I wasn’t expecting to evolve… like my recruiting business closing. But I did learn a lot about myself and I’m still learning a lot about myself through this homeschooling thing. One of the things I already told you. I’m a pushover when it comes to my kids. I also figured out I love to learn, which I didn’t expect. I didn’t know I love to learn because my love of learning was stifled the way I was taught. This gave me a lot of freedom to explore [00:40:00] not only how my kids learn best, but also how Mom learns best. So that was pretty fascinating.

I want to be organized – that is something else I learned about myself – that I’m not. I don’t know that I ever will be… if I were doing a Facebook live right now, I would show you how unorganized my area is. Now of course. I am trying to get ready for New Mexico so I probably have a little bit of an excuse but not it’s like this all the time. I’m a piler. Are y’all pilers, you know where you just pile stuff?

Probably the biggest thing that I’ve learned is I’m not as patient as I thought I was going to be. I really thought I mean because I am a pushover, I really thought that I would be more patient. I’m not. It’s sort of funny, you know, all these these public schoolers and private schoolers (or I guess I should call them traditional schoolers) say to us … “Oh my gosh, you must be so patient because I could never do that.” No, we’re not we’re not anymore patient. I’m certainly not. I don’t know about y’all, but I’m not more patient.

That is my homeschool story. It was long. Hopefully I did not bore you to tears, If I did, I apologize. We are going to have more of these homeschool stories because I really do believe that y’all get something out of it. I think you love to hear how [00:42:00] other people do homeschool, what they love, what they don’t love, what they would do differently,what you can take away from it, you know some ideas. Maybe I didn’t give a lot of ideas, but hopefully I did.

We will have lots more homeschool conversations around some mom’s telling their their homeschool stories. I think they’re like birth Stories. Moms like to hear birth stories and homeschoolers like to hear homeschool stories. So we’ll have lots more of those. One of our next podcasts is going to be with another mom who actually used to work for NASA – her story is fascinating. She’s an in real life friend. We’ve met up because of Hip Homeschool Moms, so we will be talking to her on the next podcast. Hopefully you all are enjoying these… if you are you’re going to like what we’re doing in the future. Thanks

for joining us today, and we will talk to you soon.

Similar Posts

4 Comments

  1. Great job interviewing yourself, not just anyone could pull that off, lol! I enjoyed learning about your homeschool story so much, please continue these podcasts. I always feel like I am just hanging out with a friend when I watch/listen to you. Thank y’all for the support!

    1. Hahahaha!! Thank you Deborah! You are always such an encouragement to us! We will continue them! We are heading out of town for one of our Homeschool Road Trips to New Mexico for two weeks… so there might be a delay in getting the next two out, but we promise, we will continue!

  2. Great job interviewing yourself, not just anyone could pull that off, lol! I enjoyed learning about your homeschool story so much, please continue these podcasts. I always feel like I am just hanging out with a friend when I watch/listen to you. Thank y’all for the support!

    1. Hahahaha!! Thank you Deborah! You are always such an encouragement to us! We will continue them! We are heading out of town for one of our Homeschool Road Trips to New Mexico for two weeks… so there might be a delay in getting the next two out, but we promise, we will continue!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *