In this video, we’ll explore the idea of mother culture—a simple but powerful shift that helps homeschool moms continue learning and growing for their own well-being. You don’t have to be a Charlotte Mason homeschooler to benefit from this concept. Whether it’s picking up a novel, diving into a new hobby, or having coffee with a friend, your growth matters. Let’s talk about why your learning is just as important as your child’s—and how to make space for it, even in a busy homeschool life.
🎥 𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐨 Homeschool Show & Tell is a series hosted by Abby from Rooted in Rest and Jessica from The Waldock Way. Our goal with the Homeschool Show & Tell series is to share the unique beauty that is homeschooling and that there is no single way to do it.
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Hey everybody, welcome to the Waldok way. I'm Jessica. Today's video is going to be a homeschool
show and tell. The homeschool show and tell is an open collaboration hosted by Abby from Rooted
and Rested and myself. Our goal with the homeschool show and tell was just to show that there's not one
right way to homeschool. So we do that by picking a topic each month and bringing homeschoolers from
around the globe together to share their take on a specific topic. This month's topic is mother
culture. And I'm so excited for it because I'm not the best at it. So I'm looking for all the
tips I can get. We spend so much time pouring into our kids' education that sometimes we forget that
we're allowed to learn too. We're allowed to continue our own education and that is kind of
what mother culture is. If it's a term you've never heard of, it might be because you don't
run in a Charlotte Mason circle. It is a very, very prominent term for them, but it can apply
to homeschoolers across any different type of homeschooling. It basically just means not
forgetting that you are your own person and not just a mom and a homeschooler and that you still
should be learning and growing and pouring into yourself as well. Mother culture is important
because it really helps us demonstrate to our kids that we should still continue to be curious
and that we should still have self-respect and that we should still be learning even as adults
and that you can still learn even as adults. It is a way to demonstrate that there's not a
finish line on education. You don't finish just because you're done with high school or because
you got your college degree. Even in my late thirties, I'm still learning new things. I'm
still being taught new things, shown new things. And I think that's really important to really show
that there's a sense of curiosity and that it's like lifelong curiosity and lifelong learning and
there's no finish line. So demonstrating that to our kids is very important. And that is a big part
of why mother culture is so important, especially as homeschool moms. Because let's be honest,
one of my biggest goals as a homeschool mom isn't to teach Emily everything she needs to know by
12th grade. It's to teach her a love of lifelong learning. Like I want her to be a learner for her
whole life. I want to ignite that love for learning period. And I think one of the really great ways
of doing that is by showing her that even I in my late thirties can still learn new things and
that it is still fun to learn new things. Mother culture does not have to be fancy. It could be as
simple as reading a novel for fun, starting a small morning habit, listening to audiobooks
while folding laundry, learning something new, which for us has been archery. It can be meeting
a friend for coffee. It can be starting a book club, whether that's in person or virtual, depending
on what your life has to offer, doing a Bible study or devotion on your own terms, watching a
documentary that you want to see and not just because it ties into a homeschool lesson,
reigniting a childhood passion such as drawing or crocheting, going on a nature walk without
turning it into a lesson, taking online classes that interest you, creating a playlist of your
favorite music and dancing in the kitchen, visiting a museum, gallery, or local cultural event with or
without kids and because you want to go, following an art or craft tutorial purely for enjoyment,
going thrifty or antiquing solo, doing some simple self-care like face mask or skin care with
no guilt, sitting in the sun with a warm drink and zero agenda, writing snail mail or thank you
cards by hand to friends, starting a gratitude list or vision board, trying a new recipe simply
because it excites you, working on a puzzle or playing a single-player game just for you,
or setting aside 30 minutes on Sunday to plan your week. I know it can be hard to take time away
from something or add something we feel like we don't have any more time in our day, so how are
we going to make this happen or how are we going to make this work? But the thing is, you don't
need a lot of time. You don't need hours. You just need to find small pockets of time. You just need
to be intentional with your time. So maybe that's getting up five or 10 minutes earlier in the
morning or staying up five or 10 minutes later at night. Maybe it's swapping some of your screen
scrolling time, which let's be honest, if we all looked at our amount of usage on a phone,
we could probably do away with a lot of that and changing that for reading a book or changing that
for journaling. Maybe it is swapping sitting with a friend and you say, hey, if you watch my kids
today, I'll watch your kids tomorrow. And that way you guys could both have some alone time,
even if it was only 30 minutes. Maybe it's having a monthly book club and everybody brings their
kids and the kids play outside while the moms have a book club inside. Especially if you have
a couple of kids that are older, they could sit and watch some of the younger kids while they
played. One of my tips is keeping a list of things that you want to learn, just like you would for
your kids. So I have a long list of things that Emily's interested in, things that we might want
to dive deeper into, things she's shown interest in. So I've learned to do the same thing for me,
because sometimes it's not often, but maybe Emily goes to a friend's or my mom comes and gets her
for the day and I find myself with like a few hours of alone time. When she was younger, I would
walk around the house like, what am I supposed to do for a few hours? Now I keep a list of things
that interest me or that I might want to do so that I'm never in this decision brain fog moment
and I can use that time to learn. So on my list currently is watercolor. I want to learn how to
watercolor. It's something that I think is beautiful, but I'm not very good at it. Crochet,
I did that for a little while when I was younger. I learned how to crochet when Emily was a baby,
so I can make her blanket. Again, not good at it. I can literally do one stitch and one stitch only.
So I would like to learn a few more stitches and maybe complete a project one day eventually.
And some healthy recipes, I would like to learn to make some new healthy recipes. And it's just
easier to kind of play around in the kitchen when I don't have those distractions of Emily coming in
every five seconds and telling me that she's hungry. Basically, mother culture is remembering
that you are not just a homeschool mom. You are a whole person. You're a whole being. You are meant
to have curiosity and passion, and you are also meant to ignite a fire of learning in yourself
so that you can show your kids how to do that for the rest of their life. Because it's important to
us and it will be important to them to see that in us. And by doing that, you're also helping your
homeschool become a more rich and robust homeschool. The last tip that I'm going to leave
you on is if you still have younger kids and you're not in a position to be able to maybe set
aside time from them to practice mother culture. When Emily was younger, we did a lot of what I
called parallel mother culture. So we would do things like Mealtime Monday where her and I would
both sit down and write letters to friends and family. She would write hers. I would write mine
or art projects that I thought we would both be interested in. We would do it side by side.
We would listen to podcasts simultaneously together, her listening to hers on headphones,
me listening to mine on headphones, or even reading. We would lay on the couch together and
her on one side, me on the other, and us both reading our own books. So sometimes you have to
get creative and doing parallel activities helps you demonstrate to your child that you're still
learning. It teaches them how to respect boundaries and you get to still practice that mother culture
in a way that doesn't necessarily feel like you're excluding them or taking time away from that. Now,
because I'm always looking for ways to nourish myself more, I would love it if you would leave
me your tips for mother culture, what you do, what's on your list to learn, anything that you
have down in the comments.
