WE'VE BEEN LIED TO ABOUT HOMESCHOOL

All right, you guys, we have a super fun vlog coming for you, but before that, two things. One, stick around for the end. Don't come for my throat. I know you're going to. Not everybody, some people are probably gonna take issue with some of the things I say in this vlog, and it's just the nature of our society sometimes. But also, I want to make sure that I communicated my points clearly and my intention clearly, so that's at the end. So stay for that. That way you can kind of hopefully understand a little bit more of my heart and my intention and the things that I'm saying and sharing. But number two is don't forget to change your air filters. You guys, our favorite company, Filter By, they send them right to our door. You can get whatever size you want. There's a link in the description if you want to sign up and try it out, but it's been the best thing we ever did to autopilot something so important because your house gets full of dust and dander and dead skin cells and all kinds of things, like bacteria, like just bleh. So you want clean, fresh air filters every month. That way you can breathe, because that's like so much of our bodies and life and everything that's important is being able to breathe clean air. So change your air filters, sign up for Filter By. That way you don't even have to think about it. They'll come to your door every month and you can just check it off. As soon as they get there. Okay, to the vlog. All right, guys, you are doing homeschool wrong if you're not doing it like this. But actually I have to continue on that in a second because we have to go. We're running super late. Not really. We're actually right on time, which is a miracle. But if I don't throw my stuff in a bag and walk out the door now, we will be late. So I will follow up on that initial thought in just a few minutes. By actually showing you what it is we're doing. And this is just the story of our life. It's not flat, but it needs some air. John's about to spill my drink all in the car because he's moving the car forward and didn't realize I set my drink in there. And that's fine. This tire leaks and it has since we got the car. And we really should just get it taken care of. But instead we just keep putting air in it. So it's real flat right now. He's gonna throw some air in it. Thankfully we have an air compressor. Oh yeah, there it is. There's the spill. Could have been worse. While he's putting air in the tire, we are headed out to a field trip with our homeschool co-op. And we're going to an art museum. Going to an art museum. Just a cute little indoor activity for them. They get to tour this art museum and then they get to do an art project. And it should be really fun. We'll see. But we have so many people that ask us about homeschooling and, or say things like, I just like couldn't like, or make comments that are kind of like rude about our kids not being socialized or about homeschool kids not getting X, Y, Z that they need. And so I wanted to, so I just want to have a discussion about that. That obviously is a concern a lot of people have, a thought at least that a lot of people have. And I think that's the farthest thing from the actual truth from the shoes of a homeschooling family. So I want to share more with you guys on what it looks like when you homeschool differently. All right, we made it to the museum of art in a cute little place called Hickory. Are you guys ready? Yeah. You all excited? Yeah. All right, here we go. We're going. Oh, you're so cute. Hi, buddy. I see we're in this little... Cause he's the most adorable boy ever. Well, at least it has to need some antlers or a buck. Wow. Here, hold my hand. Better keep a handle on this guy. So the girls have all teamed up with each other to do a scavenger hunt. They have to find the names of some paintings and then find them and decide whether they are folk art or fine art. Folk art is like the ones that like look flat and like don't have shadows. Folk is like, it's a little more, sometimes it's more whimsical. It's not really like as realistic with shadows and depth on there. Do you think this is big blue? You'd have to look. This one is not through the looking glass. Cause it says like pizza dog and apple painting. What if it's stained glass blues? Cause I don't think it says after the... Also, would this be like fine art or folk art? Does that look like fine art? No, it's folk art. You need classical training, do you? No. It has a raccoon wiener. It's a good opportunity to not make it a beaver. Good job. It's a good opportunity to not make it a beaver. It's tear mule. I cannot keep up with this baby on me. Do we get time to come up and look at the ladder? I don't know, do you want to get people in front? No. They're going slow down there. Come on, come on, come on. Oh, that's creepy. It was creepy. And that is really weird. Those things over there are also a little bit weird. In 1955, Paul Weicker had a stroke. He was a right-handed person when he wrote and when he painted. So after his stroke, he had to deal with the challenge of not quit painting, but yet use his non-dominant hand to paint. His work was still beautiful, if not more beautiful, after his stroke. So this museum was founded by Paul Weicker, and you're going to be painting like the founder of the museum. The first female or lady to have artwork. That purple. I think there was a high school in here. How's the scale? It's great. Scale of one to ten? I don't know. It's all accurate to me. All right, Laney, what do you got here? I got a puppy in the snow. Aw, a puppy in the snow. He's got a little cat. That's cute. And you do this with your left hand? That's pretty good. I'm kind of ambidextrous. You are? How about you, Ev? Did you do that with your right hand? Ev's left-handed. Good job. Jade, what do you have over here? I'm trying to cover up all the colors with the white and stuff. It's kind of like Manessino, her pork. Oh, Tyler's making a wharf in the snow. This one's Marin's. I don't know what it is. And this one's also... Oh, and Adley, you've got a mountain and snowflakes. I couldn't make the play, so I'm just making landmarks. You've got pretty pink snow. Snow blob. Cohen, do you want to play with your little fingers? My hair is all over. I think I was saying to you guys about homeschool, is that if you're trying to recreate an eight-hour public school day at home, it's not gonna work. It's not going to... Like, most people don't thrive in that. Most kids don't thrive in that. And yeah, you are gonna lack socialization, and you are going to lack a lot. Because as a parent, to be equipped to do that would be... I mean, you would obviously need training and all kinds of things if you were planning to try to recreate that at home. But when you take an approach that you are educating your children outside of that box, and understanding that public school day is designed to catch a lot of children at various ranges of learning and ability. So they basically have to cater to all kinds of things. They teach every kind of subject. If you, in a home setting, can give your children undivided attention for two hours, they can complete a day's worth of work. Or more, depending on how motivated they are and what they're learning. There are so many curriculums out there that you can do at home with your kids that do not take a ton of time. But one of our favorite things is to find out what our kids are interested in. Especially our older girls, now that they're getting into middle school ages, what motivates them and interests them, and letting them run with that and learn everything they can about that. Because by the time they graduate, they will have years of experience and knowledge in this specific category of what they want to continue to pursue. Versus learning so much about everything and then trying to make a decision as soon as they graduate. Okay, what do I want to go to college for? What do I want to do next? And then sometimes they change their mind because they haven't been thinking about that. But really, obviously they're allowed to change their mind and learn and grow with whatever. But we have so much more time in the day at home for them to discover new passions and to figure out how they learn best and to go at their own pace. So if some of them need to go slower and they take a little longer learning how to read because they just don't like that as much, that's okay. That's okay. All of our kids, except Maren right now, are reading books totally fluently. And so it's not something we're even concerned about even without being super structured with that. They just have learned to love reading, which then allows them to explore, like I said, any topic, anything they want to know about, they can dive into. They can look up animals. They can look up engineering. They can look up coding. They can look up, you name it. And then on the flip side, there is this. There is community learning. This is only half of our homeschool co-op. The other half is upstairs. We switched. So it's a big group that gets together a few times a month to learn together, to do field trips together, to socialize and make friends. So we are not just home all the time. And when we're together, there's built-in time where they just play and they learn together versus a school setting where you have to sit and be quiet and you're not supposed to talk to each other. Yes, you can make friends during recess and during lunch, but there's so much more flexibility for us right now being home to be able to have friends over or go see friends or meet up at a park or go to the zoo together or take a random field trip. And so I want to, yeah, just encourage you. If it's something you've been like feeling like your kids are gonna be missing out on, you just gotta reframe it and talk to some homeschooling moms and ask them questions because chances are it looks completely different than what you are imagining and what you've ever imagined. And to top it off, we get like, I don't know, 18, 20 years with our kids, like under our wing, maybe even less depending on how independent they are, depending on their friendships, like once they're teenagers, any amount of extra time I can soak up with them and building a relationship with them. Our life is so short. It is way too short for me and some people have to and I get that and I'm not, this is not to make anyone feel bad, but if it's something that is a desire in your heart to do, to be home with your kids and homeschool them, I would encourage you to like, try to find a way to make it happen. And it might not be in this season. It might take a few years until you're at a place where you can do that. But one thing I can say for sure is I'm not gonna get to the end of their childhood and regret all the time that we've gotten to spend with them. And at least as of right now, they're not in any way, shape or form behind the kids their own age. They're smart, they're creative, they are resourceful. And yeah, I don't know. I just feel super proud of my kids and all that they've accomplished on their own because they're excited about learning, because they love it, they don't dread it. And that's it. I'm getting a little emotional. So I'm like, this might be a little too much. Getting a little emotional, but it's just something that I felt so inadequate in for so long. And like, I wasn't able to and couldn't and wasn't gonna be enough. And I wasn't gonna be enough. And I just think those are all lies. I think they're lies that the society tells us, they're lies we tell ourselves. Yeah, I don't know, nothing wrong with keeping our kids home and teaching them everything they wanna know and everything they wanna learn about. Plus some. All right, she's done, she's done. What you got? Artists always signs their work, even if they have to do it left-handed. Uh-oh, boy found some mud. You found some dirt? No, mud. Don't play in it, uh-uh, let's not touch it. It's yucky, it's like poop, that might be poop. What was that, poop? Is that poop? Poop. Ew, poopy. Ready to get in the car? Up here. This is cool, that's nice. Okay, you guys, I want you to know like the difference between what I was saying and am saying and what I was not saying. I'm not implying that there's only one way to teach your children or that one way is better than another. What I am trying to communicate though is that I feel like homeschooling is a largely misunderstood thing. And this is just based off feedback and comments and questions. We get so many messages from mamas who are like, I want to, but I'm scared. I want to, but I don't feel equipped. I want to, but I don't think blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or I wish I could. Man, like I just don't think I have what it takes. Whatever, like the list goes on of these messages that we get. And so what I wanted to communicate and show is that it doesn't have to look like that. It doesn't have to be overwhelming or intimidating. It certainly doesn't have to look like the nine to five school day. I also want to make it clear that I know there are situations in which we want nothing more than to be able to be home and school our children, but we can't because of extenuating circumstances. So when I say, if you want it, make it happen, obviously that doesn't mean like tomorrow you'll be able to pull your kids out and do that. But what it does mean is if that is something that you feel passionately about, there is, and I want you to hear this as an encouragement, not a judgment, an encouragement, that there is nothing stopping you from taking steps towards that. Finding a, like starting a new hobby that you could turn into something for profit. Finding a way, I'm telling you, there's opportunity everywhere. If you don't believe me, just hop on what, like TikTok or Instagram Reels and search for the hashtags that are like entrepreneur or work from home, and you can just find different opportunities. Be careful, use discernment, but there are things you can do. I have a friend who's selling handmade candles and soaps. There are things you can do from home that you could start small and work towards so that maybe not next year, or maybe the year after that, you will be in a position to bring your kids home if that's what you want to do. So I just wanted to clarify because I know there are gonna be people who get offended as our society tends to when we hear things that either make us feel like envious, that that's something I want, but I can't have it, so I'm gonna lash out, or that's not my situation, my circumstances, and I don't feel that way, so I'm gonna let you know it. Whatever, that's fine. Feel however you want. I just want to make sure that I didn't leave room for misunderstanding my intention and my heart in sharing this information. It is our experience. It is what we value, and I know a lot of other people want to get to that point, so hear this as an encouragement. Know that we love you guys, and we are cheering you on no matter what. I think that pouring into your children in whatever capacity you have right now is the most important thing, and then work towards more and deeper and stronger relationships with them, and in their learning. ♪ I still remember ♪