Introduction

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Homestead Education Podcast. Today, I have Cheryl Daley with me from the How to Homeschool podcast. And she has just been blowing up the Internet with her wonderful new podcast about how to help families homeschool. So, hi, Cheryl. I’m happy to have you on. Thank you for having me. You got to come on my podcast. So that interview was awesome. I’m excited to have the tables turned here. Right. It was so fun. Of course, I always love the shock factor of how our life actually looks.

Discovering Cheryl

Yeah. But yeah, I’m really happy to have you on, because I remember when I first came across you, I think it was on Instagram or something, and your tagline just really caught me about how you went out from working in the government to homeschooling your kids. And it’s like, oh, my gosh, how do you leave a government job? But I might be jumping ahead a little. So introduce yourself real quick.

Government to Homeschooling

Yeah, well, no, that was it. I’ve been a government worker for 16 years, so that’s all I knew. And, you know, because the education system like I felt and I feel like a lot of people feel this way, it doesn’t really open us up to explore the possibilities or give us that free time to just like learn, what do I like, what don’t I like? I never really knew you were shuffled here and there. And I always kind of felt that in my 20s, you know, working for the government is just so boring. I mean, you’re there just wasting your life away. I’m not saying every government worker feels that way. But even the people that I saw that were busy, I’m like, what? What really are you busy with? Are you busy with a task that they’re just making you do? And then at the end of the day, you do all this work. And they’re like, thanks for doing that. It’s going to go nowhere. So it’s like this whole rat race of just just like school. Get out, get up, rush out the door, go do what they tell you to do so that you really have no time to dictate your day. And then I graduated college and my parents were like, well, we were government workers. So here, take the civil service exam. And I did. And I got into, you know, started with the tax department and climbed my way up within 16 years. And I still always was just like, man, it sucks. I don’t like doing anything. You know, what do I like? I taught Zumba on the side and, you know, like, I don’t know. I liked going to happy hour or whatnot, going out with friends. But there was nothing like making you want to be excited to wake up in the morning, you know.

2020 as a Turning Point

So then 2020 happened for a lot of people. That was a wake up call. And oh, yeah. Yeah, they were. I had a three year old at the time and he was in a private daycare. But they still I’m in New York. They still had to go forward with the New York regulations. They were like an under, you know, the table kind of daycare. They were legit. And they said, well, we’ve got to start masking your three year old now. And then I remember it was funny. She said to me, you know, you might want to get him checked for speech. And I’m thinking, well, how is his speech going to improve if he has a mask on his face and if you’re with him all day and you’re wearing a mask all day? So my husband and I initially were like, no, no, no. We’re not masking our three year old. There’s just there are just some things we’re not willing to do. And that was not one of them. So we pulled him out of daycare. I was doing the kind of work from home thing because everybody was working from home during covid and having him there. And that was very difficult.

Finding Homeschoolers

But I started taking him to homeschool playgroups because those were the people that were like still going out and living their life every day. And I would just like how these people with questions like they. I feel bad now because they’re probably like, does she think we’re from a third world country or something like or another planet like some days it feels that way? Yeah. And I would just ask them all sorts of questions. What do you do all day? And, you know, all the obvious ones. How do they socialize? How do you know you’re teaching them enough? All that good stuff.

Starting the Podcast

And then one day it dawned on me. I was like, why don’t I make this a podcast? Because I was on maternity leave anyway. So I’d had like a six month block off. And like, you’re not busy enough on maternity leave. I was like, let’s start a podcast. And my husband actually like was like, oh, good idea. And he never says that. So I’m like, I better roll with this one.

Supportive Husbands

So that was exactly how it was with my curriculum. I thought, like, I’m going to go home and tell my husband my crazy idea. And I was like, actually kind of scared. I’m like, I have this like idea. And I tell him and he’s like, that’s a really good idea. You should get in your chair and start working on that. Do you need some iced tea? So it’s like, yeah, if they’re on board, it must mean that it’s something good.

Podcast Growth

So, yeah, then I just started interviewing people. That was two and a half years ago. It was it was February of twenty twenty three. And so I was still technically on the books working for the government still. Just I had kind of saved up a lot of time so I could take an extended maternity leave. And then, yeah, when when I ran out of time, I just said, you know what? These people have talked me into it. I am going to homeschool because that was the premise of the podcast. Should I homeschool my kids? Let me talk to you homeschoolers and see what it’s all about.

Early Homeschooling Confusion

That I mean, I kind of wish I had that when we started homeschooling eight years ago, because I kind of got thrown into it and I was like. I have no clue what to do. Like, I don’t know how to do this. And we were doing it through a charter school. And the lady goes, well, it’s OK. You can pick whatever curriculum you want. And I was like. OK, like, how do I even know where to find curriculum?

Curriculum Overwhelm

So overwhelming. Yeah, absolutely. And I still as a I mean, I consider us like veteran homeschool parents at this point, because not only the like, we’ve only done it for it’s over eight years now, but we also had kids all the way from one. Our youngest wasn’t even born yet. And we have one that’s 22. So we kind of have hit all those grades at this point. And I still get overwhelmed every year picking curriculum because I’m we’re eclectic. So it’s not like we just oh, we use a Becca and we use it every year. It’s I want to find the best fit for each of my kids every year. And because I travel to all these homeschool conferences, I get to see all these amazing curriculums and I’m buying them throughout the year and then it’s time to pick over the summer. And I’m like, well, I have one, but I want to buy one.

Cheryl’s Curriculum Interviews

Yeah, it’s so much. It’s very overwhelming. I actually had a like subsidiary of my podcast that was like a paid subscription where I just interviewed people on curriculum, like give me a 10 minute rundown. What’s your curriculum like? What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it? What does it cover? And it was just getting a little overwhelming to keep that up. I did it for like a year or so, but it’s still a podcast a week for like two years. And I was like, yeah, I’m done. Yeah, it’s a lot. It was a lot to edit and just to find the people. And it would because it was curriculum would be so specific. Well, I’m looking for someone with this curriculum and they’re like, I’ll tell you about it, but not on air. And so it was hard. But I did. You know, we have at least, I think, 50 episodes just about curriculum. So, you know, that is still available to people. But that’s really handy.

Eclectic Styles Explained

You know, and it’s still hard because I like you. And I actually I just wrote an ebook about everything I’ve learned from interviewing over 120 homeschooling families. Oh, that’s amazing. Like you said, the eclectic. So somebody listening might be like, what does that even mean? So like in the book, it breaks down like this is what eclectic means. This is what the Montessori means. This is what, you know, the Charlotte Mason means. And this and you can eclectic as you’re doing it all a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And I always tell people we’re traditional eclectic on schoolers. Pick a day. Yeah. And then they’re like, I don’t know what that means anyway. Fine. It sounds like she knows what she’s talking about. Yeah, we totally have it together, which really that just means I buy lots of curriculum and attempt to have regular school days that we usually end up playing in the mud.

What Kids Really Need

So, yeah. And I think at the bare bones, like that’s what the summary of my two and a half years of interviewing homeschooling families would be. It is don’t even worry about the curriculum. It’s not a bad idea to have it, like if you want something to fall back on. But like, say, your curriculum, for instance, it’s it’s not like we’re going to cover every subject and this is going to be your whole year. It’s like this is something that your kids need to know, like how to homestead. And, you know, you can spend a portion of your year on this. You can do it just in the springtime or just in the fall. It’s like and that’s, I think, what we need to focus on. What do our kids really need to know to survive in the future that we can foresee? Now we see all this AI coming. We see there might be wars, even more wars going on. We know we can’t trust the government. We know these things have been happening. They are floods and hurricanes and this and that. So who knows? But aliens, I don’t know. What can we do to prepare our kids? Well, you know what? If they know how to grow their own food, you’re a step ahead of 95 percent of the other people out there. So we’d be doing our children a disservice to not teach them the things in your curriculum.

Homesteading as a Core Skill

And that’s why I saw you. Actually, my husband sent me your curriculum because he saw it and he was like, oh, you should get this. And I was like, yeah, I should get her on the podcast, too, because that’s why I appreciate you saying that, because, yeah, you’re not going to need Pythagorean’s theorem. And you know what? If you do need that in your job, you can learn it as a 23 year old on the job. Things like how can we raise this cow and how can we butcher this cow and how can we milk this cow? Those are things we just don’t know what the future is going to provide. And not even just in our lifetime, but say our grandkids, grandkids, grandkids, if they’re like, oh, that generation back in 1950, 2000, they dropped the ball and they never let us learn what our ancestors have learned for thousands of years. That’s our fault. That’s on. Literally, that’s like a breakdown of society right there. Yeah, we need to take responsibility as parents and teaching the stuff that’s in your curriculum is that responsibility.

Learning by Doing

Right. And I mean, I look at it, too, in the concept that kids like they’re taught to, like, memorize things in school. Then they memorize it even more in college and then they go get a job and they have to apply that. That is a lot where with what we’re doing on the farm, they’re learning how to apply it from the most like basic concept to a more advanced concept, to an even more advanced. And then in high school, they’re taking their you know, my daughter’s taking honors biology right now. She’s practically teaching herself because it all comes around to what we’ve already learned. And then when she goes to college and gets a job, if she does those things or, you know, I hope she’ll get a job. But if she goes to college, she’s not going to have to learn how to apply those things because she already knows how to apply them and learned what they meant.

Why School Isn’t Working

You’re so right, because she’s doing it. And she’s and that’s why kids another another reason that they’re doing so poorly in school, because nothing they’re learning is really relevant to their life at that moment. And then you take the next step. They wouldn’t know how to apply it if they had to, because you’re learning it in the most boring way in a textbook with 35 kids in the classroom. Some classes don’t even have enough desks for everybody. A teacher that is stressed, overwhelmed, underpaid, under resourced. It’s not where.

Roots of the School System

And then when you look at the history of the education system, which is how it was set up from the Rockefellers, John Dewey, Horace Mann, they just wanted a nation of obedient workers smart enough to do the job, not smart enough to question it. And it was really created for the Industrial Revolution. But we’re past that now. Yeah. So we have to move past that with our education for we have.

What Elites Actually Do

None of the elites, none of the elites send their kids to school. Oh, no. They do like, you know, like classical education and things like that. Yeah. Montessori, they do private little not even private schools. They will do like, oh, this pod that somebody created. We hired teachers that we believe, you know, what they teach. And they’re the ones teaching a group of our kids. So it’s it is. And none of the teachers or none of these elites to like Mark Zuckerberg. I just posted this today. He doesn’t even have his children use technology in his home. Yeah, I absolutely believe that because they know how addictive it is. That’s literally how they have made their millions or billions or whatever they have. Yes, we are their test dummies, their their chicken herds.

Tech as a Tool

Mm hmm. I always raise up. I always remind my kids, you know, technology is a wonderful tool, but that’s what it is. It’s a tool. And sometimes that tool is for entertainment, but it’s not like an end all be all. Yeah. And it’s hard. I think, you know, the good part about homeschooling is that your kids are not going to be as subjected to the pressures of the social media or the technology when they are homeschooled, because generally most homeschoolers don’t use a lot of technology. We’re all kind of on that same page that we are weary of this. And it’s harder in school when they see like every single kid in my class has a phone and has access to, you know, all of the social medias. It’s hard to it’s hard to have your kids singled out and not part of that. But then when they are part of it, I mean, it’s everything from the dopamine hits all throughout the day. And then when they don’t get them, they get anxious to the video games and they’re grooming kids for all sorts of things.

First Gen Digital Parents

The A.I. is going crazy. And I use a I, you know, with my podcast and stuff, but also adults. And we grew up in an era that we didn’t have technology. Right. So I always kind of like what is it, the Oregon Trail generation where we started out with no technology. And by the end of high school, we had a pretty close to what we have now. You know, it’s and yeah, we’re the first generation to ever have to deal with this. And parent doing it. Yeah, it’s it’s hard. And, you know, we can’t go to our parent. Well, we can’t go to our parents for a lot of reasons. But we can’t go to our parents and say, you know, like, how do we handle these types of issues with our kids? Because they have no one has ever parented the way we have to parent right now.

Shielding vs. Guiding

You’re right. And that’s so huge. The more research we can do on it or more or shield them, let everybody else be the guinea pig. Right. Well, I think that’s what we’re doing is, you know, homeschool parents. I always say that we’re you know, we’re not shielding them from everything in life. We’re showing shielding them from like that culture of relying on systems that the first line of defense against these really crazy things. And then like with my older teenagers, I sit down and be like, hey, this is what’s going on in the world. Have you seen it on, you know, anything that you’ve been watching on TV or like my daughter? She’s almost 17 and has social media now because I’d rather her have it in the house with me where I can guide her. But I mean, even this weekend, she met a group of kids at fair that she got along with really well. She had known some of them for a while, but they kind of there’s this group and they’re like, oh, yeah, hit us up on Facebook and we’ll go hang out. And they all walked away. And she looked at me like, how do I do that? And I was like, it’s OK. Like, I’m actually friends with one of their moms on Facebook. So we’ll find them. And then you just, you know, you shoot them a message and be like, hey, it was awesome hanging out. Like, what do you want to do this weekend? You know, but like she wasn’t really sure how to even pursue that type of a friendship.

Social Media and Safety

Yeah. Well, phone numbers. They don’t exchange phone numbers anymore. It’s oh, get me on Snapchat. And yeah, which I don’t I think they do that stuff so that parents don’t understand because there’s that woman. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen her Instagram page scroll into death. And she’s she used to work in social media and then realized, wow, you’re targeting kids. And then she quit her business and kind of went into this whole nonprofit trying to inform parents about the realities of it. And it’s dark. It’s dark, especially with the AI, like the stuff that it’ll let your children see. I mean, my kids do watch TV. I grew up watching TV. And it’s obviously different now because, you know, my daughter will put on like YouTube kids to watch Blippi. And then but this woman was saying on her page, it’ll have innocent stuff like that. And then it’ll put a short in maybe not on the YouTube kids. I’ve never seen shorts, but I’ve never heard of it. Like it’ll put their target from A.I. And like one was like an A.I. version of a cat with its stomach opening up or a baby with its stomach opening up and ants coming out. It was like the weirdest, most demonic thing that shouldn’t belong in between Blippi and Cocomelon. You know?

Unlimited Content, No Anticipation

Yeah. Well, that’s these kids can literally stream anything they want all the time. And I think that even takes away from like proper dopamine or whatever it is, like that anticipation that like we used to have. If I got all my homework done, then I could watch. If I got it done by eight, I could watch step by step or whatever it was. Yeah. And when there was that, like, you know, the job well done and the. You know, the reward of getting to do something where even if they have schoolwork and then, you know, they have to watch something afterwards, they can literally watch whatever they want. Yes, they do. If they miss the episode of Full House, we used to have to wait like a year till it was on the rerun. I try to tell my kids that I’m like, I’m just asking you to pause it, to brush your teeth. You don’t understand. We did not have pause buttons as a child.

Back Road Therapy

Well, and I was even we were listening. We did yesterday. We do. We did something. We call it back road therapy. And it’s when we’ve had a really rough week, like we had our fair week this week. We took a we had to deliver some meat to a really rural part of Montana. And you can there’s these tiny dirt roads over the mountain that come. We can come bring all the way back to our house. And so we did that yesterday and picked berries and packed a lunch. And, you know, there’s just we only saw two other people the whole day after we left where we dropped off our meat. And it was just some people out on their TVs for a drive. And they actually were kind of lost. And so we gave them directions back out of the mountains. But, you know, we’re just back roads. We’re listening to country music, windows down, you know, eating sunflower seeds like just that. Take a deep breath and enjoy the great outdoors and decompress from something major. And, you know, we give our kids that a lot and they actually look forward to it now. But well, they always have. But like even my teenagers, they went through like that moment where they’re like, you know, I don’t want to do the back roads. And then my daughter was like, it’s been a really long week. Can we go to go on a drive or something?

Shared Cultural Moments Are Gone

Oh, that’s adorable. Yeah. But we were listening to this country song. It’s called like when tough little boys grow up to be dads, they turn into big babies again. And it talked about this part where he goes, I didn’t cry when old Yeller died. And I got to there, he goes, at least not in front of my friends, you know, and the kids were like, what does that mean? And I realized it’s not only that they haven’t seen older stuff, which is fine. Like it’s I don’t need to make sure they see everything I ever saw. But it’s that fact that there isn’t something so iconic like that, that they can talk about it in a song and everybody knows what they’re talking about. You can’t do that now because there’s just so much like coming at them all the time. It wasn’t like with us. We only had so many movies and TV shows coming out that that was a big deal.

Food in Schools

Mm hmm. And I really like that about them. Or if it is something so viral that everybody knows about, it’s gone in three days because there’s a new thing. So, yeah, I, I agree with that completely.

Watching Classics

We just watched Field of Dreams the other day. And could you always hear that quote? Oh, if if you build it, he will come. You know, so like we showed that to my son. And yeah, we we do what we watch Little House on the Prairie. And I mean, we I don’t feel like typical homeschoolers because I feel like I’m like a foot in mainstream society and a foot in the homeschooling homestead world. But yeah, no, we I guess we are more because we do seem crazy to the mainstreamers like my sister, my sister in law, my in-laws. Like, what do you mean you don’t give your children red dye 40 and high fructose corn syrup? That’s crazy. You’re depriving them. I’m like, yeah, I am depriving them of poison. But, you know, well, it’ll be OK.

Let Them Be Kids (Even at Fair)

You know, like my eight year old, he pretty much got to run feral at fair for five days. And I think he pretty much just lived off candy from different people’s booths. And I could see that in him. Like he was he does not react well to that stuff. Yeah. But I also wasn’t going to be like, it’s fair. You aren’t allowed to have, you know, and just go enjoy yourself, be a kid. And we can do that, like in our county and where we live. Like, I don’t think I saw him all day long and him and his five year old brother were just gone. Oh, that’s that’s nice. That’s nice that you could trust the area. They run past my booth or one of my older kids would be like, I ran into the boys and I, you know, bought him an ice cream. And I’m like, OK, whatever, you know.

Kid-Led Detox

Yeah. And yesterday I said, hey, if we’re going for a drive like you don’t need to be eating any candy, like we’re not going to bring any sweets with us. I’ll bring I think I brought grapes and Gatorades just, you know. And last night we got home and he was cleaning out his bag from the fair and there was candy. And I was like, you can have a little bit like now that’s after dinner. He’s like, no, mom, I’m on a sugar detox. Oh, that’s like we all need that, don’t we? From time to time, we all need that. I was like, OK, go ahead and stay on that sugar detox for a couple of days because you’ve been on my nerves.

School Food vs. Home Food

Well, and that’s another thing, too, because when we send our kids to school, so many schools today have free breakfast and lunch because they don’t want to discriminate against the kids like the Medicaid recipients that would get that. So now everybody gets that. But it’s not healthy foods in the schools. It is the pancakes with the high fructose corn syrup syrup for the pancakes. And, you know, bagels with the cream cheese and the cereals with the dyes and the cereals. Yes. And it’s lunches that are pizzas. And, you know, so you could send your kid to school with all organic homemade food and they could throw that out and eat whatever they want, nachos, just because it’s free to everybody. Now, I say free. It’s not our tax dollars. But yeah, it’s available to everyone now in most places.

Why Homeschool Anyway?

And that’s a big thing to think about when you think about your reasons to want to homeschool your fears around homeschooling. Like what’s more important to you? Having a kid that can sit and think because their brain isn’t trying to get rid of all of these toxic chemicals in it. And I mean, and then we’re expecting the kids to sit for six hours a day. I mean, it is it all kind of, you know, it’s like an onion. You start peeling it because what I initially was going to homeschool for was in New York, you know, Cuomo took away our religious exemption for vaccines, which I knew nothing about before. And then I started researching some stuff and I said, well, maybe I don’t want to get everything. Maybe I want to actually decide what my child gets because my child. And then I sort of realized I don’t have that right in New York. If we’re going to be welcomed into the school system, there’s five states that you need everything on the CDC schedule. And I think that was my wake up call to like, it’s my kid. What do you mean to mask them? And what do you mean I have to inject them with stuff that I don’t feel is a concern for our family? It might be for someone else. But, you know, so it was just like more and more realizing how much how much more control the school and government has over your child when they’re they’re in the homeschool.

Common Fears: Socialization and Missing Out

So I think like being fearful of are they going to be socialized or are they going to a big thing of mine was are they going to resent me because they’re not going to the football games and prom? Like those were the things I was worried about. And my kids go to football games and prom. So and that’s the thing, too. Yes, they still can do that. They can be a date. They can still get invited with their friends.

Homeschool Prom

Well, we have a homeschool prom here. It’s 60 percent of our county homeschools. So there’s like one hundred and fifty kids at our prom. Oh, wow. That’s so just so small. But for our county size, that’s almost as big as the public school prom. Yeah. And if you don’t have that in your area, if you and a couple of homeschooling moms or dads started one, I bet you could get some neighboring counties and you’d have the same thing. Like, right. That was the way it started. It’s all it’s not just for juniors and seniors. We do it if they’re a teenager, like 13 and above can come. Yeah. And you can rent a hall. You can rent a band. You can let the kids get a limo or a horse and buggy if they want a classic car to drive. You know, we got to go homeschool dress shopping or prom dress shopping. The last couple of years, my daughter just wanted something from Boot Barn because she likes the more Western look. But this year it was Northern Lights themed. And so we went down to the city and we went to all these dress shops and it was after regular prom. So everything was on clearance. Oh, sweet. And we ended up getting her the most beautiful. It was like that, like shimmery, iridescent, like blue and purple, like where when she moved, it looked like the Northern Lights. Oh, it was amazing. And she got to have that full experience. And it was so fun.

You Can Create Experiences

Yeah, we think that we can’t provide that to our kids because a government entity hasn’t organized it. That’s just crazy. So, yes, you can do all of the things. And like you were saying with the curriculum before, I think to take a step back and like, don’t let it overwhelm you, because if you replicate school at home, that’s when you’re going to butt heads. So it’s like, fine. What does your child like? What does interest them? Maybe roll with the seasons. Can I get, you know, a curriculum or even just books from the library, chat, GPT, something like give me a project to do a science project to do with my kid? There are seven. They’re high activity. He really likes trucks and, you know, mud. And,you know, I want to work on spelling with him. And that thing will spit. It might be the devil, but it’s spitting out to you like little things that you can do with him for a few days or a week or six weeks, whatever you tell it to.

Using Tools to Your Advantage

So using that stuff to our advantage and, you know, it’ll help you find books that you can rent from the library. And, you know, I do where they just deliver them right to my library. I can get them from anywhere. They send it to my library and I pick them up in one bulk, like 20, 30 books. And yeah, it’s just it’s never been easier. So we do have some curriculums we do, too. But I like doing the nature studies and unit studies like yours. So it’s it’s just such a it’s hard to think about it. And it seems overwhelming when you’re not in it. If you’re still a parent that sends your kid to school and you’re like, I like that idea, but I don’t know that I have the time or the overwhelm is too much. But once you’re in it and you just take a step back and say this week, we’re just going to go on a nature walk every day, just a little walk every day. Notice something, jot it down in a journal. Your kid’s getting writing, science, gym, you know, all in just that and connection with their parents.

Every Kid Is Different

It’s absolutely true. I mean, in every like I said, every kid can be different, too. You know, my teenagers, they’re wanting to go to college. So, yeah, we’re taking we’re doing college prep level classes, but they’re teaching themselves and doing it in three hours a day. And I’m just there to, I don’t know, like correct their math or my daughter’s dyslexic. So I’ll read out loud to her sometimes. But my little guy is like, you know, my eight year old, we have a math curriculum, an English curriculum. We do it on the days that work for him. And sometimes he’ll do three or four lessons in a row and other days. There’s no way I could get him to do a lesson. And it’s not behavioral. It’s just he’s not in the mindset for it. And you know what? There’s days I’m not in the mindset for it. But then at the same time, he’s the first kid to be like, I’m interested in something. I’m going to deep dive on it. And he’s looking at YouTube videos and he’s pulling out books and he’s asking questions.

Letting Curiosity Lead

And I mean, he my daughter found a turtle on the side of the road the other day. And so she brought it over for the boys to see it. And we ended up talking the rest of the way home in 45 minutes on why the turtles were crossing the road and why they were, you know, because we’re right by a refuge. And then there’s an irrigation ditch on the other side. And then we were talking about conservation and, you know, why reptiles have salmonella. And that’s why I gave her hand sanitizer afterwards. And we’re just going down and down and we get home. And the kids run in and pull up a YouTube video on turtles. And I mean, they just went down the thing and like they pretty much gave themselves a three, four hour science lesson. And I really had nothing to do with it.

Nature School at Home

Oh, that’s so cool. And you know what? That stuff happens all the time when you homeschool and you have the time to let it because I thought the same thing before we homeschool. I was like, what would I do with these people all day? What are we supposed to do all day? I don’t even know what I like to. What would we do? Just sit there and read books together like that’s not me. And now that we’re in it, it’s like, oh, my God, we we were home for springtime. We saw these robins making a nest right outside my daughter’s bedroom window. If she actually slept in her bedroom, it’d be great. Yeah. But so we watched them like making this nest. And then I was all worried because I’m like, oh, my God, they haven’t been back. They haven’t been back. We’ve scared them away. And lo and behold, we found one egg in there one day, another egg the next day, another egg the next day. So then it was like, well, let’s start documenting this. So I had my son. He was six at the beginning of spring. And we put some papers together and he made his own little journal and he, you know, jotted down the date that the nest was done and the date that we found the eggs in there. Then, you know, we watched them sit on the eggs and what that was like and what day how many days it took for them to hatch, how many actually hatched the parents feeding them. We took videos. We took. Oh, my goodness. And he was jotting down the whole time. OK, incubation is ten days. And then how long does it take for them to fly and what do they eat? And then we were researching after they left. Like, do they stay nearby? Will they come back next year to make their nest here for their babies? And how long do they live? And you’re right. It’s like it’s snowballs because it’s relevant to their life.

Kids Learn What They Love

And then it just brings up other things like, oh, hey, well, now we found caterpillars in a tree. And all right, let’s grab a couple of those things. And oh, well, these ones turned into moths. And so what kind of the eastern tent moths, I don’t know, caterpillars. And so then we’re learning about that because it’s relevant. Something you found. We put it in a little jar. And what does he eat? So it was like all this cool stuff that I never learned in school. And, you know, I think it’s way more relevant to real life or just to get them excited about learning and not crush that spirit like, oh, yeah, I mean, it’s.

The “Feral” Five-Year-Olds

We have a five year old, we know, we joke he’s one of those covid babies. Like he’s I don’t know, they’re like a different breed. Like he’s feral and it’s not just him. Like every other five year old I meet right now is just as feral. And but he’s a little like he was early. He doesn’t really talk still, even though he’s like five and a half can’t follow like really basic instructions. Like yesterday, I was like, you know, the bathroom’s right there. And he’s like, we’re looking at the ATM machine at this restaurant we were at. And I’m like, no, the door right there, the door. And he like had no clue like what I was talking about. And, you know, we worry about him. And like we’ve had him in some speech therapy and a couple of things like that. But the other day he was watching a YouTube video of kids jumping their bikes. And he brought it to my husband. He’s like, me do that. My husband goes, no, bud, like you still have training wheels on your bike. And, you know, like it’s not safe because you don’t you know, you don’t know what you’re doing. And he’s like, me do it and walks outside. And we’re like, yeah, whatever, dude. You know, we went out there. We were you know, we could see him riding his bike and stuff, but we weren’t really paying attention much to what he was doing. He had gone out there, taken the training wheels off his bike, learned how to ride that bike like by without training wheels and probably about 45 minutes and was trying to build a ramp with some old building materials we had. And I was just like, and, you know, we see him do stuff like this all the time. He wanted to learn how to drive the tractor and we told him no. So he tried to jumpstart it.

School Would Crush That Spark

Yeah, he’s and that is exactly what school would immediately put him in some sort of remedial thing or he needs medication. Mm hmm. It would just it would kill his. But he’s got something. And they say that, too, about like kids with autism. They’re like, once you find what they’re good at, they thrive. Like you make like, for instance, if they become a detective, you get someone normal into it to be a detective. They might miss all this stuff that someone with the hyper focus is like, oh, yeah, I see that over there as connecting dots that most wouldn’t make. I mean, you just have to find that spark and you’re around them enough to have found it. So watch him build cars from scratch or something, you know.

Siblings Learning Together

Right. And my husband’s an amazing mechanic. And my 16 year old wants to go into ag mechanics. And he is autistic and reads like the history of ag mechanics all the time. And they found a like 100 year old tractor on a friend’s property and they were able to get it going by fabricating parts. My husband didn’t even know what it was. But my 16 year old son did. And our five year old is right there with them for every step of the way. Oh, and you know what? They wouldn’t be able to do that if they were both in school. All that connection of them together wouldn’t be happening. The relationship wouldn’t be.

Sibling Bonds

And that’s a big one is all my friends hated their siblings. I was an only child, so I didn’t really like see that. And I wanted a big family. But I was like, oh, my gosh, they all hate each other. And they’re like pitted against each other and they won’t play together. And we have six kids who genuinely enjoy each other. Yeah, that’s amazing. And I’m sure not all the time, you know, they get. But they will grow together because that they just have all these experiences that kids that are in school don’t get to have with their siblings.

One-Room Schoolhouse Model

And it’s, you know, it’s almost by design because we used to have the one room schoolhouse. So you would be in a class. You’re just learning, hey, instead of, you know, the seven year old writing the essay on it, we have the 12 year old and up writing the essay, doing some research. And they’re just, you know, rewriting the sentence, doing copywork. You know, they have different levels that they would do. And that’s kind of how it works in the homeschool, too. You know, everybody has a different level of what they’re capable of doing. But, you know, one of those schoolhouses used to also be in like individual neighborhoods where kids were still getting their culture and stuff. Yeah. And the neighborhood families were choosing the teachers. Yeah. We’re maintaining these. You know, cultural things that were important to their families. And now they don’t get that. Not at all. No.

Longer School, Lower Scores

And I do think it’s by design over these years. The school day has gotten longer, but test scores have gone down. Not that test scores really mean much, but it doesn’t mean they’re there. If you’re in school for longer and your test scores are going down, what is an issue and not even longer in the daytime or over the year, but at an earlier age at the school down the road for me takes four year olds full day now. So it’s it’s they call it preschool, but it’s universal preschool, but it’s paid for with our tax dollars. So it’s free. So, of course, these parents are going to be like, yes, free daycare at four years old. And then, you know, you go all the way through graduation. And if you go to college all these years, you’re not with your parents during the day. And not only that, but it’s like you’re learning one thing. Your siblings learning another. They got influence from their friends and their sports teams and their teachers. So when they come back to the house, it’s like you don’t even know each other.

Common Core and Disconnect

And then they’re changing curriculums. We had Common Core in New York for a while where they just change the way that you do math. Like all of a sudden it didn’t work anymore. But I think it was because they wanted parents not to be able to help the kids, but they wanted to disconnect. Yeah. And why are they sending them home with homework? That’s our time with our kids. That’s bull, too.

Time With Kids

Right. I mean, if you think about it, by the time they ride the bus and go to after school activities and that type of stuff, I mean, you get what? Maybe an hour with your kids a day on a school day. And you’re rushing around to get dinner on the table and everybody’s showered and taken to sports practice and trying to manage your own life.

Stress of Traditional Schooling

I know it’s in when you’re in it. It seems so normal. Like you don’t you’re like, oh, I’m stressed, but this is normal. This is life is what everybody does. But when I stepped out of it, it’s like, oh, my God. And my kids do drive me nuts. And I am stressed out, but it’s like a different way. It’s still I’m doing what I want to do today. And, you know, just for how many times you have to say, I don’t want to hear that noise anymore. Why are you screaming at the top of your lungs? Right. But there is something about waking up and you getting decide you getting to decide as an adult or child. What am I going to do today? What do I want out of today instead of what does somebody else want out of me?

Purpose-Driven Days

So like, you know, for me today, it was like, OK, you guys are going to I’ll sit in front of the TV. I am standing down a bench. But you know what? They still got to see it was polyurethane. I don’t want to breathe in it in. But they still got to see me working on something. And I’m having a hard time. Oh, my God. Now I’m breathing this stuff in. If I collapse, call somebody. But but, you know, so it’s like I got to work on something creative. They got to see that. And that even pays off, too. And they got to hang out together, you know, and that we do. People always say, how can you homeschool? I’d be so stressed out and blah, blah, blah. Oh, my gosh. The minute I stepped out of that, it was like, yeah, like everything. All that stress just went away.

Stress Shift

Yes. Yeah. The stress of living a life that someone else wants for you versus like, what did we want out of today? Well, I wanted to stand down a bench. And, you know, we we always do a Monday Creek Day with some homeschoolers. And, you know, so we went there. The kids went fishing. We have a new puppy. He did. The puppy did eat the fishing line. So that was a whole fiasco getting the lure out of his lip. But you know what? You know what? They’ll learn something. Yeah. Yeah.

Purposeful Living

I think it’s you have that opportunity to have a purpose driven life. Mm hmm. It never made sense to me before. That was always like just blah, blah, blah. You know what? What the heck are they talking about? Right. You’re right. When you’re in it, you get it. Yeah, absolutely.

Cheryl’s Book

Well, we’re getting close to the end of our time. But do you want to tell everyone a little bit about your the book you wrote, the e-book you wrote? Yeah, I know you mentioned it, but a little bit more on that. Sure. Thank you. Yeah. It’s called The Homeschool How to Complete Starter Guide. Everything I’ve learned from 120 plus podcast interviews. And I pretty much just kind of summarize like like I did today, kind of why I got into homeschooling itself. And what’s really the key points that I’ve learned from people over this two and a half years? What are the overarching themes? What are the mistakes people made? There’s a whole section on like rebuttals to people who just don’t see. Well, you know, what about socialization? And are they going to say we socialize our dogs, not our kids? But exactly. You know, but those those things that scare people, you know, this is what you can say back or here’s the reality. And throughout it, I put quotes from my guests, which was really cool going back through and being like, oh, man, what she said was so profound or what he said really clicked for me. And to go back and like set that in. I don’t know. I just I really enjoyed it. I actually I just interviewed Del Bigtree on my podcast the other day. It’s getting released this this weekend and he might be writing the forward for it. I’m not. Oh, wonderful. Going to put that pressure on him. But I brought it up and he said, send it to me. So I am. That would be super cool. I love Dell. But yeah, it’s really just like, where should I start? And like, here’s just some basic stuff you need to because I’ve read homeschooling books and they are wonderful. But that’s one person’s way that they did it, you know. And and that’s great. This is nice because it’s like a compilation of just what did what did 50 people say worked for them? You know, what did 50 people say didn’t work for them? So that was kind of cool to go back and reflect and write.

Children’s Book on Emergencies

Yeah. And I do have a children’s book to call. Let’s talk emergencies about how to teach your kids, you know, have the conversations about keeping themselves safe in an emergency, you know, knowing how to dial nine one one from a cell phone that’s locked because a lot of us don’t have landlines anymore, you know. And it’s possible to do to get someone grandma’s cell phone and unlock it and call nine one one, you know, water safety and even Internet safety. We’ve got people luring kids, you know, and it is still meant for kids. It’s, you know, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing kind of thing, like talking to the little one on the computer. So it lends the opening of the conversation, how important it is to teach our kids address their address, their phone number, mom and dad’s last name, first and last name, because I’ve talked to cops, you know, while I put that together. And they were like, kids never know their parents first and last name. It’s funny because they call us mom and dad. And if you’re in a, you know, where your parents are split and you might have two different last names, it is something to think about because teachers don’t have the time to teach that in school anyway. And I think we just kind of forget it’s not really in any curriculum. So I did that last year. I did the e-book. This isn’t mine. Yeah. That’s awesome. There’s a whole section on how to handle emergencies and how to talk to dispatchers. Oh, awesome. Oh, that’s so good. Yes. It’s like that’s the most important information we could teach our kids. And yeah, I kind of I was talking to teachers like we don’t really do any of that because we don’t have time to sit one on one with a child. We expect parents to teach it. And then I’m like, well, are you telling them at back to school night that that’s their job? Because you are they supposed to do it in that hour a night they have with their kids. Right. Right. Yeah. Everyone’s just too busy.

Funny Kid Moment

So I’m so glad to hear that you do that, too. Although my five year old, if you ask him who his mom is, he says Homestead Science because he we go to events and he gets lost. And so he gives them the booth name. Oh, that’s so. But that’s exactly. Yes. If you’re lost somewhere, who do you find? Yep. Perfect. Perfect. He did it at the fair this weekend with the Shriners. He wanted chips from their booth. And then they’re like, well, who’s your mom? And he’s like Homestead Science. But our booth was actually for our homeschool co-op. And it just happened that that lady had walked by the booth and saw my book sitting out because we were promoting all the different classes we teach. Oh, it’s super funny. It was funny because it had a happy ending. Yeah. You know, there’s always like a security guard bringing my kid back or something. So, you know, they think he’s lost because he can’t say that’s my brother right there. Oh. And so, yeah, they bring him back. And I’m like, we’ll take him back to his brother. His brother has the walkie talkie, you know, but might be time for a GPS chip on him. We put an Apple AirTag on him at the big conferences. Oh, yeah, that’s a good idea. Yeah.

“Keep Growing” Question

So another thing I like to ask everybody is what does keep growing mean to you?

Cheryl’s “Keep Growing”

Oh, what does keep growing? Well, I mean, I think as people or food, I think we all are living beings on this planet. And, you know, society has done a great job at detaching us from. Nature and our food, but keep growing would mean, you know, keep growing that food, keep growing your body, realize that food is medicine and grow your mind. Don’t stay shut. You know, oh, I voted for one person, so therefore I have to follow everything that person did. No growing is you have a mind of your own. This government will play tricks on you because there’s people even higher up that are controlling things. So grow your mind, grow, you know, your love for your children, your love for your life, grow your food. I just think it’s endless.

Where to Find Cheryl

That’s wonderful. Thank you so much. And you want to tell everyone where they can find you?

Sure. Well, thank you, Kody, for having me. I the homeschool how to is my podcast. It’s on all the major platforms and YouTube. I have most active on Instagram at the homeschool how to podcast. And I have a website, the homeschool how to dot com.

Closing

Well, thank you so much for coming on. I hope everybody goes and checks you out because you just have so much information to share. Oh, thank you, Kody. Thanks for having me.