We recently sat down with homeschooling expert and mother of five, Nicki Truesdell, to talk about homeschooling multiple children in different age groups, how to bring History to life, and how to LOVE language arts and teach it so our kids will love it too. Nicki shared valuable insights about managing multiple subjects at various grade levels, with a special emphasis on language arts and history. Her practical advice, gleaned from years of homeschooling experience, offers a roadmap for simplifying the homeschooling journey while nurturing a love for learning in our children.
1/ As a homeschooling parent of five kids, Nicki Truesdell understand the challenges of managing multiple subjects at different grade levels. But fear not! I’ve got some tips to make it easier.
2/ Online classes and co-ops can be helpful, but they’re not accessible or affordable for everyone. So, I recommend combining children into groups to simplify teaching.
3/ One way to do this is by using history as the core subject. Everyone studies the same time period together, allowing for shared learning experiences.
4/ But don’t stop at history! You can also teach literature, Bible, and science at different levels within the group. Adjustments can be made based on ages, like research for older kids and coloring pages for younger ones.
5/ Having multiple copies of books on different levels is a game-changer. It allows each child to dive into the subject at their appropriate reading level while still staying within the same topic.
6/ When it comes to teaching science, following the timeline of historical events can make it even more engaging. It helps kids understand the context and impact of scientific discoveries throughout history.
7/ Math and language arts may need to be tailored to individual grade levels, but remember, flexibility is key. Don’t feel boxed in by public school grade levels. The goal is to keep your children learning and progressing, regardless of their “grade.”
8/ To make this work, embrace the “one room schoolhouse” mindset. It’s okay if your kids are on different levels in certain subjects. Focus on creating an atmosphere of continuous learning and growth.
9/ “As a history lover who was homeschooled myself, I’ve always made extra time to read and learn about different time periods. History is relevant and important because it helps us avoid repeating past mistakes.” Nick Truesdell
10/ “Sadly, many people have been taught a distorted version of history. So, I encourage parents to learn alongside their children. Embrace hands-on learning experiences and make history relevant to their lives.” Nicki Truesdell
11/ Creating a timeline that starts at the beginning of the world and includes personal events and ancestors helps kids understand their place in history. Combine historical fiction and factual resources for a well-rounded perspective.
12/ Thanks to the Internet, finding artifacts, virtual field trips, and videos that bring history to life has never been easier. Take advantage of these resources to enhance your children’s learning experience.
13/ Field trips, museum visits, and participating in historical reenactments are also amazing ways to immerse your children in history. These hands-on experiences make learning memorable and fun!
4/ Food can also be a great way to engage children in history. Try cooking historical recipes together and explore different cultures through their culinary traditions.
15/ Reading is an essential skill for lifelong learning and excellent communication. If your child doesn’t love reading yet, don’t panic! Keep encouraging them and expose them to various books. They might surprise you!
16/ Choose books that are worthy of your child’s time and brain space. There are countless options available, so be selective. Check out Nicki’s book lists for inspiration!
17/ Reading aloud to your children for 30 minutes to an hour each school day can foster a love for reading. Let them take turns reading too. It’s a great way to spend quality time together and expand their literary horizons.
18/ Depending on your history studies, assign specific books for your children to read. Make sure to tailor the assignments to what they enjoy, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. Variety keeps things interesting!
19/ Don’t be afraid to expose your children to books they might not have chosen themselves. Sometimes, they’ll find them interesting even if you don’t. Broaden their horizons through literature!
20/ Strong communication skills are vital in any field. Reading lays a solid foundation for language arts, and writing follows naturally. Encourage reading lots of books together, independent reading, and listening to audiobooks.
Bonus Content:
The truth is, we just didn’t want to call this article “Homeschooling Multiple Ages: 22 Secrets to Simplify Teaching and Make History Come Alive,” so we rounded down to 20 and have included two more secrets because they’re just so valuable.
21/ Copy work is an effective way to improve grammar, spelling, and vocabulary. Let your child copy down words from a book, whether it’s jokes, scripture, poetry, or historical speeches. Start with a sentence a day for younger ones and gradually increase.
22/ Crafts are a fantastic hobby that can enhance your homeschool experience. It solidifies lessons, like when we made Sumerian clay tablets. Plan a craft day once a month or a few times a year. It might get messy, but the memories will be worth it!
Nicki Truesdell is a second-generation homeschooler and the author of Anyone Can Homeschool. Texas born and raised, she is mother to five children and a homemaker at heart, who loves books, freedom, history, and quilts. Nicki believes that homeschooling can be relaxed and that history is fun, and both can be done with minimal cost or stress, no matter your family’s circumstances.
Read the full interview transcript
Yvette Hampton [00:00:00]:
Hey, everyone. This is yvette Hampton. Welcome back to the schoolhouse rocked podcast. I am back today with my friend Nikki Truesdell, and if you guys were with us, I guess it’s been probably about two years since you’ve been on the podcast, which I don’t know why so long. We we’ve actually tried a few times. We have to get you on. And between your schedule and my schedule, it’s just not happened. And so I’m so glad we finally made it me, too. To record with each other. So I’m super excited to have you back with me. Nicki. Nikki is a second generation homeschool mom. You’ve got five kids, right?
Nicki Truesdell [00:00:34]:
Yes, five kids.
Yvette Hampton [00:00:35]:
She’s got five kiddos. How many grandbabies right now?
Nicki Truesdell [00:00:38]:
One. And one on the way.
Yvette Hampton [00:00:40]:
Oh, yay. That’s so exciting.
Nicki Truesdell [00:00:42]:
I’m excited.
Yvette Hampton [00:00:44]:
Yeah. So much fun. And she is also the author of the book Anyone Can Homeschool. As a matter of fact, it’s so funny because oftentimes I will see on different Facebook posts and things, I always say Facebook because I don’t do the Instagram thing, but on Facebook, which my girls say is for old people, people will ask about, what’s your favorite homeschool book? Or things like that. And I often see your book pop up as one of the most highly recommended books because it really covers everything and it answers the questions that people have about homeschooling and whether or not they can do that. So we’ve done a whole podcast episode on that. We’ll link to that as well. But we’re going to talk about some other fun homeschool things this week and bring some encouragement. Well, Nikki, welcome back to the podcast. For those of you I introduced you a little bit, but for those who are not familiar with you, maybe tell us a little bit about you and your family.
Nicki Truesdell [00:01:36]:
Okay, well, we live in Texas, and I have one husband and five kids. As I said, three of my kids have graduated from a lifetime of homeschooling, so I’m only homeschooling two now, which is kind of strange. And they are twelve and 15. So it’s very different. I’ve had to adjust many times to our lifestyle because five kids, four, three, two, it just it’s always a different ballgame. And I blog and write and speak, and my husband works full time so that we can stay home and do this. And as the vet said, I also have one grandchild, and a second one is on the way, so I’m learning how to be a grandmother, which is a whole new ball game. But it’s so much fun. So, yeah, that’s what we’re doing.
Yvette Hampton [00:02:26]:
Love it. I love it. You’re a young grandma, too. I love that you’re young. I think that gives you maybe more energy to be able to keep up. It’s so funny because you think of grandparents as, like, old, gray haired, and that is so often not the case.
Nicki Truesdell [00:02:40]:
I’m starting to get some gray, but it’s not 100% yet, but energy. Yes, definitely. When he’s here, I’m more tired. When he goes home, I rest. But it’s so worth it.
Yvette Hampton [00:02:52]:
Yeah. So funny. Yeah. I’m pulling those grays into my trick is I just cut them, like at my scalp. I refuse to pull them because of that old wives tail that if you pull them, more will grow. And so I think I have maybe eight or ten grays. But your hair is blonde, so you probably can’t see it as much. It may have dark brown hair.
Nicki Truesdell [00:03:13]:
Yeah, I think mine’s going to hide a little bit longer.
Yvette Hampton [00:03:16]:
Yeah, I’m sure. Anyway. Well, with gray hair comes wisdom, right? You are one of those mamas who’s got lots of wisdom to share when it comes to homeschooling. And you’ve done that through your book, and you do that oftentimes through talking to people, speaking, being on different podcasts and stuff like that. So I’m excited to have you with us this week. I want to talk today, and we’re going to kind of dig in a little bit to some specific subjects of homeschooling because we usually talk about kind of the broad overall idea of homeschooling and parenting and discipleship and stuff. But I want to talk about language arts today. And then throughout the rest of the week, we’re going to talk a little bit about history. We’re going to talk about teaching multiple ages together. But I want to kind of park with language arts and reading and what that looks like in homeschooling because I think I was actually just talking with my daughter this morning about this. We’re looking forward to the next year, and we’re talking about what that’s going to look like for us. And I said one of the most important things is for you to be a good writer. Like just as a functioning adult, you have to know how to write well. And one of the ways that you learn to write well is that you read good literature. So talk about language arts for a little bit, and let’s bring some encouragement as moms are planning for this next year.
Nicki Truesdell [00:04:40]:
Sure. Well, like you said, it’s so important for anyone, no matter what field or not, that they’re going to go into when they graduate to be a communicator. Because even as a mom, if your daughters grow up to be stay at home moms, they still need to be able to communicate well, to advocate for their family, for their children, to spread the gospel. There’s so many reasons to communicate well. And I always tell people if you just read Facebook posts, you’ll see how sadly unprepared people are just to communicate. And so if you read a post on Facebook that has no punctuation or awful grammar, you can see how unpleasant it is to try to try to make your way through that. And if you’ve got something important to say, you don’t want to come across that way it is so important to be an excellent communicator. And writing is preparation for communication in all forms. And like you said, reading is what prepares you for that. And so I absolutely recommend getting your kids reading and writing. And there’s a very simple way to do both. And I learned the hard way. Everything that I share with people, I usually learned through trial and error. Not because I had all this great wisdom, but because we had to try different things in our family. And so I have learned over many years of homeschooling my kids that reading lays a solid foundation in language arts. And piggybacked on top of that is the ability to write. And you don’t even have to be a great writer yourself to help your kids do this. And I know so many parents worry, well, I didn’t get a great education, or I was awful at this subject or that one. But let me just tell you, it doesn’t matter because the resources available to us now are just so amazing. But you don’t even need a lot of resources for this. You need some books and you need some paper and a pencil. And so the first thing I recommend is read lots of books. Read them together. Have your children read them on their own as soon as they’re able. Be patient as they work their way up through harder levels. I’ve had kids learn to read all across the age spectrum from five to nine years old. So don’t panic if they’re slower to pick up reading. Just keep moving forward and it will happen. So far, I have never met anyone who just never learned how to read. It’s just that some kids take longer than others. So keep reading. Read aloud to your kids, even if they’re teenagers. We still do this in our house. We still have a morning time where I read aloud to them, because usually it’s a historical fiction or something that we’re studying. All of my kids listen to audiobooks, so that’s a great way to get some more reading in, whether it’s at bedtime or on road trips or if you don’t feel like reading aloud, play on audiobook for the whole family. And then, like I said, encourage your kids to read on their own at whatever level they can. What this does is helps them to hear and see the English language and to use it often they learn words in context. They see proper grammar being used, they see correct spelling being used, and they’re able to see and hear all kinds of language, whether it’s just straightforward nonfiction or if you’re reading a fictional tale. You get to get into character with different people and see how different people, different ages, different times in history, all different sorts of language happens. And it just broadens their horizons so much. And so the second thing that I encourage, and again, this is something you can do for free is to copy a lot of words. And we call that copy work in homeschool. But it is exactly like it sounds. It’s just copying anything down. Usually you want to copy something worthwhile, but as long as it’s correct grammar and spelling and it’s got some interesting vocabulary, anything goes. Anything goes. So you can have your kids use a spiral notebook and a pencil and copy down words from a book they’re reading, maybe a paragraph from The Hobbit or something from a nonfiction science book that they’re enjoying. You can have them copy scripture. This is a great way to memorize, by the way. To memorize scripture is to copy it repetitively. I have a friend that told me that this whole year, this was their first year homeschooling, and they had followed my advice to try copy work, and they copied jokes all year. So it was a fun little thing. But while they were having fun with the jokes, they were still practicing all of the different parts of language arts. Like I said, science, books, history, poetry. A great speech from history is a wonderful thing, man. We’ve loved copying down some Winston Churchill speeches, even family history or song lyrics. So whatever is interesting is worth copying down. And if you have a very young child, let them do one sentence a day. If you have teenagers, give them a paragraph or two a day. This can be a great way to practice print or cursive or typing. I have a son who’s obsessed with typing, so he types his copy work. But what this allows them to do when you put together reading lots of books and copying lots of words gives them the ability to see and use spelling, grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, and all of it in context. So often we have worksheets and curriculum that gives them lots of exercises, but no matter how hard the curriculum tries, it’s often hard for them to see it used in context in normal life. And so reading the words and then copying the words just brings it all together. And if you use content that they’re interested in, it’s even more relevant to them.
Yvette Hampton [00:10:39]:
Yeah, I think that’s so important, especially when it comes to vocabulary, because there are so many times where my girls will ask me, mom, what does this word mean? And I’m like, well, I can explain it to you. And then you look at the definition, and the definition will give you the actual definition of it. But it is hard to understand it if you’re not using it in its proper context. And so it’s so much easier when you’re like, okay, well, it is. Here’s how we would use it in a sentence, and then you use it that way, and it really does, because, I mean, just memorizing the definition of a word does not help you to always understand exactly how to use that word or what that word really actually means. And so, yeah, being able to write those, read those, it helps with their penmanship. I mean, so many so many benefits to that as I’ve homeschool and as we’ve gotten into we just finished our 12th year of homeschooling.
Nicki Truesdell [00:11:30]:
Congratulations.
Yvette Hampton [00:11:30]:
And I’ve realized, I know only by the grace of god, let me tell you. But I realized that there’s all this curriculum that gives you such specific ways of doing things. You’ve got spelling, you’ve got grammar, you’ve got vocabulary, you have all the things. Do you use a specific curriculum with your kids to teach them those things? Because we talked about using those things in context, learning things in context. How have you changed or have you changed the way that you teach your kids those things?
Nicki Truesdell [00:12:00]:
I have changed. I grew up as a very natural speller, and so when I started seeing that my kids were not natural spellers, now some of them are, and some of them aren’t. But in the beginning, I started thinking, what’s wrong? Why isn’t this working? Because I was a natural speller. So spelling lists and spelling curriculum were great. It didn’t matter. But I think even without those, I would have been fine. And so I’ve learned over the years that when we were using spelling curriculum and we tried many, it seemed like we were drilling a lot, but all the lists didn’t matter because we were not using the words in their context. And the same thing with vocabulary. We used to try different vocabulary lists and word curriculum, all kinds of things to help you want your kids to have a lot of vocabulary. And it seemed like we did a lot of work, and it didn’t really change anything. It didn’t make them better spellers or give them the ability to use more words. And so I realized that was a lot of struggle, a lot of expense, and the copy work was what really solidified it. And I have had kids do all sorts of different things because we’ve been homeschool for 23 years. So my kids are very spread out, had a lot of time to change tactics and try new things. And this copy work, reading and copy work have been the thing that works for all of the kids that I tried. And so there’s something about using whole sentences with words that matter to the sentence and fit the story. They just work.
Yvette Hampton [00:13:40]:
Yeah, I love that. I know later in the week we’re going to talk about homeschooling multiple kids because you’ve done that a lot. Yes, but I love that you talk about that, because that is a really good way to not have to have five different spelling levels and five different vocabulary books and stuff. I remember when brooklyn was little, I mean, she was probably seven, and we were living in california at the time, and we were kind of under an umbrella school. Not a charter school, but an umbrella school. That we had report cards and stuff and all that stuff. And so I felt like I needed to check all the boxes. And so one of the boxes literally was vocabulary. And I just Xed it out because I was like, well, we’re not using a vocabulary curriculum. And the lady who ran that umbrella school, she was an older, wiser mom who had homeschool for a long time. And she looked at me, she said, do you talk to her each day? I said yes. She said, Then you do vocabulary. And I said, oh, great. She said vocabulary. A and I was like, oh, that’s wonderful. Like, it just took so much pressure off of me. Because again, this goes back to feeling like we need to do it the way that the traditional school does in the classroom where we have to check all the boxes. And so when we don’t check those boxes, we feel like we’re somehow failing our kids in their academics. And so I love that you’re 23 years into this. Yeah, it’s scary.
Nicki Truesdell [00:15:04]:
It is. And that’s one of the things I talk about most often, is don’t feel like you have to do what the public school does. Every time you start to do something, ask yourself, why am I choosing to do it this way? Is it because that’s what you only knew from public school? Or is it because you think this is right for your kids and there’s not just one right way to do it? So think outside that public school. That’s just probably one of my most common messages.
Yvette Hampton [00:15:30]:
Yeah, I love that. Let’s talk about reading, because you talked about the importance of reading good literature, and I think most people know that. And it’s funny because just today I told you I was talking with my daughter and we were talking about reading good books, and she has some books that she wants to read. And so kind of what we do with her is she’ll read a book that I want her to read that she’s maybe not so excited about, but isn’t completely diverse, too. And then she’ll read a book that she wants to read that I approve. And she said, well, does it really matter as long as I’m reading? And I said, absolutely. I said, It’s like watching a movie. I mean, not all movies are created equal. You have really bad movies that will pour really bad junk into your brain and help form you who you are as a person. And books are the same way. I said, it really is important what kind of books you’re reading and whether or not it’s good for your soul. It doesn’t have to be a Christian book necessarily, but is it good for your soul or is it going to somehow damage your psyche by reading these books? So talk about books for a minute.
Nicki Truesdell [00:16:34]:
Well, I’m pretty picky about books, and so, first of all, I’d like to say that you may have children that say they don’t like to read. I have children that say that. But all of those kids have grown up to enjoy reading. And now all of my graduated children have their own book collections. They have their own home libraries, and they have found what they love and they collect it. They purchase. They are always on the hunt for something new. And my daughter, who is a mom now, is already collecting books for her children to have their own library. So don’t panic. This is something I see too much, is panic. Oh, my child isn’t reading well, or they don’t love it, and that’s okay, just keep doing it anyway. And then choose things like you said that are worthy of your time, worthy of your children’s time and their brain space, because there’s so much out there to read, so much to choose from. And even like you said, with movies, there’s great movies and there’s awful movies, and there’s only so much time. So make sure that you give them quality books to read. I have actually quite a few book lists on my website because people are always asking for recommendations for kids, and so I choose very carefully what I allow my kids to read. And like I said, I still read aloud to them, too. So often in our school day, I read aloud for about 30 minutes to an hour out of a book I chose. And then I will let them alternate their reading to themselves, whether all my kids are different, but usually they get to pick what it is. But sometimes, depending on where we are in our history studies, I will say, now I’d like you to read this book. And so it might be a classic novel or it might be a historical fiction. I’ve got two right now that prefer nonfiction, so I’m kind of scrambling. There’s less of that. There’s just so much good novels and historical fiction. But hey, try to fit your reading assignments to what your kids enjoy. You’ll have kids that love fiction and you’ll have kids that love nonfiction. So try to go with that and make it fun, but don’t hesitate to also expose them to something that they wouldn’t have chosen, because you never know. I read a book to my kids recently that I didn’t care for that much. It wasn’t bad. It was just a story that was not my favorite, but they liked it a lot. I asked them and they said that was very interesting. So think outside. Broaden everybody’s horizons, whether it’s yours or your kids.
Yvette Hampton [00:19:07]:
So what makes a good book to you? Because you said you really research the books that you recommend and that you read with your family. What is a good book? What do you look for in a good book?
Nicki Truesdell [00:19:17]:
Definitely something that does not give them dark thoughts. In the world we live in, if you go to a public bookstore. Now, the options for kids are just disturbing, very disturbing. So many dark stories, vampire stories. And I just walk down the aisle for middle schoolers and high schoolers, and I think there’s not a book here that I would let my kids have. So I definitely love classics, classic novels, and clean historical fiction. Adventure stories are fun. And so what I try to do is look up Christian publisher, for one thing. That kind of narrows it down. Like you said, they’re not all Christian books, but that’s a good place to start. But just a story that’s clean and uplifting, and typically it’s good if the bad guy loses. Although that’s not the way the whole world works when you’re reading for entertainment, it’s kind of nice to have a happy ending in a story. So as my kids get older, they will read stories where that’s not always the case, because then I am preparing them for the real world. But for entertainment, I want them to enjoy the story. I want them to feel like it was worth their time. And for boys, I want them to read stories of men who are great heroes that they might want to pattern themselves after the character qualities of the man. For my girls, I don’t want feminism in any form. I don’t want them to think that girls are stronger than men. All of that stuff that you see in the culture today, it’s so prevalent and it’s hard to avoid. And so that’s why older books are good, the classics. And like I said about older, the older the book, the better it is. Unless it’s something that a publisher or an author that you’ve become familiar with. Ask your friends what their kids are reading and look it up, get some information. There are a lot of good books out there for families that want wholesome entertainment. And you don’t have to just get the dark, ugly stuff, right?
Yvette Hampton [00:21:26]:
I love that you’ve got book lists on your website, so we will definitely link to those. Because so many times I’ve gone on Pinterest and I’ll look at their book list and I’m like, these are just garbage. And there are some good ones in there. But there are some books sometimes that I’m like, I would never read this to my child.
Nicki Truesdell [00:21:42]:
Yeah, popular doesn’t always make it good, right?
Yvette Hampton [00:21:46]:
No, it absolutely doesn’t. So thank you for the work that you’ve put into making book lists for moms and Dads just to make it easier for us to find good literature. Let’s talk about history today, because history is such an important part of educating our kids. And when I say that, I think sometimes people think I have to know all the dates and my kids have to memorize every word, every date, and every name that’s in history, and that is absolutely not the truth. Now, some kids really love that because God has gifted them that way. That’s how he’s created them. And that’s wonderful. But I know that that’s not for everyone. So walk us through what history looks like for maybe for your family and what it can look like for other families as well, to make it fun.
Nicki Truesdell [00:22:31]:
Sure. Well, I’m one of those kids that naturally loved history. Growing up, I was homeschool, and so I had a lot of extra free time that I wouldn’t have had normally, and I was mostly invested in reading a lot of books with my free time. I fell in love with my American government book a long time ago, and that just kind of led me to read about the Founding Fathers and the revolution. And from there it just went into all of history. So I’ve been a history buff since I was a teenager, but I know not everybody is. And I want to show how relevant history can be. Even if you grew up hating it, not knowing it, not understanding it, don’t want anything to do with it, it’s so important. And the reason that it’s important is because we tend to repeat history. There’s a lot of history we do not want to repeat. We do not want to stumble blindly into tyranny. We don’t want to need another revolution. If we can preserve freedom and preserve the ability to worship God and to spread the gospel, that’s what we need to keep. There’s so many other reasons to know history and understand it. But when it comes down to it, we need to know why it affects us. And if we don’t know our history, we are going to repeat it, and we tend to repeat the worst parts. So even if you hate history or you just don’t understand it, or it never made sense, which is very common, sadly, you can do this at home. So the first thing I want to say is you probably, if you went to a typical public school, you grew up having social studies instead of history and probably interconnected or disconnected units. I’ll say maybe one year it was state history, one year American, a different year it be world history. A lot of our history since the 1980s in American education has been heavily influenced by Howard Zen and people like him who have tried to completely recreate what happened in American history. A lot of people have no idea who Howard Zen is, and they don’t realize that they actually have been educated with his concepts, a lot of half truths and a whole lot of twisting. But there is a way to overcome all of that. Parents can learn with their kids. And as long as I’ve been in the homeschooling world, which is 40 years now, because we started homeschooling when I was a kid in 1983, parents have always said, wow, I can’t believe how much I’m learning now that I’m homeschool my kids. And that’s kind of universal on every subject. But history is one of the big ones where people say, I didn’t know these things, I never heard these stories. And so what I’m going to tell you works with whatever curriculum that you’re using. If you’ve already bought a curriculum and you’re thinking, oh no, this one’s not going to work, don’t think that. Just start where you are and dive in with your kids. History is something that I think is best done in person, hands on, lots of different senses are involved and so the first thing you want to do is make it relevant. Why does this matter? You know, your kids are always going to say, why do I have to learn this stuff? My kids ask it about everything. So why does history matter and how does it matter to me? So one of the coolest things you can do with your kids is a timeline. And timelines come in all forms. It can be a neat one all down your hallway walls. It can be in a notebook. Some people do a poster board of a certain century. But I love to have one that shows the beginning of the world all the way up till now. And we are young Earth history people. So we believe that the Earth is around 6000 years old and so our history starts at Genesis one and we follow the timeline all the way through the current day. And so as we go through all of our history, we keep the same timeline for many years. And so the kids get to see the progression of history, but they also get to see where they are in relation to so many other things. And so besides putting down dates like the pharaohs in Egypt and Jesus came to Earth and the medieval times, all of those things are very important. But we also try to put personal items too. So we’ll put in grandparents birth days, any ancestors, if you’ve got any kind of genealogy research that’s been done, put those people on your timeline. It’ll be so fun to see great great grandparents in the same time as some famous people. You can put you on the timeline and show your kids, hey, I was born back in the 19 hundreds and this is what was going on then anyway. Show them how history has progressed because most people have not learned it that way. Sadly, that it’s all one long story and it’s all connected. And then keep the timeline going, pull out a map and start reading some good stories. I love historical fiction. That’s absolutely what made me love history as a kid was a story that was based on real events with some adventure and a character who was probably my age in the main part of the story. And it helped me just to live it. Live medieval events or Bible smugglers. I loved church history when I was a kid because my mom got her hands on some. Really neat books about the Reformation and people trying to smuggle the Bible or copy it. The pioneers going west has long been one of my favorite things, because you could get so many stories that put you in that covered wagon and out in the middle of nowhere and building a log cabin with ma and PA ingles and all of those things. So get good stories. Historical fiction is great. But alongside that, try to find some factual history, which, thanks to the Internet, is so easy to do. You can go on to the Internet and just look up anything. And there’s probably an artifact. There’s probably a virtual field trip. You can tour the pyramids. You can go to the British Museum, which has tons of world history, and see the artifacts online. Let the Internet be your friend in this case. And when I say that, I want to issue a little bit of caution. The Internet is not always your friend with history, but you can definitely find the artifacts and the virtual field trips, like I said, and see these things. We did a virtual video walk through of Pompeii where the volcano exploded and just obliterated the whole town. But that volcanic ash preserved the town, too. And so we just went on YouTube and started searching, and we did a walk through with some guy who did a video and got to see that town. It was just amazing. And so instead of just reading it, we got to see it. And that’s like a second layer of really experiencing it. Oh, this was real. And if you want to get on an airplane, you can go over there today and walk through that. And so field trips, whether they’re virtual or in person, are definitely fun. Get out of the house. Go walk through a museum. And my favorite way to do this, obviously, is to see things that we’re reading about right now. So, like in in our house, we’re just about to embark on Renaissance history, renaissance and Reformation, a little bit of the beginnings of America. And so there’s a Renaissance Fair locally this month. That’s a perfect opportunity to go. You can go to a Renaissance Fair anytime, but, man, it really makes a difference if you’ve been reading about it. And you go see the costumes and eat the food and play the games, even if they don’t tell you anything historical, just being in that environment really brings it to life. Go to history. Reenactments. There’s always some sort of battle reenactment. You can go to American history. Obviously, our history is more limited, but go see it all. Go to whatever there is available and live it in person. Food is a very fun way to bring it to life. And so look up historical recipes. And if you eat one meal every school year that’s devoted to your historical timeline, they’re going to remember it. And here’s a tip. Every historic meal is meat and bread and then some kind of vegetable and some kind of fruit. Put some grapes on the table. If it’s world history, Mediterranean, but every culture has meat and bread. Get a roasted chicken from the grocery store, get a loaf of French bread or some sort of fancy round loaf, and you’ve got the beginnings of a historic meal. Or look up recipes and make them together. But food definitely makes school more fun. And so when they’re eating food, if possible, get everybody to wear a costume, watch a movie that’s based on your time period and just make the whole thing very sensory. Speaking of costumes, my kids have all outgrown their costume phase now, but we went years and years and years where everybody wore costumes all day, every day. And so I always tried to look out for stuff that was historic so that they could dress like a knight or a princess or someone from the Bible or a pilgrim. We had lots of pilgrim costumes. Give them that ability to dress up. We always went right after Halloween and got the clearance sales or went to thrift stores during Halloween season because they have all the used costumes out. You can get them cheap, make them whatever you want to do, but give your kids lots of opportunities to dress up and be those characters, too.
Yvette Hampton [00:32:19]:
Yeah, it’s so funny you say that, because the other day we were talking about we only live an hour and a half from the Independence, Kansas, Little House Museum. It’s so ridiculous. We have not been there yet. I don’t know why. I love little house. I love the whole little house series. And I want to be Ma. I’ve said that on the podcast many times. But I want to have electricity and indoor plumbing. So if I could just have that conditioning, air conditioning, yes, those three things would be amazing. But they’re having pioneer days that are coming up soon, and so I showed my girls and I was like, look, we could dress up like Laura and Mary and Ma, and they were like, not a chance.
Nicki Truesdell [00:32:57]:
I know.
Yvette Hampton [00:32:58]:
Come on, it’s so fun. But I missed the old years. I know. Yeah. Several years ago, they both would have done that, especially my youngest one. She would have been all over that. But now they’re too old and too cool for that kind of stuff. But it’s so much fun to do anyway. Yes, but it’s so funny. I looked at a picture on their website and all the kids were dressed up, and I thought, well, we can’t go in jeans and a T shirt. We would look ridiculous. So we might have to go outside of the pioneer days event and just dress like normal people. Let’s talk about a few more ways to just make history come alive and make it fun. What other points do you have?
Nicki Truesdell [00:33:37]:
Well, as I mentioned on the previous podcast where we were talking about language arts. Reading books is so important, and a lot of our reading in our school is history. In fact, most everything we do in school is based on our core history topic. Like I said, we’re currently about to go into Renaissance history, and so almost everything we do is going to be surrounding that, and that includes our literature. So I will either grab I go ahead and start picking out books before we start the curriculum. And we use Mystery of History, by the way. So we will pick out several or I pick out several historic fiction books, but also the kind that like an USborn book or DK book that has tons and tons of photographs. Those are so fun. And lots of illustrations of the insides of houses and how everybody did everything. Those are really valuable books. And we use both. We use the nonfiction and the fiction. And then if there is sometimes you’ll get a biography, like if we’re getting ready to study the Reformation, we will read straight from Martin Luther’s writings. And so that’s not fiction. It’s not an Esborn book, but it’s a primary source, and that’s the best thing for history. And so I want to mention that’s how we pull our literature into our history. But I want to mention the importance of primary sources because for those that are not familiar with that term, that’s history. That was written down at the time that it happened. So when our founding fathers wrote their diaries, when we have their speeches, those are primary sources. The Magna Carta is a primary source. But also any documents written by people that were alive at that time, at the time of the Magna Carta, that’s a primary source. We have lots of different chronicles written throughout history. So anytime you can pull that in, definitely do it, no matter what age your children are, because it’s important for them to see this document is 1000 years old and this is how we know it happened. And if you only have little kids, but you want to show them maybe a chronicle like the Anglo Saxon Chronicle that tells a lot of really interesting history, little tiny snippets. You know, it talks about all of the English, the Englishmen before they were considered English. You don’t have to read the Anglo Saxon Chronicle to your five year old. But if you have a copy and you can get all this stuff on Amazon, by the way, if you have a copy, you can read them a couple of lines and say, this was written by people over 1000 years ago. That’s how we know what happened. They wrote it down. When the Vikings attacked England, they were writing it down and they described what happened. That’s where we get the information from. Pull them in. Even if your children are young and you just do snippets, that’s okay. Just show them and say, this is real. This is not something that someone made up later. In fact, I’ll do a little plug for my Knowledge Keepers bookstore. That’s what I specialize in. I have found old books that went out of print and brought them back into print because they are primary sources. So every one of them I have 14 different titles right now, and they were all that kind, written by people who were there. They saw the history, or they wrote a diary, and it’s been published. I haven’t changed anything. I just thought, wow, this is too good to go to go into the dust bin of history. So they’re just brought back in paperback form.
Yvette Hampton [00:37:18]:
Oh, that’s so cool. And that’s on your website, I’m assuming.
Nicki Truesdell [00:37:21]:
Yes. You can get there from Nickytrusdale.com, but that website is Knowledgekeepersbookstore.com.
Yvette Hampton [00:37:27]:
Okay. I didn’t know you even had that. That’s great.
Nicki Truesdell [00:37:29]:
Oh, yes. That’s my whole other side business and hobby. Okay. So also, I highly recommend making stuff, and I know that’s kind of a general category there, but some families kind of tend to shy away from crafts. But I would like to recommend that you try. We did sumerian clay tablets one day, and all I did was buy the modeling clay from Walmart that’s air dry and some little wooden I don’t even remember what they’re called. They’re not dowel rods. They’re very thin. But the kids are able to basically make a sumerian alphabet on the clay. Let it dry. Done. It was a simple craft. It was not messy. But after we learned about the sumerians and their contribution to the written word and history, that was a fun way to solidify it, get their hands busy. They kind of worked on it while I was reading aloud, so that was kind of keep your hands busy while you’re listening to me. Getting hands on is so fun. And I would say, if you don’t like messes or crafts, just set aside a day, cover your table with something protective and just do it anyway, because the kids will not forget. Paint the picture, whatever it is. There’s so many different possibilities throughout world history that you can get hands on. It can be small. It can be huge. When I was a kid, I’m from Texas, we’ve been Texans for nine generations. We did a paper machete Alamo. It was big. Lots of people were involved. I will never forget that. So that’s the kind of thing you can do a group project or just a little family craft, whatever, but get involved with that. And I’m saying do once a month or twice a year. It doesn’t have to be every day.
Yvette Hampton [00:39:25]:
Yeah.
Nicki Truesdell [00:39:27]:
And one of my most important pieces of advice when teaching history to your children is to do it chronologically, because if you went to public school, you might very well have learned it all over the timeline without understanding how people and places were connected. And so I always like to start history at the beginning at Genesis one, watch the progression of world history and biblical history because they went together and see how it all happened and played out. And see you’ll just see so many different ways that one thing builds on the one before it. One group of people, whatever they did, wherever they came from, it’s the result of the generation before them or multiple generations before them. You see that in the Old and New Testaments. You see it all throughout world history. And you cannot study American history without understanding world history before it. We are such a small blip on the radar of history here in America, but we tend to think, oh, American history is all there is, and it’s not. There’s so much of what we have that it’s only because of what happened in England and Germany and other places in the world. And without those events, our history might be very different. So whatever history curriculum you use, try to try to start at the beginning of world history and do it all chronologically.
Yvette Hampton [00:40:55]:
Yeah, you mentioned that you use the mystery of history, and we love the mystery of history. We’ve used that too. And I love that specifically because it’s very well written. It’s written by Linda Hobar. She’s got all four volumes. But it is written from a biblical worldview.
Nicki Truesdell [00:41:12]:
It is.
Yvette Hampton [00:41:13]:
So that is such an important part of teaching any history curriculum, I think, that we tend to think, well, if you just pull any history, it’ll be fine. We’ve also used not grass history, which we’ve really enjoyed. And I know there’s tons of great history. BJU Press has great history resources, and all of those are from a strong, solid biblical worldview. And so as people are looking for.
Nicki Truesdell [00:41:37]:
I’m glad you brought that up too, because some people say a Christian history curriculum is very biased, and I think some of them can be. But honestly, if you try to be unbiased, generally they leave out all of biblical history.
Yvette Hampton [00:41:52]:
Right?
Nicki Truesdell [00:41:53]:
And that’s biased also. So you want something that recognizes all of world history, the good and the bad, all the ugly stuff too, but shows you God’s hand in history and shows you who all was Christians. So many of the people that we study all throughout history, most people don’t know that they were Christians, famous scientists and explorers. And so that’s very important to know too.
Yvette Hampton [00:42:14]:
Yes, great stuff. And timelines are so fun. I remember the first time I never knew what a timeline was. I mean, I don’t know if I ever had a teacher who used a timeline. I mean, we talked about dates, but I never got the concept, as silly as it sounds, of what an entire timeline looked like. And we went to our first home school convention, and this was in 2010, I guess it was Brooklyn. I was pregnant with Lacey, and I remember going to a booth and seeing a timeline chart that you could pull out. And I was like, what is this thing? And what do you do with it? And it was just so cool to look at that. And now, of course, I’m like, of course we should all know what a timeline is. And it’s exciting to look at it and be able to just my Bible, my study Bible, has little timeline, bits of timeline as I’m reading through the Bible. But to just see it as a whole chart unfolded and to see from the beginning of creation until today, all the events that have taken place, it’s really neat to see. It’s neat to see how God’s hand has been truly at work.
Nicki Truesdell [00:43:26]:
It is. Do you have that big green one, the Adams chronological history?
Yvette Hampton [00:43:31]:
No, that’s the one that we saw.
Nicki Truesdell [00:43:34]:
Okay. That one is so neat, and we use it. The only way we use it, though, is we pull it out and fold the whole thing out across the living room floor, and the kids just look at it and it shows you by year, everything was happening in every country around the world. And it’s such a neat visual representation of world history. And if anybody hasn’t seen that, it’s a giant green hardback book. It’s at all the conventions. It’s on Amazon. It’s Adam’s something. It’s a longer word than chronological, but yes, right.
Yvette Hampton [00:44:09]:
We’ll find a link to that and we’ll put that in the show notes so that people can easily find it. We ended up doing classical conversations for the first few years, and so we have our timeline cards, and I still have those in this nice little binders and the timeline song. And that was really fun just to get the visual. But then also you get that auditory learning. The different parts of the timelines tell us your age ranges of your kids just to kind of set the stage for our audience. What does your kids situation look like?
Nicki Truesdell [00:44:44]:
So I think there’s a 15 year difference between my oldest and youngest.
Yvette Hampton [00:44:49]:
Okay.
Nicki Truesdell [00:44:49]:
So currently their ages are 1215, 1722 and 26.
Yvette Hampton [00:44:57]:
Okay.
Nicki Truesdell [00:44:58]:
So for a long time, I had two kids for nine years. And if you heard my previous Schoolhouse Rock interview, that’s where I talk about my life as married in an abusive marriage and then single motherhood and then remarriage. And so there’s a gap between my two oldest and then my next three. So 15 year difference between the first and the last. It’s a pretty wide range, especially if it’s only five kids. Some families have ten kids and they squeeze them all in there. I didn’t do that. I had five in that time. So there were often times when I was teaching not only my five kids, sometimes four, depending on preschooler or graduate, but I would occasionally different years homeschool my nieces and nephews because my sister was a single mom and I had a very good friend who was also a single mom going through a very difficult divorce. And so I would homeschool her children. And there was a couple of years where I had the nieces and nephews and the friends, and so we had just a big classroom in our dining room. So I have some experience in blending a whole lot of kids together. So I want to share how you make that work. And the best way I can explain that is for you to think back to the one room school houses of the 18th and 19th centuries in America. That’s literally what you’ll be doing if you follow my methods. So I didn’t do this, I didn’t go into this with a plan. I kind of had to figure it out as I went because I started out having a different curriculum for each child, a different grade level, different subjects.
Yvette Hampton [00:46:38]:
Oh my.
Nicki Truesdell [00:46:38]:
But I quickly learned that was not going to work. By the time I had four kids, I had, I think, a twelve year old down to a two year old. Well, that’s crazy. And the two year old wasn’t having school yet. But I had a preschooler who was just dying to do school like his big sisters. And so you can imagine at least three different grade levels plus a toddler running around. I learned that it’s very difficult to have multiple subjects at multiple grade levels. It takes all day long and you are either running a very strict school or you’re always feeling like you’re behind. It’s so hard to just run a smooth school. Now, there have been some things that have made it easier in the 21st century, like online classes, co ops, things like that. But that doesn’t work for everyone. I have friends who don’t have internet access because they live so far out in the country, or they don’t go sign up for co ops because with multiple children it gets very expensive. And so if you fall into any of those categories, there is a way. So I’m going to tell you to combine as many of your kids into one group as possible. That’s going to look different at every house. But at our house, it worked well to put my two older kids together and then the younger group together. So I kind of had two groups instead of five classes. We combined classes starting with history. History was kind of the core that we built everything around. I first started doing this when I was using Sunlight curriculum and then we kind of merged. We did a couple of different things and now we are using Mystery of History. It all works very similar because you can group everyone together and teach one time period or one concept at different levels. So that would include history and geography. It often includes literature. You can do Bible studies this way, obviously, and in many cases science too. So what that looks like is whatever age groups. You have everybody’s together on the American Revolution, everybody’s studying that one time period together. And so you might have a read aloud that involves everyone, the whole family, sitting in the same room together, listening to whatever book you’re reading out of the textbook or a story. And if you’ve got a video to show, everybody can watch that. If you’ve got a field trip, everyone can go on it. Then there will be a couple of different things that you will adjust based on their ages. So an older child will do more research or read a harder book. Younger ones might do a coloring page. The middle kids will fit somewhere in there. In between, they might have some copy work to do or read a book on their level. I quickly learned to pick up books on multiple levels. In fact, I have multiple copies of Pilgrim’s Progress in different age levels, from easy to the original version. So different things like that, different biographies of George Washington for little kids, big kids, high schoolers. That way everybody’s on the same page, basically. And I do have some blog posts where I go into more detail about this so you can figure out how to do it. Even science can work this way in many cases. Obviously, there are only actually a few science subjects that we teach, and they repeat. But we have really enjoyed using Berean builder science because it is historic. So it follows the timeline of history as scientific discoveries were made, as scientists were born and invented things. And so that’s a great way to implement this with your history, timeline. Math and language arts are probably the two that you wouldn’t be able to blend everybody in unless you have kids very close in age. I have friends that do this, and so if they’ve got a ten and twelve year old, there’s a very good possibility that those kids can be on the same math level or the same language arts level if they’re doing a grammar book or a writing assignment. Generally, kids within a couple of years of each other can do the same work. You have to remember that grade levels are a public school invention, and you do not have to use them. So it’s okay if your ten and twelve year old are doing the same curriculum, even if it says fourth grade or 6th grade. It’s okay if your 14 and 15 year old, 16 year old are doing the same thing. Don’t worry so much about grade levels as long as they’re learning and always moving forward. That is your goal. So grade levels, throw them out the window, because it will definitely help you with this. One room schoolhouse mindset.
Yvette Hampton [00:51:19]:
All right, so we’re talking about homeschooling, multiple kids, multiple ages, kind of that one room schoolhouse type thing which we talked about, I want to be ma ingles. And so we just got to put all of our kids in their little bonnets and little hats and prairie dresses and overalls and all that fun stuff, and then it’s the perfect mix. But for those maybe who actually don’t live on a prairie, what is your strategy for doing this with all of your kids?
Nicki Truesdell [00:51:48]:
Well, you need to plan ahead. There were two books that I found very helpful in the early years when I started figuring out this idea. One was managers of their homes. I think it’s put out by Titus Two, and it’s really good book on just learning how to schedule everybody. And even if you’re not a scheduler, you can learn a lot from that book, just kind of how to arrange your day and to accomplish more. Because I tell you what, with a lot of kids, you can be overwhelmed and almost accomplish nothing sometimes. But if you have a plan, you can get somewhere. Another book that I really enjoyed was Large Family Logistics, and both of those kind of helped me to figure out how to make everybody work together, how to have school, and also make meals and also clean the house, and no matter how many kids you have. And I recommend starting those books. Even if you’ve got two kids, start that mindset early. But especially when you’re homeschooling, you might have multiple children, lots of ages, especially if you got babies and toddlers. That’s one of the most common questions I get, is, how am I going to do this with these babies running around? I recommend starting with the little kids first. So even if they’re not old enough to have school, they want to be a part. They want to feel like they’re having school. And so start the morning with a family circle time that involves them. Whether you’re just reading the Bible together, maybe sing a song, or just get the little kids together and sit on the floor and do a fun song and read a story to them and maybe a quick activity so they feel like we had our school and it fills up their little tank. They feel like, okay, I have had my mom’s attention. And then you know how little kids are after a little bit of attention. They’re happy to go play. And so if they’re happy to go play, that’s when you can sit down with your older children. Maybe pick a topic, a subject that they really need your attention on. It might be one certain child with their math lesson or something similar. While those little ones are occupied and happy to play in the floor or gone off to another room to play, take 30 minutes with this child that needs specific instructions from you. Plan out those difficult subjects. Figure out when is the best time of day that you can devote to your children, whether it’s 30 minutes, blocks, or you’ve got a two hour window during nap time, maybe you just do it twice a week for 2 hours. Both of those days do whatever. Figure out a system where you have uninterrupted time to help with the hard subjects. I also recommend putting big kids with little kids if you’ve got a situation where that works. I did because mine were so spread out. So it was easy to say to the twelve year old will you take little brother outside to play for 30 minutes while I do this? While I help this child that does so many things. It helps their sibling relationship. Obviously you have a little babysitter, they have a time limit so they don’t feel like oh my gosh, my mom just left me in charge till who knows when. They know they have a little time limit and then they get to move on to something else. And so does the toddler utilize naps with those babies? I know that you’re supposed to nap when they nap, but this is the real world. You’re probably not going to. Another thing that I implemented was quiet time. I learned this from some homeschool bloggers many years ago. And so every afternoon we would, after lunch, have about an hour of quiet time. Which meant everybody had to be alone in a room quiet. Sometimes your house doesn’t work out that way, but as often as possible, separate each child into a different area of the house, whether it’s for a nap or for quiet time. And that means they don’t get to talk to anybody. They might can have a book to look at or a very quiet toy. I didn’t allow race cars and things like that. And it took some training. It wasn’t like we implemented it and it worked great. It took training probably a month at least, maybe longer. But they got used to it and it lasted for years and years. And so every single day there was that 1 hour. And if I needed to do something personal or if I needed a nap, that’s what I did.
Yvette Hampton [00:56:11]:
So you did take naps?
Nicki Truesdell [00:56:12]:
Sometimes I’m actually a napper, yes. So whenever I could, I did. And that quiet time made it possible. Even if it was 30 or 45 minutes. It certainly helped me get through the day. And my last tip would be combine food and reading. If you’re reading aloud from a history book, science, or just a story that you all are working through Bible time, do it during breakfast or lunch. Because that kind of it’s. Two birds with 1 st. You have a captive audience, everybody’s happy when they’ve got food and so you’re going to have less complaining, less trying to get down from the table and leave the room. So for a long time I did breakfast and lunch reading just to get more done that way. And I would wolf something down before or after, but they were all sitting at the table and sitting still and happy. So that’s when we did a lot of. Our schoolwork.
Yvette Hampton [00:57:09]:
Yeah, I know a lot of parents who actually even do audiobooks and things like that during meal times. So whether it’s breakfast or lunch, they’ll just listen or pop in an audiobook and then mom can clean the kitchen or do some laundry or something like that while the kids are eating. And then that goes back to what we talked about on Monday, is they’re getting that good literature fed into their brains and that’s so healthy for them. There are so many great, so many literature options, audiobooks and stuff for kids. We love the Lamplighter series. We love the YWAM heroes then and now series There are tons and tons of great things that our kids can listen to that they are. Yeah. That’s awesome. I love that. Let me ask you one last question. We talked again in the first episode and then again yesterday about reading. You talked about historical fiction. We talked about just classics and good literature. If you could maybe choose your top three or four favorite books, can you pull those off the top of your head?
Nicki Truesdell [00:58:15]:
My personal favorites or Homeschool with my kids favorites.
Yvette Hampton [00:58:19]:
Yes to both. Okay, let’s do yes to both. Yeah, let’s do a couple of your personal favorites and then some of your favorites that you’ve read with your kids.
Nicki Truesdell [00:58:28]:
So my personal favorites, I’m a big Jane Austen fan. I read Pride and Prejudice a lot.
Yvette Hampton [00:58:35]:
It’s one of my favorites.
Nicki Truesdell [00:58:37]:
I’m a Tolkien fan. I love The Lord of the Rings, Silmerillion. Every single thing that he wrote, I love. And I love Westerns. I’ve got the whole Louis Lamore collection. I’ve been reading those since I was 14. So you can see I’m kind of a fiction person. But I love nonfiction. I read a lot of apologetics. A lot of apologetics. That’s kind of where I’ve been for several years now. And then, of course, gardening and things like that. So for Homeschool, some of my favorites that I’m trying to remember stick out to me. One’s called the Bible smuggler. I think that’s the name of it by I can’t remember her name. I’ll try to get you the title so you can share it. Then we read The Trumpeter of Croque. That is a really different and interesting one. It’s sort of medieval. Takes place in Ukraine, which, when the Ukraine was more in the news, it was so perfect timing for us. But it actually had to do with the medieval times we were reading about. Very interesting. It still relates to today. The Great and Terrible Quest is a really good one. It’s a medieval story and it’s an adventure until the end. Little House on the Prairie. Love all of Laura Engel’s writings. So we read those. Goodness, I could go on for days.
Yvette Hampton [01:00:07]:
But, yeah, I’ve not read any of those. Except for little house, of course. I’ve read that a few times. As a matter of fact, I have two series two sets of The Little Ingles up the Little Ingles, the Little House series. One for each of my girls so that when they leave my home, they can take them with them and you.
Nicki Truesdell [01:00:31]:
Can’T say, I love Little House. If you’ve only watched the TV show, you have got to read the books. They’re so different and so much better.
Yvette Hampton [01:00:40]:
I’m certain I have said this on the podcast before. I shake my head and wonder. I grew up in a Christian school my whole life, and I did not know that the Little House series, TV series that I grew up with was based on a real person. I didn’t know that there was a book series. It’s so sad. We never read that in school. And my family, we weren’t big readers, and so I didn’t even know that that existed. I didn’t know Laurie Engels was a real person. I had never heard of Pompeii. I was just talking to my daughter about this as we were talking about just the things that she wants to learn and what holes do we want to fill over this last year with her. I still stand in shock that I never learned about the Holocaust in homeschool growing up, ever. We had to have read something about it when we got to World War II, I’m guessing. Yeah. But we definitely didn’t dig deep into it because how would you not remember that, right? Unless it was so traumatic for me that I simply just out of my mind. I don’t know. But it’s so interesting. And that’s one of the things I love most about homeschool. We talked about the timeline. Like, I didn’t even know that was a thing until we started homeschooling. And it’s just so cool that we have the opportunity to regain our education with our kids as we homeschool them. There’s so much that I’ve learned, and again, this is what I was telling my daughter today. I said, I’ve learned more in my adult life than I ever learned growing up. And when I got to and I talk about this in the movie, actually in Schoolhouse Rock, but when I got to the end of my senior year, I was literally like, woohoo, praise the Lord. I am done with learning. I am done with school. And you throw that cap up in the air. And that was the end of it for me. That was literally my mindset, like, I never have to learn anything again. And how silly that is. It is we want to teach our kids to be lifelong learners.
Nicki Truesdell [01:02:40]:
That’s right.
Yvette Hampton [01:02:40]:
And so I’m encouraging my daughter. I’m like, what do you want to learn this year? But we don’t have to learn at all because you’re going to continue learning for the rest of your life, and you’re going to learn more in your adult life than you’re ever going to have learned in your childhood. And so praise God for that. I’m so grateful for the privilege and ability to homeschool our kids because we get to learn about God and about his creation and about you know, how.
Nicki Truesdell [01:03:05]:
It said in the beginning on the first episode about don’t worry. If your kids don’t love reading or don’t just automatically pick up books and read on their own because it’s the same thing with all learning. You’re just giving them the foundation and the tools and they will grow up and continue learning. You don’t get to pick what they’re learning anymore, but when you get to homeschool and you give them all the possibilities and that foundation, it’s so fun to see them grow up and become their own person and learn all kinds of things that you never even thought about.
Yvette Hampton [01:03:37]:
Yes, I love it. I think it’s Davis and Rachel Carmen, they often say character over curriculum and I couldn’t agree more. I mean, if we raised our kids for their 1st 18 years of life and we.
You must be logged in to post a comment.