The Sequoia Breeze

Rebecca: Welcome, listeners, to the Sequoia Breeze podcast, a breath of fresh air for your homeschool. I am your host Rebecca LaSavio, and I am so excited that you have decided to join us today and I hope that you will stick take around to the end when I have an exciting announcement about an opportunity available to Sequoia grow families. I am joined by Kelley Soper in the podcast booth today to talk about math. Kelley is an HST with Clarksville, but she actually has another job, and I'm going to let you explain that because I'm going to get it wrong, of course.

Kelley: The last two years, I was in 8th grade teacher with the junior high virtual academy. And then when they moved to partner with the high school program, I stayed with the Tk through 8th grade adventure Academy. So I'm still working with the middle school age, which is where my experience lies, and still doing math. But now I have fifth through 8th grade. Mostly I'm teaching math. Minecraft. Google. I'm developing a PE class. So lots of fun things.

Rebecca: Nice. That's a really fun lineup of classes. So tell us a little bit about you. Are you a home school parent? How many kids do you have?

Kelley: Yeah, I have two boys. I started homeschooling when my oldest was going into kindergarten. I just didn't want to pass them off to somebody else. And as a teacher myself, I'm like, I can do this. I was working at a virtual high school at the time, so it was easy for me to just keep him home and do it then. So, yeah, we've had a great ride of it. He's going into 8th grade now, and my youngest is going into six.

Rebecca: Nice. So right at your specialty age now.

Kelley: Yeah, exactly.

Rebecca: So tell us a little bit about your math background. Most people shy away from math when they can, but you've embraced it.

Kelley: Yeah, you know, I wasn't a huge math person growing up, but I did. I mean, math came easy to me and I loved my mom would buy me logic puzzle books, like workbooks and stuff, and I would just sit and solve logic puzzles. I just loved it. I love the puzzle trying to problem solve aspect of that. And then I got up to calculus in high school, and then I never really did anything more with high school or with math in college. And then when I was graduating college, I'm trying to figure out what am I doing with my life. And there was this opportunity in Los Angeles to become a teacher, and you actually start right away and get your credential while you're there. So I started as a math and science 6th grade teacher, and so I did that for on and off for eight years, and then I moved to the online high school. And then when my youngest went into kindergarten is when I started becoming a home school teacher.

Rebecca: Okay.

Kelley: Yeah. So I started working with his school, and then that's when I went back into teaching math or math type subjects to the middle school age. Okay. Yeah. So I've been doing that for a few years now.

Rebecca: So you have some wisdom to share with us today, and I'm really excited about that. So let's start at the very beginning. What advice thoughts do you have for parents with the littler kids, the TKK first grade? What advice would you give them? As many are often a little at odds of I don't know where to start, I don't know what curriculum to buy, how do I do this? And if they're at the beginning of their home school journey, may still have a lot of pictures of public school math in their heads.

Kelley: Oh, yeah. When my son started kindergarten, I had been a teacher for many years. Right. So I came into it with a teacher mindset, and we actually did start with a curriculum. I want to say it was a singapore type book, but there was lots of pictures, lots of drawing circles, things like that, which he actually enjoyed. But I don't know. We didn't stick with the curriculum. I found it easier to actually just look at a list of what they need to learn. So for our schools, we have the ICANN statements, which in the early grades are very clear exactly what they need to know. And I find just incorporating it in our daily life was really the easiest. And for the young age, they don't want to sit at a table. Right. That's too restricting for them. They want to be up. They want to be moving. A lot of them want to be talking. Right. They want your attention. That's a big thing. I want mom or dad's attention. So we just did a lot of math outside, counting rocks, collecting sticks, looking for shapes, driving in the car. I can't even think of an example, but things would just pop up just spontaneously, and we'd have a conversation about something. The shapes or the look. That's an eight sided figure. Do you remember what that was called? Can you think of any other things that have those shapes? Just natural conversations that really worked the best for me and my boys. I still find I occasionally struggle with wanting to be strict teacher, but then there's also another part of me that's very unschooly type as well, so they're always at odds. But I think for the younger kids, they really just like being up, doing things, and talking.

Rebecca: It sounds like that method for math. It's a lot more fun. Perhaps there's no, like, get it done, keep writing, keep going. You're just having fun and having a conversation.

Kelley: And if you're talking to them, you can see that they understand the material, so why have them do it ten times over, like they do in a lot of curriculum? If you can tell me that you understand it, then great. Maybe. Well, not maybe. Definitely. I would bring it up again at some point down the line, because it's so easy for us to know something, and then if you don't revisit it, it's easy to forget that thing. I think that's true for all people. So revisit things, that's the great thing about math and curriculums do do that. They'll revisit the math every year so that you don't forget and then grow and develop. But especially at the younger ages. I don't know if curriculum Is really that important.

Rebecca: When you were talking to me before we started recording about how abstract math can be, and that when kids are little, they don't always have the brain development for that. Talk to us A little bit more about that.

Kelley: Yeah. I keep going back to this class I took in college about lifespan psychology, talking about how the brain develops. And you can't expect kids at certain ages to be able to handle abstract or sarcasm. There's a bunch of different things. They just can't understand those things until their brain gets there. Right. So if you keep Forcing these things on them, you're just going to make them miserable. You're going to make them feel like they're failures because they don't get it right. And even if you're not Trying to do that, they internalize that. What I did is with my oldest, he's a language kid. He loves words. He loves reading. He's writing a book right now Outside as we speak. And so math Wasn't as easy for him. So, like, we were in second grade trying to tackle subtraction, and he would just end up in tears. And I'd be like, okay, we'll stop. We'll take a break. That's totally fine. I might occasionally talk about subtraction while we're walking and doing things, just to kind of keep it fresh in his brain, and then I might revisit it in, say, two months. Right. And then I'd see that, okay, his brain is developing. He's starting to get it a little better, and then I might push A little bit more, but then if he pushed back, I might back off a little bit. So it's kind of this give and take. Right.

Rebecca: And you're not talking about Doing no math for two? No, not talking about giving subtraction a break.

Kelley: Right.

Rebecca: While you're focusing On A lot of other aspects yeah.

Kelley: Of math and going back to the abstract comment, if you think about what math is prehistorically. We had rocks, and I've got two rocks here. I'm going to give you two rocks, and you give me that one bowl of fruit. Or I guess they didn't have bowls, but you know what I mean? And they had physical objects to look at bartering in history. And now we're using numbers, which are very abstract. It's just this squiggle. It's the shape that represents one or represents two, and a lot of kids just aren't ready for that until maybe second grade. So it's okay to not push it. It's okay to give them some space.

Rebecca: And we may come back to this because it's such a broad idea to cover a lot of different pieces of math. But the other part of math that I've myself been learning in the last year or so is we focus a lot in math on the computation part, understanding what those squiggles that mean two and three are and how to add them and subtract them and multiply them. And yet there's a lot of math. I heard the percentage once, and it was way more. That is not the computation part, it's the logic part. It's the logic of being able to see how things work together and the logic you can be working on with.

Kelley: The little kids and finding patterns, right, patterns. I think a lot of people overlook the importance of finding patterns, making patterns. And yeah, it's super important because when you get to the high school or higher levels of math, that's what it is. You're looking for those patterns and you're logically trying to figure out how to move these numbers around to get to an answer. So if you don't have that pattern, the ability to think in patterns or see patterns and the logic, then it makes it harder to do those higher level math.

Rebecca: So if your child is not yet ready to do subtraction and addition and understand those symbols and what they mean, you can still be doing math with patterns and shapes and logic and all these other things that will give them a really solid foundation for what's coming.

Kelley: And at that age, at the younger ages, I mean, even just telling time, because that's patterns, right? Money. I mean, it's amazing. I still to this day with my middle schoolers, when I'm working on, say, decimals, they don't get it, but then when I put it into money, they're like, oh, yeah, especially like positive and negative numbers, right? They get so stuck on that concept. But I said, okay, so let's say that you owe me $20. How much do you have? Well, I don't have the $20 and you owe me, so when you get the $20, you're going to have to give it to me, right? So you're negative $20. And when you start talking about math, they're like, oh, they get it, right? So that's a huge thing to work with them. Here is a dollar. You want to go buy that piece of gum or I don't know, things cost a lot more than one dollars these days. I was going to say buy a candy bar, but candy bars are like a dollar 50 now. You give them and then they have to figure, okay, this is what I have. How much will I have left over? And then actually go buy it and make sure the person gave you the right change. All those things you can easily do.

Rebecca: Getting a little more broad than just the little kids. If you were talking to a new family who was just beginning to home school and they're saying, I don't know where to start, and it could be multiple ages, what would your advice be?

Kelley: That's a good question. I'm assuming that if you have older kids, you might be coming from a traditional school setting. Right. So I think it's always a good idea to kind of take an inventory to see what your child truly understands, because just because they went through fourth grade in a school, do they actually really understand all the material that was covered. Right. So I would just start with the basics. You can even go through the I can statements at a younger age and be like, okay, let's work through this and see what do you understand and what do you not understand? So that's one option. There are a lot of curriculums that do, like, pre assessments. Like, I know the Singapore one that I was looking at. They have a pre assessment for every book. So you can take the assessment to see if you're ready for that book. I know there's a ton out there.

Rebecca: I know Khan Academy is free and online, and you can even recommend, if you want to use there, that you start at the very beginning and take every test. You don't have to go through all the curriculum, but go through take each test until you get to a point where you're not passing those tests.

Kelley: Yeah, exactly.

Rebecca: And that's where you should start, even regardless of what the grade level is. One of the things I love about a lot of home school curriculum is that there isn't a grade number assigned to it. And so if you find that your child is in fourth grade but isn't testing up at a fourth grade level, you might be able to choose some materials that don't necessarily have a giant two or three written on them to make your child feel bad. They often will have some of them have Greek letters, or they've got multiple, or it's a level three. It's not grade three. So there's lots of ways to address because the most important thing is that they learn the material, not that they stay on this grade level where they're supposed to be, because that's just going to lead to frustration exactly.

Kelley: For everybody. And there's so many free resources out there. Like, if you see that your child needs practice adding and subtracting decimals. Right. There's so much free information, not only just Khan Academy, but I mean, you just do a Google search, and there's so much out there. You can make free worksheets, and you can just work on that one skill until you know, they've mastered it. And then you can move on to multiplying and dividing decimals, which is a little trickier, right, because you got to move those decimals around and work on that until they get it. And if they get frustrated, back off a little bit, maybe take a break and go onto another topic for a while and then come back to it or find different ways to approach it. Nowadays with YouTube, there are so many amazing videos that people have made that address the same math concept from so many different angles, right. Which I think is so valuable. So like, if you have a student that was in traditional school and maybe they grew to not like math, it's not because they're not a math person, it's because they just didn't have a good experience with it. Right. So find a different way to approach the math. I know a lot of people are like, well, that's not the way I did math as a kid. And I get it. It's a little uncomfortable to learn how to do math a new way. But there are so many different ways to do math. Even just like multiplying a multi digit number. You have your traditional you start with the number in the one place and you multiply up and then across an over, and then you go to the number in the tens place and you carry and you have your placeholders. That's the way we all learned when we were younger. But you can do them in tables, you can do them in graphs, you can do them by just taking the number in the ones place and multiplying it and putting that number down below. I'd have to show you an example. There's just so many amazing ways to approach math and I would say reach out of your comfort level as a parent and be willing to approach math in a different way and try to find other ways because there's a lot of visual, there's a lot of hands on ways to do math that might be better for your student.

Rebecca: One lesson that's been hard for me to learn as a home school parent and I'm finally coming around to it. Sometimes getting a lesson done isn't important. Sometimes wrestling with the one problem, the one concept, and really digging deep together and getting through that, that's enough. By the time you've spent a half an hour, which I just did with my daughter the other day, trying to get this one thing stop, she can finish the lesson tomorrow or try to finish the lesson tomorrow. And as the parent, I've got to make sure that she's not falling behind. But the lessons we learned within that half hour of wrestling with that one problem, I could actually list out several things she learned from the method she was using on a whiteboard of erasing the work she'd already done. And now we found a mistake and we have to redo it all because she took it away to being willing to go back to my previous lesson and review it. How did they do it? And what are you missing now? And there's so many different pieces of the work she was doing that she learned that we're beyond just getting 20 problems done, that it's a time to stop, and I love to check off boxes and get it done and move on. And so it was really hard for me to come around to this lesson, but I've been learning how really important it is to not give my kid a really bad math experience and beating them over.

Kelley: Yeah, oh, totally. Yeah. And to kind of build on that. If you're a person who doesn't enjoy math, try not to put that on your child.

Rebecca: I think we do that as parents. We don't realize that we're teaching our kids to hate math because we're talking about it negatively. And, oh, God, this math is just killing me, trying to relearn it to teach my kids. And they're hearing that whole conversation. They are hearing, math is not something to enjoy. Math is something to hate, to cry about.

Kelley: And math, especially when you get to the older ages, the older levels, people always ask, well, what am I going to use calculus for? Why do I need to take this class? Obviously, if you're going into science and a math field, then obviously you would need it for your job. But what it really does is it teaches you problem solving, just like you were talking about, right? Like, you are confronted with a problem, and you stop and take a breath and be like, okay, how can we solve this? Maybe you don't know the official next steps, but you know other things that you can do to solve it. Well, let's try this. It's okay if it doesn't work. You know it doesn't work, right? And you're trying it, so let's try something else. Problem solving is so valuable in our daily life, and if you're confronted with a problem and you just kind of melt down, that's not going to get you anywhere in life. So math, especially higher level math, doesn't necessarily teach you.

Rebecca: It's not about the computation.

Kelley: Exactly. It's about solving a problem and not giving up.

Rebecca: And I think sometimes even following the rules have a place and they're there for a reason. And if you can follow some of those, sometimes you get to be creative, and sometimes you just need to follow the path that's been set out.

Kelley: Well, and you know what? Speaking of rules, though, I don't know, if I don't use something frequently enough, I will forget those little details, right? So I was doing a lesson with my 8th graders last year, and it was like seven to the third power over eight to the fifth power, right? This is basic. I can do this one in my head, but I was forgetting the rule. Like, do you take the exponent and do three minus five? Or is it three divided by five? I don't know. I forgot the rule. So let's write it out. Well, seven to the third power is seven times seven times seven. And then seven to the fifth power, you write it out five times, then you can cancel out the three and what are you left. And then you can kind of figure out the rule that way. So rules are valuable, but if you forget the rule, just don't stop. Figure out what the rule is.

Rebecca: So maybe we've already covered this a little bit, but let's expand a bit on what do you wish that home school parents did differently about math or understood about the process of learning math?

Kelley: I think the biggest takeaway I have is not to make math like dredgery. Math has its purpose in everyday life, and obviously we need to learn that. But beyond that, try to make it as fun as possible. Doing 20 problems in a workbook can get dry and boring for a child for some. I bet you there's some kids that love it. They're like, oh, give me those problems. I love doing it. We're all different. But maybe doing 50 problems on a video game version of math would be fun because they're trying to beat their sibling or their parent or just be better themselves. So nobody knows their kids better than we do. We know our kids better. That's part of the reason why we home school, right? We can give them an education that is specific to that child. So if they really like math, workbooks, great, do that. You know, that's going to fulfill that child's needs. If not, if you have a squirrely little boy who loves math but hates just repetitively writing out problems, give him a different way to do that math. You know, I've been using Math Playground recently with my kids, and it covers up to 6th grade math, but it does do pre algebra. So it would cover up to an 8th grade or any kid, really, that's still doing pre algebra, right? But it's just gains. That's all it is. It's video games, but it has you practice. So I did this with my class earlier this week, and we were just practicing addition and subtraction, but it was three digits and written out horizontally, and they had a little bit of time pressure, which I don't always recommend. I don't think you should do math. You should put pressure on kids to do it quickly. If they get there, then that's awesome. Don't force them. But if they don't mind, like my youngest son, he loves video games, right? So he doesn't mind a little bit of that time pressure. So it was really good to just get in and practice the addition and subtraction in a very quick way, trying to oh those cancel out, that's that and then just fun practice.

Rebecca: Awesome. What if a student is struggling? What if a parent is really worried that they're not close to grade level? We're not talking about just, oh, we've missed a couple of concepts here and there, but they feel like their child is really not getting it. At what point should a parent begin to worry or seek help for that? What could they do to help their students be more motivated to continue learning?

Kelley: I think a lot of times kids will internalize discomfort for trying hard things and not being able to succeed right away. And then that kind of gives it almost builds this wall to moving forward or trying something new. I would say with those types of kids, you just back up a little bit, give them things that are easier, that they can feel successful with and celebrate those successes and try to get them to a point where they can kind of bring that wall down or at least poke some holes in it so you can try to get them moving forward. There does come a point where you might need to reach out and ask for assistance. Intervention. We have intervention services to tackle some of the more basic math and then we have our special ed department. If they're really struggling, then that would be something that you might want to talk to your HST about. But I think on your end, what I would do is I would just back up a little bit, back up, make them feel successful in something smaller. Now, that being said, and I haven't actually tried this, but I have also read the idea where let's say you have a 6th grader that is just fighting you on the material. In 6th grade, it starts getting harder. In 6th grade, you're using decimals and percents and fractions and tying that all together. There's a lot more statistics in that year and everything just kind of builds and it just gets harder. So I've heard again, as I said, I haven't tried this. I was presented with the idea that if someone is fighting you on a math topic and what you could do is then present them with something actually harder. So if you have a student, an intelligent student that just doesn't want to do it right, they're just fighting you on it. But, you know, they could probably handle it. Try giving them something harder to challenge them and then they might have to work a little backwards to understand the material they're doing, but they will be more challenged and it'll move them forward.

Rebecca: So instead of just trying to get through problems that are kind of boring or not that interesting, they're suddenly have a problem to solve. And they might need to even go investigate a little bit themselves to figure out how to solve exactly the problem. So for a certain group of kids that might be more motivating to try and prove, hey, I can figure this out, I don't want to do my homework.

Kelley: Yeah, exactly. You often hear about those kids in a traditional school setting that they fail a class. But they're really the smartest kid. They're bored. Right.

Rebecca: And if they just don't have the skills to do the 6th grade math and you go back up yeah, exactly. To the fourth grade level or wherever they're at, give them confidence and rebuild up to it.

Kelley: And then we did talk earlier about once a student gets to high school, the requirement is to take two years of math in high school, and one of them has to be algebra. So if you have a student that really just struggles with math, then just know that algebra is your target. Right. You just need to get through algebra. So even if it takes multiple years to get to that point, they're not doing algebra until 11th grade. That is totally fine if it takes extra time to work through the skills and they're working on, quote, 8th grade math in 10th grade, that is okay. As long as they are making progress forward and you're giving it a regular effort, you can't just say, I'm not going to do math and then don't do math for six months. You know, that's not going to get them anywhere. But as long as you're making daily or regular effort towards completing that goal of getting to algebra, some point in high school, they can take prealegebra. In high school they can take not for math credit, but they can take other math courses that count as electives that help support them. So if you have a struggling student and let's say they get to algebra in 11th grade, you can also enroll them in a math elective that just gives them extra support. If they're just spending so much time trying to get through the algebra, you can give them that math elective to also get them credit for the extra time they're working on the algebra.

Rebecca: If you're worried about a struggling student, part of the process of evaluating what the need is, where do I think this kid is going to go? Do we just need to graduate high school with the minimum requirements? And for some kids that's fine. That's a great goal. And so now you can take the pressure off of 6th grade because it's okay if we don't actually finish 6th grade math until 7th grade because we have time to work on this and we have time to work, make sure that concepts are truly understood and that our relationship isn't falling apart because we're trying, fighting to get through this math.

Kelley: Yeah. And you bring up a very important point, is relationships. Your kid, your student is not going to want to work with you or listen to you if you don't have that relationship. Right. The relationship is probably one of the most important things. My child, it's the sweetest thing. It almost makes me tear every time he gets frustrated with math. He's like, Mom, I need your help. So I go and sit next to him and. Then we work through the problems and we get through it. And he's like, mom, just you being next to me, I feel like you just give me this positive math energy. Like, I could just do it just because you're sitting next to me. And most of the time I don't really even do anything. I might just point out one little thing, like just a little reminder, hey, do this. And then from there they've got it. And so I really think relationships are the most important thing. Don't let struggling and math ruin your relationship with your child. And if it gets to the point where there is a struggle, maybe pull out an outside resource. It is okay in homeschooling to use outside resources, right? You're not saying that as a home school parent, I'm going to teach them everything you are saying. I'm going to choose how my child learns this material. Right? So find a tutor, find an outside class. Either something in the school or something outside of the school. There's so many math resources out there. So you struggle with your relationship or you just feel maybe you do feel you have a hard time not putting in the negative math energy. You struggle with the math, and you just have a hard time not giving that energy to your child. It's okay to find other sources to help you out with math, for sure.

Rebecca: Do you have some fun examples of how you make math fun in your classes? Math isn't always fun. Sometimes it's work, but at least interesting.

Kelley: Well, I try to get the kids to see the fun and problem solving, which sometimes it's not. Sometimes it could be frustrating. So when I was teaching Ghva last year, I would try to give them lots of puzzles or problems to solve. So we would start our class off with there's a curriculum provider called the Critical Thinking Company, and they make the most amazing puzzle and logic books. They cover all the subjects, but I love the ones that they have for math. And so we would start our Ghva class with one called Balance Math. And so it's a balance, and then it's a bunch of shapes on this balance, and they would show you three different balances with different shapes, and you would have to figure out the final answer. What we would do is just what do you see? What do you notice? Well, I see this and this. Okay, well, do you think that can help us? No. Okay, well, what else? What else can we do? Someone would throw out an idea, and maybe it wasn't going to help us, but I praise them for observing that thing. Right. It's the joy of being. I mean, I think math is really best with a group of people also, because you can talk about those things and problem solve and bounce ideas off each other. So I personally had a lot of fun starting my classes off with that because it's just like, yes. And sometimes I totally would not see it at all. I would not see how you got from A to B to C to D, but the kids would see it and I'm like, oh, my gosh, I didn't even see that. That's amazing. Right? So it was just the joy of the problem solving as a group, as a team. And I really think it comes down to that, is what I enjoy in my classes particularly, is talking about math and getting other people's views on it. Like, what do you see in this pattern? Okay, great. And talking about it, and then, oh, I didn't even see that.

Rebecca: One thing I've tried to do some is I've discovered in the last couple of years the world of math read alouds, that they are the books that either talk about the concept of money or my kids love bedtime math.

Kelley: Oh, yeah.

Rebecca: And it's hard because they don't go up to the level where my girls are in, but they still want to participate. They want to solve the little questions and problems, but they're simple for them. But my boys can still do those and read a simple little problem, and then there's different questions for different levels. And so doing those together because we're doing little puzzles and reading little books about math, and I think that helps take I talk a lot in orientation for new parents and stuff about taking the walls off of school. It kind of helps take the walls off of math. Like, you can read a book and it can be really fun about math. It doesn't have to be sitting down, doing a workbook.

Kelley: There are so many books out there these days that cover so many different math topics. And I'm sure the libraries we have here at the schools have a good chunk of them. But yeah, if you have more of a language type student, then read them math.

Rebecca: Kelly, is there anything else you'd like.

Kelley: To share with us before we yeah, kind of a little bit of building on the last topic there. I am a huge fan of a Stanford professor. Her name is Joe Bowler, and she runs a website called YouTube. But in many of her professional developments I've been through, she talks all the time about when you get to higher level math. And I mean, like college, university, PhD candidates level math. Nobody does math by themselves. It's a group of people talking about math and problem solving math is not easy, even for those people. Granted, they're working on much higher level types of math, but they work as teams and really work through the problem solving aspect of it, right? And so, obviously, we need to know the basics. We need to know arithmetic, we need to know how to convert decimals into fractions and percent. That's daily math that we need, everybody uses. And then once you get to algebra, you get into slightly more abstract types of math, but it's the problem solving. It's really the problem solving that is present in all of math, no matter what age, what level you get to. And so working on that a lot, I think is helpful. And hitting a wall is not a bad thing, right? Just take a deep breath. Like, okay, we'll back up. We're going to problem solve here. That is okay. I think kids get frustrated and so they have a hard time seeing that, but if you can teach them that, it's okay. Just take a deep breath. We can handle this. We'll do this together because honestly, math, especially in the higher levels, is not really intended to be done alone.

Rebecca: That's a really interesting perspective, perhaps illustrating why your son feels like he can do math just within nearby. We think of it as a very individual. Put your blankers on, sit and focus and maybe it should be more socially. Kelly, thank you so much for joining us today. I hope that our listeners will find lots of great resources and ideas and encouragement and the things that you have shared with us today. And I will be putting the links in the show notes for all of the various things that Kelly mentioned throughout our conversation. So you can always go there and find those books and curriculum that were mentioned.

Tell us, what do you love about home schooling?

Hi, my name is Aimee and some of the things I like about home schooling are all the books I get to read and I get to be part of some drama groups and do acting and have a lot of fun time.

My name is Madison. I home school grades 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 8th. What I like about homeschooling is I love being with my kids all day and I love seeing them learn and I love knowing what they're learning and being very involved in that.

Rebecca: Before we go today Sequoia Grove families. If you are listening to this episode in October of 2022, then you are in luck because there's a great opportunity available to you. Our schools are going to be hosting a series of family math festivals from October 24 through the 27th. There will be a festival offered in Chico, Roseville, Folsom and Elk Grove, so you are encouraged to attend whichever location and date would work best for you and your family. This event will provide lots of hands on games and activities for all of your students. What a great opportunity to explore some new ways of playing and solving problems with math in a fun and social environment. We family liaisons will also be there to chat with you and to help you browse math curriculum and resources for some new and fresh ideas. We'd love to meet up with you. We love talking to families and getting to know you. Registration is recommended but not required. If you'd like to sign up in advance, head on over to Sequoia. Sign up. The Math Festival is listed under Other events, so pick a date and come on out to one of the Math Festivals the last week in October. Whenever we get our Sequoia Grove community together, we all have a great time, get to know new people and find other like minded families. We'd love to see you there. Thank you so much for joining us for this fun episode of The Sequoia Breeze. I hope that you've found it to be a breath of fresh air for your home school. As always, I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email at podcasts@sequoiagrove.org.