The Sequoia Breeze

Rebecca: Welcome, listeners, to another episode of the Sequoia Breeze podcast, a breath of fresh air for your home school. I am your host, Rebecca LaSavio, and I'm so glad that you've decided to join us here today for the last episode of season three. You. So, listeners, today we're going to do things in a little different way. I've decided that it's about time to share with you my whole homeschool journey. I think knowing where I'm coming from might inform some of my opinions and things that I share in other episodes and I've hinted or referred to a little bit of it, but I thought it might be helpful to talk in more detail about what our family's journey has been like. I don't think my story is particularly amazing or that I have any earth shattering wisdom or how to's to share with you today, but I know that when I listen to other parents talk about their failures, successes and lessons along the way, I am encouraged and that always helps me hear. I am not alone from those stories. Sometimes I glean a good idea or learn a lesson without having to make the mistake myself first. So if my story is an encouragement to you or allows you to safely bypass a pitfall I experienced, then this episode will be worth it. So I tried recording this by myself and it was terrible. It was very boring. I have invited my fellow family liaison and friend Morgan Stout to come today and help me keep the conversation going to ask the questions and I'm going to try to stop being the host here for a little bit and let Morgan take over. Welcome, Morgan. Hello. So you are homeschooling your three kids as well, while two and one is still little. And we've heard your voice on our podcast before, so I'm excited to have you back. So thanks for doing this with me.

Morgan: Thank you. And can I just say, I didn't know that you did that intro every time. That was really cool to watch.

Rebecca: Morgan is often a little behind the podcast. You don't hear about her much, but she's making flyers. She has often encouraged me and helped me round up guests and things. So she is a little part of this project and I'm really glad that she can be here. And what do you want to hear about first?

Morgan: So you have kind of a unique experience in that you didn't start your journey in the States, so maybe you can tell us a little bit about that.

Rebecca: Yes. Our family lived in Albania for several years. The first question I always get is where is Albania? And if Italy's boot kicked backwards across the sea, it would kick Albania. It's just north of Greece and most people don't know where it is, so don't feel bad. The second question I always get is what language do they speak? And they speak Albanian and it's a unique language that's fairly difficult to learn and get your mouth around. So we lived there from when my oldest daughter was two until the fall of 2019. So we definitely started out our home school journey there, which meant that we were completely and utterly independent for most of it, not a lot of resources around us. Two pieces of information that helped form the beginning of our home school journey was that most of southern Europe has combines preschool and kindergarten. So from three to five years old they go to what they would call kindergarten. And so my kids went when they were maybe four and five for language learning purposes. But with my oldest, Anna, I would keep her home on Fridays and do a little kindergarten with her. And then in first grade we had this one golden year where this amazing British lady took a sabbatical from her job and she and her husband came and held a first grade class for four little kids that were all foreigners in living in Albania. And so she taught Anna how to read and on Fridays she would let the two four year old siblings, including my Amy, come. And so we had this great year of this really good teacher that taught them. In second grade, another gal came and got the year started, but that was not a good fit. And so we ended up pulling her after Christmas, pulling Anna after Christmas. So that's when our we dabbled in homeschooling, some to a degree up until that point, but that's when it really became full time forever at that point was about halfway through second grade, and trying to round up the supplies and things that I needed at that point was kind of an adventure. So I had a second grader, a kindergartner and almost three year old at that point.

Morgan: Okay, so when you went to Albania, did you anticipate homeschooling or what was your idea of what homeschool would be?

Rebecca: We were not decided. It was certainly on our radar. My husband had been homeschooled and I'd been thinking about it for many, many years. We really thought through carefully because there were advantages to putting the kids in national school and we knew we had colleagues who did that successfully, but we really decided in the end that it wasn't a good fit for our family.

Morgan: Okay, and how did your time in Albania kind of shape your home school and your perspectives and what you wanted for your own family?

Rebecca: That's a really good question. How did our time in Albania shape our home school? I was working pretty heavily because we were there to work with a day center that was there for kids who were often on the street begging or whose families couldn't take care of them and as well as a home for girls who were not safe to stay at home. And so there really wasn't a foster system at that point. And so there wasn't another option for these kids. So I was heavily involved in that, as was my husband. And so sometimes we would tag team it that he might be home with the kids for a day or I would be but often he had his own responsibilities and I was out back and forth working with that. And so there were times when we just had the ability to sort of quietly focus on school but there were a lot of other times when I was pretty stretched. One of my biggest regrets from that time is the pressure I put on my girls and how much I expected them to get done even if I wasn't home. That I kind of expected them to be able to manage themselves and be independent. Just because they were capable of doing the work that was assigned to them doesn't mean that they were capable of managing their time and themselves while I was gone. So I would sometimes leave them a list on the whiteboard of here's what I want you get done today. But we were talking at that point about maybe a second grader and fourth grader. They were pretty little and it was a big expectation and so then I would feel frustrated when I came home and it wasn't done and they would feel frustrated because clearly the expectations were not fair. So that is a regret that I have is that I put too heavy a load on my girls. Fortunately I don't think they're permanently scarred from but I definitely feel bad that that's part of our home school memory.

Morgan: I think a lot of first time homeschool families feel a lot of that pressure and kind of want their homeschool to look a certain way and kind of learn along the way.

Rebecca: So the second part of your question was how did it shape perspectives about what I want my kids to know? I think that because of our overseas experience I pay more attention to is the curriculum I'm choosing showing a global perspective? I don't want everything we read to be only American centric. When we study world history, does it tend to kind of give a northern perspective or do we remember that there are other countries? What was happening in India and China and Africa and South America at the time? The other thing I think it gives me is one of the things I miss from a home school perspective about being over there now is how close we were to history. America is so new and especially where we are over here on the West Coast, it's just not that old. And we could walk down the street and see a 500 year old building or go to museums where they had things that were 1000 years old easily. Sometimes we would go to Thessaloniki, Greece where we would often go for doctor's appointments and things or some a few days away. And walking down the street we'd walk past archaeological sites that were just they were open and there weren't a lot of explanations, maybe, but you could watch it, look down and see the archaeologists working, and it was amazing. And just being that close to history was incredible, as well as being so close to art and music and where it all came from and all of that. So I think that those things have influenced my home school view forever.

Morgan: That's amazing. Okay, so when you moved back to the States, what was that like?

Rebecca: So the kind of work that we were doing involved working heavily with severely traumatized kids, often that were still in the families where things were that that weren't able to adequately care for them. So we saw really extreme situations. By the time we came back in 2019, we were severely burnt out for quite a few reasons that aren't necessary to go into, but it's really hard to go through so much transition as well as to be under so much emotional and mental stress and to continue to invest in homeschooling. So that was tough. And we went through multiple times of we tried about every two or three years to come back to the States for a few months, to reconnect with people here and to connect with those who were supporting the work that we were doing over there and family. And so our kids there were multiple times during our home school years when our kids were going through some really extreme transition where all of a sudden everything was foreign. People would say I would ask my kids, oh, are you so happy to be home when we'd come to California? And they'd look really confused because their house, their bed, their toys, everything was back across the ocean. And there were a lot of really tough goodbyes over the years, whether it was good friends that lived down the street from us who moved, whether it was grandparents coming to visit or us coming to visit here in California and then going back to Albania. For small children, those at times could almost feel like deaths. They were really extremely difficult goodbyes. There was real grief involved, plus just learning how do you greet people, how do the toilets work in these places? Where do we go for this one time we came back and one of my kids ran around a house in circles where we were going to be staying for a while and finally stopped and said, does this house have a bathroom? Just trying to figure out where everything was, what became pretty big at times. So school would have to take we'd have to maybe work on slightly different schedules or take weird breaks and things just because life was really big. I remember one time when they were little and we came back, we spent a decent amount of time not even looking, reading books or working in workbooks. But this is called a fire hydrant, and this is what that does because we didn't have that. Or here's a nice policeman who can talk to you and show you his car, and here's how the post office works and things like that. Some of it we may have had, but it was just so different over there. So there was a lot of just observing of life that became a real part of school at different stages throughout our time. So in 2018, we came back. We were not intending to stay. We came for about six months, and about five months into that, we realized, you know what? It's time to move back to California. Two weeks later, the world shut down. So that was a real adventure. When you're in the States and you're expecting to leave again, you live differently than if you're there permanently. You're living with 1ft out the door and thinking, what do I need to do before I go back? And that sort of thing. So then all of a sudden, our perspective effectives, changed to, now we're here. Now we have to start learning how to live here, not just visit well, except we can't because COVID hit. So we had to get through all of that. And then it was another year before really things opened up, and then our real full acculturation began of getting used to back here. So it wasn't until 2021 that we started to figure out what activities are around for us. What should we do? How do we choose? How far are we willing to drive? Because it was a really long process to get readjusted.

Morgan: I see. So do you have any advice for parents who might be in that same boat that might be battling burnout?

Rebecca: Burnout is hard because it can depend on what it is that's affecting you. And I think the first thing is you have to recognize it. I'm not well right now. I'm not my whole self. And so then you have to decide which things are worth the energy you do have or how much can you fit into that? So I need to feed everybody. We should probably have some clean clothes. And beyond that, I can maybe do two subjects a day, or I can work with one kid at a time, or today I can sit on the couch and read. And we're going to read and read and read, and we're going to talk about those things that we're reading. Maybe we'll watch a YouTube video to follow up on something. That was interesting. But I don't have battling through math in me. But tomorrow I might need to start with that when I'm fresh, because we can't set it all aside completely. So sometimes you can't do everything in a day, but also a plan, like, what am I doing to work my way out of this? And it may be long term, but I need to fill my own bucket. I need to find ways to heal. So whether that's finding a counselor to speak with or a friend to go out to coffee with on a regular basis or you're journaling or something at those times, you can't be everything for everybody. You can't do all the things. So you have to decide which things are worth the energy that you have that's good.

Morgan: How did you come to find Sequoia Grove and how has that impacted your family?

Rebecca: So when we were making our way back for 2019, knowing we were going to be back for about, what, six months of school time, and I had three in school, at that point, I wanted to be legal. And filing a PSA seemed like maybe it felt kind of weird because it wasn't even going to be for a whole year. I was tempted to just fly under the radar because I wasn't sure anybody would actually notice. But that was also made me a little nervous. But then also realizing that for the time that we were here, we could have the resources to go to museums and see all the things that are. While we had access to history and art, we did not have access to zoos and books and some of those kinds of things that I really wanted to give my kids a chance to see an aquarium. I thought, well, the thought of being able to have some of those resources available to us was amazing. So we joined for that purpose, which at that point we were inspired, but we joined then to be legal and to have the resources and then we never left. Rode the wave of turning into Clarksville and Sequoia Grove and really glad that we did. And how has that affected our home school? I honestly try pretty hard to not let it affect us too much. I really want to keep homeschooling the way that we did, which was pretty independently and I did what my kids needed and which subjects we wanted to home school. Obviously we are testing and turning in samples and those kinds of things. But I think for the most part and community, I mean, we didn't have we had some friends over there but we just we really did not have a home school community and so that's been pretty incredible to have a lot more people around and people's more brains to pick.

Morgan: We do have an amazing community. What does your home school look like today?

Rebecca: Well, I'm going to back up and say what it looked like when they were little so that this part makes more sense. When they were little, when my big kids were little, we got started. So we've always done literature based curriculum. Back when we were in Albania, I managed to buy some used sets of sunlight, which is very similar to bookshark and we had that access so we had piles of books even though we couldn't really go to a library or anything. We had piles of books in the house for that reason. And so we spent a lot of time sitting on the couch reading books together and loved that I was pretty rigorous with. We had to do all the subjects. So we had fairly rigorous science, pretty rigorous math and language arts, as well as reading lots and lots of books. And so today, because of that, let me back up. I was also able to combine my girls in most subjects. Many, many subjects we were able to do together. Then as my first son came along, I was a little confused about what to do with him. So he's done more of his own thing. But then the reason all that has something to do with now is because today what does our home school look today? I'm still been figuring out because all of a sudden I have a high schooler and I have another kid who's too little to combine with his big siblings. And so this has been a year of transition for me in my homeschooling, of figuring out what can we do together, what do we still want to do together, and what do I now have to break up and separate out? And so I've done a lot of my high schooler doing her own thing, but turning my 7th grader back towards my fourth grader and having those two middle kids while they're three grades apart have the same age gap that my two girls have. And so we've done some science and history with those two kids together and been able to combine them with mixed success. I'm still working that out as well. But then my kindergartner gets some of his own stuff, and there's quite a bit of time when he kind of tags along. I read stuff that my big kids can understand, and he catches some of it. And what he catches great. And what he doesn't, I'm not really worried about it. He does a lot of driving cars around on the floor while reading things. But of course, he's getting his own math and language arts, and we'll read some other books and stuff together with him. You want to know what a day looks like? Yeah. What's?

Morgan: A day in the life.

Rebecca: A day in the life. So most days I prod my kids out of bed by well, I prod my girls out of bed by 730. The boys are usually very chatty by that. We will eat breakfast and watch the news and do a chore. Everybody has a chore that they can do. My five year old helps empty the dishwasher and feeds the dog, and the others each either help with laundry or bathroom or dishwasher and cleaning at breakfast. And then we will sit down on the couch, and during that time we'll read. We might do some religious training stuff. We'll also do some maybe art and music, although that's actually something that has been missing this year we are reading right now. We are taking turns between one book called Dot to Dot, which is all about the stars in the sky, the constellations, or another book that I really like called Africa Is Not a country. And it's just one quick little bit about each African nation. And the kids have a map and so they're coloring in which country we're reading about as we go.

Morgan: I love that.

Rebecca: It's super simple and we just take a couple of minutes on it. They each grab a colored pencil and their paper, which is our bookmark, in the book.

Morgan: How did you find those books? Are they a part of a curriculum?

Rebecca: No. Where did I find africa is not a country. Probably Facebook groups. Homeschool groups? The Dot to Dot, I might have come across yeah, I can't remember now how I found those, but they're both small books and we'll read a couple of pages and maybe each of them once or twice a week, and we just are slowly making our way through. And then the thing I'm really excited about is that we are making our way through Romeo and Juliet. And so we started with a short graphic novel version of the story, and then we read one, an Osborne version that was a little bit longer, and now we're doing I don't remember who wrote it, but one that's actually set into like, little chapters. And so with the goal of I listened to a few podcasts and looked up how best to teach Shakespeare. So the idea being that by the time we get to the actual play, they'll know the story so well that they know what's happening and they can focus when the difficult language or the unusual language hits them. They're not trying to interpret what's happening and figure out all of the difficult language. They know the storyline at that point. So the girls are loving it. My boys are not super excited about it, but every once in a while we'll stop and have a sword fight. Reenact a sword fight can bring them back in a little bit, but it is rather dramatic.

Morgan: I love that. That sounds so fun.

Rebecca: I have to have a real firm schedule or we will end up all over the place. Because I don't do a good job of keeping track of time. I have very little awareness of how time is passing. I'm not good at that. So I've written out a really specific schedule about what to get done each day. So at that point, I will usually have the girls go work on their Iew writing curriculum and I will sit at the table with the boys and do spelling with Mark and Math or his Phonics and stuff with Peter. So we'll do that and then we'll switch and Mark will do his Iew, which they can do independently because they watch a video and follow some directions. And the girls will move to math so that if they need my help, I can help them with that. And if they don't need help, then I'll probably read some books to Peter or have him help me with some laundry, or he'll play and talk to me about his magnets and cars and things like that. There's a recess in there at like, 1015. They'll go play outside. I usually will kick them outside, go run around and get some fresh air, have a snack for 15 minutes, and then before lunch, we will work on either science or history with my middle too, and I'm just trying to keep my high schooler moving. And then we'll have lunch. And then I might do one more subject with them or if it's something they can do independently, either the other science or history. Sometimes we'll get to that at that point. And then I go to work and they wrap up things they didn't finish. So I will go sit down and try to get some work done, and they will wrap up math they hadn't finished yet or practice instruments and things like that. Wednesdays are lesson days, so we'll keep it to bare bones. They might do Iew and math, but then they have all four go to art lessons. The three big ones have piano lessons. There's a couple more instrument lessons and a dance class that day as well. But because we live in a little town, they can actually get themselves to a lot of that. So I can work, and they can ride their bikes around and get themselves to their lessons.

Morgan: What rhythms and routines worked for you really well last year that you've brought into this current year?

Rebecca: I think having that schedule has really helped, so I've gotten a little bit better at it this year. Last year I had it like I set alarms on my phone, almost like school bells, and it got to be a little much, so I've turned those off. But I have made myself a really clear chart of who's supposed to be where, when, and what everybody's doing so that there's no guesswork with any of that. And I should mention I do this because I like to be spontaneous, and every once in a while I need a really firm schedule, but I also need to be able to break it. So while we do have a routine that we can go back to, it's also really easy for me. Last week we finally had a beautiful spring day, and we cleaned out the garage and went and bought chicks. But then the next day had to get right back to it. I have a kid or two that's a lot like me, so keeping us on track is is a real effort. It takes real effort to keep us on track because I don't have one of those kids. I've known a couple of kids. They wake up early and they get themselves to work they know what they have to do and they're like done with school by nine. And I see all these people saying, oh yeah, we're done by twelve. I'm like, how do you do that? It's never ever been that family. One, because when they were little I gave them too much to do, but two, because we just aren't that family. We have new ideas to talk about, we find other things to do and that's interesting. It's really hard. My husband would be a lot more like that if he were their primary home school teacher, but he's not, it's me. So we do our best.

Morgan: I love how in home school we're able to dive down those rabbit holes, but I know one of your daughters wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up. So how has home school helped in that path?

Rebecca: I think she has a lot of space to explore, so it's easy for her to have. Currently she has four rabbits and eight baby bunnies and six chicks with some more on the way, and some fish tanks and a dog and I know I'm forgetting something. Do we have more creatures? We'd have more if we let her. I mean, we did get really off track of school just recently because she got an email telling her there was this great dog up for adoption and she really wanted it. We had to have a whole conversation about that. So there's time for her to explore her interests. She's also in four h and she can spend time, she really enjoys doing these presentations and she can really research the subjects that she's interested in and create these really cool presentations. And it is on top of her other school to a degree, but we can also make room for it in her schedule, so that's been really helpful. This is not something she's done recently, but when she was a couple of years ago, she got to follow vets around a couple of times and she could take a day and go do that sort of thing. So it's given her a chance to she would do more if she could. Our local shelter won't let her volunteer until she's 18. She would be there all the time if they would do that. So we've tried to keep her eyes open for some more opportunities, but it's kind of hard when there's liability issues and so they get to come. But she would do that. In fact, if she could do some of that, she'd probably be more efficient at her work because she'd be highly motivated to get I love it.

Morgan: Is there anything you want to talk about specifically or any advice that you'd like people to know?

Rebecca: Okay, here's a couple of things. One of the things I learned a while ago was that I have to keep myself in the equation when I'm choosing curriculum and schedules and things. If a curriculum looks great for my. Child, but I hate it. I can't stand how it's laid out. I don't want to look at it or I don't understand how it's supposed to flow, then it's not the right curriculum for us. I need to be able to have it function for me as well. I also need the schedule to work in a way that works both with who I am, but also with how our family needs to flow. The other thing is that I think it's taken me I love all the things I want to do, all the opportunities I get FOMO so badly. I want to do so many things. It's taken me a really long time, especially when we got to America and there were so many opportunities.

Morgan: Yes.

Rebecca: It was so hard to say no to anything. And of course these are all important and we have to do all of them. So it's taken me quite a while to learn how to narrow down what's important and what we can do. So one of the things I do with four kids is that it's pretty rare for me to say yes to an opportunity if it only involves one kid. We find things that we can do with multiple kids. We also try to prioritize relationships. So if an activity is just one kid with nothing else going on, it's probably a no. Keeping in mind that because we live in a small town, we have to drive for a lot of things. So if my kids want to be in any sort of choir drama, lots of music stuff, gymnastics, all that kind of stuff requires probably at least a half an hour drive. So I have to choose really carefully. And so if it involves being a part of something with a cousin who we didn't get to be around for so many years, then the answer is much more likely to be yes. If it's an activity that can be done with multiple siblings, if a good friend can be a part of it, if it's a real opportunity for me to form relationships with parents or something, those are all things that we consider and whether or not we're going to say yes to something. We also don't let our kids choose activities that would become family dominating. So we're not going to choose a sport that one kid is going to do. And it means that three nights a week our family is taken over by this activity because that's not worth the stress to our family. The other thing is that I've also been able to kind of narrow down subjects. Like I've really been wanting to study Shakespeare for quite a while and we finally are, but it's not taking over everything. It's just sort of one more book that we're doing in a row of everything else. Music and art appreciation and history are really important to me. I want my kids I've finally been able this year, I think to finally find my vision statement, which is that I want my kids to be able to know and desire truth and beauty. And so I also want them to be prepared for whatever path in life they need to take. So I want to make sure that their education is solid so that they can do what they want to do. But I want them to recognize the difference between a good beach read and solid literature, to know the difference between fun pop dance music and music that took a genius to write. And maybe they're not going to always get in the car and choose Mozart to listen to, that's fine. But to be able to recognize it and have a clue what it is and appreciate it for what it is, to understand to a degree how difficult art was to create, because they've been in art classes and they know how much work it takes and what they were able to do or not do and like, oh, that technique is really hard. To have some appreciation for those things and to desire those things, that's a.

Morgan: Really cool thing to be teaching right now. It reminds me we were watching a video last night on Mark Rubber's Channel on YouTube, and there was an AI robot that was playing the hardest song ever on piano, and we were talking about how hard that would be for a human to do, but AI is able to do it so easily.

Rebecca: I just want to say that as true. Home school mamas. There's a little one in the booth with us, so if you've heard any strange noises throughout, she's now fallen asleep and is so sweet, but you might hear her snoring a little bit. One thing I heard recently, which I thought was such an amazing quote, was, we can really overestimate how much we get done in a year. This was not about homeschooling, but it was so true. We can overestimate how much we can accomplish in a year, but we underestimate how much we can accomplish in ten years. Interesting, and I found that to be really true, what we're going to do next year plan is usually very ambitious. But now that I'm up to having a 9th grader and a 7th grader, I can begin to appreciate the long game. I can begin to understand what the years have built finally in a way that is only hypothetical when your oldest is still little. And I really liked that quote a lot and thought there's a lot of peace in that. We can overestimate, and so we can be down on ourselves about what we accomplished maybe in the past year. But when we start to look at it all together, then we can begin to see how the bricks that we've built are creating this cathedral of a child. Not that we are creating our children, but I think you all know what I mean. And that the years. All of the each day is just a day. But it's also a brick. It can matter, but it is only one brick. And so it's simultaneously insignificant and significant all at the same time. But brick by brick by brick by brick by brick, we can really see our kids, see the work that we have done begin to build into some pretty cool things in our kids.

Morgan: I love that. What do you hope, looking back when your kids are graduated, that you will have instilled in them? What are your biggest dreams for them?

Rebecca: I hope they will know that they are loved and valuable. I hope that they will love God. I hope that they will seek to love others and that those truths will be written deep in their hearts. I hope that when they look back at school, they remember sitting on the couch more than they remember math tears. But I also hope that they will remember that mom knows they can do a lot. Sometimes the math tears came because I was pushing too hard, but I also wasn't going to let them have lazy brains. We have to work those muscles. And so I hope that they know how to use their brains. They aren't afraid to stretch their minds and their abilities and that they will know how to learn so that when there's something they don't rephrase, I know they know how to learn that they will have a love of that and they won't have a fear of it. Like, I can go and learn a new thing to accomplish, this thing that needs to be done. And as I said before, I hope that they will continue to seek truth in a world that sort of feels ever chaotic. I know every generation says that. And that they will seek and desire beauty that can bring rest to their souls.

Morgan: That's beautiful. I have a homeschool planner, and in it, it asks, how do you want your kids to see you as a home school mom? And I love what you said because I think your kids will have that inner voice of you believing that they could do big things and they'll know that they're supported every step of the way. So that's really cool.

Rebecca: Gosh, I hope so. Not every day feels beautiful, but hopefully they will hopefully they will know that.

Morgan: I feel like there's so many things I could ask you. I love to pick the brains of other homeschool moms.

Rebecca: Maybe one more thing that I do think I do reasonably well is to evaluate what's working and what's not working. So it took a little while, but I was able to see that I was giving my kids too much to do. And so let's evaluate that and figure it out. Or two different times, I think we've had sort of an albatross around the neck of our home school dragging us down. And at first it just felt like school was wrong. Something was wrong. But then we realized, wait, actually one time it was the language arts curriculum we were using. It's like, you know what? It's too much. The whole day is weighed down by this subject. We need a different approach. And so I was able to remove that curriculum and get something else. And I don't switch easily because I couldn't in the middle of the year when we were in Albania, I couldn't just order new stuff. And then another time it was a math. And the way that that was happening like, okay, something has to give. This isn't with one kid. This isn't working. So I think sometimes that's one thing that I think I'm not terrible at is to be able to look and say what things cause the stress? And what can we do to try and switch that out? And I realized that not everybody is able to easily see things that way. So that's one thing I like to encourage other parents in is to if it's if something's broken, you don't have to stick with it but find the thing that's actually broken. Maybe it's not your schedule. Maybe it's the thing that's shooting the schedule in the foot. Maybe it's not that your kid isn't good at that subject. Maybe it's that particular curriculum isn't speaking their language working for them.

Morgan: How do you know what to switch up and what to keep the same?

Rebecca: Some of it's easy. Which parts of your day are the most peaceful or are the most fun? The parts that kids ask to do. So I would never take couch time away because that's everybody's favorite and begging me to read another chapter or the read aloud and things. I know that that's not what everybody wants to get rid of. Sometimes if something is a fight over and over and over or you just can't get through it. Or a kid you can tell a kid is feeling small or incapable all the time or if you are feeling like I'm no good at this, then something's not fitting right and so trying to identify which piece of it is actually the problem. Is your kid bad at that subject or irresponsible? Or is there a part in the process that's not in a way that allows them to be successful? I don't know if I answered that question or not.

Morgan: I think so. Next year, what things are you keeping and what things are you letting go of?

Rebecca: One thing I'm letting go of is I think each of my kids is going to be doing a different history and that's a little bit we're going to all be studying American history but that's a big deal for me. It took me quite a while to get to that. But especially I was wanting to put the girls back together again and realized that it wasn't even about being in 8th grade and being in high school like trying to figure out how to make that work. The the real problem Was that one curriculum I was looking at fit one girl and the other curriculum I was looking at fit the other girl, and I finally had to come to terms with they just need to do their own thing, and both of those things Are going to be at a level that's not fair. To try and include my fifth grader in my next year's. Fifth grader in. So he'll be doing his own thing, and mr. K he'll be in first grade next year, is clearly not going to he'll be aware of that. We're studying american history, and I'll do some things with him, but including him in those things is going to be too much. So that will be different for us. One child is ending the math curriculum that she's been using all these years, so we have to switch to something else for that. So that will also be different. But the others, I think math will stay more or less the same other than mostly I'm thinking curriculum wise, I think schedule wise, it will probably stay fairly similar, but we're still learning the best way to keep track of high school. That's been hard for both my high schooler and me to learn. What do we need to do, what doesn't need to be done, and how can we both stay on track with that? Because there's a lot more correcting of papers and keeping track of grades and all those kinds of things for me. Yeah.

Morgan: Well, it has been so fun to get to know you better and to hear your home school journey. I feel really lucky that I got to speak with you today. So thank you.

Rebecca: Thank you, morgan, for helping out with this. It's been fun to have your sweet girls snoozing in here with us. We'll have to do this again sometime with you on the other end of the microphone.

Morgan: Let's do it.

Rebecca: Listeners, thank you for being here today. This has been the Sequoia Breeze Podcast, a breath of fresh air for your home school. As always, I'm your host and this time, your interviewee. Rebecca la Savio. Thank you for being here, and I hope that you have enjoyed season three and all that it has had to offer. I think it's been an exciting season, and I would love to hear what was your favorite episode? What did you learn? What do you still have questions about? What do you hope that we cover in season four? Please send me an email at podcasts@sequoiagrove.org.