The Sequoia Breeze

Rebecca: Thank you for joining us today, listeners. This is the Sequoia Breeze podcast, a breath of fresh air for your homeschool. I am your host, Rebecca LaSavio. Hello, and thank you for joining us today on the Sequoia Breeze. I am so excited to be joined by Beth Oakes, who is the producer of HiGasfy art history. She has lots of interesting things to tell us today about her unique approach to teaching art history and art appreciation to kids. Welcome, Beth. I'm so excited you're here.

Beth: Thank you so much for having me.

Rebecca: So tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you? Where do you live? What got you interested in art history?

Beth: Sure. I live just south of Dallas with my husband of 33 years, which surprises me that he would stick with me that long. I have two great kids who are both in their twenty s and finally off the payroll. And I had a career as a flight attendant. I retired from that career and began teaching elementary art history in the classroom, and I did retire from that, but I have come to the conclusion that you never actually retire from being an educator. I think it's just in my bones.

Rebecca: That's a good point. And I suppose that those of us who are home schoolers are going to feel that the rest of our lives, that we now see life through that lens. And it's hard to turn that off.

Beth: It sure is.

Rebecca: How did you get interested in art history and art appreciation?

Beth: Okay, well, I've always enjoyed drawing and sketching, and I took a few classes in it, but I have to be honest, I was often intimidated at the thought of going to an art gallery or an art museum. I did not grow up going to those, and so I kind of had that preconceived notion of what you see on TV, that museums and galleries are boring or stuffy or intimidating, like I said. And it was actually on a trip. I was working a trip as a flight attendant to London, and one of the flight attendants asked me if I wanted to go with her on our layover to the National Gallery. And I thought, nah, I've got better things I think I'd rather do in London. But it wound up being a rainy day. And so she called me in my hotel room and said, are you sure you don't want to go? I know it's gonna be hard to get out. And I thought, okay, I'll go. So we jumped in a cab and on the way there I felt myself being a little anxious about it. I wasn't sure what to expect. I wasn't really sure of the protocol and felt like it may be a little boring, but I had this epiphany because of her. We got into the gallery and we began to walk around and she knew a little bit about some of the artists or some of the pieces. And so she would just kind of tell me a story about a piece of artwork and it was intriguing. I do like history and I like stories. And so I found myself really being drawn to some of the art pieces. She kind of showed me that you don't have to know a lot about the piece to be able to appreciate it. And if it kind of spurs on some interest, you go and you ask questions and you research and you'll learn volumes. And the epiphany was art really is not boring. It's very exciting. So that's how I got interested in art history. And I found myself in the months and years that followed that when I would go to certain cities all over the world, I would try to find a museum, whether it be a famous one or a local art gallery, and just go in. And some I stayed in for 15 minutes and some of them I would still be there if they hadn't kicked me out. So I really began to enjoy going to art galleries.

Rebecca: And you're so good at telling stories. I'm just sitting here with a grin on my face. What a fun way to get into to discover a love of art history.

Beth: Right, right. Thank you.

Rebecca: So you transitioned from a love of art and its history and the stories that you discovered to teaching that to kids. How did you get there? How did you make that transition?

Beth: Well, it was just that passion and probably being at the right place at the right time. I do like teaching, but had not been a teacher in the classroom. I just enjoyed telling stories and having fun with it. And so I found out that where my children were going to school, they were needing an elementary art teacher for the next year. And I thought, oh my goodness. I said I would never teach, and if I did, I would never teach elementary. And yet this door kind of opened up and hit me right in the face. And I thought, wouldn't it be fun to tell these kids about the things I had seen that week or that weekend when I was flying? Because I was still flying at the time. So I went and interviewed for the position and told them basically what I wanted to do, that I would fly on the weekends and what I learned that week or what I studied that week. I'd love to come back and teach the kids, but I didn't want to teach the children technique. I let them know administration know that it wasn't going to be an arts and crafts class, but it was going to be an art history class for first to 8th grade. The concept was kind of met with some trepidation by the administrator. He thought that the younger children, 1st, 2nd, 3rd graders would not really get the art history part of it. That they would be bored. But I knew what I had seen and I really thought they would get it and love it. And I asked him just to give me a trial run. I wrote up a few lesson plans of things I wanted to teach him. And when he read the lesson plans, he was very open to it. He said, let's give it a try. And so we started that year with teaching art history at elementary. And the kids get it. They're sponges and mainly because I tell a story and so they always like that part and they are a lot more perceptive sometimes than we give them credit for. And so the curriculum just grew and grew, and I became more excited to tell them about different artists and it made me want to study more and learn more. So it was the perfect storm. And I wound up teaching in the classroom for 13 years doing that and just kept building and building the curriculum around art history for elementary students. And so it just worked out to be a very good marriage, I guess you could say.

Rebecca: That sounds like a really fun class. What does art history have to do with our daily lives? Why is it something that you believe we should spend time in our school studying?

Beth: Sure, that's a great question. And it's something that I didn't really think about until I got into it and started doing it and reflecting that I saw this chasm kind of come together. So I think as educators of children, we need to exercise both hemispheres of their brain. So the left hemisphere is the one that processes the analytics and the math, language, logic and facts. And then the right hemisphere processes intuition and creativity, emotion, imagination and reasoning. So you may have heard people say, I'm more left brain or I'm more right brain. And I agree that we all have our strengths, we have our weaknesses, but the hemispheres actually communicate back and forth to each other to process all this information that we're putting into our brains. So as a child's brain is developing, I really feel that both hemispheres need to be exercise to work effectively as a whole unit. So I took this study of art history and made it kind of a catalyst to exercise both sides of a child's brain. So, for instance, a child can look at a piece of art and the right hemisphere will examine the colors and the shape and what the child feels when they look at it. And then they may even imagine what it took to even create that piece of artwork. And then you couple that with the left hemisphere of that child's brain, and that's the one that would possibly be processing the history and the cultural facts surrounding that piece. And they will analyze the artist and the style and even the medium or what the artists use to make their piece of art. And so the brain takes in all this information and it begins to critically communicate back and forth to come to an educated, emotional conclusion. I know that was a long wordy thing, but that's what happened. I saw how this particular subject could exercise both sides of a child's brain, which is in a very fast, rapid rate of developing. So what I just said sounds terribly difficult, but, you know, our brains do it all day long without us even giving it much acknowledgement. So with a strong left and a strong right hemisphere, our children can critically think through, let's say, what product on the grocery shelf is the best value on the grocery store shelves. Or maybe they can process, using both sides of their brain, left and right, why a mom wants them to keep their room clean, because that can be emotional and logical. It's very emotional for my children which color of crayon they use for a particular reason. Do they use green for a leaf because that's logical? Or do they use blue for a leaf because they're feeling sad? Or why they have a chore of even feeding their dogs? These are all things that if their brain is exercised using both hemispheres, that they can bring those two together and make a lot of very analytical and critical thinking resolutions of information. So I think it's our duty as educators that we present information to our children and we guide them through the use of both of those hemispheres without them even knowing. And it allows the brain to do these miraculous things in processing. I mean, it's really an incredible machine that I know very little about and don't have a very big one. But this is kind of the concept I took as I was teaching art history. I saw that, for instance, there would be a child that said they loved art and they loved to draw and they were very good at it, so they loved coming to class. But then I had a child, a lot of them were boys who said, I don't like art. I'd rather be at PE. I'd rather be running around and kicking a soccer ball. But when they came to art history class, they saw that they didn't have to be very proficient at drawing to be able to appreciate art. And so I saw this transformation, especially the ones that said they weren't artists or weren't good at something, suddenly pick up a pencil or a marker and start trying. And two, through looking at history, you see where so many artists failed or were made fun of or criticized, and yet the artist kept trying. And that was also very encouraging to those that felt like that was a deficit in their lives.

Rebecca: That's all really fascinating. And while they're having these new experiences and strengthening their brain connections and growing as people, they're also making connections with history and expanding their understanding, probably even of some level of geography as these artists are around the world in different places, as well as deepening their cultural understanding. And it really covers a lot of things. And just hearing stories about artists and looking at their works and what I.

Beth: Love about that is because it's a story, they don't even realize they're learning. That right. That's the great part. If we can teach our kids just to love learning, just to love the story and love what's presented, they'll learn and not even realize it.

Rebecca: Well, that was my next question for you, is that I know you teach art history through storytelling and not a list of facts or just bullet points, so you've answered it a little bit. But could you expand on why and where does that approach come from?

Beth: Sure. For millennia, stories have been told. They've been passed down to enlighten, to inform people, and very often to entertain. And it seems that most people love a good story. It kind of piques their imagination. You know, stories can make us laugh, they can make us cry, they can make us ponder and think. Stories can also help us remember. It's almost as if stories become a video in our brains. And if you're a good storyteller, you can insert facts and feelings and both hemispheres start working in tandem. And that knowledge that's being portrayed and that experience that's being told about will usually stick. The kids will remember. So I do love telling stories, and it didn't just come about with our history. I've always loved coming home from trips and telling what happened and being as animated and sometimes having a little bit of creative liberty to tell us it's a story. So I think stories help us remember, help us to learn. And it's been going on for a very long time. So it was just something that I enjoyed doing even before I started teaching. And I was kind of wondering if it's okay, I would love to tell you a story today.

Rebecca: I was just about to ask, so yes, please do.

Beth: Okay, so I'm going to tell you a story and I'm going to invite your listeners to don't think about both hemispheres of your brain, but as I tell the story, know that both hemispheres, the creative and the knowledgeable part, the logical part, are going to be firing back and forth. And I have a great story to tell you today. This is one about a little girl who was born on a farm over 150 years ago in New York. Her name was Anna Mary Robertson, and she loved growing up on a farm. As a girl, her mother taught her how to make candles and soap and taught her how to cook and sew and how to be very sweet to her nine brothers and sisters. I can only imagine what dinner time was like on the farm. It was probably crazy with ten kids. So when she was done with her chores. She would ask her mom if she could go outside. And she loved to play with her brothers. She had so much fun. And she said it taught her how to be tough. They would go out in the woods and they would play. They'd collect sticks and play swords or they'd gather wood and try to make a raft for the mill pond and play hide and see and she loved that. Now, when she was twelve, she was sent to work at a house in town. She did that to kind of help her parents to make some money for the family. And so she did that and she went as a house girl. And what a house girl was, was a girl that kind of came in and helped a lady of the house do the things that Anna Mary's mom had taught her how to cook and she would do a little bit of sewing and often she would be looking after the kids. And she did that for a long time. She started at twelve years old and she continued until she was 26. Now something happened when she turned 26. The man of the house needed some help too. And so he hired a guy to come and help. And that guy's name was Thomas Moses. Well, when Anna Mary saw Thomas, she thought he was like very handsome. And she also saw that he was a hard worker and was very kind. When Thomas saw Anna Mary Robertson, he thought she was the prettiest thing he'd ever seen. And he loved that she was funny. She loved telling stories too, and loved to try to make people laugh. Well, they wound up falling in love and getting married and they moved into another part of New York where they had their own farm. And Thomas Moses and Anna Mary Moses now had a great life. They loved each other. They wound up with five children. She worked really hard in the home and out helping him in the fields and he was a hard worker. They did this for a very long time until their kids grew up. And then something bad happened. When Thomas turned 65 years old, he died. And Anna Mary was heartbroken. She was so sad. She missed Thomas so much. And Anna Mary was now in her sixty s too. There was no way she could work this farm by herself. So she decided to go live with her daughter. And her daughter also saw how sad she was. And so she began to come up with an idea that would maybe help her mother tear up a little bit. She went out and she bought some paints and some canvases and some brushes and she brought it back to the house and she told her mom, she said, I've got these fun art supplies and I thought maybe you would like to paint. I've set up a table in the living room and just wanted to see if you want a try. Well, Anna Mary remembered when she was a little girl, she did like drawing and loved creating things. And so she sat down at the table, and she began to just paint, and she found out that she loved it. One reason she loved it was because she painted pictures of what we would call the good old days. Of the fun memories that she had as a kid. Like when all the community farmers would come together for what they call the sugaring off. Which was when the SAP would start running in the maple trees. And they would get buckets and start collecting all that yummy SAP and make it into syrup. Or memories of the women getting together and having a quilting bee. And so those were the type of pictures that she painted, and it did help smooth away some of her sadness of her being heartbroken. Now, she began to make quite a few paintings, and so she would give them away to her family and her friends, and they love the paintings because it made them feel good. It made them happy to see these really fun, very busy paintings. One of her friends suggested that she might want to hang some of her paintings in her husband's store there on main street. And Anna mary thought, well, I've got quite a few. I'll just take maybe five of my best ones and hang them in the window. And that's what she did. She hung the paintings up in the window, and those paintings sat there for days and weeks and months and years. Nobody bought a single painting in five years. Now, if that was me, I might get a little discouraged. I may think, well, I might want to take those down, and maybe I'm not all that great. But Anna Mary moses didn't think that she just let him stay there. She loved painting. She didn't let it discourage her. And then one day, this guy comes driving into town. His name was Lewis calder, and he was an art dealer from New York city. And he stopped off at the store, and as he was walking in, he looked over, and he saw the paintings in the window. Well, he was a critical guy. He looked at paintings for a living, and he took a kind of a quick glance at the paintings and started to head on in the door. And then he looked back again at him, and he found that he just he really couldn't take his eyes off of them. They were interesting to look at, and they made him feel good, and they, too, kind of brought back memories of the good old days. So he walked into the store, and he asked the storekeeper, he said, those paintings in the window, are they for sale? And of course, the storekeeper who had been looking at those paintings for five years said, yes, sir. Yes, they sure are. Is there one in particular you'd like to have? And he said, actually, I think I'm going to buy all of them. Well, you can imagine that shopkeeper ran to the front of the store. He started taking the paintings down and kind of blowing on them and dusting off before he took them back to the man. And as he's wrapping them up in paper for Mr. Calder, mr. Calder sees where the artist has signed the bottom of the painting, and it says, Moses. And he said, do you know this artist? And the shopkeeper said, sure, they live just down the road here. It's the third white house on the left. And he said, do you think I could pay them a visit? And the shopkeeper said, sure, just stop by. It shouldn't be a problem. So Mr. Calder gets in his car, he goes down to the third house on the left, and he goes up, and he knocks on the door, and the door creaks open, and there's a little old lady standing there. And he says, hello, my name is Lewis Calder, and I'm looking for an artist, a Mr. Moses. Well, Anna Mary is the one that answered the door. And she said, well, honey, Mr. Moses has been dead for several years. What would you need him for? And he said, well, I just bought some paintings down here at the store, and I wanted to meet him. She said, oh, honey, those weren't painted by Mr. Moses. I painted those. I'm Mrs. Moses. And he said, well, I am so sorry. I didn't realize that you were the artist. And he said, well, Mrs. Moses, can I come in and talk to you for a little bit? She said, well, the only way you're going to be able to come in and talk to me is if you call me what everybody in town calls me. They call me Grandma Moses. And he said, well, okay, Mrs. I mean, okay, Mrs. Grandma Moses, I would love to come in and talk to you. And so they began to visit, and he asked her if she had any more paintings, but she happened to have a few left. And so she took him into her studio, and he said, I want to buy everything you have. Well, she had four that were finished, and so she sold him to four. And she just couldn't believe her luck that day. He said, grandma Moses, I'm going to make you famous. And she said, well, honey, around here, I'm already famous. I've got some of the best strawberry preserves and pickles in the whole state of New York. He said, well, I think I'm going to make you famous for your paintings. So Mr. Calder takes the paintings, and he goes back down to New York City, and he starts going to all these galleries showing these great paintings. And some were a little interested. Some didn't really care for the paintings. And those people who were a little interested became not interested when they found out that grandma Moses was 76 years old. You see, they wanted to buy paintings from artists who would keep producing them for years and years and years, and they figured that if she's 76, she's probably not going to live very long. And so they wouldn't buy her paintings. It wasn't until a department store named gimbals was having a very special Thanksgiving week, and they invited artists to come and bring their paintings for them to look at because they wanted to have a little exhibit or a little display of artwork. Well, Mr. Calder took those paintings to the store to gimbals, and when they looked at them, they said, well, these are very nice. I think we would love to exhibit these in the store during the week of Thanksgiving. Oh, my goodness. Mr. Calder was so excited, he couldn't wait to tell grandma Moses. So he contacted her, and he said, guess what? Gimbals wants to show your artwork, but there is a little glitch here. They need you to come down and stand beside your artwork as people come into the store so that people can talk to the artist. Grandma Moses said. Oh, my. Come all the way to New York City. I don't even know how I would get there, and what in the world would I even wear to something like that? He said, grandma Moses, don't worry. You go pick out your Sunday best dress, and I'll send you a train ticket. So grandma Moses did that very thing. She found her prettiest black dress and a real pretty black hat, and she put on even a little lace collar, and she got on the train, and she headed to New York city. Mr. Calder picked her up and took her to gimbals. So Mr. Calder picked her up and took her to gimbals, and she stood right next to her artwork. And people began to come in when they saw her artwork. They really, really liked it. But when they began to talk to grandma Moses, they fell in love. You see, she was sweet. She was kind. She was very humble, and she talked probably as much about her strawberry preserves and her pickles as she did about her artwork. People loved her as much as her paintings. Now, word began to get out about these paintings, and a card company, a company by the name of hallmark got in touch with her, and they said, we heard about your paintings. Would it be possible if we put your painting on some of our Christmas cards that we sell? And grandma Moses said, well, I think that would be a great idea. And then another company who made plates and coffee and tea cups got in touch with her and said, can we put some of your paintings on our plates and our cups? And she thought that was a great idea. And then the US. Post office got in touch with her and said, we want to put one of your paintings on our stamps. Would you be OK with that? Well, of course she was. That was huge. But the biggest thing was that a magazine, a very famous magazine, asked her if they could do a story on her. It was about a farmer's wife who becomes a famous artist, grandma Moses. Remember I told you she was old and people didn't want to buy her artwork because she was old? Those museums and galleries. But, boy, they really misjudged Grandma Moses, because you know what? She lived to be 101 years old, and she continued painting up until her last day. Now, I mentioned a painting a little while back about Sugaring Off is the name of, and I want to encourage you to go and look up that painting. It's a very fun painting to look at. That painting sold at an auction for over $1 million. And if she'd equipped painting, when people made fun of her or when they told her she was too old or when people were critical, she would never have been famous. She would have never been rich, and she may have not ever gotten over her sadness at losing her husband. Thomas. So I love Grandma Moses because I learned so much from her. I learned that you're never too old or maybe even you're never too young to start something new, and that if you like doing it, do it. Even if people aren't very nice about it or critical or make fun, if it's something that you really enjoy, just keep doing it because you don't know what will come of it. And also, something else I loved about her is she was very humble and sweet. She was never prideful. And that is a lesson to me, too, that even if I do something good, I should still be really, really humble about. So that is the story of Grandma Moses.

Rebecca: What a fun story to listen to. Beth, I really appreciate you telling us that. I got to hear that once before when I met you at a home school conference and fell in love with what you do and with your curriculum and how you make us so excited about the histories of these painters and their stories of these artists. Not just painters. So, which leads me into, could you please tell us a little bit about your curriculum? HiGasfy is an unusual name. What does that mean?

Beth: Yes. So when I was teaching in the classroom, I would always start my class with, oh, have I got a story for you. And then I would tell them a story just like the one that you just heard. And usually in the classroom and at conferences you talk about, I also will put up. I have, like, a PowerPoint that I show when I taught that. So I thought, I'm going to resign from teaching the classroom. And I'm going to take this art curriculum that I've been writing all these years and see if I can put it into video form. And so we began to do that. I began to take my curriculum and write some dialogue between me and a little Drop of paint. He and I in the videos, we communicate and talk and interact with each other and he helps me to show paintings. And I took that phrase, Have I got a story for you. And I took the first letter of each word, which is hi. G-A-S-F-Y high. Gasfy. I thought, maybe that can be the day above it. And in every lesson I started off with, Have I got a story for you, and we named that little drop of paint gaspy. So every time he pops out of his paint, can I say Hi Gasfy, which is the name of the curriculum. And in these videos, he and I do a lot of very silly things that normally I probably wouldn't do out in public, but to help with my teaching. And I do exactly what I just did a few minutes ago. I tell a story and I show the students the paintings. And this little animated character will often jump in and out of the paintings to point out things. He asked a lot of questions that a child would ask. And we analyze and critique paintings, we talk about the lives of the artist sometimes, the silly things that artists do, sometimes the sad things that artists have to experience, and we just tell a story. And it's amazing that in that storytelling format with these videos, these children learn so much about culture and history, like you were talking about Rebecca, and the lives of these artists and struggles that they went through, and it ends up being just a very enriching process. I'll tell you a quick story. I was several years into teaching and we were studying the Impressionist and especially Monet, and I have a class about to come in and I hear them running down the hall, being loud, and that's not acceptable in the traditional schools. And so I poked my head out the door and I said, you guys quit running, quit running. And they couldn't wait to get to art class because they couldn't wait to tell me that the local donut shop had a real Monet picture in it. And they were so excited. Now, that picture, a print, had been hanging in that donut shop for years, but they never noticed it because they didn't know anything about Monet. And so I didn't quite have the heart to tell them that it probably wasn't an original Monet, but the very fact that they began to see art around them was something that made me think, OK, I'm actually being an effective educator. And it is amazing when the children learn about these artists and pieces of artwork, they begin to see it in the stores and in people's homes and in cartoons that they watch, in movies they watch, and they get excited because they know something about a subject that, unfortunately, very few people know about. I don't know about you, Rebecca, but I didn't have any type of art history class until I went to college. I had no clue.

Rebecca: Yeah, I think I was taught to look at two pictures in high school, and that was because I was part of academic decathlon, not because I had an actual class or that I was a part of the regular part of education.

Beth: Right.

Rebecca: Our family did your Impressionist series this past year and really enjoyed it. And if anybody's worried about an age range of kids, we had a preschooler through 8th grade, and they all really enjoyed it. And sometimes the preschooler didn't track with all of it, but every time that paint drop came back on, he was back in the room or back paying attention, and so that would grab his attention. I remember you told me that sometimes the big kids will roll their eyes a little at that part, but they're still interested in the story, and the little kids really want to interact with gatsby. And that's exactly what happened with our family, and the kids were always excited when it was time for that. The curriculum comes with a set of videos, but it also comes with tools to help your kids learn more about looking at the art and things. I know one piece that I specifically remember was there was a list of here's a picture. Find these things in the picture. And I thought I was looking at the picture and knew what I was seeing, and yet you said something like, find three dogs. I'm like, There aren't three dogs in this picture. It took us a while.

Rebecca: We had to hunt to realize, oh, there is one over here in the shadow. And, you know, it was really interesting to realize how much more there was to see in that picture than I realized glancing at it.

Beth: Right. And it's been I love it that the curriculum is such that the parent can have a very minimal interaction with having to teach this. If they just I know sometimes as educators, home educators, we're just worn out, we're tired, and then we're also educating our kids, and you want to give them the core. And when it comes to it, you think, I don't have time for art, or I don't have time for art history, but if you just watch the videos and that's all that you do, is put the video in and have the children watch, they learn volumes. But we've also written curriculum to go with each video, and that's what you were alluding to a minute ago. So you can take it to a much higher level using the lesson plans that we've provided. And the great thing is, we've made them cross curricular. My partner in this venture is a full time home educator. She has six children, have graduated, two now. The youngest is eleven. So she's been in it for a long time and she helped me with the lesson plans and she said, if we can make this Cross curriculum where I could tap out something in science that day using this art curriculum, that would help me out a lot. So most of the lessons will have a writing assignment, a writing prompt. If you need something that week for that, just suggestions. It does have art activities in there at a very minimal cost. And it's not technique, it's just giving them suggestions, such as put a piece of paper underneath the table and have your child lay on their back and draw on the piece of paper like Michael Angelo painted on the Sistine Chapel. And your child found out very quickly that their arms get tired in about three minutes. So it helped really bring home what Michelangelo went through with that. We have geography and history, of course, and science in there, so it's broad enough to help out an educator, maybe, you know, feel a need and cross curricular, but if you just don't have time, you can pop that video in and go get dinner on, and you're still educating your children, but it gives you a chance to breathe.

Rebecca: It was a really big hit at our house, and while I wanted to use it for like, you guys go do that and I'll go get something else that I always wanted to be in the room because I wanted to have this story.

Beth: You got the first one to say that. I've got my silver, mom. This was supposed to be my laundry time, and I'm never too old to learn something new.

Rebecca: It's all downloadable.

Beth: Yes, that's the format that we're doing now. Everything is downloadable. So if you want to purchase a series, we have four series available renaissance, Baroque, Impressionist, and Post Impressionist. And in each series we just highlight three artists during that time. There's twelve videos per series, so they get several videos on each artist. So it ends up being a very indepth study on the culture, that time period and the artists during that time. So it is downloadable. You can pay for it, purchase it on our website at www dot highgasfy. Higasfy.com. Purchase it from the store and I will download the videos right to you.

Rebecca: And for our Sequoia Grove families, HiGasfy is a vendor, so you can order it through with your funds and so that is available to us that way. Beth, thank you so much for being here today. I have had so much fun talking to you and listening to your story, and I want our listeners to know that I'm going to link to Higasfy.com as well as we'll see if we can find a good example of Grandma Moses pictures to link to as well and so that you will have access to that. But what a treat to talk to you today.

Beth: Well, thank you. I'm so glad to chat with you again after having met you at the convention last year and look forward to chatting with you again. And I do appreciate the invitation to your podcast. That was super special and honoring to me.

Rebecca: Thank you so much for joining us today. I have really enjoyed hearing all of this and I really hope that that has been inspiring to you as well. Hopefully you've gotten some new ideas and some new ways to enrich your homes school. Thank you so much for joining us for this fun episode of The Sequoia Breeze. I hope that you 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 podcast at sequoia growth.org.