The Homeschool How To
I don't claim to know anything about homeschooling, so I set out on a journey to ask the people who do! Join me as I chat with homeschoolers to discuss; "why are people homeschooling," "what are all the ways people are using to homeschool today," and ultimately, "should I homeschool my kids?"
The Homeschool How To
Curriculum Series: My Father's World
Unlock the secrets of successful homeschooling as I welcome fellow parent and homeschooling enthusiast Megan from Michigan. Our conversation promises to equip you with the knowledge and confidence to navigate the world of home education through Megan's personal experiences with the My Father's World curriculum. Embrace the opportunity to discover a program that not only spans the full educational spectrum, covering subjects from science to social studies, but also offers an adaptable framework for teaching multiple ages, all while ensuring children engage in a joyful learning journey.
Homeschooling is a canvas for creative education, and our episode paints a vivid picture of its versatility, from library visits to crafting math masterpieces. Megan and I dissect how My Father's World facilitates an interconnected learning environment, weaving together tactile spelling lessons with Spelling Power and embracing the "open and go" lesson plans for stress-free parental preparation. The curriculum's adaptability shines, providing a tailored pace that respects each child's unique learning rhythm, and we explore how integrating education into diverse daily activities can spark joy and curiosity in young minds.
As we round off our discussion, Megan offers invaluable insights into the world of curriculum selection, including supplemental programs that enhance the homeschooling experience. She candidly addresses the challenges of complex subjects like reading and phonics, while also stressing the importance of community support in the curriculum decision-making process. Whether you're a veteran homeschooler or contemplating the leap, this episode holds a treasure trove of wisdom, encouragement, and practical advice to support your journey, with Megan affirming her continued commitment to My Father's World and extending an open hand to further discussions on shaping a fulfilling educational path for her children.
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Welcome to the Homeschool How-To Find my Curriculum, a series where we talk all about curriculum. I've been interviewing homeschooling families for over a year now on my main podcast, the Homeschool How-To, but I really wanted to zero in on curriculum. There's so much out there. How do I know what would work best for me and my child? How do I know what works for one child would work for the other? I might like the curriculum I'm using now, but how do I know there's not a better one out there, especially if I don't know all the curriculums? And what about supplemental curriculum? Should I be using that too? This series is to help you decide just that. I'm going to interview parents who are using all the curriculums so that you can decide the absolute best way to unfold your homeschooling journey. The absolute best way to unfold your homeschooling journey. Welcome with us. Today I have Megan from Michigan and she's going to tell us about my Father's World. Welcome, megan. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to hear about this curriculum because it's not one of the super popular ones to my knowledge and I really hadn't heard of it before. But when I had kind of reached out on what curriculums were out there, a few people had mentioned this one. So what even made you use this curriculum?
Speaker 2:I hadn't heard about it before until about a year or two ago also. So I was looking for a new curriculum. We'd tried one curriculum with my daughter when she was in first grade and it was a lot. It was really worksheet heavy, really involved. So I started to just reach out to different homeschool Facebook groups, you know, saying, like, what do you like? And I got a bunch of different answers. I got the my Father's World. I got oh, I can't even remember now, but I researched all of them and once I'm like on the curriculum's website and I start looking at the details, I can kind of get a little bit of a better feel for, like, is this going to work for us? Plus, it got really good reviews from so many other moms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's kind of why I started this podcast is it's this spinoff of the curriculum series, cause it is you you'd have to. You put that question out there on the Facebook pages and all the same ones kind of pop up for everybody and you don't really know is that the best curriculum, or did they just have the best marketing strategy to get to the most people, or the most money behind their marketing to get to the most people? So, like, really, what are the curriculum? And then you'd have to spend the time going on every website and really learning about it. So I'm hoping people could just play this as they're like doing the dishes or falling asleep at night, and it'll give them a little insight into what the curriculum is about. So what subjects is this for?
Speaker 2:It's full spectrum, so it's a little bit science and history based. I wrote down a couple of answers so that I wouldn't forget to say anything. It's a little bit like social studies based and then there's a language arts portion to it, but you also have the option of getting your math books, getting your art books and really giving your child a complete education, so it's not just like just your science.
Speaker 1:Okay, All right. So you got science, math, language arts and history it kind of sounds or social studies.
Speaker 2:Are they the same thing? I mean at a little kid's age, it's social studies. Yeah, I'm teaching little kids.
Speaker 1:Perfect. So, yeah, what are the ages that you're using this curriculum with?
Speaker 2:I started using it for my daughter when she was in second grade and my son was in preschool, so he just kind of like hung out with us and absorbed everything through osmosis. And now my daughter is in third grade, she's nine, and my son is in kindergarten and he just turned six. So I have a third grade curriculum and a kindergarten curriculum through them.
Speaker 1:And what age does it go up to Do you?
Speaker 2:know, is it through high school or yeah, because this, this particular one that is for third graders, you can reuse when they're in fourth grade, seventh grade and eighth grade.
Speaker 1:To hear it a couple of times for it to sink in so well. So, then, that leads me to kind of you can use this with more than one child at a time, right?
Speaker 2:Or does it depend on the subject that you're doing? Oh yeah, I find it really easy to use with more than one student at a time because it was designed by a family for a family and they have multiple ages. So when I start the morning with the kids and I start talking about their subjects, I can kind of see how, like my little one's lesson can fit into my older one's lesson, I can bring them to the kitchen table at the same time to do their handwriting, if one is. If your older child is working on spelling at their level, you just let your younger child work on spelling at their level, you know, and it just yeah, it's easy to just go back and forth. Now I've only got two kids, I don't know. Maybe if you had five kids we would be talking about something different.
Speaker 1:Oh, I think if you had five kids, you probably need even more so of this sort of family style learning. Because, yeah, how would you have the time to devote individually, I mean math, I get it. That's something you might need to, and reading are going to be at different levels, but even you know, like you said, with spelling. You're giving them different levels of the reading. Older kids um, I think, starting in second grade I'm.
Speaker 2:I didn't do first grade so I can't attest to that. Um, but they have a memory verse that they learn, even the little kids like. Every week they get a new letter and an animal that goes with that letter and then a Bible lesson that goes along with the animal that they've gotten.
Speaker 1:Oh nice. So, yeah, that sounds a little bit more than some of the other curriculums that are religious, but it's just kind of a touch on it where you can take it or leave it. This is really intertwined into the actual curriculum. That's nice. Yeah, now you said that, so it encompasses all of the subjects that you need. So how long does each lesson take and then, like your day take to devote to getting the curriculum completed?
Speaker 2:what they do every day, because they incorporate spelling power, which is a separate book and a separate program. And then I've started doing like a morning circle time where everybody comes and sits down, we do our Bible lesson and then I just start talking about science and social studies right there, before we even go do another subject, and so that takes about 30 minutes, because we talk about so many different things and I ask the kids questions and I give them an opportunity to answer me, and then for us math takes the longest. So we take a big afternoon break and then we do math because that could take up to an hour. My daughter is legally blind so she needs to magnify everything. So we start, our morning session is about two hours total, and then our afternoon session is maybe like an hour.
Speaker 2:Okay, and that's for the two children, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause even with like a 10 minute math lesson, my five-year-old is like, okay, I can't sit still. So that must be. Yeah. You, I'm sure you have tricks in place to like, all right, let's focus Right, especially with the little one being there too. So that's gotta be hard. Maybe you can come back on the main podcast and kind of tell us how you you juggle the both kids and and getting them to pay attention, for you know, the three hours in total, because it is hard when you have the different ages. But then you think of a classroom where there's 30 kids. So it's like, all right, well, it's not impossible.
Speaker 1:There are ways to do it, yeah, so you kind of explained a little bit what the day to day looks like as far as your morning and getting into it, like what can we expect them to learn? I know you've got the two different ages, so let's start with your daughter's Like what is she learning today? I guess the question would be like what would a day look like beyond your morning time?
Speaker 2:Okay. So it's really flexible and I think that's the best thing about it. So when you get your lesson plan, she's got it written out like an idea of a schedule for you like start at this time and move on to this subject at this time. For you like start at this time and move on to this subject at this time. But it is so flexible for you because you can like sit down in the morning and do your spelling and do your English and get that stuff out of the way. Have recess, have lunch, go have some fun or do an activity.
Speaker 2:We go to the library a lot. You can take your lessons to the library and then like do your reading out loud, because with the, with the social studies and the science, there's a lot of the parent or the teacher reading things to the child and like showing things on a map, you know, and then you can finish up your day with math and like then just let them be creative and have art. Or if you have a sport that you go to do in the afternoon, then you could, you know, switch your subjects around. Maybe it's easier for you to do math in the morning. Have them do a spelling sheet while they're waiting for their sport to start, and then come home and do your reading out loud. It's so flexible. You can really design it around all your needs.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's nice. And then, what types of things are they learning in that year?
Speaker 2:Okay, so they're learning. They've got Spelling Power, which is a really interesting spelling teaching program. That's really helped my daughter a lot with her reading also and her spelling breakdown. It's a mother who designed it for her daughter. She collected the most misspelled words in our language there's like 5,000 of them and then she groups them. Yeah, it's really interesting. She groups them into these small little chunks and at the beginning of the week you ask your child to write down like 10 or 15 words from each group, whatever ones they miss. They practice for the week and they trace the letters in sand on a tray, like with their fingers, and it's this really cool way for them to get the spelling through their body, like into their brains. So that's a really cool program.
Speaker 2:In second grade, science and history was all about the USA, and so we learned about like where is every state, facts about the states, how the United States was formed, and now we're into properties of ecosystems for third grade, and so properties of ecosystems you can use for fourth grade, seventh grade and eighth grade, and it's learning about the whole world, learning about biomes, environments, animals, geography, where are these countries, what continent are they in, and like so much more than that. I could just keep going. They learn so much, and then your little ones are learning a new animal every week, which is really fun for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, All stuff I don't remember learning in public school, Like if I did, they didn't teach it to a part that made it stick, but like that's all stuff that at 40, I'm really curious to know. Like I'm like I would like to do this curriculum just for my own benefit. That sounds really cool. I love that and do all of the subjects kind of intertwine with what the child is learning? As much as they can be? Like if they're learning about an ecosystem, do they find a way to integrate that into the math lesson too? Lesson too?
Speaker 2:You know, that's one thing that I have not noticed necessarily, but that's okay, because if you're working on your ecosystem and say it's rainforests, right, and then that week your math lesson is fractions, well, what if it takes your child a little bit longer to understand fractions, right? The beauty of homeschool is we get to take the time, we get to say I'm sorry that you didn't understand that, let's try it a couple different ways or, you know, work on it a little bit longer, so you might. Then the next week let them move on to learning about deserts and science, but you're going to keep focusing on fractions until your child really understands what's going. Same thing every week.
Speaker 2:They get a new list and then they get clue sentences to like fill in the blanks, and then Wednesday and Thursday they break down the words, like by sounds, and have the kids learn, like the, the, what sound is in the beginning, what vowel sounds do they make and what sounds are at the end.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then does this have so that kind of leads into? Are there games and like lots of writing and crafts? That's stuff involved in this curriculum.
Speaker 2:There is. There's a lot of writing, yeah. So, like when I got to that question, I was looking over it last night and I was like I really think the one thing is that the worksheets are like the parent explains the information and then the child like fills in the answers. The worksheets could be more game based. They're very much just like answering questions and getting the information down so that the child has an opportunity to practice it. I think the spelling book is a little bit more fun because there's like little pictures and things like that that go along with your spelling questions.
Speaker 2:But if your child, like my child, is a tactile learner and she's really kinetic, she needs a lot of movement. So you can always incorporate those games you know with. Just like we have a Melissa and Doug puzzle that we've had forever with little the lowercase letters in it, you know, and so I use that as a way to help with spelling. Sometimes I just get the puzzles out and the games and like make them work. But the science does have a game that you can play with a globe, okay. So that's, that is kind of nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it makes, it breaks it up a little bit, yeah, but there's a lot of writing. Okay, okay, well, that's not a bad thing. You know they're learning they need to learn it right. So this is considered open and go then. Like that you don't have to do a ton of prep on Sunday.
Speaker 2:I consider it really open and go, because you get a full lesson plan for each grade level that you're working with and it already has a calendar in it explaining like on Monday this is what you should work on, on Tuesday this is what you should work on, and it follows the same pattern every week, so they have it set up. I think it's like every Wednesday or Thursday you go on a nature walk. We don't have time to do that on those days, so I just always bump a nature walk to Friday and then put something else for science in Wednesday or Thursday. I personally, because I'm teaching more than one child, I sit down on Sunday and I look through my curriculums and I put them in. I got a teacher planner off of just Amazon and I put the information in my own planner so that I have like an at-a-glance version of it, but then all my notes are in the lesson plan that was provided for me.
Speaker 1:Okay, that makes it easy. Yeah, so okay. So how many like do these curriculums take the full year to do?
Speaker 1:I know that it was kind of a surprise to me when I ordered my son's kindergarten stuff that like one of let's see, the all about reading was 23 weeks, or 78 lessons if you did them five days a week, and then the math was like 33 weeks, so that's like 10 extra weeks. So it was like, okay, what do I fill in there? What am I supposed to get supplements? So how does it lay out for my father's world?
Speaker 2:That was one of the things that I was going to look at with you too, because I brought my lesson plan up here with me. We've got is it 34 or 36 weeks?
Speaker 1:And then everybody does it different as far as oh, do you take the summer off, do you take the little you know? Quote, unquote school breaks or do you just teach all year and do a little bit less each day.
Speaker 2:Right. So this is 34 weeks, so it would take two semesters to get through everything. And when I mapped it out and I was like if it was a perfect world and we did every single week just the way that it's laid out, we'd be done by May, after starting in September. But because we have somebody in our family who's legally blind and has special needs, it often takes us longer to finish at least one or two subjects every year. So a lot of times we end up schooling through June and July and we take August off, and June and July are just like a lot more relaxed. They're just a lot easier than you know the fall and winter semester. But if you're, if your kids are diligent and they do their work every week and you stay on top of it, you could take the whole summer off if you really wanted to. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I like that, because everybody has a little bit, you know, different. Do we like to travel in the summer? Do we like to take time off? Other people are like well, I'd rather do shorter lessons all year long and continue for the summer, because if you take the time off the kids get out of the groove and then it's harder to get them back in. So it's really nice that you can customize it to whatever works for your family. Do you remember offhand how much this curriculum cost about, and do you have to get all of the subjects? Or, if you really like a different math, could you integrate that with the rest of the subjects? For my Father's World?
Speaker 2:Good question. So I think total for my oldest it was around 500 for the complete kit, which is really reasonable in homeschool world, I think, because I've seen a lot more expensive ones out there and I've seen like some really expensive co-ops too. But you do not have to get their math program. So if Singapore math doesn't work well for you, then you can go find a different math program that works better for you, and if you don't, if you already have a spelling program or a reading program that you really like, you don't have to do spelling power. I chose to do spelling power because I knew that we had somebody in the family who was really going to need it, you know.
Speaker 1:Okay, so my Father's World. When you branch down from that, the math is Singapore math and the spelling is. Spelling power. Spelling power, so they all kind of have these names that come down, but they're all underneath my Father's World curriculum, yeah right, gotcha, but they're.
Speaker 2:They're optional add-ons. So, like, when you go to order your kit, you select the grade it gives you, like that, science, social studies, language, art, base, and then it says you can these are the things that you should add on, okay, okay, but you don't have to get those through my father's world. You, if you have a different math program that you love, it's optional to leave it off of your kit.
Speaker 1:Now, do you think that you need or that you should add any other supplemental subjects or extras and phonics, that type of thing with this curriculum?
Speaker 2:I think if phonics works for you, yeah, get something that helps you out. For us, phonics isn't the best way to learn how to read. We're all dyslexic, so I had to. Yeah, so I found on YouTube. It's a site called Nessie like the Loch Ness Monster, you know Nessie and it's for dyslexic readers and that's really helped my kids a lot. So I supplement extra reading help where I can.
Speaker 1:And would something like Nessie work for people that don't have dyslexia?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it works for all readers because technically it is phonics based, but it gives dyslexic readers a lot more clues to look for to decode their words.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now that I'm getting into like trying to teach my son how to read and what phonics actually is I mean, growing up, other than like the commercial, hooked on phonics, I didn't know anything about it because I don't remember if they taught that way in school, like I didn't pick up that that's what they were teaching.
Speaker 1:But now that I'm you know I had done a Hagerty workbook that they use in school with him and that was very heavy on the rhyming and the breaking up the word, and so I'm even still not sure. Like I know there's phonics and phonemic awareness and that sort of stuff, but how it all works is it's a little like it's either very simple to understand and you feel like it's more involved, or there's a lot to it and a lot of different ways to go about learning it. So that's the hard part too. Um, so okay, so it sounds like if your child might need a little extra on the reading. If you know there's a reading at that age, like the five, six, seven year old, it's hard to know what the best way to teach them how to read is. Do you have any?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is OK. So just speaking on experience, I am right there with you about like I don't remember how they taught us how to read when, cause I went to public school and so I remember like sitting with somebody and going through flashcards and like practicing sounds, but nobody ever told me they were phonics or anything like that. You know it was. It was more like practice and memorization, like over and over again. And so when my daughter was in first grade, I tried a Becca, which has like a really heavy phonics based reading lesson and there are like phonetic rules that your words are supposed to follow. But English is one of the hardest languages to learn, and so she would get stuck on the rules because she's really good at memorizing.
Speaker 1:And so then any word that like If E is silent in one word.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or like yeah, I before E, except after C, but not in all cases.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so she'd get the rules memorized. And then we would run into a word that like breaks all the rules and and she'd just be like completely stuck and have no idea where to go, how every syllable has a vowel, and this is how you can break your words into smaller sections, into little, bite-sized pieces to make them make sense, and that just opened up her whole world to reading and gave her so much freedom. It's really been beautiful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I feel like a lot of times it does take trying different things and then you get that light bulb moment. Yeah, and I feel like a lot of times it does take trying different things and then you get that light bulb moment. Yeah, oh, if I had just known this from the beginning. But sometimes it takes it, I know hitting those roadblocks to make something click later on. Oh, that's good yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm waiting and you just do. You just have to try.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so do your children enjoy doing this curriculum. The my Father's World.
Speaker 2:I think so. I think they enjoy the morning circle time the most. And then I think that for each of them the hardest thing is like oh gosh, we have to do math again. Why do we have to do math every day? But they are learning so much and they love the fact that we can take it slow, we can take our time, we can take it to the library if we have another lesson at the library, and so I think that the freedom and the flexibility is their favorite part. You know, maybe not like sitting down and doing the lessons themselves, but the freedom and the flexibility, yeah.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Is there anything else that you wanted to make sure that you touched upon about this curriculum and you purchased the books? It's not an option to download and print through a third party, is it?
Speaker 2:I don't think so. I think you have to purchase the books. Yeah, because they don't have an option where you can just do videos and like be in an accredited program, like I know a Becca has that option. In my father's world, the parents are always the teacher that there was anything else I wanted to add. I think the other thing you had asked me was just, would you use it again? And I say yes, definitely, like we'll be using this again.
Speaker 1:We'll be using it next year for sure. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, megan. I invite you to come back on the main podcast and tell us all about what got you into homeschooling and you know how the parents working out with the kids and your long-term goals and that sort of stuff, so we'll set that up. Thank you for telling us all about my father's world today.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. It was really fun.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Please consider sharing this podcast or my main podcast, the Homeschool how To with friends, family, on Instagram or in your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. The more this podcast is shared, the longer we can keep it going and the more hope we have for the future. Thank you for your love of the next generation.