Well This Wasn't The Plan!

22. 2026 Goals + Keeping the Kids Busy While We Work!

• Carson and Teran Sands • Episode 22

Share episode

Send us a text

We trade the post-holiday slump for a simple “goals time” system that gives our kids clear daily reps and gives us reliable work blocks. Short, intentional practice drives Spanish, piano, and sports progress while we scale our accounting workload through tax season.

• juggling homeschool with a 42-hour workweek and seasonal peaks
• setting kid goals with specific daily reps and clear time limits
• choosing fewer goals and ranking priorities to avoid overload
• using a checklist and a monthly $100 incentive tied to consistency
• focusing on Spanish speaking and listening with daily micro-lessons
• building piano skills with 10–15 minute sessions and steady difficulty
• planning spring break camps and considering year-round homeschool
• teaching money habits with a 50% save rule toward car funds
• balancing app-based learning with handwriting and core subjects

Make sure if you have a question to leave us a fan mail and we will answer those on the next episode!


Support the show

Follow us on IG

Find Our Free PDFs!

The reading app we LOVE!

The phone we have with NO social media and NO internet browser!

SPEAKER_01:

If I could give anyone any advice on if you're trying to juggle work in homeschool, like what you should do is give your kids things to do. Like, what should they be doing during this time? Because if you leave them just to do whatever, that's when the chaos starts. We're two full-time working parents who just made a crazy decision.

SPEAKER_00:

After four years in public school, we're homeschooling our three kids and documenting the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01:

Never in a million years did I think we would be homeschool people.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to, well, this wasn't the plan podcast.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm slate, and school's in the kitchen now. I'm Scotty. We says Scott to an I say so. I'm Sailor, and this whole podcast was my idea.

SPEAKER_00:

This podcast is our real-time journey, unexpectedly juggling homeschool, jobs, parenting, and everything in between.

SPEAKER_01:

Follow along each week as we document how it's going and share the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because we know some days are going to be ugly, and we're not holding back.

SPEAKER_00:

We're learning to expect the unexpected. So let's get into it.

unknown:

Let's go!

SPEAKER_01:

Good morning. We are currently here surviving the post-Christmas slump, both with homeschool and just getting back into work.

SPEAKER_00:

But we are awake.

SPEAKER_01:

It's Sunday morning, and we did reduce the number of podcast episodes we're doing, so we haven't done one in two weeks, and our accounting business is really ramping up, so we've got a lot a lot of work there. And so we are having just as much trouble, or at least I am, getting back into the swing of things as the kids are with homeschooling.

SPEAKER_00:

Not me, I feel perfect.

SPEAKER_01:

Always, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Always.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, after Christmas, of course, the kids were very complainy about starting school. And then it's just always like, oh man, we gotta go to school again. And we keep being like, we could send you back to school for a little bit just to uh so that you get a good reminder of what it was like having that many hours of school versus now.

SPEAKER_00:

I know there's there's a war going on between the kids complaining about homeschool and us telling them that they'll have to go back to public school if they keep complaining. And then my oldest telling us that, hey, just because we hate something way more doesn't mean we can't hate something else a little bit less.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, she's like, you don't need to take offense to it. I mean, we love homeschooling, but we're not gonna love learning. And I'm like, well, you should love learning. She's like, well, we do love to learn some things, but some things we don't. So I totally get that. I mean, you want kids to love learning, but not all of it is fun.

SPEAKER_00:

And I know that some people do the child-directed learning. They probably have more luck with the kids liking just about everything, but I just don't I don't think that most of our kids, maybe one of them, but most of our kids would select to learn things that have to be learned, like multiplication that has to be learned. That's not optional. Maybe when they're older they can be a little bit more selective.

SPEAKER_01:

But no, these are the things that they have to learn. They have to get a good foundation in all of these areas, and it is frustrating to learn it, and that's just part of life. And having frustration tolerance with kids, I think sometimes in the world we live in, where we want to make everything just like perfect for our children, they don't build that. So I'm just like, guys, you gotta go to school, you have to learn, you have to learn these things. So let's just do it as quickly as we can. And most days it's like two hours or less. It's really not that big of a deal.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it seems so easy to us, but you know, I know everything's harder for kids.

SPEAKER_01:

So today we're gonna talk about something that we've been doing or we did at the beginning of the new year, and this was our second year to do it, but we changed things up a little bit. We did some goal setting with our kids, and we'll explain like how we did it and all of that and the rules around it, but it's been really good for us as work is getting into like our super busy time of year, the kids have a time in the afternoon where they're basically working on goals, it's goals time. So that's been helping out. I think if I could give anyone any advice on if you're trying to juggle work in homeschool, like what you should do is give your kids things to do. Like, what should they be doing during this time? Because if you leave them just to do whatever, that's when the chaos starts.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and during the fall in the afternoon, it was kind of like the longest PE ever. That's the way we thought of it as homeschoolers is, you know, we were like, okay, we're done with school, you've had lunch, now go play outside. And that was great. The weather's really nice. It was, you know, we were it was our first semester doing homeschool, so it made sense at the time. But now, I mean, they really can't be outside for three or four hours. It's the weather isn't really appropriate for that. They can get outside for an hour during the warmest part of the day if they're bundled up most of the days, so that's fine, but they need something else to keep them occupied.

SPEAKER_01:

And not only is the weather changing, so we have to change some things up, but our work schedule is changing. So we're gonna be super busy from January until the end of April. So we have to get a little more creative. Whereas before, like we were just not working as much in the afternoon. We didn't have to, so you know, we might work a little bit in the afternoon and let them read and finish up on their chores and stuff, and then we would all go do something like go to the park or get out of the house or something like that. And that's just not gonna cut it because we need more work hours. And that was one of the questions I got a lot this week on how you make like a 40-hour schedule work. And we don't have to work an exact number of hours, but just to break it down for you, we work four hours every morning, seven days a week, so that's 28 hours, and then we generally average another two hours every single day in the afternoon, or at least we average two hours. So that would be 42 hours total. There was a few people commenting on one of my last posts this week, and they said that they did early mornings and late nights. So just that just to give you an example of how you can make this work, and definitely with our kids doing the goals in the afternoon, it is helping with us getting like a few more hours.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that helps a lot. And for us, there was a time when I could have done the early mornings and the late nights, but it's harder for me now. As I get older, it's a lot harder for me to stay up late and work. I guess if I had to, I could probably do it, but I mean, I'm slower. It takes me twice as long to do everything and then have to double check everything the next morning. So I prefer not to. So that's why the you know, seven days a week, early mornings is great, and then a little extra in the afternoons as we need it. And I think that will definitely increase as we get closer to March 15th and April 15th deadlines. You know, I'll probably be it'll probably go up to an average of four hours per afternoon or working all day on the weekend or something like that.

SPEAKER_01:

That's exactly what I told that girl is like, you know, more power to you. I love that schedule, but we don't work late nights anymore. We used to and the kids were young, but we just don't. And I think part of that obviously is that we're up so early. I was up before six this morning. You just don't have enough brain power doing that, homeschooling the kids, getting them to their activities, getting them in bed, and then have anything left over. So if you can do that in your night out, go for it. But for us, it's just just not really possible.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

So another thing that we will be planning to do in this kind of super busy time is spring breaks coming up. That is one of the biggest weeks for us in March leading up to the March 15th deadline. So there's going to be a lot of spring break camps, and we're gonna take advantage of those. We're just already planning to sign the kids up for a few of those, get them out of the house all week. So that week we'll be able to put in a lot more hours than normal. And we're not even gonna worry about homeschooling during that time.

SPEAKER_00:

No, we're getting plenty of homeschool in. We're gonna finish the books, we'll be fine. It's not gonna be a problem at all.

SPEAKER_01:

No, and we have talked about this, and I think on the last episode too, we may just stick to homeschooling year round. That really wasn't like our plan when we started this. But since we do travel a lot and there's times where we do take off like Christmas, and then this will be a break, we might just keep it going. That way, when we go somewhere or we're traveling, we don't have to take the stuff with us. Plus, the kids just seem to remember things better that way when they don't have like a super long break. But we'll see, we'll keep you posted on that. Another thing to get a little bit extra work, we started doing this week was on Thursdays after lunch. I am going to a coffee shop to get like a few more hours in, and Carson is with the kids. And then on some other days of the week, he has like late meetings in the afternoon, so I'm with the kids. So that's also another good way to get like a chunk of work in that we normally don't get by just like dividing and conquering.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, we had to set that up. I mean, I have some clients that are not early people, and I totally understand that it is a service business, so we have a couple of days a week where we have to have some afternoon slots open, or as some people call it, morning.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. So those are just like some ways that we're planning for this. Also, if you didn't notice, we are not podcasting every single week anymore. So just every other week. And then we have another CPA podcast that we've put on hold for now. If there's any like crazy tax updates, we'll push one out, but we're not doing a weekly or a bi-weekly podcast.

SPEAKER_00:

There's a few reasons. I mean, one is because it's tax season and we need to free up a little bit more time, but also I think we thought there would be more drama and more to share on a week-by-week basis, and it's just been a lot more smooth than we thought it would be.

SPEAKER_01:

Right, exactly. I feel like a bi-weekly update is probably more appropriate because we were coming on here being like, well, went pretty great.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, which is a good thing.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. All right, so let's get into what today's episode is actually all about, which is the goal setting with the kids. And I am one of those people who set goals and I work really hard at them. And I think that's one of like my superpowers. I think that I wouldn't be where I am today without being able to set goals. So that's something that was really important to me to teach the kids. And we did last year have them set New Year's resolutions. And they started out with, you know, very common, like, oh, I want to do this and this and this. It was all of these like super huge things. And that was when I was like, okay, let's take this opportunity to teach them about how it really works setting a goal that you actually want to achieve. So we sat down with them and I was like, nope, that's not gonna work. That's not gonna work. You need to be more specific, you need to make sure that you don't have too many goals. And we really worked on them getting like, I think it was like one goal last year. It wasn't they didn't have a bunch, they just picked one thing. And I think for one of them, they accomplished it like super fast, and so they didn't work on anything the rest of the year. But our youngest, she had a goal to learn to ride her bicycle, and that was because she got really angry anytime that she had to be in the bike trailer because we do a lot of biking on our vacations. So I was like, okay, if you want to ride your bike when we go to Switzerland, then you need to one learn how to do it, and then two, practice a lot. So we kind of broke down the steps for her and she did it. And fast forward to our family kit vacation, she rode her bike, but she also rode 15 miles.

SPEAKER_00:

So she did wonderful miles for a six-year-old.

SPEAKER_01:

And she had just turned six.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, like brand new six-year-old, too. Yeah, and she crushed it.

SPEAKER_01:

That girl is uh, she's fiery. So if she wants to do something, she is gonna freaking do it. So props to her. She pedaled so fast, it was the funniest thing I've ever seen. But she was also still mad because she was not as fast as her brother and her sister.

SPEAKER_00:

Her bike's smaller, so just to just to go as fast, she has to pedal like one and a half times to go as far as the bigger bikes go with one pedal. So she's just like pumping those little legs so hard to try to keep up.

SPEAKER_01:

And that just went so extremely well. When it rolled around to New Year's again this year, I was like, okay, we need to be even more intentional with this. Like, we need to bring them into like our family goals and talk about like our intentions for the year, even if they're not goals, how we want to spend our time, like bring them into that conversation because I feel like being super intentional with your time and what you can truly accomplish in a year is hard. And a lot of adults struggle with that. So this year we did something different, we're kind of testing it out, but we sat down again with our goals, and we do have a goal tracking sheet for kids and kind of walks them through like how to set a goal and set like your many steps to get to the goal. So if you want that with your kids, there is a link in the show notes, but also it's about to be February and it's never too late to set goals. Just want to say that. Like, just because you don't start right in January, you know, it doesn't really matter.

SPEAKER_00:

And it could be even better because by February 1st, like 80% of people have quit. So if it requires you to be at a gymnastics place or at a gym or whatever, I mean, it will have cleared up a lot.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. So if you want to start now, definitely grab that and do it with your kids. It does not have to be at the new year. So we all sat down, we got out those sheets, we talked about the goals. I did tell them that we wanted them to have like a school-specific goal or not really for school, but something like learning-based and something that was more like physical, which is what they usually pick, is something like that. Like Sailor last year wanted to be able to get her backhand spring, but she also wanted to do her like back walk over backhand spring. So it was specific, like physical goal. And Scottie's was riding a bike. So they already had those, and then we added that. So Slate, he has been wanting to get his multiplication tables down, which is a goal because it's not something that he needs necessarily right now, or that's something that's taught in second grade, but he's been working on it. So that was kind of a small goal for him. And then so they picked those, and then we've talked about this a lot, we just haven't started implementing yet, and that's the Spanish. So if you're gonna want to learn another language, which they all do, they're all super pumped to learn Spanish, which I think is awesome, but they're gonna need to do it every day. We it's not something that you can just do every once in a while and it ever come and it ever happen for you at all.

SPEAKER_00:

I think that there's so much research about what it does to your brain when you learn another language, how good it is for you, and also just the convenience of it. I mean, we picked Spanish because we live in Texas, and that's a good reason. But also, if you the I mean, the entire Western world, if you speak English and Spanish, that's almost everywhere. You could go almost anywhere. It's all of South America other than Brazil, it's Mexico, it's Spain, Central America, so oh, and even a lot of the Caribbean islands. So you're covered. So yeah, we're excited about that.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm excited that they're excited. They're just so pumped. And we did actually get started on that and they've been loving it. Another thing that we kind of intertwined with the goals this year was the them working on the sport that they want to do. So it's been like this: they sign up for a sport and then we're like, hey, why don't you go outside and play catch with me? And they're like, no, don't really feel like it. So we as parents with three kids who want to do all of the sports, we're like, no, like if you're not willing to go outside and shoot or play catch or practice a little bit in those times that you have it, then you probably don't need to be playing the sport if you're not willing to put in the extra effort. So that was one of the things in our goals this year. So they're all playing basketball, all three. We're coaching all three teams, mostly Carson. So it's a lot of work for us right now. So if they're not willing to put in the work, then we we don't want to let them do it. But they all do, they all want to get better at shooting. So they are putting on their goals to shoot baskets every single day.

SPEAKER_00:

Just 20 a day, but every single day.

SPEAKER_01:

And we just don't have those kids that are just like super motivated with sport, and that's fine. But if you want to sign up for the sport, you need to commit to those two or three months, whatever the sport is, to trying to get better, you know, trying to work at it. And that's just something we weren't seeing. And I think part of that is just that not that they're not motivated kids, they just they like so many things and they don't want to do the same thing every single day. You know, they might want to skateboard one day, the next day they might want to go to the park and ride their bike. Like there's so many things they want to do in the afternoon that when we would ask them to practice, they were just like, no, actually, I was thinking of doing this instead.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and I do blame technology some. I mean, not that we let our kids do a ton, but there's just technology and the way that people have more money to travel and do fun things, like which are great for the world. But when we were kids, there just wasn't that much to do. There wasn't that much on TV. And if you're a middle class, you went on a vacation maybe once every other year. And so the rest of the time you had to go outside and and play basketball or play football, whatever you like to do. I mean, or if you skateboarded, you would do that a lot. So you would get really good at something, and I just kids don't do that anymore because they have so many fun things to choose from. So you kind of have to push them a little bit.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think it's changed a lot since we were kids. You know, sports were the highlight of our week or a day or whatever. And yeah, you're right. It's just not the highlight for our kids. And I do think that they can find something they truly love. It just took a lot longer. Like Sailor truly loves gymnastics and tumbling, and she will go out there and she will do it for hours. So, not that there isn't stuff like that, but I think it's just more difficult now.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. But there's also a lot more free information out there or paid information, like we'll talk about the basketball course in a minute that we're doing. But and I think that helps too, because I did spend so much time in my driveway playing basketball, but it was also very not intentional. You know, I didn't nobody knew how to train properly or how to progress. It was just me out there throwing the ball at the goal all the time. And that can improve you a little bit. But let that make you feel better. The fact that your kids aren't constantly shooting or playing basketball or whatever sport they're doing, if they do something. With intention, they'll actually improve just as fast or faster.

SPEAKER_01:

And that was the whole lesson here is that you know, kids they go out there and scrimmage basketball. And so it was like, oh, like I'm just not that great at shooting, like I didn't, which they were shooting a lot. And I'm like, because you need to work on your shooting. And if you do that, then you will get better. But if you just complain about it and want to be better, that's not gonna happen. And I think that's such a good life lesson. Like you can't just wish for things to happen.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

And kids really don't understand that. But to be able to make like 50% of your shots in a game, you have to get to where you're making 90% of those shots when you're practicing by yourself. Because it's way harder when you're in a basketball game.

SPEAKER_01:

For sure. So for the basketball, we are doing a short shooting course with the kids. And in the shooting course, you have these drills you have to do every day. So that part of it is gonna change a little bit mid-year. They will be switching to different sports. So, like Sailor's gonna be in volleyball. So whenever she's done with basketball, she wants to change her like sports goal to working on her overhand serve in volleyball. And that's completely fine. Like I don't care if they work on basketball all year long. I just want them to be working at something and have some intention with it.

SPEAKER_00:

And then I had a little bit of a different idea with that. I do want them to switch to whatever sport they're working on at the time, but all that improvement, I don't want it to go away. And, you know, all the research shows that when you're doing something physical, whether it's a sport or weightlifting or whatever, about a third of what it took to get those skills is plenty to keep those skills. So if you're working on basketball six days a week, you can cut it down to two days a week and keep all the skills that you've gained. But if you just stop and then come back six months later, I mean, you're gonna be real rusty. You're gonna lose a lot of what you learned. So we're also gonna be intentional about that.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Now, when we were writing all this down, our kids had way more things that they wanted to do, and we had to just be like, okay, that's not possible. So we need to rank these in order of importance. So we did that, and these are the ones that we came up with. I think the older kids have four things they do, and then Scotty has three. I think that's right. So we did that, and then we estimated how much time each day it would take. So if you have to shoot 20 baskets and do your drills every day, how much time will that take? Plus, Sailor's working on her standing back tuck. Okay, if you have to do two or 10 reps every day, then how much time does that take? So we did that and we estimated it would take them between 30, probably 45 minutes a day for them to work on all of these things. So Sailor is working on her typing and her Spanish, that's kind of something that we're including in the schoolwork. So, how much time is it gonna take them? And then they were like, Okay, yeah, I definitely want to do that every day. So then we took it a little bit further this year, and we said every single month that you stick to doing those goals, and I don't know if we mentioned this, but it's only five days a week that they're having to do them.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

They don't have to do it seven days a week, but every month that you stick to it, we will pay you$100 at the end of the month if you turn in your checklist and you have done it five days a week. Now that does give them a little bit of room to miss a day for some reason and then make make it up on the weekend. Like if they didn't shoot their 20 shots for some reason on Thursday, then they could do it on Friday or Saturday.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's really not that bad because out of 28 days, they really only have to have 20 days of checking off the list that they did all their things.

SPEAKER_01:

And I do think with kids, you do have to give them some motivation. So I think that yes, these are goals that they want to do, but motivation doesn't always show up. We know that as an adult. So I think the$100 that they're earning, which I feel like is so worth it if they were to stick to them all year long. I think that that helps push them for sure, because they are getting these done on their own for the most part. They're like, oh, gotta do my, gotta do my goals. And then for us, it's a good time for us to work because they're working on their goals. Like one of Slates is to do his piano lessons, which he has been doing, but it's been so intermittent, like he's not making as much progress as he should. And it's just one of those things that just like Spanish, you need to do it like 10 minutes a day. And so I think this is gonna be it's gonna be awesome to see how much progress they make in these areas this year.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm really excited about the piano because I stopped whenever I was a kid. I had to pick between piano and football, and I really regret that I chose football because I am not a football player. I am a musician, and it would be great if I was really good at piano. But he's getting good already, and the lessons are getting hard enough now that if you don't stick with it every day or at least five days a week, you will backslide a little bit. For a while it was fine, one or two days a week sporadically was still enough to make progress, but now he's working both hands and he's playing, you know, multiple notes with both hands at the same time. And I didn't realize it had gotten that hard until I went in there and watched him do a lesson, and I was like, oh yeah, he needs to be doing it, you know, four or five days a week so that he can keep improving because it's getting pretty hard.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, and this is the beauty of homeschooling, right? We did talk about last episode about somebody left us some fan mail saying like they were overwhelmed with the number of things that they could do. And I feel that as well, but that also is the beauty. Like our kids are getting to learn Spanish, Slate is getting really good at piano, Sailor's Gymnastics has like improved so much this year, which is what she wanted, because we can take her to gymnastics twice a week, because she can go back in in the backyard and practice. Scotty's reading has gotten so much, like there's just so many things that you can do because you have more time, but you do have to be intentional. So this is a way not only for them to like learn how to set goals and work towards a goal every single day, but for us to do it because we've been talking about doing Spanish the whole first semester and we never did it.

SPEAKER_00:

But now we are, and that's the thing is if people that either haven't homeschooled yet or or something, if they heard all of the things our kids are doing and they didn't listen to our schedule, they would think, oh, you're overburdening these kids, they're overloaded and all this. But keep in mind, all of this is done. We're talking about all of their real academic schoolwork, their core subjects, their Spanish, the piano lessons, the basketball drills and shooting and the gymnastics is they start at 10 a.m. with school and they're done with all of those goals and everything before most kids are out of school. So they're definitely not overburdened.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, and that's a the reason why we were sitting down talking about these goals. I was like, we need to estimate how much time this is gonna take you. 45 minutes, guys. Like kids spend 45 plus minutes like playing video games or on a screen or something like that, like to work 45 minutes on tiny goals. Like, I'm just excited for them to see how much progress they can make, just committing that 10 minutes to Spanish a day or 15 minutes to piano a day, or whatever. Like, you can make so much progress if you are willing to put in a little bit of work every single day.

SPEAKER_00:

And you have to be intentional the other way too. You have to stop them. The Spanish app is actually fun, it's kind of almost like a game for them. And they want to keep going and have to say, no, I have to stop them for two reasons. First, all the studies show that you know, 10 to 15 minutes and the lessons are broken up so that they take about that long. That's how you're gonna learn. If you try to double up or triple up on lessons, you're not going to retain it. And then the other reason is I don't want them to get burned out. It's fun now, but if they spend an hour doing it every day, they're just gonna get sick of it and they're not gonna learn anything. So I have to tell them, like, oh no, do that one lesson and then move on to something else.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. And we did talk about the rest of our year, how it was gonna look and the things that we we wanted to do and the trips we wanted to take. And this year we just talked to our kids about that too, which I think is just a good habit to get into. We have we want to go somewhere that they speak Spanish so that that they can learn more Spanish and practice. And so we talked about that. We want to go skiing, we talked about that. We have a birthday trip coming up for Slate because he's turning nine. I can't believe he's turning nine. So we talked about the entire year, not just the goals, but the intention and like where we want to spend our time. And I think that that was is gonna be like so many lessons whenever it comes down to it. And hopefully this creates three little kids that can set goals. If they want to do something, they can create a plan to make it happen. And the whole thing with the hundred dollars, I just did want to mention that I don't know if we've ever talked about it, but we are having our kids save up for their car. So they each have a car fund, and the hundred dollars is a way for them to be able to put more money into their car fund. So they do have to save 50% of that. So if they were to do all 12 months, you know, they would have$1,200. They're gonna have to put$600 into their car fund. Now they can put more, it's up to them, but we've been telling them, and this is very accounted of us, but we definitely want them to be good with money. But we've been telling them that like every time you earn money, you have to save some of it. Like, you can't just spend everything because that's where people get into problems. They don't have an emergency fund, they don't save for things, they don't plan for things that definitely will happen. So I thought it was funny that Slate got some money. I don't remember what it was for, and I was putting it into his card, and he was like, Well, I'm gonna put$20 into my emergency fund. Emergency fund. And he's eight. I'm like, so we must be doing something right, right? Yeah. So I think that probably wraps it up. We're about 30 minutes in now. I do know people are gonna ask, so what is the Spanish app that we're using for the kids?

SPEAKER_00:

It's Study Cat, I think. Something cat. I'm pretty sure it's Study Cat.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And Carson researched it, and this was supposed to be the best one for kids. And the kids seem to really like using it, and they keep practicing their Spanish all day. Whatever lesson they learn, they keep doing it. So I think that's a really good one. And then for piano, we're using simply piano, and we've been using that for a while, and I think it's just great because it's simple and the kids can do it on their own, and it's music that they actually like, it's engaging, and they asked to do the lessons. So I would say and you don't have to take them anywhere. That's the best part, right? You don't have to go get piano lessons, which would be impossible with three kids to take them to all of these things.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. And and we're using the app strategically. Like we stopped using the computer and the apps for the core curriculum because we want them writing, we want them practicing that, and I feel like they retain it better. But I don't care about them learning to write in Spanish. I know if they were taking Spanish in school, they would be writing and reading in Spanish and learning to conjugate. I don't care about any of that. That's fine if they learn that too, but I want them to be able to speak Spanish.

SPEAKER_01:

So we're working on conversational Spanish. We're not starting out with writing it.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's what the app does. It's one of those that it listens to using the microphone on the iPad. So it it speaks, you listen, you you're supposed to say it back, and so that it can hear that you're saying it properly. And I mean, I think it's really cool. It's a bunch of games where they pop up a picture of a cat and you have to say gatho. So it's it's working really well.

SPEAKER_01:

And I know we've said before, you know, we're not super big fans of the iPad, but it we do love it for things like this. It's been super great for the reading.com app, the Assembly Piano for all of these things, but it's only like 15 minutes for each thing. So they might be spending a total of 30 minutes on an iPad if they're doing two things on the iPad. So definitely not a big chunk of their day.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. We like it.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think that's all that we have. We will be releasing episodes every two weeks from now on. Make sure if you have a question to leave us a fan mail and we will answer those on the next episode.

SPEAKER_00:

So until next time, thank you so much for listening to Wells. This wasn't the Planned Podcast.

SPEAKER_02:

We will do really hard on this podcast. Make sure you scream so you don't make the single contest episode. Thank you.