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A podcast for homeschool families brought to you by Sequoia Grove Charter Alliance. Encouragement, tips & tricks, interviews with HSTs and curriculum help.
Rebecca: Welcome, listeners, to the Sequoia Breeze podcast, a breath of fresh air for your home school. I am your host, Rebecca LaSavio. Thank you for joining us today. I hope that you will subscribe and review this podcast wherever you listen. Today I am joined by Nicole, the math lady. And Nicole, I just realized I don't even know your last name. I assume it's not the math lady.
Nicole: It's true. People wonder, is it really the math lady? It's actually Nicole Thomas, but nobody knows that.
Rebecca: And she is calling in all the way from Florida. And I'm super excited to talk with you today. Nicole, I got to meet you a couple of years ago at a conference and got a feel for what a fun gal you are. So thank you so much for joining us today.
Nicole: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
Rebecca: So, Nicole, you agreed to come and talk to us today about finding your math match, and I'm super intrigued by that title. I would love to hear you teach math and you have a real specific niche as well in how you teach math, and yet you give a talk at conferences about how to find the right curriculum and right method for families.
Nicole: That's correct. Yeah. Well, sometimes people, when they meet me, right. So I'm going to call the math lady and I teach a particular curriculum and they think I'm going to say, you should really just use the curriculum that I use. And the first thing you're going to find out is, that's not what I'm going to tell you. Really. It's about finding the right match. And you got to bring two things together. Right. You've got to bring together what are you looking for in the curriculum that you're using for those people who are using curriculum or what you're looking for in the resources that you're using. And you also have to look at your student. Right. To me, that is the glory of homeschooling. We get to tailor what we're doing to the little person sitting in front of us. Right. We don't have to teach the 30 people at one time. So I'm going to look at it's funny. I also home school my son, who's 13. I just finished home schooling him right before this call. It's probably the most challenging part of my day and the best part of my day because I really think about like, okay, what can I create? What can I do or what can I find to make this point? Go home with him. And it's funny because a lot of the things that I will come up with are fine, and I'm working with him will later become things that I offer on the website because it really like, work for my son. I think it might work for some other people, too.
Rebecca: That's awesome because you know that when somebody is offering a service that they're also using practically themselves, that they are going to be way more in tune with what works and what doesn't.
Nicole: It was a game changer. When I first started nicole the math lady, I actually was not a homeschooler. So I learned about the home school community and what people were looking for. And then as many people who came to homeschooling during COVID I was one of those and had the opportunity to say, you know what, I think this is going to be the right decision vision for my family. And I got to tell you, it's a whole other world to see what he needs. And it's funny, people will ask me, well, does he use nicole as a math lady? And I'll be like, yeah, he does. The way people will point to my videos and tell their students to go watch nicole, I'll do the same. I'll be like, his name is justin. I'll be like, justin, go watch a video and then we can talk about it.
Rebecca: He has to live with the corny brain breaks, right?
Nicole: Yeah. His, as many other students is their favorite part of the site.
Rebecca: So I think a lot of our sequoia grow families might be excited to hear you say that, because we have a lot of families that are a part of our schools now that are in the same boat and they're still very much trying to figure out what they're doing, what works for them, what works for their kids, how to make those decisions. So when you are talking to a family about how to find your math match, where do you start?
Nicole: Yeah, that's great. It's a great question. And it's funny because again, I literally found myself in the middle of this in the last maybe few weeks. Right. So I teach again a particular curriculum and where I usually start is basically in math. There's two types of math that people will offer as far as homeschooling curriculums. Now, first of all, I want to tell people out there I get your pain because when you start looking for curriculum, there's over 50 math curriculums that are directed at home school families. So I see it all the time in the facebook groups, like, how do I pick a curriculum or like, which one do you recommend? There's a lot coming at us, right? So the first thing, the place that I start, as I say, okay, basically there's two types. There's a spiral method and there's a mastery method. So let's talk about those two methods and break them down. I'll actually start with the mastery one first. Mastery is probably what most of us as adults had when we were in school. If we attended public school, you took a particular topic in math and you learnt that topic pretty fully and then you had a test on that topic. Then you moved on to a brand new topic in math. Right. And the cool part about that is you have a chance to as the title says, master a particular concept, you get tested on it and you move on. The challenge with a curriculum of that nature is that as many of us found when it was time for like a final or final test, at the end, we were like, did we even learn that topic? Like we forgot, we forgot what we learned. So if we're not having a chance to constantly reuse a skill, you might forget it, right? So that's mastery. If you go over to the spiral side, spiral is a little bit different, where they take little slivers, you know. So for example, let's say we're using, we're learning fractions. We're going to learn a little bit about a fraction, maybe like what a numerator and denominator is. And then on the next day you would think, okay, I'm going to learn more about that fraction. They might actually switch to talking about decimals, which is just another form of a fraction, right? Which by the way, I did not really realize until I started teaching that those were all the same thing because I forgot it when I was in school. So it might teach a little sliver of something and it'll do a sliver of a decimal. And maybe on the second day it'll have practice problems about fractions and decimal. So I'm still learning, I'm still using something about fraction, but now I've added decimal. So maybe on like my third or fourth day, I go back and I add another sliver about a fraction. Maybe I learn how to break it up and show what a fraction is visually. And then maybe the fifth day I talk about decimals again. So you're constantly spiraling back and building upon a topic. Okay, so what's the benefit of something like this is that you don't have a chance to forget because you're constantly using that skill. And what's the cause of something like this? Again, for many of us, it's different than how we learned. And when you first start doing it, you're like, why do they teach it like this? Why don't they just like, handle a topic? So both of these are great ways to learn. People say, is there one better than the other? I don't think so. I really think that both are possible ways to do it. But I do think again, I like in math match to like speed dating. Speed dating is all about finding something that you've got chemistry with and like you can continue as a conversation, right? So we're going to see like, hey, does my student like this kind of learning or are they frustrated by this kind of learning? Right? So we want to be able to try a little of this and try a little of that. See what works for your kid.
Rebecca: I've found that sometimes in the mastery approach, kids can get really if they're feeling stuck or they can get tired of a specific topic. And sometimes a break can really help to not keep them feeling sort of beat down by a subject that they've been wrestling with for a while. But sometimes in the spiral approach, if they get the topic, it keeps coming up, but I get this, I don't need to keep doing this. So they can each have their own pros and cons and own ways of needing to break things up or they might need. With spiral, I've had to go through and cross things out like, yeah, you already know this. You don't have to keep doing these for a little while. We'll take a break from that. But mastery is like, well, let's move on to the next chapter and try a different topic for a little while. We'll come back to this when your brain is rested from this particular topic, right?
Nicole: And that isn't that to me, like, that's like the awesomeness of home schooling. Again, you can customize, you see what's working for this particular student and you can say, I know we've covered this, I know you know this. If you decide that there's something that works better for your student, do it. I'm all about as a parent, as a teacher, you get to decide, right?
Rebecca: And you get to decide for each student too. You don't even have to make the same decision. All four kids are in different math curriculum.
Nicole: Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say, is that and again, it's like the glory and the pain of home schooling, right? Because some would be like, oh, it'd be great for everybody to be on lesson three today and everybody's in different books. But again, to me, you look to see what's going to be a match for the kid. Some kids are going to need a curriculum. So after we talk about spiral, right, spiral versus mastery, the next thing I'll talk about is the tactileness of the curriculum. Meaning some students are going to really want something that's hands on and visual and they need to touch it and see it and have a lot of manipulatives. And then others are more like they want to sit down at their desk and work through their textbook more and then that's a whole spectrum, right? So you're going to find that everything I'm talking about is a spectrum. So let's even go back to the spiral and mastery for a minute. I personally don't believe that it's just one or the other. Like there is a spectrum and you don't have to just say I want this or that. You could say, you know what, for example, the curriculum that I use is technically, on paper, it's a spiral learning curriculum. But what I started doing, this is how I told you I work with my son and then things end up on the website for our family is I started noticing that he needed a few extra problems in the practice session. They were only giving me two of the topic that we did on Tuesday, and I felt like I needed, like, four of them. I had our team create a whole bank of problems where if I just need two more problems to kind of do a little mastery on my topic, I can go to a special part of the site, grab two or three more problems, and do a little bit of spiral and mastery at the same time. So there's so many options out there where you don't have to be stuck in this corner or that I just invite the families to say what's going to work for my kid at this moment. I need a little bit extra of this. Great. Go find it.
Rebecca: How do you recognize in your child that they might need a more manipulative heavy or more visual math curriculum?
Nicole: Yeah. So, again, I'm definitely all for trying things out. This is where vendors don't like me as much because I tell everybody that they should demand free trials from people, and I believe that could be true. And I think you try it, right? You try teaching with something. You don't need to go buy curriculum yet. You can just pull things up on the Internet or YouTube. So, for example, the spectrum, again, is something that's really highly manipulative based to something that's really more textbook based. And then there is the spectrum in between, right? You might say, okay, it seems that my kid does really well sitting down with a textbook, going through the lesson, going through the problems. But I've noticed, like, I'll give it to you today. We did fractions in my house today, and we were talking about simplifying. So you know what we had? We had the little fraction pieces, right? They're here, and we're laying the fraction pieces on top of each other to find how we can simplify and find equivalent fractions. Right. So was that part of in the book? Well, I have these manipulatives sitting here on the side, and I'll recommend to my families, hey, you might want to go on. I'm also kind of cheap, Rebecca. I don't like spending a lot of money. I'll be like, look, this is not Amazon for, like, $2, go or Dollar Store for $2. Go get some cheap manipulative. And now you can add to your textbook and see how the kid responds. For example, I will notice sometimes my son responds to something that's manipulative, right? Like, we'll actually go get the crayons out and count crayons. Or sometimes he just needs something that's visual, like a visual sign that's like a little reminder. Like, when we're talking about average, remember, average is a two step problem. So we created a little visual. To me, again, the glory of homeschooling and why we do this is that we get to bend and flex and see and adapt and say, okay, did that work? That didn't work. I got to find another tool in my toolkit. So I'm always trying to make sure that you have a full toolkit. Do you have your manipulative? Do you have your signs? Do you have your visual things that will help, visual incentives or whatever it is? Do you have incentives? Do you have your toolkit? Fully furnished so your student is motivated and excited to learn.
Rebecca: So we've decided on mastery or spiral, whether or not we need backup of manipulatives or just lots of them upfront. What do we look at next?
Nicole: So here's one that it kind of always cracks me up when I talk about this one because I find that after I demystify a little bit, people are at least a little bit more open to having the conversation about it. So common Core. Let's talk about Common Core. I was called the dirty Water because.
Rebecca: I know sometimes people are like, I don't want Common Core or I do want Common Core. And I sometimes wonder if they even really know what they're asking.
Nicole: That's exactly what I have found. Right. So here's what I always tell people. I do not have a bone or a dog in that fight, right? Like of the Common Core fight. So I'm just going to tell people like, what it is. And then you can see, does my student need the kind of skills that the Common Core curriculum was designed to do? And then if so, how do I find something that's a good fit for my needs? Right? So Common Core, the idea of Common Core was that if you live in New York and you have a third grader in New York and you picked up and you moved to Texas and you had a third grader in Texas, that they would be expected to learn the same things in that third grade year, right? And if you move around this country, you will find that that is not the case. There's one thing going on in California, one thing going on in Florida, another thing going on in New York, and everybody's doing their own thing. So the idea of Common Core was to get some common standards that we said, hey, if you're in this particular grade, here's the things we think you should have learned by this grade. That was the idea of it. Good idea, right? Good idea in concept, good idea on paper. Now, what happened, unfortunately, as some of processes with big organizations, is that I think the people who were closest to the students didn't have as much input as they should have. Meaning the teachers, right? Teachers are the ones who are in there every day. They know what their students need. And there wasn't, again, my understanding, there just wasn't as enough teacher input in how this thing was put together. So the second idea behind Common Core was that when we looked globally at how the US. Was doing in the area of math, we weren't doing that great. And right now, as we know, as we saw with COVID we live in a global world, right? Our students are going to be competing against people globally for positions. So we wanted to up the ante in the area of math and science. Okay, so we're not doing so great. They don't have common standards. Let's put some common standards in. Great idea, right? The challenge was that sometimes the actual teaching was more complicated than, like, what you and I learnt when we were in school. The idea was to try it newly, but sometimes if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So I'll give you an example in a moment. But let me add just one other thing back to the global piece. The idea was that many of our students were learning math in a vacuum and they were not able to apply it to the real world, right? You probably get your kids not even asked the same thing, how am I going to use this in real life? How am I going to use it for real? That so the idea was to give more real world examples of how math could be applied in real life, which is a good thing, right? Okay, so good premise. The execution probably had some challenges, so teachers weren't super involved. So when teachers looked at some of the strategies, they were like, that is not how I would teach that to a student. Like, that is overly complex. It is very difficult. So teachers were not bought in, unfortunately. And if the people who are rolling it out are not bought in, it's not going to work very well. Tell my families, if you have a student who would benefit from that real world application of math, looking for problems of how they could implement it in the real world, they could benefit from a common core curriculum. Now, there's also a spectrum of common core curriculums. Like, not all common core curriculums are made the same. So it could be that some just have problems that they just have more like the curriculum that I work with, they're not really a common core curriculum. They've got, like, a pure home school curriculum, which is absolutely not common Core. And then they have one that I call common core friendly. The idea was that they just would put in more practice problems that were more real world or they were more word problems. Like, I'll get a lot of families going. My kid needs more practice with word problems. Well, that's more real world stuff. So they had more of that. I think that's a great thing, right? For some students. Some students, having a whole, you know, half a page of word problems would just about kill them. So you got to look at your student. Is your student going to be one who's more computation based and they can apply some of some of the math to real world, or you really need somebody who's understanding it being applied to the real world all the time. So I just tell families, don't discount it so quickly. Look and see, could my child benefit from this? And it's also possible that you don't need to buy a whole curriculum that's common core. You could also supplement with more word problems, supplement with more real world activities. For example, we did for pie day at nicole the math lady, everybody's like, let's make a pie. And I'm like, okay, pies are great. Let's make a pie. But let's actually teach what pie means and how you can use it in the real world on pie day. That, to me, makes pie day mean a whole lot more.
Rebecca: And pie day is march 14 because pie is 3.14.
Nicole: I like it, rebecca. I like it.
Rebecca: In case people aren't so we're talking pi pi, making apie.
Nicole: That's right.
Rebecca: Celebrate today.
Nicole: That's right. And we had all sorts of pies pizza pies, apple pies, you name it. Let them arrange.
Rebecca: And I've also noticed with some curriculum, I think sometimes parents might, if they really feel anti common core, I might discount a curriculum too quickly that maybe says common core line, but it wasn't built to be common core. They just found a way, as you said, to adjust a few things so that somebody who is looking for common core can take that. Or if a family needed to meet those regulations for something, they know that they could use that curriculum, and it's not necessarily turned itself inside out to be different. Math sometimes I've seen curriculum say, here are the common core standards we do meet. We don't meet them all.
Nicole: Yeah, let's actually even, like, demystify a little bit more for people, right? So people will be like, okay, I didn't understand what common core math would look like. So, for example, let's do something really simple. You know how we were taught how to do eight plus five, right? We were taught to go to eight, and then we were taught to count up, right? 910. Eleven. I always do this in the workshop, and you'll actually see people like their mouths moving. Okay, 13. I got it. Well, common core teaches it a little bit differently. They teach the students to think more in terms of groups of ten. And the reason that they want them to think in groups of ten is it's easier to hold groups of ten in their head. So mental math was one of the things that they were hoping to impact with common core type teaching. So instead of saying eight counts up five, to get to 13, they would say, eight. What do I need to get to ten? Oh, I need two. So I'm going to take two of my five. Now I'm at ten, and what do I have left over? I've got three left over. So boom, I'm at 13 now. It's really funny because when I do that in a workshop, people are like, that's so much harder. Well, that's how we were taught, right. Differently. But when you work with kids and you teach it to them and you have enough repeated practice, they get it and then they do those kinds of numbers with much larger numbers. Right. That's where like an instance where I thought, oh, that's a pretty good way to teach math. But then there were some things that were like, I saw this one at a student I was working with who I had to do a long division problem with them. And the way they did long division was like, really challenging. And I thought I was going to show you how to do it the way I do it. So I tell parents there are things that are Common Core aligned, as you said. The book might just say, we meet these standards and there's things that are Common Core teaching where they really made changes of how they teach things. I think those are where you might want to look and say, is that for me and my student?
Rebecca: So are there any other things to take into consideration as you're looking for your math match?
Nicole: Yeah, there's like two more things. The next thing I always say is the level of technology you would like to have. Right. And what I tell people is, look, your students are living in a different world than what we grew up in. And technology is where many of them spend their lives and will spend their lives and need to be agile. So we don't want our students doing math on the computer for the first time when they're taking their Sat test right. To get into college.
Rebecca: Right?
Nicole: Yeah. I want them to be comfortable and familiar because there is a bit of a different shift that takes place. I remember when we first started doing things on the computer, I was so anti. I was like, no, we need to do this all on pen and paper. So I tell families there's like another again, there's a spectrum of where I say no tech. Let's say that's on the left and high tech is on the right. No tech, I almost don't think is an option in this day in age. You need to have at least a little bit of tech. Right. A little bit of like, maybe just having your student be familiar with how to go to a website that does math. Okay, fine. In the middle might be more of a program like mine where I'm a real life person and I have videos where they access them on the web or they do their grading. So all the grading on our site is auto graded. The student puts their answer in it, grades it automatically. But the teaching is not online automated. It's not a computer based program. And that would be a view. Yeah, that would be on the right hand side, the high tech, where like a program like an Ixl or something like that, where the program itself is teaching the math through visuals or animated character. So again, if you're clear that your child would do really well from having a live person, then look for that. If you think your child would do well with animated characters and YouTube videos, then look for that. So again, the glory of homeschooling. Find what works for your student. Find where on that spectrum it's going to work for your student.
Rebecca: And I think this one especially, maybe even more than the others you've talked about, can change over time. Taking a kindergarten in front of a computer to do math in most cases is probably not advisable. But at some point you may need either maybe the parent has to work part time or they have gone beyond what the parent is capable of teaching the child or helping the child along with their math. And so it may be time for them to move further to the other side of the spectrum and start. That's very much what's happened in our house. I'm still holding my fourth grader wants to be online, but it's just because he wants a screen. So we're not doing that because that's the wrong reason.
Nicole: Well, it's funny, too. Here's the other thing that happens. As a parent of two, I totally get I feel this in my bones. As we all know, as they get a little older, sometimes they want a little distance from us and independence from us. So sliding further on that spectrum could give them a little bit of independence. But also as a parent, we still want to make sure the program we're using has tools that we can monitor and we can check in and we know what's going on. So again, you slide along that continuum and you find out for your student at that moment what's going to work. And here's the bad part. You kind of hit on it over time, things change. Like what worked for the third grader may not necessarily be what worked for the 10th grader. And there's going to be a change that needs to happen. And that's okay.
Rebecca: You mentioned, too, that we don't want the first time that they are on the computer being for the Sat. Well, our families do have to take tests each year, so they are doing the California State testing as well as some little short kind of check in tests throughout the year just to make sure that everybody's moving along. So the kids do need to be able to look at a screen and look at a math problem that may not look like their math book. Yeah, they do know that skill to recognize. I know that skill, and I can plug this in even though it's coming at me from a little bit different format than I'm used to.
Nicole: Yes, exactly right. And that's half of what it is. Right. People will ask me, well. Nicole, what's the best way to prepare for this test or that test? And I'll be like, you need to take a course because half of, for example, standardized testing is understanding how the test is formatted and how the questions are coming at you and marrying that with what the student's knowledge is. So you got to take an Sat or an act. Yeah, you're going to want to do some kind of prep for how those questions are coming at you.
Rebecca: So is that the last step in.
Nicole: Choosing your actually, here's the last step. You guys will help families. Okay, so we've got the spiral versus mastery. We've got manipulatives and how textbook based. We've got the common core. We've got the technology. The last part, that's all stuff about the curriculum, right? That's like I call it the left hand side, right? So that's like the person you're trying to meet when you're doing speed dating, but on the other side is you and is your student.
Rebecca: Amen.
Nicole: Right. And that's the other 50% of the equation. So it's not just all about the curriculum. It's about what your student needs and what works for your student. So I have always been a fan of finding out the style that your student learns in best. And I really should say style was an S on the end, because if you Google learning styles, you're going to find like, there's some people who say there's three, there's some people who say there's four. You'll find some who say there's 13. I mean, there's just but the idea is that we learn in different ways and that we have preferences on how we like to learn. So let's find out a little bit about how your student prefers to learn. Do you have a student who prefers to learn very visually? Great. Who likes to learn through images? Okay, then you're going to want something that's very colorful and has like, as I said, I've created these little signs that I put up in our little work room to help remind him of certain things. And you'll see, when he is trying to find something in his brain, he'll look to the sign, my son's a visual artist, or do you have an audio learner? You have somebody who not only learns through listening but learns through speaking. They need to have a conversation with you. They need to work it out. Do you have somebody who's a read writer? Right? Like a really loves to read and likes to write out their answer, right. You might need to know that they might need to do their math on paper first before they can talk it out with you. You're going to have to learn that. Do you have a kinesthetic learner? Do you have somebody who needs to be up and out of their seat? I always remember I had this one student I was working with. We were trying to learn multiplication tables. He could not learn them just sitting across the table from me. He couldn't memorize them. We would drill, he couldn't memorize them. And I was like, let's just get like, what do you like to do? He's a basketball player. So we went in the backyard. We started shooting hoops and started reciting the math tables while he was shooting hoops, okay? Instantly he started memorizing them. How is that he learns more kinesthetically? Like, that's just how he prefers. So people were like, well, how do I know which one my kid is? Well, first of all, your kid's not only one of them. Your kid is all of them. But there's some preferences that your kid might have. So there's an assessment that I love to use. It's called the Vark vark. Google it. And there's like a little quiz that you can take for yourself. You can have your student take or you can kind of take if you have a really young student, you know how to take for your student from observation, and it'll just give you some ideas of like, oh, my student might lean more towards this way. So let me try to find some curriculums that teach in this way that are very visual. Visual might be like, for example, I do videos, right? That's a visual medium. They're watching me. They're watching my face. They're watching the screen. So there's many ways for that to be met, but you've got to know what's going to work best for your student. And here's the also flip part of this, right? So, like, some of the current research around behavior styles is saying, you know, you know, we're not even really sure that, you know, your your child has one or two of these. Here's what I say to that. As I said, your child has all of the learning styles. We can learn in any of these ways. We have some preferences. So when my son is challenged with something, I will think, okay, how can I represent this visually? Or how can I represent this more auditorially? Can we talk and can we repeat and repeat it back to me? And repeat and repeat it back to me? Or I'll say, do we need to write this down? I'm going to have him write this down on paper with his own handwriting three times so he can go through the motions of writing it down. I was definitely that student in college. Like, I had to rewrite my notes to learn my lectures, or is he a kinesthetic? Do we need to get up? Do we need to go manipulate something and move something? So take the styles and apply it to what you're learning. Apply it to the let's say you have one type of curriculum. Again, you can take this style and figure out a way to talk about this one thing that they're challenged about and fit it to a way that their brain is going to say yes to.
Rebecca: And each kid will be so differently. That's one of the challenges of home schooling, I think. While we have the freedom to meet our kids where they're at, we also have the responsibility to meet our kids where they're at. And so that can take some work on our part, but also allows our kids to learn in the best way possible for them. And that's just a sweet place to find.
Nicole: And here's the cool part, right? We didn't choose to do this because we just wanted to open a book and do a lesson and be done in an hour and move on to the next thing. It's the joy of finding out how to get that AHA moment from our kid. Isn't that the awesome part?
Rebecca: And so often those come at the end of a struggle, right? AHA moments don't usually just come. They're not fake wrestle with something. To get to earn that AHA moment.
Nicole: You got to climb the hill first and you're like.
Rebecca: In addition to the learning styles, I have found that I've also had to take into consideration from my kids how independently each of them learns or how much accountability that they need. And that's really different for each of them as well. One might need to really keep an eye on because there's Destructibility, or she might not be as likely to finish, whereas another one will finish, but she needs more cheerleading. But those sometimes have to do with which curriculum you choose and sometimes just contribute to what the method is. But I think sometimes that if they're not super independent, but they're older and they need a little space for mom and dad, then you might need a website that they can be accountable to so that you're not the one saying, get it done, get it done. They've got somebody else telling them.
Nicole: I tell you, some of my favorite emails that we get are, nicole, you saved my relationship with my child. Because, again, sometimes as they get a little older, the relationship of being mom and teacher can be a little challenged. I always say we tag team it's the three of us. We're trying to get it done together.
Rebecca: And in the end, it's just math. But your child and the relationship that you have with them is forever, and so that's what really matters. And math curriculum is just a tool to help you teach something that's important, but it's just math.
Nicole: That's right. At the end of the day, like I always say, what's going to have you be successful in this world is not going to be what I learned in algebra two. And I love algebra, too, but it's the skills of discipline and sitting myself down and being able to do my work three to five times a week. And those skills that I learned to do my math are the things that are going to have me be successful in this world.
Rebecca: Amen. So that feels like a really great place to stop. I'm not sure where else we can take the conversation after that. But I do want to give you a chance, nicole, to tell our listeners how to find you. If they've been really excited about what they've heard about what you offer and how you teach and all that, how can they find you?
Nicole: Awesome. Okay. So, yeah, if you kind of listened to me and said, I want to check out what she's doing again. I'm nicole the math lady, and it's at nicolemathlady.com. And essentially the curriculum that I use is the saxon math curriculum, which is funny, because many people who maybe in their older years tried saxon math, or if they were home schooled, they use sex and math themselves. And people will come up to me at the conference, and they'll be like, oh, my gosh, if I had had you and I was learning sex and math, my life would have been different. I think it's a great curriculum. It is an intense curriculum. So that's where I get to come in, and I love I just feel like I was gifted in some random way to teach math to kids. I can somehow speak it in a way where they just get it, and they go, oh, that's it. And I'm like, yeah, that's it. And they're like, okay, well, that made sense. So I have on demand videos over. Students look at every single lesson in the textbook. They just open up their textbook, which they do need, and then they go to my site, they watch me teach the lesson, and then they do their practice set, and they enter their answers into the system one at a time. And it immediately grades it, which is awesome, because it gives them feedback as they're doing the problem. So if they made a mistake, they get to find out immediately, and then we have retries, which allows them to try the problem again until they get it correct, or there are some ways that they can get help. So that's what we do at nicole the math lady. If you're interested, check us out. As I said, I believe in free trials. No credit card free trials, because I want you to just to try it with no stress of like, oh, my gosh, do I need to cancel it in seven days? I can't take that. My brain can't remember that.
Rebecca: We're homeschooling. We have a lot of other things to think about.
Nicole: That's right. I can't be keeping track of what my free trial ends so people can go in and they can see the system. And what I tell people is, let your student use the free trial like it is for you, too, but let them use it. And then watch them. Watch how they navigate the site and how they feel about it and ask them, because kids, they know. They know. If they think that I could be a good tag team partner for you and them.
Rebecca: What grade do your lesson start with?
Nicole: My lessons start with grade three and they go to grade twelve. So sometimes people will be like, nicole, you're going to do first and second grade. And right now I'm holding firm to know and I'll tell you why. I like taking care of your older kids so you can spend time with the younger ones down on the floor with the blocks. That's what I can't do with them. Right across from a video. So I just believe at that young, young age I would love for them to be with you. And then once I get third grade, I can take them from there. I can see them through to twelveth grade.
Rebecca: Awesome. And you have algebra one and two and geometry and all those upper grade things all set up to automatically correct, automatically grade and all of that?
Nicole: Yes. And as I said, we also just released Mastery Bank, which is the 10,000 practice problems by topic. So you like the spiral, but you're like, I think I need a few more problems that are kind of more mastery. Then you can go into our Mastery Bank and just search for your topic and pull out the topics that you need and get maybe three or four problems or maybe ten problems, or maybe 50 if they need a lot of work.
Rebecca: That's amazing. Yeah. Well, Nicole, I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and I really appreciate you coming on and joining us today.
Nicole: Thank you so much for having me. And again, I just want to, you know, empower your families that I, again, I understand this journey, being a part of it myself. You've got this. I just want to encourage you, support you, and let you know you've got this. Your children are in the best place possible. So have you feel a little empowered on what you're doing and that you've made the right decision.
Rebecca: Thank you. Okay, listeners, thank you for joining us today. And before we go, I do want to tell you if you are listening to this the day that it drops or maybe the next morning. So if this is March 1 and you are listening, you still have time to register for the Andrew Poodwa Webinar Cultivating Language Arts preschool through high school. So this is an event you aren't going to want to miss. And even if you can't be there live tomorrow, Thursday, March 2, at 02:00 P.m.. If you register ahead of time, you will have the whole webinar emailed to you or link to it sent to you so that you can listen later on when you have time. So please go to the home school helper to find that link and get registered for that. Thank you for joining us today on the Sequoia Breeze Podcast, a breath of fresh air for your home school. I've been your host, Rebecca LaSavio.