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Explore game-changing educational and homeschool ideas. Designed for intentional parents like you.
Christy Faith (00:00.078)
One of the things a lot of homeschoolers don't take into account is their kids can do more than we're expecting right now. Give your kids space to have different ideas. Teach them logic, teach them how to argue well. They're going to argue anyway. And end those weird conversations with your kids.
Welcome to the Christy Faith Show, where we share game -changing ideas with intentional parents like you. I'm your host, Christy Faith, experienced educational advisor and homeschool enthusiast. Together, we'll explore ways to enrich and transform both your life and the lives of your children.
Welcome back to part two. In this episode, we'll continue delving deeper into game changing ideas for intentional parents like you. So grab your coffee, find a comfy spot and let's dive right in.
Now, and what came to mind too, which is so antithesis to what our culture teaches us that education is. And of course you hear us saying almost so much, that no one even hears it anymore. Like education is not the filling of a bucket, it's the igniting of a fire. Okay, la la la, we get it, it's true. The first time you hear it, you're like, yes, right? What does that mean? And I think that what people need to realize about curriculum companies, I used to write curriculum, is that they need to sell it. They need to sell it. And it's not that people wanna do a bad job, but...
they certainly are giving people what they want. So for example, that's why you have a curriculum that maybe has your kid reading those eight books a year because by golly, this proves, this is hypothetical. I'm not accusing anyone of everything, but by golly, look at all these books my kid read this year, right? Here's the number and look at what my kid has memorized. And I'm saying that as a mom who does practice memory work, but it has its proper place in my home. You know what I mean?
And so it really this to me, this is a this is a discussion about less truly is more. It's better to go a mile deep than a mile wide and very shallow. And that's really hard. I think it's particularly for homeschooling moms who maybe haven't graduated their first yet because you don't see the proof in the pudding quite yet.
Christy Faith (02:23.342)
What words of encouragement as a mom who has graduated and has done it this way, why is less more for our kids? Yeah, that is a really good question. I think a lot of times we live in America where more is more. More is better. And bigger is better. I mean, we lived in New Mexico right next to Texas and they were all
It was always this bigger in Texas and I love Texas by the way, but I do think that if we are just waterboarding our kids with information, this is part of the problem with kids and cell phones. They are literally being waterboarded with information and they don't know where to file it. And you can scroll, you can see somebody beaten. You can see a cake recipe within seconds. You can see somebody trying on leggings and then other people being brutalized all within less than a minute.
And our kids don't have any way to file that in their brain. They don't, and it deadens their morality. And so one of the things I think with less is more is that if you're intentional about the education, and I think it's a combination of memory work and content. So skill -based and content together, because you have to have a filled bucket to light a fire with. You can't light a fire with nothing involved. And so I think it's a both and.
that we have to make sure our kids have actual content and their brains are being formed. So if we're just water logging them, they don't know, they're not, their brain's not having the chance to file it and make sense of it. So we've got to just like slow down. I think too education consists of a lot more than just academic work. It consists of being outside and just doing those outside things like playing on the trampoline or taking nature walks.
doesn't have to be super directed, but green therapy is being prescribed to kids by both doctors and therapists. And it means go outside. And it's because green is calming to our senses. A lot of kids are struggling with regulation because we're not doing those self regulatory things that we all did when I'm this old, like we just did as part of our childhood. And I'm not saying let's all go back to my childhood. I'm not saying that, but I'm just saying we spent a lot of time outdoors.
Christy Faith (04:41.678)
We spend a lot of time hanging out with friends, just chatting and talking about nothing and bike riding and those kinds of things. And that's self regulatory activity. So we need to help our kids with that because it helps them create files in their brain. The other thing too, we have to give our kids time to be bored. And what I mean by that is turn off the screens and don't amuse them. Like back to Neil Postman, amusing ourselves. I mean, that book is, it should be required reading for every parent.
We feel like we're so in charge of making sure our kids are happy all the time and they're amused and entertained. And the reality is that great discoveries were made during some pandemics throughout time, right? Like people got bored and they were just like, I need a great thought to mull on. And then amazing discoveries came out of that. So in the fourth industrial revolution is very high tech, but I think those kids who have the space to mull and discover and create, they know the scientific method.
They've got some great writing skills under their belt and those kind of things. They're going to be the ones who are making the discoveries. They're going to be the ones who have the brain space to think of new and innovative ways to use tech that we already have at our disposal.
Before we continue, I want to share with you a program that has been a game changer for our family. At our learning center, we instructed and helped kids through pretty much every program on the market. So we know firsthand just how important a solid math foundation is for our kids' futures. Finding the right homeschool math curriculum that didn't compromise academic excellence, but also didn't put me and my kids through the wringer was a challenge. Until one day,
I found CTC Math. You guys, the rest was history. First off, it's a mastery -based program, which means your child gets a full grasp of the material. It's also loaded with mixed reviews, ensuring your kids don't forget anything they've learned. The questions are adaptive too, which keeps students confident and progressing at their own pace. But the best part? All the teaching, grading, and testing?
Christy Faith (06:47.566)
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No contracts. You can cancel anytime. No questions asked. Go to Christy -faith .com. That's C -H -R -I -S -T -Y -F -A -I -T -H .com. Enter promo code podcast for $10 off your first month. See you inside. And what the beautiful irony when you were saying that is we're literally talking about the fourth industrial revolution and how technology is so booming and our kids are going to need jobs in technology. And you're saying, get them off the screens.
get them outside. And it makes perfect sense to me. It's not about banning the screens. In fact, there's even arguments where our kids need to be playing video games even within reason and with boundaries. But let's talk about that a little bit and let's unpack that. Why? Because I agree with you and I see that and I see what is lost. When our kids are constantly entertained,
Christy Faith (09:08.558)
And I have coached mamas with this where they are scared to death. So I get this question a lot. Well, if Christy, if I finish my school hour in, is my school day in three hours, what do I do with the rest of the time? And literal panic grips them and legitimately so. And I coach them through, they'll be bored. They will be bored and it will be hard. And there will be this fire stage of,
This is really miserable for a second until your kid breaks through and reaches that ingenuity space of creativity. And this is inventing something with what they have rather than going out and buying something new to make it happen. Right now we have, and I love them. I love these boxes that come to your door. But the reality is what I noticed with the last box that came to my house is I was like, well, my daughter.
is following directions. That's that's and making something cool and learning, you know, learning this and learning that. But ultimately, and there's nothing wrong with that. And she loves these boxes. She got a subscription from her grandmother for her birthday. But I did notice that, wow, this box, although it talks about ingenuity and STEM and all of this, it really was a box where she was
being trained how to follow directions. All of the pieces were already there for her. She literally had to just put stickers on to connect things. And I just kind of had an awakening about that. And that's something I think that we're gonna be changing in the future is going more the direction of like a tinker table where there's like nuts, bolts, you know, and then see what my son can build out of that or something else. And...
I wanna also go back to what you mentioned about critical thinking, because I think there is a little bit of a de -schooling that the listeners today will really benefit from regarding critical thinking. I was a school teacher. It's such a hot term, critical thinking, right? What critical thinking is in the schools is really not critical thinking at all. Writing a compare and contrast essay,
Christy Faith (11:28.526)
or answering a compare and contrast question, it checks the box for the schools that this was a critical thinking question, but they are comparing and contrasting the information that was just fed to them in a textbook. Let's unpack what critical thinking actually is, because it is not what our schools are doing. Yeah. Well, I think the subscription box is a great example, because we have a couple that we love, and there's so much, and it's like a present.
male. I love them. But a great way to do critical thinking is to buy your kids four colors of duct tape and give them a warfare right duct tape book and say, make whatever you want, but it has to be movable. That's critical. Open ended. And I do love open ended toys like Brio trains and playmobil and Legos. It's very open ended. So your kids can discuss my, my son did stop motion for a long time using Legos.
And to me, it just seemed like I would have shot myself in the foot, you know, because it was so glorious. But to him, it was super fun to figure out how to move the little parts to actually create a story that made sense with hundreds of pictures. You know, that's a great critical thinking task, creativity, all that kind of stuff built in. So open ended. And really you can do a lot of creative thinking with books too. You can have your kids write.
an Instagram post based on the Scarlet Letter. You know, I mean, give them something that's relevant to them, but it's not, tell me what you thought about A, B, and C. Because if you're so directed, you're not letting them really dig into all the possibilities. And I think that's one of the things about critical thinking. There's a smorgasbord of possibilities there. It's not just A and B.
Exactly. And then when they get into those junior high years in introducing informal logic, and then later formal logic, that is nearly gone. I took a logic class in college. That was the first I was ever taught these types of things. And kudos to the classical movement who really is bringing that back. Because without
Christy Faith (13:44.526)
Being able, informal logic is more like how to spot, for the audience, is more how to spot fallacies. Like, that's the bandwagon approach, or that's, you know, this or that, but a headline, for example, that's, that's, doesn't hold water, but sounds really good. And then formal logic is more mathematical. It was very, actually pretty challenging for me in college to pass that class. I will say the formal logic class, it was an excellent teacher who challenged us tremendously. But,
And the thing is, is as homeschoolers, we can't do everything. We can't do, this is what I've realized is I've, I've had to truly distill my values and let things go. Now I'm going to make an admission here. I have, I have let go, for example, for an entire year of any science whatsoever for the sake of critical thinking and logic, because I know for a fact.
that if my child can think critically, has math skills and excellent comprehension skills, that when the time comes for high school, they will have zero problems taking that physics class. So, and to the point where even in elementary years, we do nature, we just, science is nature for us, like to wonder and be enamored with the world and hands -on art projects. So what do you think?
What are ways, did you, I actually wanna ask you, just I want you to mentor me right now. What are ways when you were raising your kids, what did you let go of and what did you prioritize? And I would suspect that you prioritized different things based on your family values, but also I bet different things based on your particular kid, right? Yeah, could you give us some examples if your kids allow you to share about them, I don't know, but I would love some examples of,
those decisions that you had to make and how those decisions played out later? Yeah, you know, that's, that's gonna be a hard question to answer quickly because we have five kids 16 years apart from my youngest to oldest. So I'll use my youngest as a, as an easy example. She, she took a career exploration class her freshman or sophomore year. I can't remember which I taught it years ago at true Northam school academy. And it came out with your skills indicate that you would be a great mortician.
Christy Faith (16:11.63)
Or. Or. Nothing wrong with that. That is a pretty lucrative career, I will say. Very lucrative.
Or a foreign language translator. And she said she's already taken a few years of Latin. I think she was on her third year of Latin and she hated Latin, but she was a very good student. She's like, I'm going to get this language down if it kills me. She decided I really want to go after that. So she set a goal for herself of being fluent in a couple of languages before graduation. So she took eight credits of foreign language in high school.
but she only took one science class in high school and that was chemistry. So she took, she graduated fluent in Hebrew, conversant in Spanish and she can hold her own in German. She can read it. She can understand it. She's not really conversant necessarily in German, but you know, she's a lot farther along than a lot of people. She didn't realize how hard being fluent in five foreign languages in four years would actually be, but that's part of, you know, being young.
and those kinds of things. So she's actually worked with a tutor for many years. But my point with all of that is that we decided based on some of her goals too, that we were gonna give up some science stuff for language. Now she went to college and she got an A in her first science class, not a problem, because she knew how to study. And in that study of foreign language, she learned a lot about philology, which is the study of language.
She's a killer grammatician at this point. And she knows a lot about memory work because a lot of understanding and being able to gain fluency in a foreign language is memorization. So within that study, she learned all these like side, you know, side studies. For some of my other kids, I have a really super mathy kid and we actually hired tutors for him and he went and got a math minor and now he's in a graduate program in math. And so.
Christy Faith (18:09.838)
He also was writing a novel at the same time. He is dysgraphic. So we just got rid of all handwriting and he learned to type really fast. You know, I mean, part of it is just learning who your kids are and where you want to go. One of my sons really loved classical education and went to a small private classical college and really dove deep into, you know, ancient literature, ancient history. It's kind of where he lives. He participated in the National Bible Bee. He's got like,
a freakishly great ability to memorize odd details. Like he has, he has some websites memorized. You know what I mean? Just like, so he, he did that. He really struggles with math as does one of my other kids. So I have a couple of really super mathy kids, a couple of kids who really struggle with math. And part of it is just understanding your kids. And that's one of the great benefits and beauties of homeschooling is that we have time to get to know them. So we know where their strengths are. We know where their challenges are.
And I've, I've always advocated for shore up your kids areas of challenge because again, they do need number and language literacy. On the other hand, you don't have to beat him over the head with it. Like my one son is dysgraphic. He will never look like he can write well. He's written a novel, so he should be typing everything, right? And just let that part go. But the other thing too, if your kids have areas of interest or special, you know, just an area that just peaks their interest.
Put some time and intention towards that because I'm always really curious why people are interested in things. Because I think part of that is nature versus nurture kind of question. But also I think part of it is some of that's that God, God within us that God puts certain things within each of us that is specific and individual to us. And that's part of what we are supposed to be living in humanity for the sake of others. So if your kids have a special thing,
or because you have something that they really come alongside with, then put some time and intention to that and see where it goes. It doesn't necessarily have to end up being their job at the end. I think a lot of us think if we put this in high school, they need to become an expert and do that for their life. And looking back at my own high school, I don't do any of the things I did in high school. I mean, I still learn, but I was in band and choir and I played squash and tennis and I was in marching band and all the things.
Christy Faith (20:35.63)
I don't do any of that anymore. I threw pottery and sold it, but those are transferable skills. You know what I mean? Like if you know how to do production pottery, you know how to knock things out. Like you just know to sit down and get it done. And if you're in music, you understand a lot about communication and timing and all those kinds of things. So even if you put time into it, it doesn't have to be forever. And that is totally okay.
The show will resume in just a minute, but first I want to share with you an incredible resource that is totally free to homeschooling families everywhere. Have you ever felt like you were on trial for your homeschooling choice when visiting a doctor or another service provider? It's unsettling, especially when someone misinformed has the power to threaten your family. Unfortunately, we have heard countless stories of parents who have felt trapped in offices and met with suspicion rather than support.
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check Christy Face List website before stepping foot into any service provider's office to make sure they are on there. And number three, if your favorite service provider isn't on the list, make sure to refer them. There's a button on the homepage of the website. It takes only 30 seconds and that way we can send them a lovely invite. If you're listening and you are a homeschool friendly professional, we want you on the list.
Christy Faith (22:32.718)
We're eager to connect homeschooling families with you, shout your name from the rooftops, and bring you tons and tons of business. We have plans for every type of business, both small, local, nationwide, and worldwide. Check out ChristyFacelist .com today. Hi, mama. If you like my social media content and my show, I'm pretty sure you will love my book, Homeschool Rising, Shattering Myths,
finding courage and opting out of the school system. My book is for homeschool parents, both veteran and new, and the perfect book to hand any homeschool skeptics in your life so they can better understand why you've chosen this amazing lifestyle. This book will challenge you.
empower you, encourage you, and give you solid, mindful answers to all those questions you get about your homeschooling choice. Grab your copy and maybe an extra one for your mother -in -law today. Homeschool Rising is available wherever books are sold. I love that. And what I'm also hearing you say is this culture of curiosity. I think that there is a vein of a little bit too far in the interest led to the point where, my kid won't do that.
right? And there's something that there's a lot of mistakes Scott and I have made with our parenting, let's be honest. But one thing, yeah, I know, right? So but I will say that I had a couple, I had two main priorities with my parenting. And, and this is not possible. This is this was possible because none of my kids have food.
Issues like sensitivity or texture issues and my kids don't have any of that. That is extremely legitimate. So please don't anyone hear this the wrong way. But nutrition was always very important to me. And so we always encouraged and valued our children trying new foods from the moment that they were born and get excited about new foods to the extent where when we go to a, we're celebrating and we go downtown, we live in the burbs. And so when you celebrate, you have to go downtown.
Christy Faith (24:36.43)
All of us are excited because when we look at the menu, the challenge is let's try, let's order something we've never ordered before. Because if this is an amazing five -star chef, you know, just an example, if this is an amazing chef, it's probably gonna be the best of this thing that you will ever have. So let's try it now. And just that adventure and that experimentation, just things like that. When you were talking about auto diadacs earlier, which I do wanna,
wrap up and make sure that we define that and talk about that. The auto that goes into that piece where you are willing to try new things, figure out how to learn new things and that culture of a new thing isn't a bad thing. And
Failure is not a bad thing. Trying something and even if you ordered it and you spent $45 on that dish at that restaurant and you hated it, that's still okay because you tried something new. That's totally awesome. Let's order you something else, you know, type of a thing. But I want to go back to auto -diadact. So I have done social media posts on auto -diadacts before. It is something that from the moment I start preschooling my kids, we are working towards.
Autodiadacts, there's pushback in our community and outside that that's abandonment of your kids and this and that and the other. Let's just quickly define what that means and why that is going to serve our kids. This is a great way to end actually, because this is that piece. This is that piece that is going to allow them to do anything, right? So let's talk about that. What is an autodiadact? Yeah, it just means the ability to learn without formal.
learning, formal education, that you go after it yourself. So that, I mean, when my daughter was learning foreign languages, she was like, I need to understand language families and what it means to actually go after foreign language acquisition. Philology is a whole different study than of like, say German or French or whatever. So, you know, it's that kind of thing. What is of interest to you and how do you learn it?
Christy Faith (26:48.206)
That's kind of what you've been, you know, the whole homeschooling thing. I mean, you're in education, but homeschooling is a whole nother niche. So you know about education and this huge umbrella of how people learn and what's important and those kinds of things. But now parents are doing it. What does that mean? And what, and plus that's all blown up now. So it's a completely different thing, but you know, that's, that's as home educators, that's what we're all figuring out. What's going to really work.
Yes, absolutely. And we want our kids when they're 20 or when they're 30 and referencing earlier, how many jobs our kids are going to have. We want to prepare kids that will see an opportunity and say, wow, that looks really interesting to me and be able to pivot and learn what they need to learn to acquire the knowledge and the skills they need to pursue that new venture or job. And that is these.
people, these are not skills our schools are teaching. Our schools are still giving spelling tests on Friday to see who memorized the words the best. They're not actually learning to spell. They're just memorize, you know, whoever's the best memorizer wins. They're asking them to regurgitate dates and things like that. And we know what is the missing piece of the water cycle. Well, that kids, our government school system was started during the third industrial revolution.
I mean, it was it was it was it's not failing. It's succeeding. It's doing exactly what was created to do, which was to create passive consumers and passive workers for rich industrialists. Those rich industrialists are now billionaire globalists. But the point is still the same. So if you really want your kid to be an active learner and an autodidact, you need to pull him out of the government school system.
And I mean, no dis on government schools. There's some things that they have done really, really well and necessary for the culture and that they did better when they were first created. I mean, we could have like 12 hours of discussion on this alone, but if you really want your kids to be ready for the world that they're going to live in, not the world that we launched into, but the world that they're going to launch into, it's time to reimagine education.
Christy Faith (29:00.878)
And I mean, that's where we really connected. Kristi, I feel like that is our thing, is re -imagining education. And we need to do that for our kids because the traditional paths are failing us. Education, healthcare, government, et cetera. The things that we counted on when we launched, it's an age of disruption. And so we need to prepare our kids well for that.
If you're enjoying the show and you don't want to miss out on future episodes, hit that like and subscribe button and show us some love with your comments. Those five star reviews really do make a difference. Yes. And what is so exciting about this is there isn't a formula for your, our schools say, yes, there is a standardized, standardized formula and your kids need to know this, that and the other by the time they get to 12th grade and then they're ready. Right. What is so great about this?
reclaiming of our children and actually asking ourselves the hard question on what is an education? Because we all want our kids to be successful. We all want our kids to be happy. So, but what I think and what I've heard from you today is the answer is not now, now just pack it all in. Okay. On top of all that curriculum, now I'm going to add in logic and add in.
and add in soft skills. It's not really that. And we have an opportunity as homeschooling families to create, even if we're looking nuts and bolts here at a high school transcript, for example, what an opportunity for our kids to stand out. If their transcript doesn't look like the 20 ,000 other ones that had that standardized curricula on there, someone looks at that and says, wow, this kid has interests. Look at this. And whilst still...
fulfilling those requirements. But I love that because we have to balance this with being mindful about what we do have our kids do and realize that there's going to be stuff that we're going to have to de -prioritize here because there just isn't enough time in the day. And we don't want to pack it on and make our kids do Saturday school and all of that. We still want them to have a childhood. And one of my arguments in Home School Rising,
Christy Faith (31:15.214)
and you mentioned this term earlier, I think homeschooling is a both and. It is, we can actually accomplish this. We can't if your kid is in school for seven hours a day, and sure you can do things after school, you also have to undo a lot of things on nights and weekends. So, but we have this amazing opportunity and it's exciting. And I just wanna hear more from you on this.
Lisa, you have not mentioned this yet, but you own and operate True North Homeschool Academy, which is a place where there are live online. Are there self -paced as well? There are a few, but not too many. We mostly focus on live online and small group classes. Yes, and they are fabulous classes. Her programs are amazing and her instructors are amazing.
And we personally in our family have loved the flavor. Yes, we do in -person community, but the online classes, you know, my kids have friends on across the globe. You know, it's so funny because homeschoolers are accused of not being socialized and this, but this flavor of this online has really been this surprise blessing for my family. This just extra bonus I never would have expected.
So it's exciting to me that you provide that, but you also do an excellent job academically. And where can my audience find you Lisa, online or on social media? Go ahead and let us know. Yeah, we are at truenorthhomeschool .academy. We have Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube channels, and we're putting out content all the time to serve the homeschool community. If you go to the front page of the website, you can get two years of free academic advising or 15 minute appointment with an advisor.
and we will start with where you're at. There's a simple questionnaire. I mean, it's like an overview kind of thing, but it's a super helpful way to get started. And then we're also over at, it's not that hard to homeschool. That's right. Yes, I forgot about that, which is a Facebook group. That's a free Facebook group people can join, isn't it? It's a free Facebook group. We have a podcast and blog over there too. And we have several books as well as a transcript template. So probably anything you need for high school, where are you going next? We help.
Christy Faith (33:32.558)
you know, service the homeschool community there. that's so wonderful. Well, we'll have to have you back to talk about high school. I do want future episodes on that. Lisa, it has been a pleasure. I always love chatting with you. I always when I'm when we're in person somewhere, I always hunt you down to make sure we can talk. And thank you for having another conversation with me today and truly blessing my audience with your wisdom. I really appreciate you coming on today. Thanks for having me.
Christy Faith (34:06.958)
To where we belong I told you, you are the one You're my satellite Won't you take me higher than the sun We can go all night Till we find our light and show every way