Tomika is a homeschool mom of three, currently living in Western New York. As a trained chemist, she brings her curiosity and love for science to her home education practice. In the early years, her homeschool style was Waldorf inspired, making use of art, hands on learning, and living books all while incorporating her family’s multicultural background and desire to know more about the diverse world around them. Now, in the 11th year of homeschooling, she would describe her current style as eclectic and uses various curricula, resources, and the local community to meet the educational needs of her 5th, 8th, and 11th grade children.

Show Chapters

00:00 Preview
02:28 Welcome & New York Homeschool Requirements
08:36 How Tomika Found Her Way to Homeschooling
12:17 From Chemistry to Homeschooling
15:33 Adapting Waldorf for a Multicultural Family
17:42 Military Life & Global Perspective
20:37 Teaching Indigenous & World Cultures
24:16 Homeschooling Evolution: Early Years to Today
29:28 History of the Haudenosaunee
29:31 Current Schedules: High School & Middle School
35:09 Math Curricula Deep Dive
41:32 Math in the Early Years
47:36 Teaching Science: Living Books & Nature Study
57:35 Greatest Challenges & Building Confidence
01:02:09 What Surprised Them Most
01:04:56 Real-World Learning & College Prep
01:12:24 Closing

The Parenting Passageway

Haudenosaunee — TheGreat Peace

Jake Bowles Book about High School

Living Science Books

Transcript

Tomika (00:00)
African American folk tales, maybe Mexican mythology, also legends from Guam, And then being indigenous to someplace else, it gives me a greater appreciation for people who are indigenous from here.

I really want to know how does this work? How are we learning how to read? I can’t just be happy with buying, oh, everybody said to use this curriculum.

just feeling , what’s happening out in the world now,

putting the political stuff aside, AI is coming, universities are not being funded. It’s just wait, is what am I doing for homeschooling?

we’re gonna look at the child in front of us in the world around us and try to give the education that they need for who they are.

and where they live now.

There’s five symbols on that wampum for the Confederacy and that’s for the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Onida and Mohawk.

Della (01:01)
This week we’re meeting Tamika. Tamika is a homeschool mom of three currently living in Western New York. As a trained chemist, she brings her curiosity and love for science to her home education practice. In the early years, her homeschooling style was Waldorf inspired, making use of art,

hands-on learning, and living books, all while incorporating her family’s multicultural background and desire to know more about the diverse world around them. Now, in the 11th year of homeschooling, she would describe her current style as eclectic and uses various curriculum, resources, and the local community to meet the educational needs of her fifth, eighth, and eleventh grade children.

Della (02:55)
Hi, Tomiko, welcome. And

Tomika (02:57)
Hello!

Della (02:58)
so you’re here. So what I to start out with, because there’s so much variation with the requirements are from state to state, I would for you to tell us what state you’re in and requirements for that.

Tomika (03:12)
I am in New York State the requirements for New York State is that when your child is six, you need to let your local school district know that you’re homeschooling. And so that’s, send them in every single year, something that’s called a letter of intent. And that’s basically just saying, hi, we’re going to homeschool. then after that, you need to send into your school district an individualized homeschool instruction plan.

which is basically saying these are the subjects that we’re doing and you can use a list of resources, some topics that you’re covering, and you could say that it’s subject to change. there are, it’s a very small list of things that are required your homeschool time. So it’s the usual, you need to have

some English, language arts, math, social sciences, social studies, science, as you get through the grades library skills. But they have a list of everything that you need for your child to cover from K through 12. then every quarter, you need to send a quarterly report.

to say this is what we’ve covered, they’ve had this number, hours of instruction. you could just say we’ve met the minimum hours of instruction. it’s, you don’t have to be super detailed about it. then at the end of the year, you send a final assessment. for elementary grades, it can be a written narrative. She says, look, my student’s doing great. They really enjoyed this this year. They learned.

whatever they learned this year, just something to say, okay, we did homeschool. It went well. And then for middle school, they need to be tested every other year using a standardized test. I think most people use the California achievement test here, where I am. And then they hit high school, they need to be tested every single year at the end of the year.

you’re finished with homeschooling, you’ve met all the requirements, you let your school district know we’re done, can we get what’s called a letter of equivalency? And it is up to the school district of whether or not they will give you a letter of equivalency.

Della (05:13)
my gosh. Are you allowed to give your student a diploma?

Tomika (05:18)
I mean, I guess you could give them a diploma? I don’t know if… I don’t know who would count it though.

Della (05:24)
in my experience, when you start looking at colleges, if that’s where you’re bound, they don’t have the same assessment as far as graduation for homeschoolers that they do for public school kids that have, a diploma. New York seems to me to have

Tomika (05:28)
Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

Right.

Della (05:45)
the most complex.

and highest accountability of education. Do you know anybody, maybe California, that has?

Tomika (05:53)
I feel

Pennsylvania, they have to do…

Don’t they have to do a, really meet with somebody and portfolios? Is that a requirement? Because I feel you guys do portfolios.

Della (06:02)
I don’t know. Well, Florida Florida does. Right.

We send our letter of intent like you do. And then you have a couple different options to send in to the county to say, we’ve met the requirements for homeschooling each year. One of them is to keep a portfolio and have an annual evaluation. And the other is to do standardized testing and send those.

Tomika (06:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Della (06:25)
results in. then there, but there are loopholes that people use. You can also enroll in an umbrella school, which only takes attendance. And if you’re enrolled in an umbrella school, you’re considered enrolled in a private school and the same standards aren’t, aren’t upheld if you are registered with the county as a homeschooler. But we registered with the county as a homeschooler.

and do an annual evaluation. And I really enjoy the annual evaluations for both my kids and myself. they, evaluators, there’s such a wealth of information and I gained so much from that. And then also it gives my children the opportunity to go through their work for the year and see how much they’ve accomplished and share.

Tomika (07:12)
Great.

Della (07:14)
with someone else the things that they are most proud of.

Tomika (07:18)
Right.

I know that on paper it sounds we have the most accountability. I feel it’s we have the most busy work. Really, because the school district can’t say that what you’ve done is not enough. Or if you say, we’ve done this number of hours and we’ve met what we…

Della (07:26)
Mm.

Tomika (07:39)
what we’ve met at least 80 % of what we wanted to do. 80 % of what of what you wanted to do could be almost nothing. Do you know what I mean? So

Della (07:47)
Right.

Tomika (07:48)
You can tell them these are all, you can write out the list of all the topics that you covered. And even if the topics that you covered are not equivalent to what be covered in a public school for instance, they really cannot come back. And as long as your test scores are looking good,

they’re not gonna come back and say , well, I see for algebra, you never got to, I don’t know, the quadratic formula. right. But.

Della (08:11)
factoring quadratic formulas.

Tomika (08:13)
think so here you can put on probation. probation is if you’re not turning in your paperwork and if when your students are testing, they’re showing no improvement. or they test at below the 33rd percentile. For their grade level.

Della (08:23)
Mm-hmm.

that’s interesting.

Tomika (08:32)
when you’re on probation, if you take the next test and they show improvement, even if it is still not amazing, , okay, well, you showed improvement. So move along. So I would say , it does look we have a lot of accountability here, definitely are ways that people get around what’s required.

Della (08:52)
when we first talked about New York’s standards versus Florida standards, I was saying how intimidating and exhausting it is to have to do quarterly reports. And you were , once you get into it, it’s not that, not that hard.

Tomika (09:07)
Right.

It’s not, yeah, it’s not that hard. I still don’t doing them. You know, I still, I still am kind of , ugh, I have to just tell them , I’m doing it. trust me. I think most beginning homeschoolers, they want to impress the school districts. And they’re , we, we’ve done all of these

topics and we went on all these field trips and my kids were in all these extracurricular classes and then when you start looking at what older homeschoolers are putting on their quarterly reports and it’s just the headings of chapters in the books, just a couple of things and it’s just okay I don’t actually have to be doing

they’re not really looking at it, really in depth that. which I’m not saying that you should be try to not give your child an education. Do you know what mean? But it’s. Yeah.

Della (09:56)
Right. Yeah,

I don’t think anybody within our circles is interested educational neglect.

Tomika (10:01)
great.

best.

Della (10:04)
How did your family find themselves homeschooling?

Tomika (10:09)
well, I would say that the seed for me was planted before my daughter was even born. my oldest who is 17, when I was pregnant with her, I was taking a prenatal yoga class and there was this little 13 year old girl who used to come to the yoga class. She was not pregnant. She was just attending, because she was shadowing our yoga instructor

I started talking to her and she was part of this homeschool program where they connected students to professionals in areas that they were interested in going into careers. she was shadowing a prenatal yoga instructor, a pediatrician, and a Montessori childcare

so just started talking to her, was , oh, that is so cool that you get to do this when you’re 13, that you actually get to be out in the world and seeing how things work. think that first planned the seed. after my daughter was born, through the attachment parenting groups, I met a lot of homeschoolers and their kids. And I was , oh, this is not so out there. And I love learning.

And I just thought it would be really fun be there and part of that process as my kids were learning.

Della (11:16)
That’s one of the reasons that I did it too. I taught preschool in college thinking that I would never go back to education. I really enjoyed my work in the preschoolers. it was a wonderfully educationally progressive preschooler. So there was lots of training that they gave to us, which was awesome.

Tomika (11:26)
Mm-hmm.

Della (11:37)
But when my child was born we also had been exposed to other homeschoolers. that time came where it was ready to send him to school. I was , wait, I want to be the one that teaches him how to read. And I want to be the one that spends my day with him. And I want to be the one that sees those aha moments in his education. And yeah, that’s, that’s why we.

Tomika (11:50)
Right.

me.

Right. Right.

Yeah,

where I was living at the time, the homeschoolers they were open to having the younger kids come and do things. they had, the info on all the little fun places to go and the museums and things that. it was I could send my kids to school.

or we could keep learning at home, going on field trips learning in a fun way. my daughter was also pretty sensitive and shy. so I think at the beginning too, it just seemed she would have needed an extra year anyway. And then once we got into it, we just never stopped.

Della (12:36)
Same,

What did you do before homeschooling and how has that influenced your homeschooling?

Tomika (12:45)
I had my daughter not too far out of finishing graduate school. I went to graduate school for chemistry. after I graduated with my master’s, I stayed on with my PI, she was starting a biotech company. And so I was her director of R &D for a little while.

we were making slides for looking at the interaction of drugs with receptors inside of a phospholipid bilayer.

Della (13:12)
Let’s pause because

I understand what you’re saying. I don’t know if everybody understands. So you were making special slides that would hold a fatty layer of membrane so that you could see the chemical interactions that were happening on that slide.

Tomika (13:25)
Yes.

Right,

at that membrane. if we go back to high school biology, we learned that if you have your cell, things will come to the cell membrane and might interact protein there. It’s the key in the lock. The molecule might hit this protein, the protein will change and then inside the cell, it’ll start off a cascade of whatever.

scientists, want to look how exactly are things drugs, how are they interacting with those proteins at the surface? when you have microscope slide and you have a the membrane of a cell or something that is an artificial membrane of a cell.

It’s hard to see everything that’s going on because there’s just so much floating around. But we figured out that if we took a silica glass slide, and if we put some little teeny itty bitty spheres, nanosized silica spheres on top of it, it’d create porous slide almost. you can suspend this layer on top of this porous substrate.

and put a drug that has a dye on it and let it go and interact with the proteins in that fatty, the fossil, the bilayer. you can start to say, what’s actually going on here? the idea was that we’d make these slides and sell them to companies that are doing…

these type of studies. Yes. So that’s what I did.

And then my husband was also in graduate school and he finishes PhD. it was time for him to go do his postdoc. And he’s also a chemist also. He’s actually a physicist who ended up going to graduate school for chemistry. So he’s now a chemist, a physical chemist.

Della (14:55)
and he’s also in chemistry.

Tomika (15:05)
I was okay, I’m just gonna go with you. I’ll find another job. This happened to me in

2008 when there weren’t a lot of jobs or a great recession.

Della (15:15)
The Great Recession?

Tomika (15:18)
So I was , I’m not finding a job. we’re gonna have our one kid. We’re just gonna have the one kid. And, I wanted to stay home with the kid anyway for a little bit. And then after that,

at the next stop, it’ll just be, two years for a postdoc. I’ll go back to work. Kid will be ready to go to school. good, good to go. we started on that plan and it ended up, really liked staying home with my daughter and that little seed of, of homeschooling was starting to sprout. and so then I just ended up not ever.

Della (15:49)
And how does your background in chemistry affect your homeschooling?

Tomika (15:54)
Well, I would say at least for sciences, of course, we’re very comfortable in the sciences here. I would say more our whole family has just kind this curiosity about life, how things work. it’s kind of maybe got me in trouble a little bit with the homeschooling because

I just am not happy with taking curriculum just off the shelf. I really want to know how does this work? How are we learning how to read? I can’t just be happy with buying, oh, everybody said to use this curriculum. I’m just going to get this one and go with it. I want to know, What’s the research behind how we’re learning certain

subjects is that curriculum following that or is just something else is this just a fad you know

Della (16:41)
my gosh, to make it that is just me and my membership subscription. The first post that is available is all the tools for learning and learning how we learn. This is how we learn as things spacing and are leaving memory recall, making connections, dual coding, and, that governs any kind of resource or

Tomika (16:54)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Right.

Della (17:06)
Curricula that I’m using are they doing those

things in their curricula because this is what the science says Tells us how we learn

Tomika (17:11)
Right.

that really has affected my homeschooling. also I really wanted to research all the different philosophies out there. And it started also when I was pregnant with my daughter, one of the moms who was also pregnant at the time, she owned the Montessori School. Actually, that the 13 year old.

that I told you about was attending, And she pulled me aside. She’s , OK, if your kid ever goes to a Montessori school, here are the things to look for, because not all Montessori schools are the same. And that kind of sparks me oh, wait, so what is Montessori? I started looking at what Montessori was. And then I led to Riggio Emilia. then what is Waldorf? And then as I entered the home school space, Charlotte Mason,

and project-based learning and place-based learning. And so I could get into the weeds learning about all the philosophies, But in the end, I really did land Waldorf for the beginning. And although I have to say, because Waldorf was created in

Germany, the history of Waldorf it needed to be adapted for me for not only to be more modern, but also because my family is a multicultural family,

Della (18:14)
Yes, I know the history. Yeah.

Yes.

Tomika (18:28)
I am Chamorro and Black, so Chamorro are indigenous people of the island of Guam. So Pacific Islanders, which is a territory of the United Chamorros are all American citizens, regardless of whether or not they get to vote for their president, but they are American citizens. Similar to Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, yes.

Della (18:43)
similar to Puerto Rico.

Tomika (18:48)
So my mother and father, met in California. They’re both in the military. I also spent my childhood in different states and countries. I definitely have a global perspective, I would say, on life in general.

Della (19:04)
in the military housing and communities, they are slightly different than what we see in our regular everyday communities in that there’s a greater number of diversity, there’s a greater tolerance. Can you talk about that aspect?

Tomika (19:25)
the US military, they tend to people from lower income places and they also go into minority schools and try to recruit people into military. The result of that is the military is fairly diverse compared to the general population.

you find yourself living in different countries. You have to learn different languages. You do have to learn to be tolerant of other people, different ways of living. I would say most, well, I don’t know if that’s because of my parents, but most of the people that they surrounded us with were of that mindset. And there are some people who

They’re in the military and they’re stationed in in Milan, near Milan, and they will never leave the base. You know, there are those people, but I would say at least the people that my parents surrounded us with, they were interested in learning about the place where they lived. And also in school, we have a thing called host nations as part of our curriculum.

part of the DOD schools. I don’t know if they still do it, but when I was younger they did. while you’re in the country, you learn about the history of the country that you’re living in. You learn about the culture, you learn about the food. you take field trips. you’re immersed in the culture, you’re not just on a little American Island in another country.

at least as a child, they try to get you out and learning about where you are.

Della (20:51)
to,

Tomika (20:52)
as far as homeschool goes, that means that, for instance, for Waldorf, when all the other kids are doing, grims, fairy tales for the alphabet, right? I’m trying to bring in

African American folk tales, maybe Mexican mythology, also legends from Guam, also being indigenous to someplace else, it gives me a greater appreciation for people who are indigenous from here.

I’m also gonna bring in stories from the Haudenosaunee, which are the indigenous people that live here the original peoples of Western New York.

Della (21:29)
And they’re, fascinating culture and history

hugely, they were a huge impact. Franklin was fascinated by their Confederacy, which if you have not heard of Haudenosaunee, it’s because that’s what they call themselves.

Tomika (21:34)
you know, , yes.

Della (21:47)
Iroquois is what we’re used to hearing, the Iroquois Confederacy, but they call themselves Haudenosaunee. And they have a wampum of the great peace.

I

found out that they bead their history, they don’t formally write in the way we write, but this is a way of retaining the history. Well, yes, yes.

Tomika (22:05)
Right.

Right, I mean they do now, right, formerly, right, but yeah.

But yeah, originally, and they still do make the wampum. if you go to the Smithsonian DC, they have some of the wampum on display. And here you can see in some of our museums, locally in the area, they’ll have wampums that are for different treaties,

Yeah.

Della (22:28)
That’s the one that I’m

thinking of. have a wampum that has, I think it’s a square in the middle and trees on the outside or I may have.

Tomika (22:32)
Right.

There’s a tree. So the trees

in the middle. There’s five symbols on that wampum for the Confederacy and that’s for the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Onida and Mohawk. I wouldn’t believe it’s the Onondaga. They were the that’s the middle. That’s the

the great tree of peace. And so the idea is when they at war with each other, the great peacemaker came and said, guys, we can’t do this anymore. We need to peace. And Taradajo, which was the warring leader, he had supposed to have snakes in his hair. And the grandmother the snakes out of his hair. When he finally agreed to the peace,

the people came together from those five nations and buried their weapons under the Great Tree of Peace. if you drive around here, you’ll see in different places, that image of the squares with the tree in the middle, all over Western New York.

Della (23:27)
I just say how impressed I am that you remember that story in a way that you can just narrate it. That is so impressive. And you remembered all five nations and just point of clarity. There’s six or seven nations now.

Tomika (23:33)
Okay

Six. At first six.

Now there’s the Tuscarora because originally the Tuscarora, who are actually probably closer to where I live, at one point in time they moved down to Virginia, which I also lived in. And I think when, I’m not sure, maybe it’s when the colonists came, they were , let’s get out of here. And they came back up. And now the Tuscarora are folded back into the Confederacy.

Della (24:04)
I’m so impressed. Excellent. Yes, that’s a… Yeah, it’s a nice review for me.

Tomika (24:05)
Hahaha!

I taught history a couple times.

that’s our local history. that I can teach, I can tell you about, but , maybe the history of the indigenous people where you are. Muscogee yeah, I don’t have.

Della (24:23)
It’s the Muscogee, the Appalachee,

the Creek and the Cherokee.

Tomika (24:29)
Right, I don’t have a deep knowledge of

Della (24:33)
Understandably, understandably. What did the progression of homeschooling look like for you? So from when you started, when your oldest was little, and then you have two other children that you folded into the mix, what did it look like when they were little? How did it change? And what does it look like now?

Tomika (24:53)
as I said before, when my daughter was younger, I was really drawn to Waldorf. she kind of seemed she was maybe not as ready to start first grade as I think I would have liked her to be. But I think maybe that was probably just natural. some kids, they’re really gung ho about starting school and she was.

I just I want to be out in the woods still and doing my crafts and things and so Waldorf was a very nice way to gently Fold her and so we started, doing the the blocks the storytelling the time when she was five or six, when she was six Her brothers were three

and then I had a newborn. that was a lot at one time to be starting school. it’s hard to even remember that it was, there was a lot going on. So I did try to stick with the blocks the best I could. I think at that time, schooling had just popped up.

Della (25:33)
that’s a lot at one time.

Tomika (25:49)
and I was able to get in with the co-op price on our schooling for a lifetime membership, which is amazing when I look at what it is now. And I think I also perhaps bought Waldorf Essentials from Melissa, But at the same time too, it’s I felt I had to do a lot of changing things around because I wasn’t necessarily happy with just doing all

European style we were in a co-op at the time. it was really important for me to get her outside a lot. we did do a lot of going out in the woods. We were part of an ecology class, there’s a local ecology organization.

that teaches ecology in schools and in the community and they had homeschool classes. So we also did some of ecology classes with them and then jumped in on any field trips that kind of popped up in our local group. So I feel at the very beginning, was a lot of push to be do this better than public school, I maybe did too much.

because it was , we’re doing all the things. then as my middle kid became old enough to I tried to do kind of more family unit blocks, um, in a way that was appropriate for him.

And I did start eventually over the years start relying more on standard curriculum. I think of the beginning especially that was also coinciding with the beginning of Instagram and everybody shows you we’re doing Waldorf school and everything is so beautiful and we have all the clay and we have all the watercolors and the beeswax and nobody’s really talking about.

how they are also using all about spelling with their Waldorf curriculum, or we’re also using formal math curriculum took me a second to kind of catch on to that. we did end up folding in logic of English for reading and

We did some Singapore math and eventually some Beast Academy and Math Mammoth. Actually, we’ve done a lot of different math curricula, honestly, depending on the child. So we fold in some more traditional math to go with our traditional curricula to go with the Waldorf curriculum.

Della (28:07)
this took me a long time to catch up on too. then I did similar to what you did because we need to have daily language arts practice, daily math practice. foreign language is important to me. So we were doing what I call Waldorf block and then Charlotte Mason lessons. then I met Hana who I’m interviewing soon.

Tomika (28:18)
Great.

Nothing.

Della (28:33)
And

Tomika (28:33)
Okay.

Della (28:34)
she calls that daily work. in a Waldorf school, they have their main lesson block and then they have their daily work. So they’re still doing spelling, math, language arts, et cetera. and yeah, that took me a little while to catch on to too, but we definitely have our main lesson block. And then we have our daily work, which are short.

Tomika (28:41)
Braids. Braids.

Great.

Yeah.

Right.

Della (28:57)
Charlotte Mason style lessons five to seven minutes with some practice.

Tomika (29:00)
Ready.

think that’s exactly what we ended up kind of doing. So for instance, we do a little bit that Waldorf of math. So for instance, for second grade, we do a story the folk tales type stories in the second grade.

we do our little folktale story, do something little hands on, but then he’d have just a worksheet of problems from math mammoth. I felt some of these more straightforward were really good for that daily practice. My youngest child, started interning school at the same time, math with confidence.

on the scene and I actually really loved that curriculum for him and that was also very easy to add in with Waldorf. Although I would say he’s the least Waldorf-y of them all. And at this point he is in the fifth grade. We have basically dropped Waldorf for him. Yeah.

Della (29:52)
Yeah.

So tell me what did your middle school schedule look And you’re oldest now and 17 so she’s been high school.

Tomika (30:01)
My, yeah, she’s in high school.

She’s doing dual enrollment. she is fairly independent from me. unfortunately, I would say schoolwork ends up being online. So she’s doing Mr. D for math. that is a lecture that’s online. There’s some homework that goes with it.

and then she’s in charge of actually grading that herself. For science, she’s doing human nutrition at the local community college, and that is a asynchronous online class. it’s really involved. My husband who teaches chemistry at our local university, he’s , this class is not first year freshman class.

that has been a challenge for She likes it and she’s doing well. She’s getting an A. But she’s really dipping her toes into what a college class could look . we’re using a little bit of Students of History, which is a curriculum created by a school teacher,

in the public schools. he has lectures online, he has worksheets. then we can match that with reading we’re pulling from different places, but she’s fairly independent. she’ll be doing her English for this year through dual enrollment also.

then for my middle schooler, he is more independent than my oldest was. for math, he’s using math without borders for algebra. we are doing earth science together. for his English language arts, it’s a mix of doing brave writer. He’s doing sentence diagramming using

the critical thinking companies? then also we do a little bit more writing with grammar using Eben Moore. And I never thought that I’d be somebody who’s buying workbooks, but they have definitely come in handy. then we have a co-op. Our co-op has changed.

through the years because the kids in the co-op have gotten older. once the pandemic hit, our co-op went from being an all in person co-op, although I was not in the school at that time, to being online. the way our co-op had functioned for a while was that even post pandemic. We meet for a Zoom class on Fridays. They’d have a rotating schedule.

different people teaching, and then after lunch we’d all meet somewhere in person for a field trip.

My eighth grader…

He’s been talking about going to MIT since he was in the seventh grade. Yeah. So we’ll see. Yeah, I know. Like, okay, no pressure there, right? So for him, it’s , okay, well, if that’s what you want to do, I have to be really real with him. you need to be very on top of things for everything, and then it’s , we need to start talking about what are you doing outside of homeschool?

Della (32:23)
Impressive. Good luck, mama.

Right.

Tomika (32:45)
Right.

my husband’s yeah, he kind scares me a little bit because are we gonna give, are we gonna be able to give him enough of what he needs to get to where he wants to go? You know, it’s, that’s a little-

Della (32:47)
you

I think you can. have

full faith. I’ve seen what you’ve done. just if you don’t know already, You can do dual enrollment in a university and not just a community college, which I did not realize. There are all kinds of free classes. MIT has free college courses online. There are lots of different resources for children.

Tomika (32:58)
you

Yeah.

Bryce.

Yes.

Right. Yeah, we

started, we definitely started looking at some of those. as we’re trying to plan out what he’s going to do for high school and thinking about

getting him an opportunity to do research. Like, at the local university.

Della (33:24)
That’s a great idea. Make

sure he does math through calculus. Yeah.

Tomika (33:30)
Yeah, of course. Yeah.

I think that the curriculum that I’ve picked for him to do for math will set him up really well. Like my husband says, he’s not super impressed with the math that most students are coming to college with at the moment. doesn’t matter where they’re going to school.

My daughter, doesn’t seem as burned out from school kids going into college are.

Della (33:51)
Yes, we have had the same experience and because of that and because our philosophy in our house and I think most homeschoolers house is mastery, not how hard can we push, how fast can we go. We have taken our dual enrollment classes slower.

Tomika (33:51)
Yeah.

Right.

Della (34:11)
And he’s been more serious than a lot of students in the class. He’s actually doing the reading. I was surprised to find out a lot of college kids are not doing the reading.

Tomika (34:21)
Right.

Della (34:26)
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Della (37:39)
Let’s talk about math curricula. You know, I had a hard time deciding what kind of algebra that we were going to do. feel especially if your child is college bound, a lot of the homeschool curricula, some of the homeschool curricula, particularly for algebra is not enough.

Tomika (37:52)
Mm-hmm.

Della (37:55)
we used Math U See with my son and I supplemented because it simply is not enough and leaves out quite a bit in the textbook on the flip side for my daughter. You’re going to laugh. I picked up the art of problem solving, which if anyone listening doesn’t know is very challenging.

Tomika (37:55)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Great.

Della (38:18)
I was seeing some college algebra in there. and so I’m , this is too much. mean, I love math, but my children are not going into math. we’ve dropped that and I’m looking for something that had enough practice, but not as

much practice. I feel the art of problem solving went too fast. You didn’t have enough practice for the problems that they did and were too complex. there needs to be more baby steps for most students. in the other side, there’s not enough that’s gone over the art of problem solving didn’t have much on the Cartesian plane.

Tomika (38:42)
rates.

you.

Della (39:00)
and coordinates, but Math U See didn’t have enough of algebraic manipulation. And I’m back to teaching and we’re using Making Math Meaningful, it’s a workbook for practice, which I feel is just spot on for practice. But Making Math Meaningful is a resource, it’s not a curricula.

Tomika (39:00)
Right.

Okay.

right now.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Right,

For algebra, found I math without borders.

Della (39:30)
Mm-hmm.

Tomika (39:30)
And it it uses Prentice Hall Classics algebra.

It very much felt an algebra class kind of similar to what I took when I was in high school. I felt hearing feedback from my husband about how math is going for his students. At first I was is that really a good thing to say? it’s math when I in school 20 years ago. kids are coming unprepared

Della (39:44)
right?

Tomika (39:53)
university to do math in a basic general chemistry class then this is fine. I mean I got a minor in math right so yeah I did. I’m minor in math. really?

Della (40:02)
did not know that you minored in math. I minored in chemistry. My major is biology,

specifically marine biology, and I minored in chemistry. And I had had most of my math in high school. did in my college class.

Tomika (40:08)
Right.

Right, right. No,

for chemistry, you have to take a lot of math. I took math through calculus in high school. And then when I got to university, the scholarship program that I was in, they required us to take calculus again, no matter what you did in the summer before college. for chemistry at the time, we were required to take through differential equations.

Della (40:35)
Okay.

Tomika (40:36)
so it turns out in order to get a minor, you only need two other classes. of math. So I had so much math already. I was , okay, yeah, sure. Throw in some statistics, which is weird that it’s not required. And, a geometry class, an advanced geometry class. It is weird. It was not. I mean, I, I do feel , yes, that definitely makes sense for biology, especially marine biology.

Della (40:41)
because you’ve had so much math already.

That is weird. It definitely was required for my degree.

Tomika (41:03)
But it is also weird that for chemistry, we weren’t required to take a statistics class. yeah, so just threw in two other classes and ended up taking that. OK, so back with Math Without Borders is the curriculum that my middle child is using for algebra. it’s independent mostly for him.

he basically gives a little lecture. My son, takes notes during the lecture. And then gives you a problem set to do.

Della (41:28)
Does it ever do interleaving? it bring those things back up and mix in a variety of problems so there’s some assessment?

Tomika (41:35)
years.

There is a little bit, because it’s a traditional algebra textbook, there are some, at the end of every chapter a word problems section. And so some of those you’ll get some things from before. Like, first all, you’re talking about the Cartesian coordinates. My son did that in chapter seven.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve not seen him do that again,

Della (41:58)
And how does it do with application? Because one of the things I hear a lot from a lot of adults are , I don’t know why we had algebra. We should have had personal. Finance. I never use algebra. And I feel that’s a false dichotomy. Yes, we need to be teaching personal finance, but I also think that those adults either don’t realize how often they’re using algebra. Any formula is algebra. And second,

Tomika (42:17)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Della (42:26)
If you’re not using algebra, then you probably weren’t taught its application and you’re missing out because it makes it so easy. I had to make a 70 % solution from a 90 % solution for isopropyl alcohol for a project that we were doing and I used algebra. I mean, you can get there in other ways, but algebra is so easy.

Tomika (42:36)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah. I think that this, I said, the end of each chapter is word problems. And I feel here the word problems are pretty applied. Like you can see them in real life. I should ask my son if he’s noticing that they’re real life problems.

If somebody didn’t want to use this curriculum and they wanted to see more applied problems, I believe that Math Mammoth actually has some books that are just applied math concepts.

Della (43:19)
well, and also physics. My son in middle school gave me a lot of resistance. When am I going to use this? This is not applicable. I don’t need to learn this because I’m never going to use it. And so for his eighth grade year, all of his math was applied physics. Yeah.

Tomika (43:22)
Right.

to read.

Great.

Okay, nice.

Yeah, this instructor on Math without Borders, actually has a physics curriculum too. And I think that one though, it’s for high school

for middle school, science, we did a lot of kind of in a Charlotte Mason way, a lot of reading of popular science books to see how some of those things apply. there’s so many great books out there, people who are very passionate about subject,

Della (44:08)
want to talk about that. Let’s talk about math curricula in the early years and then let’s talk about how we teach science. So me what you used math curricula in the early years.

Tomika (44:19)
math curricula for the early years, did for K through I’d say maybe fourth grade for my older two, did a mix Waldorf and math mammoth. I would just look at what the chapter was for math mammoth. And then I think about , okay, what Waldorf stories, artwork go with that?

we have a story, we do some of the art maybe, maybe we’d make our own manipulatives. then we pull out the Math Mammoth book and they do the paperwork, For my youngest,

We did a lot. actually used your quality of numbers.

Della (44:59)
quality of numbers. I love,

love, love that block

Tomika (45:05)
And so we did quality of numbers with math with confidence a little bit.

Della (45:09)
We did quality

and numbers for all of her first grade year. I started it as a block and I was , this is so amazing for anybody that doesn’t know quality of numbers is the opening block for a Waldorf style introduction to mathematics. it’s very hands on lots of movement, lots of art, and it is a study of numbers. So usually in mathematics.

Tomika (45:15)
Right. Uh huh. Right.

news.

Della (45:36)
your top mathematical concepts at a time. You’re focusing in on multiplication or fractions, but for quality of numbers, it is the study of numbers. that block was so much fun when we started. It was just , we’re going to do it all year round.

Tomika (45:54)
Yeah, we definitely, I would say we use that for a good part of the year. I definitely pulled different activities and concepts and for the good portion of first grade,

Della (46:08)
What else did you

use? Did you mostly use math mammoth Was that your main curriculum?

Tomika (46:14)
yeah, we

use mostly use math now with my daughter. We tried Singapore math a little bit.

Della (46:19)
How did those compare?

Tomika (46:20)
Singapore Math, comes with a home instruction guide it almost compares with math with confidence little bit more where it has activities that you do a hands-on portion and then it has a workbook that goes with it. Math Mammoth is almost written to the child.

And I think for if you’re not doing Woldorf with it, a lot of people would read a little bit of the instructions and then the kids do of the problems. Although one thing I didn’t realize when we first started Math Mammoth is woman who wrote the curriculum, she suggests that you don’t do all the problems. I did not catch that at first. my daughter was this is so much.

And later I was going back through the introduction and somewhere I had missed that she said, you don’t need to do all the problems. fun.

Della (47:08)
I think

most curricula will give you more than what you need, and you need to pick and choose what’s applicable for your family.

Tomika (47:12)
Yes.

Right.

Right. Yeah.

Della (47:17)
is that more workbooky or is that more hands-on lab kind of math?

Tomika (47:22)
I think it depends on how you use it. in the early years, it’s intended to be more hands-on. I want to say that there’s different types of Singapore math. Like there may be two or three different workbooks. don’t know. But the one that we got, came with the Home Instructor’s Guide. And so the Home Instructor’s Guide, kind of similar with Math with Confidence, it teaches you how to introduce the concept.

to your it tells you bring out these manipulatives, have them, move things around. whereas I feel Math Mammoth was mostly just workbook-y, it was really great for my second child, because I already felt confident with.

doing the hands-on things and I felt it gave us a little bit more space for the Waldorf stuff. Whereas if you’re following the Singapore for instance sometimes it’s it’s too much I’m trying to do the story and make little clay manipulatives and also do the things that this part that this curriculum says I’m supposed to be doing and then the work so sometimes having a more streamlined

curriculum works if you feel confident in doing the other stuff yourself.

Della (48:22)
Right.

we used Miquon when my son was little and that is supposed to definitely be lab, math lab. I Gattegno’s work. It, he is a heavy influence in my guides and he uses

Tomika (48:32)
Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

Della (48:42)
Cuisinaire rods and they are by far my very favorite math manipulative because they are so versatile in the math that they can exhibit and it makes abstract things concrete. But if you’re doing the Miquon workbooks, you’re using those, it’s so easy to fall into just doing the workbook and not the lab.

Tomika (48:44)
Right.

Right.

magic.

Right.

Right.

Della (49:05)
And I think for beginners,

Tomika (49:05)
Right.

Della (49:06)
in the beginning, they have a very thick manual that goes over how someone used it as a lab for several years, or maybe it’s kindergarten first and second, but it’s really thick. It’s really dense to read through. that’s hard for a beginning homeschooler with a bunch of small children.

Tomika (49:12)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Della (49:28)
that’s one of the reasons that I wrote my math guides is because I love Jamie York’s making math meaningful, but they’re written assuming that you know math and they’re written assuming that you have some kind of Waldorf teacher training.

Tomika (49:33)
Mm-hmm.

And.

Della (49:44)
a lot of people were having difficulty from the concepts listed in the resource book and making that happen in fruition. So I wrote out lessons, guides, this is how you can do this.

Tomika (49:53)
Great.

Yes,

I think it’s really nice for the younger years especially, curriculum that’s written for homeschoolers, by homeschoolers who are knowledgeable. Because I feel with the Singapore Math they did have that home instruction manual, but I don’t know who that was written Do

I have found early on. I use a lot of information from Carrie from parenting passageway. Yeah, Hana yeah, then Jean from Waldorf inspired homeschooling. I actually took some.

Della (50:18)
I don’t know her.

with Pepper and Pine.

Tomika (50:29)
classes with her to talk about she does planning classes for Waldorf, which is really nice. she goes over what are the concepts you’re supposed to be learning. she also homeschooled her kids I think she had three also through graduating. it actually met her in person. She came and did a workshop for the Waldorf Homeschoolers here in our area.

Della (50:35)
Nice.

That’s

awesome, what a treat.

Tomika (50:51)
And

yeah, so that was really nice. she’s very helpful to kind of getting that back end. it’s interesting, with especially the Waldorf homeschooling that everybody wants to do what the Waldorf schools are doing. one of the philosophies of the Waldorf school is to make a school that’s like home.

they’re trying to imitate what you’re doing and you’re trying to imitate what they’re doing. And it’s just , you already have it at home. one thing I really appreciate Jean saying the very first Waldorf school when it was created, it was created after a war. Germany was completely decimated. The people coming in, they weren’t even really teachers. They just had the concepts. playground was in the rubble,

this doesn’t have to be perfect. the idea is not that you’re following this curriculum that was written by some person decades ago, That the idea is that you’re looking at the child in front of you and the world that you’re in you’re trying to

offer to them, what they need.

Della (51:48)
what they need,

what they need for the time, the place, and the development that they are at that time.

Tomika (51:56)
Right.

Right,

yes, it’s not about , I’m gonna do exactly what they did at the first Waldorf school or with Charlotte Mason. We’re gonna read all these old classics that people read in the early, the late 19th century, the early 20th century, no, we’re gonna look at the child in front of us in the world around us and try to give the education that they need for who they are.

and where they live now.

Della (52:23)
That’s actually beautiful.

let’s go back to science and talk about the Charlotte Mason style living books for science that you were talking about. There are so many available now.

Tomika (52:36)
There are

so many. So in the very early years, elementary school years, we started with a lot of picture books. There are so many great science-focused picture books. first and second grade were a lot of being outside too.

being out in nature observing what is happening. You could really learn a lot that way. when I was in undergrad, I did a summer research experience at Clemson University. woman who I was doing research under was a educator, her research was in science education. she was trying to write a

first year chemistry curriculum for non-science majors that was almost completely based about water going outside, the pH of water, how does water freeze, how does water melt, that kind of stuck in my head , you could just learn so much science just from observing the world around you.

Della (53:28)
Right.

There’s also citizen science that you can participate in. There’s so many of them, the Monarch Tagging, the Audubon. bird count. we participated one that was taking counts of different

tadpole species in ephemeral ponds. That was a lot of fun. Yeah.

Tomika (53:46)
Nice.

Right. We’ve done the backyard bird count, we try to make use especially in the younger years of all the places that are around us. we’re here by Niagara Falls, and, there’s lots of tours going on and, we have a local science museum.

Our science Museum has a partnership they also have area, that’s somewhere else that they host tours, walking tours. we learn so much just learning, observing the seasons, your phonology will.

Della (54:19)
Right.

Tomika (54:20)
seeing the changes of what’s happening around us. then as we got into middle school, we started reading popular science books. storm in a teacup for physics, right? Or disappearing spoons, , yeah, what’s the one that’s,

Della (54:31)
and disappearing spoon, genie and bottle.

Tomika (54:39)
The Neil deGrasse Tyson book. Astrophysics. We read the young people’s one, the Astrophysics for Young People book.

Della (54:46)
Joy

Hakim has a wonderful series that’s at middle school. Yes. And she, she really has a beautiful narrative style of writing. It is talked full of information. Ironically, it covers chemistry, mathematics, physics. It covers the physical sciences. There’s nothing in it about the biological sciences.

Tomika (54:50)
the story of science. that? Yeah.

Right.

Right, and not, not, right.

We tried Song of the Cell.

Della (55:13)
I haven’t heard of that one, was it good?

Tomika (55:15)
Yeah, it was good. It was thick; definitely for high schoolers. I don’t have a young people’s version of that yet. Yeah, no, you know what’s really interesting? We haven’t done a lot.

living science books for biology. A lot. Yeah, go ahead.

Della (55:29)
young has,

I don’t remember the title, but I will definitely put it in the podcast notes, but it’s a new book on animals and the senses that is fascinating. It is absolutely fascinating. Definitely adult high school level, but a wonderful book.

Tomika (55:40)
Okay.

Right.

the Storm in the Teacup that we read, That was written for the audience intended to be adults. The Disappearing Spoon, they have a young reader’s edition. read one called Furry Logic. it was okay. But that one was fascinating because it was about how animals use physics.

Della (56:07)
interesting. We read another adult book that was a living book called What the Robin Knows and it was written by a tracker, which was fascinating. he was saying what you can deduce around you by watching the birds. Also, another biological one was The Hidden Life of Trees I will never feel the same way about plants again.

Tomika (56:08)
Yeah.

Right.

yes. Right.

my daughter read Braiding Seatgrass, the young. Yeah, so guess that’s not true that we didn’t have biological sizes, but yeah. Right.

Della (56:34)
Yeah, that’s an excellent one.

that’s an excellent one as well. So

and I just want to say this doesn’t take the place of formal science education, this is in addition to

Tomika (56:47)
No,

in addition to, something that I’ve noticed in the homeschool community is a lot of the moms have a subject that’s their special interest my friends who are very into history, or some of them,

Della (56:57)
Mm-hmm.

Tomika (57:04)
don’t use a formal curricula. they have NPR always playing in the background in their house. they just constantly talk history. for our middle school I didn’t use a lot of formal curricula with the exception of the ACS, American Chemical Society’s middle school chemistry. I love that one.

Della (57:20)
Yes, I

Tomika (57:21)
we did in some ways use the living books and then go back either a textbook or an online resource to read about the concept more in depth. that was the time we start using more YouTube videos.

because for instance, in furry logic, author would actually reference that were done in academia and we could go look them up and then there would be videos those researchers or something related. And he’d be , oh, okay, I read what this was in the book and, we learned about the concept and then

there it is those are those those are the people and this is their seeing how their research is actually set up

Della (58:02)
we do the same thing for the biological sciences. I don’t really need a textbook. I love building foundations and scientific knowledge. It is heavy for the teacher-parent.

Tomika (58:06)
Right. Right.

Della (58:15)
you have to read pages and do preparation and various things is not easy. There is a science curricula based on that. I don’t know what it is, but people will ask me what science curricula did you use? I don’t need a science curricula. I do have a couple guides. We also did the same thing for chemistry. So I’m currently working on the, I had you check some of the chemistry for me.

Tomika (58:30)
Right? Right.

Right. Right.

Della (58:40)
and I have a botany guide and a tree guide, but yeah, we have also pulled from various sources and created our own science.

Tomika (58:49)
Right. Right. Yeah.

Whereas , you know, when I ask my friends who are authors, who are writers, what are you guys doing for English? They’re , I mean, we read books and my kids write, you know, so it’s pretty.

Della (59:04)
Right. And I’m confident

at English, but I would never rely on my own sources for English. I’m exactly, I’ve got to have something.

Tomika (59:08)
Right. Yes, but I wouldn’t exactly. Right. So I’m , no, I need something that’s a little more.

for science, we do kind of for the middle school age, we did kind of do it a little more flowy. because of both my husband and I are scientists, you know, our house.

Della (59:25)
Right. Same here.

Tomika (59:27)
Our house is full of science textbooks. We kind of gravitate to that naturally. My kids got science magazines. It’s always funny because my husband will be explaining some concept to my children. And they’ll be , oh yeah, and come

back to him with their knowledge and he’s wait, where’d you learn? Did mommy teach you that? Like, where’d you learn that? They’re no, I read that in a magazine.

Della (59:52)
What has been your greatest challenge in homeschooling?

Tomika (59:56)
I mean, honestly, I think my greatest challenge would just be confident in what I’m I have a bad habit of looking what it’s next. what else is happening out there? just feeling with the world, what’s happening out in the world now, we’re in this.

putting the political stuff aside, AI is coming, universities are not being funded. It’s just wait, is what am I doing for homeschooling? Like, is this going to be enough for the way that the world is changing? I would say that probably actually is my greatest challenge is

feeling confident in what I’m doing.

Della (1:00:32)
Yeah, that’s

a good sign of a homeschooler. It shows their investment in their children’s community and the insightfulness and reflection that you really need to have a good education. And also, I feel like it’s a common universal experience.

Tomika (1:00:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yes. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it’s all on us. when your child is going through school, you could say they didn’t have a really good teacher that year. so they’re they’re missing out,

No, that was me. Yeah, that was me that year. I mean, I try to keep in mind, I said, because I was a military brat, I definitely had holes in my education growing up. I mean, that’s just because, I graduated from a school in Virginia. I never had Virginia State history. because I was not in school when I did not live in that state when when that happened and

not always going from different schools, they don’t always line up with what they’re teaching. do try to keep in mind one, , hey, you went to public schools and private schools, and had holes in your education. there’s no possible way you’re going to graduate a kid anywhere, K through 12, that’s going to know all the things be a hundred percent

Della (1:01:24)
Right.

Tomika (1:01:42)
ready for There’s always going to be something that they’re going to need to learn. so I do try to keep that in mind. And then my husband always tries to tell me, yes, they’re doing fine.

Della (1:01:53)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, there definitely

is always going to be gaps, always. And not that we shouldn’t have some kind of standard, not that we shouldn’t try to meet that standard, that there’s always going to be gaps.

Tomika (1:01:58)
Great.

Right. Right.

Right but it’s I know there’s gonna be gaps. Yes and you said that we shouldn’t lower standards because of that but also maybe that can give me a little

allow me to not stress too much about it. yeah. Right.

Della (1:02:19)
It gives you a little grace. Yeah. And well,

the other thing that I want people to know is that as you’re going along, a lot of the times when you hit a block and you see a gap, that’s your opportunity to fill it. you will have opportunity to fill a lot of gaps. And I think everybody comes out of their education thinking that

Tomika (1:02:36)
bright bright bright

Della (1:02:45)
there are gaps.

Tomika (1:02:46)
it’s funny because even just for parenting, I always keep in mind, we’re here on our own because my family and my husband’s family, they live in a different state or different country. so I do.

tell my children, I tell my oldest, even just as a person, you’re being raised mostly by two people. Two people can’t possibly fulfill all the needs of one child. As a human species, we were to be in a much larger village. And even

They do have adults around them help a little bit with that. It’s not the same if we were in that village. That community, a more community type experience. And I have to think about the same with their education. There’s no possible way that

Della (1:03:28)
the community, right?

Tomika (1:03:39)
just me or even my husband and the little classes that we’re outsourcing here and there. There’s no way even those things are gonna give them every single possible thing that they could learn or need. And, but hopefully love learning and they do and they know how to learn. So when they see the gaps themselves,

Della (1:03:51)
Right?

Tomika (1:04:00)
know how to go look for resources to fill those in.

Della (1:04:05)
It’s really important to not only teach children, but to facilitate them knowing how to teach themselves how to learn. And hopefully we’re all raising lifelong learners.

Tomika (1:04:18)
Yes.

Della (1:04:19)
Okay, last question for today. What most surprised you about homeschooling?

Tomika (1:04:25)
I think maybe for me it was how much there is available my community or region that could help aid in homeschooling. There’s just so much available that you could really never be home.

There’s so many people who are willing to help. I don’t know if that’s partially something that has developed after the pandemic. But there’s so many people who are supportive of homeschooling in a way that I wasn’t really expecting. who are willing to help out and sometimes you get paid,

and people who are really excited to see us, to see the homeschoolers coming you want to learn about place that I work? to learn what I do? Sure, come I would I don’t really get a lot of negative feedback. And I think maybe I thought it was…

gonna be a little more, taboo or whatever to be over homeschoolers. But people are just , oh yeah, that makes sense. Good for you.

Della (1:05:24)
Yeah, I think in this day and age, the real challenge is not what it was in several generations back for homeschooling. Several generations back, there were only a few things available. You were criticized if you were out and about during school hours or at least questioned, and they really clung close together. Now, the challenge is there is an

Tomika (1:05:44)
Thank you.

Mm hmm.

Della (1:05:51)
overwhelming amount available to homeschoolers, overwhelming amount of curricular choices, resource choices, programs, classes, after school activities, or extracurricular activities. you can’t do it all. You just cannot. And so you really have to guard your time for academics, particularly in the middle school, high school times. And

Tomika (1:05:54)
Yes, it is.

No. Right. Yes.

years.

Della (1:06:18)
You have to pick and choose. You can possibly do things seasonally, we’ll do horseback riding in the fall when it’s not really hot in the summer, and we’ll do music lessons in the summer when it’s really… You can pick and choose and do things seasonally, but you just simply can’t do it all at the same time.

Tomika (1:06:20)
Right.

Thank

No,

I think especially, you said, as the kids get older, time to really start focusing on what, at least for us, that’s how we approach this. It’s , it’s time to start focusing on what you need for the next step. Like we do still want you to enjoy your education, but also…

Like we may not have time for all the extracurriculars if you’re taking a really hard dual enrollment class this semester, then also starting to think about what are ways that you can get experiences in the things that you want to be doing for college or as a career after college.

Della (1:07:14)
Let’s

talk about that for just a second. There is a great book, Jake Boles believe, I think the title is College Without High School, but I could have that wrong. But it is basically talking about facilitating the same kind of theme that we did in our early years with education, but doing so in a way that preps us for

college or trade or whatever your next step is. And you’re talking about experience in different fields. I want people to know what opportunities are available.

Tomika (1:07:43)
Right.

I can only really talk about what is, one is here and two, what my kids are interested in. my oldest, she has really loved art and she loves thinking about public transportation and urban planning So maybe the

thing that makes the most sense is to do art classes outside of our homeschool which she does. And then through that we were able to have her join an art program where she gets to not only take classes but they also bring in local artists to give workshops the

kids who are in that program, workshops on their art. They also coordinated their own art show. They put together a panel having artists who work in the health industry. people who do medical illustration, things like that come in and have a panel to discuss with kids who are interested in

place where art and science meet as a career. So there’s some of these opportunities that are all already set out there. Also we have

organizations that do tours around the city. she’s also looking at maybe volunteering to do one of these architecture history tours for her, at her age, she’s not going to be giving the tour, volunteering in some capacity. Our local university has summer we’ve applied to those. We’ll see if that comes through for the summer.

where she would get to actually work with architects at the university and then also learn about architecture of the city. And then for my middle schooler, feel because science is where my husband and I, that was our careers we have a much better handle on that. So for my…

Middle schooler, know that he can do research at the local university. we just have to find a professor who does research in an area that he’s interested in who would be to take them on. And then our local university has tons of outreach to try to get sciences and engineering out into the community. He does a robotics program that is

located at the university. as we go, being curious, , what’s out there? So for my daughter, that was a little bit more out of my wheelhouse, luckily we have the Internet and I could just look for my city name and subjects of things that she’s interested in and kind of

keeping updated on what’s happening in my city. So for instance, there’s going to be an urban planning, conference, talks open up to the community We can go there and then we learn about what people are doing around us, what opportunities there are to volunteer.

if there is some political activism that’s happening related to what she wants to do, we can work with this group, and volunteer. then same for my son, was going to engineering. I just try to keep updated on what’s going on around me. then it becomes easier to find opportunities.

as you start just going to things and find out who’s doing what around you. And most people are really very excited to see young people interested in what they’re doing. So if they can’t necessarily bring your child on to what they’re doing, they most likely know somebody who could they who they could point you to. this person who has

program that your child can start getting into or this person might be open to having your kid come do research with them.

Della (1:11:26)
We did a very similar thing with my son whose interest was photography, as you know, and we tapped in in similar ways. joined wildlife photography or nature photography groups and I set up sessions for him to shoot with different.

Tomika (1:11:32)
Mm-hmm.

No.

Della (1:11:44)
nature photographers in our area. They were happy to have a young person that was interested in photography go with them. That opened up other opportunities. I took him to photographic workshops and in the end we have filmed with some amazing photographers because of that. David Moynahan who has work in the Smithsonian

Tomika (1:11:50)
Great.

mean, you know.

Della (1:12:10)
John Spore, who is famous for Florida, and another one, John Moran, that did the Springs photography. also worked with David and even a National Geographic photographer, Joel Satori, had come down locally to our aquarium for his photo arc and my son spent two days.

volunteering and shooting with him, which is interesting because one of the resources that I used for his photography education was from the great courses and it was all Joel Sartori’s lecture. And when I said he’s watched every single one of your lectures, he was like, really? They’re so boring. He watched all of them. I was over and over again. He’s watched your lectures and

Tomika (1:12:47)
No.

huh.

Yeah.

Della (1:13:03)
I think the idea is to do what you’re talking about, put your foot in, join groups, look for opportunities in doing so. Photography is a really expensive hobby. The good cameras, the DSLRs are well out of my price range. what we did to facilitate that is that our area has a large artist.

Tomika (1:13:17)
Yeah.

Thank you.

Della (1:13:29)
venue each year of arts and crafts people craftsman people and they have a children’s tent available and so he would sell his photography to pay for better photography equipment and that’s how we funded it. For my daughter it’s the same thing when she was young I told you she was really interested in animals.

Tomika (1:13:31)
Thank

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

this week.

Della (1:13:54)
And I knew we had to direct that energy when one time she brought me a baby squirrel that she had climbed up into a tree to see the squirrel nest and found a baby squirrel and brought me a baby squirrel. And I was , go put it back in the nest. And we need to do something. We need to direct this energy. And so we found.

Tomika (1:14:06)
no!

Right. Right.

Della (1:14:19)
a local wildlife rehabilitation center that she was eight when that happened that initially we went together one day a week and volunteered for an hour at that facility. The facility owner and her daughter really made a connection and that’s a beautiful thing about homeschooling the community connections and now she

Tomika (1:14:23)
Mm-hmm.

you

Della (1:14:43)
volunteers three hours, two days a week, and it’s a drop-off pickup situation. And she has learned so much from that experience.

Tomika (1:14:51)
Mm-hmm.

Nice.

Della (1:14:53)
Yeah.

Tomika (1:14:54)
Yeah.

Della (1:14:54)
We

did cover a lot, but it was really nice.

Tomika (1:14:59)
Yes, I agree.

Della (1:15:02)
Well,

so much for joining me today, Tomika, I really enjoyed our conversation. Is there any place that you are online that people can find you?

Tomika (1:15:06)
I enjoyed it too.

Yeah, people can find me on Instagram at TamikaRCV and just know that I’m not there very often. trying to break up with Metta, but I do try to check in every now and again.

Della (1:15:23)
Okay, I’ll

put those in the podcast show notes and thank you.

Tomika (1:15:27)
That’s all. Nice. Thank you.