Hana is deeply passionate about homeschooling and has been cultivating a rich, nurturing learning environment for her children since 2003. Drawing from her own strengths and creativity, she’s built a sustainable and inspiring homeschool journey rooted in a Waldorf-inspired, Islamic approach. Her work emphasizes the importance of lifelong learning—for both parent and child—and she encourages other homeschoolers to rediscover their own passions as a foundation for confident, joyful education.

With three grown sons and a 14-year-old daughter still learning at home, Hana brings years of experience and insight to her teaching. She is currently a teacher-in-training at the Waldorf School of Orange County and a skilled artist, knitter, and maker, sharing her talents to inspire and uplift fellow homeschooling families.

Based in California, Hana documents her homeschooling journey through her website https://pepperandpine.com and across social media platforms, where you can find her under @pepperandpine on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and TikTok.

Show Chapters

00:00 Intro
01:10 Meet Hana
04:49 Homeschooling in California: Know Your Options
08:09 Their Path Through the System
16:25 High School Planning & Early Graduation
21:00 Why We Started Homeschooling
24:05 Life Before Homeschooling
27:44 Teaching Through Your Temperament
34:40 Teaching Multiple Ages in Waldorf
46:06 Building a Waldorf Block
58:45 Teaching the Whole Child
01:03:45 History & the Age of Exploration
01:10:53 Greatest Challenge in Homeschooling
01:12:37 Biggest Surprise: Less Is More
01:17:52 Closing

Waldorf Schools Rotation of Blocks for K-8th

from Jamie York

from The Art of Homeschooling

Waldorf Teacher Training

Adult Education

The Beauty of Play’s Botany Guide

Handwork from Hana

https://pepperandpine.com/handwork

Waldorfish Art Program

https://waldorfish.com

Charlotte Mason Narration

Drawing and Painting in Waldorf Schools

Transcript

Hana (00:00)
But let me tell you, when it was right for them to be on their own, my heart was so at ease.

I just felt like it was right. I didn’t have to go through that stress and my child didn’t have to go through that stress and they do get over it and we do get over it. I just wasn’t prepared for

I think my greatest, this is like really kind of silly, but I think my greatest challenge in homeschooling is me. I am the greatest challenge.

We almost do botany every year, even though it’s only called for once. it’s in fifth grade curriculum, but we are either in the garden or we’re planting something or we’re cooking. That’s, part of botany in some way.

Della (00:27)
Yeah.

Hana (00:41)
Or you have an older student who’s in high school and botany is entirely different because it’s more like biology at that point potentially. I feel like that’s something that very easily could appeal to so many different ages.

it’s that adolescent years that I’m like, wow, there is…

as much going on in those years and as much care in the curriculum for those students as there has been in the previous seven years.

Della (01:10)
This week we’re meeting Hana. Many of you probably already know Hana from her YouTube channel and her website, Pepper and Pine. Hana is deeply passionate about homeschooling and has been cultivating a rich, nurturing learning environment for her children since 2003. Drawing from her own strength and creativity, she’s built a sustainable and inspiring homeschool journey rooted

in Waldorf-inspired Islamic approach. Her work emphasizes the importance of lifelong learning for both parent and child, and she encourages other homeschoolers to rediscover their own passions as a foundation for confident, joyful education. With three grown sons and a 14-year-old daughter still learning at home, Hana brings years of experience and insight to her teaching.

She is currently in a teacher training program at the Waldorf School of Orange County and a skilled artist, knitter, and maker sharing her talents to inspire and uplift her fellow homeschool families. Based in California, Henna documents her homeschooling journey through her website, Pepper and Pine, and across social media platforms where you can find her under Pepper and Pine on YouTube, Instagram,

Facebook, Threads, and TikTok.

Della (02:40)
This is a homeschool journey.

Della (03:42)
Hi Hana welcome. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Hana (03:47)
Hi Della, thank you for having me. I’m very excited about this.

Della (03:50)
I am too. I realize we’ve talked about a lot of different things over the years, but I don’t know any of the answers to the questions that I’m asking you today.

Hana (04:02)
Very exciting. And yes, we have talked so much over the years. what’s really fabulous about that is that having this opportunity to connect with you and other like-minded individuals is such a gift now that I know I didn’t have when I first started out. So I’m especially loving this. And I really, it’s close to my heart to do this and give back to others.

Della (04:26)
I agree. I think each person experience and differences really provides a wealth of information to other people. Well, let’s start out with what state you’re in and the requirements for homeschooling in your state.

Hana (04:45)
Yeah, it’s a good question. And it’s quite varied state to state. I’m in California, and I’ve only homeschooled in California. we have two types of schooling available, and that is the public school route or the private school route.

within the public school and the private school route, there are on-site and off-site choices.

you have offsite options. an offsite option for a private school might be say, a private tutor, like maybe you are a professional athlete or an actor or a musician, then you might choose that option if you’re still in school and you need to.

complete your courses, then you might have a tutor or some kind of private school that offers off-site instruction. And then within that off-site instruction, you might find schools that say, hey, listen, we know that you want to do your own thing, so we will file the paperwork for you. Just give us a small fee, maybe $1 to $300 a year, and we’ll file all the paperwork for you. And then you can just kind of go do your own thing.

And then even within that, you might find schools that are specifically catering to the homeschool family. And they might say, well, listen, give us a few hundred dollars and you can have access to like, say, our library or we’ll organize field trips. And so that’s another option within the private school option. You’re still paying for this. But you can also say, you know what, I don’t really need those kinds of services and I feel pretty confident in finding my own paperwork.

So you can just go directly to the website And then you can file your own paperwork and you can become a school of one family with.

as little as one teacher and one student, or you can have more students. And now the laws are changing all the time. So you have to make sure that you check on the updated laws. But I remember a time when I learned about this, where you could have a home school with more than five students, for instance. Let’s just say you have more than five children. And then those schools end up becoming part of public record. So just letting you know that you might get a call one day for

someone saying, hey, can I join your school? And it’s really just a home school. So that’s all part of the private school route. What’s really great about California is that you have a lot of public school option choices for homeschooling as well. So this would be the offsite choices through the public school system. And in that, you might have a charter school, you might have your county school, you might have your district school. So each of those options are going to be free.

They’re going to provide books and services. And in some cases, like the charter school we were a part of, they’ll actually provide funding.

These different institutions will offer a variety of things, but it’s all free. And in some cases, you might even be provided your own materials or access to those libraries or access to field trips or access literally to funding, not cash, but funding that you can use in order to buy curriculum or attend classes.

So the lot of options within California, you just have to know what’s going to be best for you because each one has its benefits and its challenges.

Della (08:04)
which one did you choose?

Hana (08:07)
We chose a variety of them. We started out with, I think, our district when we first started homeschooling. I didn’t know very much, and I did something similar to what my mom did. I thought I went to my district and said, we want to homeschool. they said, no problem. We were enrolled in that school. And we met with a teacher, and she gave us a big stack of books that were a lot of teacher-made. This is in kindergarten, so for my five-year-old.

big stack of teacher manuals and some workbooks and we even had access to manipulatives and everything. we were required to do the work that other five year olds would be doing in our district. I realized I really wanted to do my own thing, my own Waldorf thing, and this wasn’t working out and I would do.

like one entire week dedicated to all of the work that they would give us. And I’d get those worksheets done and then I’d spend the other three weeks doing our Waldorf inspired work. And it was not working out because at least in kindergarten, those two methods are so different. We just were not vibing. So then the following year decided to go to the county and this was what my mom had done so that I was a little more familiar with this. So within the county, this will service all the students within that county, not just your local district.

Now this system was a lot more established. It had been there for many years. Had a lot of services, a lot of familiarity with the homeschool families and the homeschool mentality. So it was a little bit more, I want to say a little more flexible in some ways, but still this is a public school. You have teachers, you have requirements, you have textbooks, and they also wanted to see a lot more lesson planning than I was prepared to do. So this was, I believe, either half of grade

kindergarten or this was grade one. I believe we left midway grade one. I just can’t remember if we did a full year with the district or a full year with the county. It also didn’t work out because those two pedagogies, know, local public school and Waldorf, they just didn’t mix that well at that age. They do a little bit better later on. I had been going to homeschool conferences at this point, still when they were in person.

local homeschool groups were really active at the time. This is the early 2000s. Then I paid a private school to homeschool. So I paid a private school about $150. They filed all of my paperwork and they kind of just left me alone. I was like, this is perfect. And I was able to do exactly what I wanted, but there’s no support. And I’m paying for everything out of pocket. And as you know, Waldorf materials are very expensive.

And this is the year that I had a single paintbrush that we all shared because that single paintbrush cost $14. It’s just too much. So then we were with this. Yeah, we were with this school for a little bit and either around this time or at another time, because we’ve done this option much later as well. I thought, you know, I don’t really need this private school to file my own paperwork. I’m actually going to try it on my own. And we have the California

Della (10:57)
That’s a lot.

Hana (11:17)
homeschool network here, which is very supportive of independent homeschoolers and they have very clear directions on their website on how to file your own paperwork directly with the State Department of Education. So I tried it out and indeed it was so easy and I think the most exciting part that most people who do their own

PSA or they’re know filed directly with the state is to choose a name for their school, we got to choose our own name for our school, which was fabulous. And then you’re just accountable to the state. And I forgot to mention that when we were accountable to our private school, we were required to do either a grade or narrative report card and provide attendance. And those two things are also very important if you’re doing

the public school route, which our teachers would take care of. But it’s really important in all of this that you are following the laws because truancy a very serious issue and you don’t want your children to be truant. So in all of this, make sure that you check the laws for your state, even your county, if they happen to be different, make sure that you are enrolled properly. Whatever your state says is proper enrollment. And make sure that for us, we had to just provide

attendance and a report card, which I did a narrative report card in those early years, which I really wish I had continued because it was far more expansive than just saying you get an A. And honestly, I would have given my children A’s in all of their work because they’re showing up, they’re completing work, that’s an A for me. But doing a narrative report card means I’m sharing exactly what my children learned that year, maybe what their challenges were.

what books we covered, what games we played, what field trips we partook in. All of those things is for me far better and I really, really wish that I’d continue that but I didn’t. at this point I’m probably homeschooling two children and my oldest is maybe third or fourth grade and a friend of mine says, hey I’m joining this charter school and I want to

choose some Waldorf materials? Can you help me choose some Waldorf materials? Here are the vendors. Here’s how much money I have.” I said, sure. So I went to those vendors, looked at her budget, and I just started filling the cart with all of these things. And I thought, wait a minute, why don’t I do this? Like, this sounds amazing. So then we went through the charter school system. We were given a certain amount of funding. We were able to buy all of the materials that we needed and

that’s when our homeschool took the biggest shift in how we were able to use our materials and enjoy our time differently. It did take some time to get used to the charter school because you still have requirements, you still have attendance, and you still meet with your teacher once a month. that took a little while to get used to because we shifted thinking like, just need to provide enough to show this teacher that we’ve done work. And that shifted my…

aims and goals of homeschooling and I really did not like the way that felt. it’s paramount to teaching to the test. I was like I don’t like to just do work to show you we’ve done work. So I said you know that that’s her job. She knows the state standards. She will take our work and fit it into the state standards. That’s her skill set.

Della (14:29)
Mm.

Hana (14:44)
So I will utilize my time to do exactly what we want to do as far as homeschooling because it is learning all the time and focus on our Waldorf approach. And she very skillfully took our work and matched the state standards. And that’s another thing. When you are homeschooling in, I believe, first grade to eighth grade or kindergarten to eighth grade, any of the work you do has to match

any of the standards between first and eighth grade or kindergarten eighth grade. I can’t quite remember if kindergarten is included, which means that you could have a fifth grader doing first grade work and eighth grade work that same year and that counts as long as it meets one of those standards. Once you hit ninth grade, then it’s a drastic shift and then that work has to meet

the standards, I believe, either in the grade level that you’re in or between ninth and 12th grade. And of course, the credits and everything become very serious, making sure that you get enough time. And this is the most important thing is that your work represents high school rigor, not just that you did algebra, but that you did high school algebra because eighth grade and seventh grade algebra can look really different, especially from the Waldorf approach. So we’ve done a little bit of all of it. There are pros and cons to all of it.

But I do really appreciate the charter school system for its support, primarily financially.

Della (16:12)
did those requirements that you had in high school play a role in the choice that you had to graduate some of your children early and move to community college?

Hana (16:25)
Yeah, that’s a really great question. I imagine that this will be different state to state. But what is the same, not just in the US, but probably wherever you’re homeschooling, is that it’s really important that by ninth grade or really before ninth grade, in my opinion, if you want your children at all to go to university or college, that you really have an eight year plan for them by the time they enter ninth grade. Now,

I feel like before ninth grade, we’re really just building certain skills and really enjoying learning and having a love of learning and really exploring having just a magical time with education. For me, the shift was really puberty in ninth grade and ninth, 10th grade around that time. Because your grades in ninth grade and more specifically your GPA starting in 10th grade is going to affect your

your possibility of getting into university potentially. It’s really important that we understand that. So now while we had great flexibility and freedom up until eighth grade, since we knew that our children were almost definitely going to go to university, our high school approach was very different. University or college, it kind of depends, but we were looking at a four year degree rather than a two year associate degree. Now this is really

dependent on your child and your family and what your goals are. And for us, university was not an option unless there was a child of mine who was like, really want to do something different. they were really under our mentorship quite a bit at that point. We really guided them through those years. And there are good things and bad things about guiding with this level of guidance.

the choices we made to exit high school early.

and have them enrolled in community college. it’s important to know that your options for exiting high school early, at least in California, I don’t know how it is in other states, it’s not graduating high school. There are different tests that you can take, GED, and get other credits, but it’s not graduating high school, which means that if you are enrolled in a charter school,

or in a public school and you want to exit high school early, you’re likely not going to get the support from the school for you to do that because to the best of my knowledge and certainly things can change, it does look like a dropout rather than a graduation and that does not look good on the statistics for that school. Now I knew that we aren’t just going to drop out of high school and not complete university. So my children don’t have

the typical high school diploma. Now they have a certificate of completion of exiting being able to exit high school. They do not have a high school diploma, but they have their AA degree. They have their bachelor’s degree. They have their master’s degree. And that’s okay because you’re looking at the highest level of education. So we were completely okay with it. But if you decide to do anything else where really your highest form of education is going to be high school, you want to make sure that you’re completing those credits.

You want to make sure that you can graduate your student. if even if you still decide to exit them early, which you can take the exit exam, but not actually submit it so that you can still graduate. And also you have to like make sure that you understand these rules really well and understand that this is 2026 and we are now going to be doing this with one more child in the upcoming year and the rules have changed. you please, please, please make sure that you’re up to date on those rules.

the high school slash college experience, I think, is really where, in my opinion, students need as much care and mentorship and attention from parents, counselors, school counselors as much as possible because things are changing, because children might just not know, like, yeah, I love biology, but actually the career I want is entirely different. They may need that help and attention. And then,

every family or every classroom is going to have that one student that knows exactly what they want to do. They know exactly where they want to go. They know the career that they want to have. That’s fabulous. They barely need any guardrails. But I think for most students, there’s a little bit of confusion. As I think by ninth or 10th grade, you kind of have to have this figured out. That can be so challenging.

Della (21:00)
Yeah, yeah,

So how did you find yourself homeschooling? What did that path look like for you?

Hana (21:08)
My family actually had homeschooled my mom had homeschooled my younger two siblings and then my older sister Who’s about maybe ten years older than I am had homeschooled some of her children So I was familiar with this as an option we weren’t sure what we wanted to do when my first child was young we were getting closer to that time where we had to make a decision and

we sort of just left those options kind of open until the very last second where we’re like, well, like, should we homeschool? Yeah, I guess we’ll homeschool. But it wasn’t until probably 10 or 15 years after I had started homeschooling that I realized that one of the major reasons why I homeschooled, I wasn’t even aware of consciously at the time. And I’ll tell you that. But first, I’ll tell you the two.

logical reasons why we homeschooled. One was for religious reasons. We really wanted to have a more religious approach to our education, but I didn’t want to send them to a religious school. And the other thing is that I definitely wanted a Waldorf approach to our education, which had been to a Waldorf school when I was younger, and my siblings, my older siblings, had been to a Waldorf school much longer than I had. But once I moved back to the States from France, I was in second grade.

and there wasn’t a local Waldorf school, so we went to public school and I just had fallen out of my memory. I just hadn’t thought about it until a chance encounter with someone when my child was four years old and had mentioned something about her child going to a Waldorf school. I’m like, you know, I know I had been to one and just that chance encounter and visiting that local school just sort of revived this renewed interest in Waldorf education. So my child was…

about four and a half nearing five years old. And I thought, well, I want a Waldorf education, but I don’t want to send him to a Waldorf school.

I

So I thought, well, let me do this at home. And of course there was a whole trial and getting to that point where I felt like I had what I wanted, what I envisioned for my children. But what I realized about 10 or 15 years later was that the truth was I didn’t want to be separated from my child. And I couldn’t fathom the idea of this

this child who had only just turned five, literally probably a week before school started, to be away from me for four, six, eight hours a day, my heart just was not going to be able to handle it.

But let me tell you, when it was right for them to just be on their own, my heart was so at ease.

I just felt it was right. I didn’t have to go through that stress and my child didn’t have to go through that stress and they do get over it and we do get over it. I just wasn’t prepared for that.

Della (23:53)
I was telling Tomika in my last episode that I wanted to be the one that got to teach my child. So I shared that feeling. Also, they were so young.

Five is so young Yeah, they’re babies.

Hana (24:11)
their babies.

Della (24:14)
Tell me what you did before children and tell me how that has influenced your homeschooling.

Hana (24:22)
This is interesting. feel like I found my passion years after university, where I want to dedicate my time towards, which is not so different in a way. But I went to university to study chemistry and I studied chemistry because I thought I would be a high school chemistry teacher. It turns out I’m a very poor chemist, very terrible chemist. I actually like biology a lot better.

But I also, there’s so much about biology the way that it was taught in school that I just didn’t align with us from a religious perspective. the advice was like, why don’t you try chemistry? And also for my local university, biology was a really impacted major for pre-med. actually I was probably a poor biologist too, because whenever we had to do a dissection, I’d have my lab partner do it.

And whenever we had anything that was the least bit explosive in chemistry, I would probably have my lab partner do it or I would probably close my eyes and turn away or I would just be in such anxiety. It turned out I really liked physics, but not the first quarter. I pretty much failed out of that physics class. And my counselor said, you know, if you can’t do physics, you can’t do chemistry.

Luckily, my do-over for physics, had the most brilliant professor ever, and I fell in love with physics, but that was not going to be my degree. But I think physics feels a little bit safer for me than chemistry

Della (25:52)
That’s funny.

That came up in our chemistry conversation where you were talking about, apparently your daughter also has a little bit of reservation with explosions and setting things on fire. And if you don’t know in Waldorf pedagogy, typically the way it approaches

Hana (26:06)
Yes!

Della (26:12)
Chemistry, and I think it’s because it’s in the middle school years and they’re looking for that ooh and They do a lot of combustion.

Did any accidents happen in your chemistry classes?

Hana (26:27)
No, I was terrified of any accidents happening because the first thing you do is you learn all the safety protocols. And as you know, there’s that shower inside a chemistry lab in case you get any chemicals on you, you have to go and get it off right away. One thing that was helpful in that was knowing that water is great at solving a lot of immediate problem, getting it diluted, getting it washed off. That was a bit of a comfort, but

No, nothing ever bad happened.

Della (26:56)
We had a guy set himself on fire in our lab, one of my labs. It turned out not being bad. Like you said, they do go over all the safety protocols before you even start all the labs. So we all knew them. And someone quickly shuffled him over to the shower and turned the shower on and it went out. But yeah, he…

Hana (27:03)
Wait, how- how- my gosh.

Della (27:24)
I think that was our most exciting lab experience. Yeah, it was miserable. I can see why you would be afraid of explosions and combustion and so forth in chemistry.

Hana (27:28)
That’s memorable. Yeah, I know.

That’s it.

Yeah.

my temperament and my personality, let’s avoid the conflict. Let’s just stay very far away from it.

So if my child is resisting reading, let’s just give it a few months. Let’s give it a few days. Let’s give it a year. Let’s give it time until that student is ready and the conflict diminishes.

most of the time this is okay and the times that it’s not okay we should have had early intervention. So let me give you two really quick examples. My child is writing their letters incorrectly. This is very typical for a new student. Five, six, seven, eight. They’re going to maybe write their sevens backwards or

their e’s backwards or maybe upside down and you’re like, that’s okay, normal. they’re doing such great progress. I’m not going to point that out. They will just grow out of it and most students do grow out of it. For the students who don’t grow out of it, you’ve established a very poor habit and now to try to undo that is going to be a lot more challenging than had you had that early intervention. How are you going to know whether you needed early intervention or not?

Certainly more skilled teachers are going to know I gave in to my temperament, my personality, because most things worked out in the end. So I missed a lot of teaching opportunities. I missed a lot of problems that should have been resolved earlier because I assumed that things would work out.

Della (29:07)
knowing what we know about the science of reading, I do feel like most children do need explicit systematic teaching of phonics to be good readers. And I feel like if you are having any particular issues that you are noticing, having an assessment as a homeschooler is a really positive thing. It’s not like…

in public education where sometimes children get labeled and that label follows them from one year to the next and then there are these prejudisms that happen associated with that label. In homeschool, It just gives you the information that you need in order to scaffold and support your child. You don’t even have to share that assessment with anybody else, but if you know that there are issues with X, Y, or Z,

then you have the ability to scaffold them in the best way possible for their education.

Hana (30:07)
Yeah, that’s really good advice. I think state by state, most states will offer those kinds of assessments through the public school. And what I learned most recently, I believe with California is that even if you’re homeschooling, you still have access to those services through the public school system. And I think now they even do early intervention for hearing. So if you suspect that there could be a hearing issue,

You can have that assessed really early. do need that assessed early because that will affect language development and other things later on. sometimes we just don’t even know where to begin with that. your local pediatrician is a great place to start. Also your local optometrist and even your local dentist.

Della (30:42)
Mm-hmm.

Hana (30:53)
one of my children had a vision issue, but not a sight issue. So going in to get his sight checked came back perfect, like 2020 or better, but his vision had an issue. And I would not have known about all of these nuanced issues.

had I not been going to homeschool conferences at the time. now we have different ways of getting our information.

Here’s the other thing is that it’s constantly a moving target because our children are growing in and out of issues. Some things do remain with them, but some things are, you know, they last a period of time.

Della (31:29)
And then they grow out of them. we’ve had that too.

Della (31:35)
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Della (34:48)
this one is a common one. And I’m going to just ask you because I know it gets asked a lot, like every workshop that we do together, this question gets asked. But if you were choosing to homeschool in a Waldorf fashion, how do you go about teaching multiple ages? Because obviously, if you are following what Waldorf schools are doing in what should be taught when

then you would be teaching two to three main lessons. So tell me how you handle multiple ages in a Waldorf style homeschooling.

Hana (35:24)
It’s such a good question. And I think my answer might still be the same, but I am in my Waldorf teacher training, I’m learning more about child development and more about why these lessons are given at each stage, but at the same time, I’m also learning more about what the, I’m going to say this in my,

my interpretation of it. But what the ideal school might have looked like, that was never what the Waldorf School was. Okay. And I’m going to give you two examples of this so that we can understand in a greater picture, what is really important our kids, what is required by our peers, our community and our society and what our children really need in order just to live life.

my oldest son was a late reader, but I also want

to explain what that looks like exactly because reading of course is something we panic about early on. Reading for him did not become fluent until the summer before he started fifth grade and when he entered fifth grade and became a fluent reader he was reading at a fifth grade level. So this is really important to understand that he didn’t become a reader and read at a first grade level or kindergarten or you know second grade he read at his level.

Now, could he decode some words before that? He certainly could. And decoding words and reading fluently, I think there’s a difference between the two that we should recognize so that we can also understand those milestones that our students are going through so that we’re also not panicked. There’s some stuff going on. But he didn’t read fluently until he had turned 11.

Rudolf Steiner also didn’t read until around that age. I want to say 10 to 12. And he said something that I think is so profound that we need to remember when we are thinking about our children being spiritual beings, not just this physical entity that

we’re kind of reduced to thinking our problems are all just physical if they’re medical, for instance, that we’re kind of forgetting that we’re emotional and we’re spiritual. he said it would be of no consequence. And it could actually be even better for the spirit of the child, spirituality or for his spiritual development if the child didn’t read until 10, 11, 12 years old. So it was of no detriment to him. he’s even saying

It would be of no detriment to anybody if they learn to read late. Now, I also want to just clarify spiritualism, spiritual being separate from religious or religious upbringing, because we can all agree that there is something that makes us alive that is unlike anything else.

Well, that was one thing. I said, well, then why aren’t we doing that in school? Why aren’t we spending our time between, you know, let’s say school age, seven and 10 years old, doing something that’s better or more meaningful for the child? And what would that look like? What did he say that would look like?

well, because society is expecting of us and we can stray a little bit, because Waldorf schools certainly do that, but we can’t just stray that much. Maybe it’s better for them in the long run that they are doing things with their hands, for instance, because we’re certainly not doing enough things with our hands and enough things with our bodies. Our children need to be moving more and climbing trees and jumping from rock to rock and exploring the woods and.

and even learning skills with their hands. I’m a big proponent of learning skills with their hands.

The other thing was that Steiner said in one of his lectures that if he could, he would have a shoemaker on staff at all of the schools so that students could literally see how shoes are made. So I’m like, this is very interesting and curious because students at a Waldorf school learn how to do many things from

weaving to knitting to sewing to wood carving to stone carving to coppersmithing like all of these things he wants a shoe cobbler you know a shoemaker on staff as well i think we should also also have other professions as well like we really need to see where these materials are these products are

where they’re originally coming from, we’re disconnected from that in a big way. So these two things, why I’m mentioning them, is that when you then look back at the Waldorf curriculum and you look at the different main lesson blocks and then you think about your children and the developmental ages, what is it that we’re really trying to do at each of these different grades? Like what is really the thing that we need to distill out of that entire year?

that is so particular for that age or that grade that is this window of opportunity for that time period that you’re just not going to get as much later on. First of all, you yourself have to decide what your understanding is of child development.

So my understanding of child development is heavily influenced on the seven year cycles, which are observable, not just through Steiner’s lens, but they’re just observable. Also, understand it from not just a physical development, but from a spiritual development, emotional development. We have to understand like this whole child, all of the parts of this child that make up this being.

the human being really in essence. Once you have an understanding that aligns with you, your ideas, etc., then you can start to decide what kinds of lessons you want to combine or which ones you definitely want to keep for that grade level or for that age level.

the way that I approached it was that I always gave my seven-year-old, sometimes he or she would be almost eight years old, that inaugural lesson, that main lesson block in the letters of the alphabet. Quality of numbers should have come too but it’s basically the letters of the alphabet. This was

Welcome to school. You are an official student. Certainly you’ve done a lot of learning before this point, but you get your first main lesson, your first main lesson book, your first set of crayons. It was just ceremonial for me. also I’ve combined grade levels into units

rather than a main lesson block approach so that it can kind of fit with multiple ages, multiple students. In the end, I really do love either a main lesson block approach that is going to bring in other materials for those other students or a unit study approach where it’s that’s just built into the unit study that you’re going to be doing all these different kinds of activities and that naturally fits with multiple ages and multiple students. in

all of these situations, always chose the one student that this main lesson block was really intended And I taught to that student primarily, but brought in other materials so that the rest of my students were engaged in some way.

Della (42:17)
Yeah,

I did a similar thing with that and I’ve coached other people on doing similar things where you look at the family as a whole looking at the value of the family and what blocks are most important to that family. we were definitely not going to skip botany for anybody and we’re not going to skip the animal block.

That was a big one for us. And then quality of numbers you’re looking at your family at a whole, where everybody is, what blocks are most important that you want to make sure that you’re hitting that block within a certain timeframe for that child. Maybe it’s not

Botany right on fifth grade. Maybe you do botany on fourth grade or maybe you do it in sixth grade, but you’re hitting botany around the child development time for that child. Definitely I wouldn’t advocate for doing too many main lesson blocks at the same time. It’s so much work. It’s just too much work to do for multiple children.

Hana (43:22)
when you mentioned botany is a main lesson block that you would never skip, same with us. We almost do botany every year, even though it’s only called for once. we are either in the garden or we’re planting something or we’re cooking. That’s, part of botany in some way.

Della (43:27)
Yeah.

Hana (43:40)
Or you have an older student who’s in high school and botany is entirely different because it’s more like biology I feel like that’s something that very easily could appeal to so many different ages. And then I’ll tell you and I know you know this too because you’ve experienced it. I could be doing something that you might think, that’s that’s baby. That’s like really young. That’s juvenile. And the older kids love it.

And so if we’re not saying, that’s only for a first grader, but we’re doing this all together, there’s no trepidation about doing something we’re just planting a seed. That’s all we’re doing. And you can plant a seed at any age. And then we circled through to daily work. And you’re right, I love the Charlotte Mason approach so much.

Della (44:14)
Right.

Hana (44:21)
In a way, I want to say it’s easy to understand and implement, but that’s probably simplifying it too much. the idea of these short lessons, brilliant, varied lessons, having such a variety of lessons, so smart. I misunderstood when I was first homeschooling, because I was like, I love Charlotte Mason. I love Waldorf.

We’re supposed to do a variety of lessons every day. How am I doing so many? I was like exhausting myself.

If you’re coming in as a tutor and you’re going to do multiple main lesson blocks a day with someone, because I did talk to a Waldorf teacher was like, oh, it’s okay. 10 to 12, you do the first student. 12 to two, you do the next.

Okay, you are coming in as a teacher to do this with this family. That is not possible when you have other children. Who’s going to watch the other children during that two hour block? always something comes up it was, in my opinion, lofty to think that that was going to be a possibility. In practicality, it’s not. And we don’t want to beat ourselves up for it. So the most I was ever able to do with my four children.

which because of their four year age difference, I was only ever homeschooling probably only three at a time since my children, exited high school early and only ever did two main lesson blocks that one year. So every day two main lesson blocks, insane work. Do not recommend it.

Della (45:38)
Yeah,

yeah, I really do think doing more than one main lesson block is not practical for a homeschooling family with multiple children.

Let’s talk a little bit about building a Waldorf block, because you and I both do this similarly. What resources do you pull from? What are you thinking about as you build the block? What kind of things do you want to have in it?

just basically how do you approach building a Waldorf block?

Hana (46:14)
probably one of my favorite things to do is to build a block or a unit study

Well, I should say that I always want to have something hands-on in our unit. And I think you do too. it’s almost always enjoyable as some families, some parents really don’t like it. And now that I’ve almost done homeschooling my four children, there are certainly some children that really gravitate towards it more than others.

let’s say you’re homeschooling your first child and you see all these really beautiful projects that people are doing and it’s just not working for you. It might not be you, might not be your preparation. It just might be your child who’s just really not interested in type of learning. So I love the hands-on projects. I love cooking, or I should say I love eating, so I love getting into the kitchen. There was a year that I…

made it a priority to do all kinds of field trips. I have to say that we did a lot more field trips when my children were younger. It got a lot more challenging when my children were older or in community college or had sort of aged out of, you know, going to like children’s museums or field trips and things like that.

Then there are the books, and this is where the Charlotte Mason comes in. Like, I love adding the books. And I have to say that now that my homeschool journey has come close to an end, I realized that in my enthusiasm for building these main lesson blocks in unit studies, I overdid it. In many ways, I overdid it. And so I want to caution what overdoing it might look like. I want to warn what that might mean for you as a teacher parent.

and what it might do for your children because you might think enthusiasm is great, passion is great in the homeschool world and maybe most of us need a little bit more of it. But for those of us who are coming with our whole body and souls, we can overdo it. This is what it looked like. let’s just take botany for instance or astronomy or ancient Egypt. those areas of study that are going to have a lot of resources.

I would either go to the library or go to Rainbow Resources, one of my favorite websites. They have just about every single book, project, workbook, curriculum imaginable for the homeschooler I would type astronomy and I would go through 15 pages of products and it would be activities and kits and hand projects and…

a space kit that included space ice cream and the books and I would just add to cart, add to cart, all of these things I’d be so excited about. And then I would receive those materials. And then there was like, wait a minute, I have 10 books on astronomy. It out that six of them are almost the same. And I have scheduled all of them into my curriculum planning.

and I have three projects and actually they’re all solar system projects. we don’t need to do three solar systems. So my problem, which I don’t think it’s a common problem. I think maybe most of us are looking for ideas. Okay.

Della (49:14)
You know, it’s a common problem for me. I pack our blocks and the consequences of that. I want to read all the books. I want to do all the projects. The consequences of that is you burn out your child, A typical Waldorf block is supposed to be three, four weeks max, or you can split them up if it’s like botany where you need a spring and a fall.

Hana (49:16)
Bye.

Della (49:41)
Our astronomy lasted six weeks. It was a beautiful block, but at the end of it, we’re all exhausted. can’t wait to be done with it. something that took a long time for me to learn, there’s a great book about this, Making Thinking Visible, is that there are different types of learning and thinking that we need to

help our children in doing. a huge portion of that is not just consumption, but analysis and digestion and then use of that material in some way. And that can look a lots of different ways. It can look like hexagonal thinking for analysis. can look like doing a project that has historical or factual

information within that project. It can look like illustration, narration, but in the beginning when I was homeschooling, I was cramming all of this stuff and wondering why we weren’t doing it or having the retention not be there. They couldn’t remember what we went over or the writing was poor. Why aren’t you writing better? And it’s because I was demanding

much at one time and I had to make room and I eventually learned, especially for writing projects, that I needed not to assign reading on that day if we were going to be writing because they needed to spend that time writing, depending on the quality of the writing that I was

wanting or expecting, also is a whole different learning experience. Because you can’t edit and develop every piece of writing, you have to pick and choose. And so you have to be okay with some of the main lesson entries not being perfect. It took me a long time to figure that one out.

Hana (51:53)
forgot you and I are so similar in this I’d be curious is this is this a very niche issue to have or are other others do they get excited too I love the books I love the books so much and you’ll notice that in the Waldorf approach we’re not we’re not behind a book

reading, right? That’s like this barrier between you and the student. The student’s like, well, look, if all you need to do is read a book, what do I need you for? we’re supposed to be absorbing the information and being able to present it. But on many occasions, would, the vast majority of occasions, I wasn’t ready to just do a lesson. So let me use this living book, Charlotte Mason living books. They’re books that are usually from a single author, passionate. just

They’re not a textbook, you can just really sense the enthusiasm from the author and the material itself. this is perfect. We would read our stack of books that I would either buy or get from the library. The problem with that, and you mentioned so many issues that come up with the burnout of the teacher, the burnout of the students, the potential for less quality work because you’re going through things so quickly.

The other thing that I noticed and at first I’m like, oh, it’s not such a bad idea. Actually, this is kind of a good idea. I’ve got, so many books on the solar system. we read one of them. similar to the first. There’s like a couple of things that are different, but there’s a lot of things that are the same. So then I’m well, the redundancy is not bad. that repetition is probably good for them. And I’m like, oh, well, you know, and I can actually ask this question as as I’m reading it aloud. I know we’ve already done this. Why don’t I re

phrase this sentence into a question since you know it’s something we already did. So those were little tricks that I used in doing this we do have the live education Waldorf curriculum and I have it from kindergarten through eighth grade. Now we haven’t used all the main lesson blocks for sure. I’m aware of where the content is supposed to be.

I don’t always follow it. A lot of times I’m just doing my own things. A lot of times I’m like following to the letter. And what I realized was that when I was following the main lesson blocks with a limited amount of additional resources and curated projects, everything went so much better. We did not get exhausted, as you said, from the main lesson block.

we stop when we still felt good about the content and not like, thank gosh, like we are finally done with this. The work that we did was more meaningful and more intentional. The writing and the illustrations, which we should not forego, as you said, we spent more time on it, whether the quality was better or not.

I can’t really say, but we we made space for that, which is so important. We’re not just looking at consumption, as you said, we’re also looking at what did we learn from this or what did we understand from this? that’s another thing that I really love the Charlotte Mason approach to narration was that I wasn’t really testing my children. don’t think I ever really tested them. Sure, tests came up, but not from me.

And if there were, was through conversation. was an organic assessment, Or it was through their written work, realizing, taught you capitalization. How is it that you were in sixth grade and you haven’t capitalized the first letter of the sentence? don’t understand. clearly there is a breakdown in my teaching and your application of that content. And I was

flabbergasted, so confused. So then it was like, okay, well, we need to go over this again, because in let’s just take grammar, for instance, they could get all of that content correct over and over and over again for that entire main lesson block or that entire daily work exercise. then we transfer it to here’s where you actually apply this in your narration. Your paragraphs are a mess. You don’t have correct punctuation.

some words maybe are spelled incorrectly. there were those that breakdown of like teaching versus application. when I stuck more closely to the curriculum or when I edited my choices, when I was more intentional about our projects, our main lessons and our unit studies were more successful. My children were more engaged. We didn’t have as much burnout. We ended on a high note.

endings were hard for me. I’m really great at a ceremonial beginning, but I’m pretty terrible at a proper ending. was usually our endings are because like we fizzle out or we just kind of have this mediocre ending before we move on. This is really important in Waldorf education. It’s probably important just in life to have a proper beginning and a proper ending and that if you run into issues, especially when the children are young and especially if it’s regarding skills,

and you’re realizing that there is a frustration that is turning into either a meltdown, a tantrum, a crying, whatever it is that you realize like emotionally this child is not understanding this, you end that lesson right away. Okay, it’s time to close, let’s do our closing verse or let’s, you know, it’s time for lunch or it’s time for a break or we’re gonna go out, whatever it is, however you close it, you close it hopefully before you hit that point where there’s a meltdown.

And then you can literally resume that class 15 minutes later or two hours or the next day. But we don’t do that to our children. that was something that I learned much later on in our homeschooling journey from a seasoned Waldorf teacher who reminded me of the importance of closings and endings. also, you don’t have to do a two-hour main lesson block. You’re homeschooling. Do 20 minutes. And if there’s a problem,

close your lesson and start again, it’s okay.

Della (57:41)
that’s interesting. I did not know about that with closings. That’s really useful information. And I think having known that now I would have done things a lot differently. That’s that’s really interesting, Hana. That’s useful

information.

Hana (57:59)
as I’m in my teacher training, as I’m working more towards my own harmony of my temperament, I’m realizing, there’s actually a lot of wisdom in doing this. this is my, these are my goals and aims now.

that if I were in a teaching position, I would now be also mindful of those as a classroom or in a homeschool setting.

Della (58:24)
Right. The wonderful thing that we have available to us, and there are some public school system teachers that do this really well. How they do it with so many students is beyond me, but as the parent, you have the ability to see the entire child. And what I love about Waldorf Pedagogy is that it cultivates an education based on the

entire child. I remember doing a block on Africa. We did our history different from Waldorf schools timeline We did it in chronological order and when we hit the 1500s, 1600s and where the

Transatlantic slave trade was occurring. That’s a heavy block. And so we sandwiched it between starting with the culture, which I think is really important. I have learned this from my black and brown friends and I am so grateful for it because when you’re just focusing in on the negative, it still gives that picture of suppression. But celebrating

the culture and the joy and the achievement gives a fuller picture. So we started out with that. It was a great block. I found this artist who had done this piece that had fabrics from different tribes within Africa. it was, each fabric was cut into

the country and it made up the whole Afros absolutely beautiful. And I thought I want to do my block based on that fabric being the theme throughout the study of Africa. So I took that piece and I

did a bunch of research and I found some books. It was hard in the beginning, but I did eventually find some books. we went through a variety of tribes. You can’t do them all. There’s just so many. It’s like here in the United States, there’s over 500 indigenous peoples. You can’t do them all. But we picked a few that hit all the areas of the continent.

And then we made an attempt to replicate some of the fabrics. It was such a fun block. Anyway, that was sandwiched in between the transatlantic slave trade. But when we finished that, it was such a heavy block and we really needed something more. And another Waldorf person, Robyn with Waldorfish who has the art

programs. She was like, do some art is like art therapy, do some art for finishing. And here’s some suggested

samples that we can do and I picked that up and we did it because we needed it and that is the beauty of Waldorf is that it it does the whole child. You were talking earlier about balance and the need to be outdoors and making things with your hands. That approach is really what drew me to the pedagogy that and geometry.

You know how much I love math. When I saw Waldorf geometry, I was like, I am in love.

Hana (1:02:08)
Yeah.

that block is tremendously beautiful. That’s a really great approach for your Africa, did you call it an Africa main lasso block or was it like the time period more so?

Della (1:02:16)
is.

what I was going for was that time period, but we focused in on the continent of Africa and the different people. We mixed in the geography, the tribes, the fabrics, all in that same block. But I did that block because we had hit the 15 and 16 hundreds in.

What else is happening? think also there, we might have done the Explore. The Age of Discovery is there too. And I think Waldorf does an Age of Discovery. But when I was reading, I think Charles Kovach, it was so Eurocentric. And there’s such huge implications. We also shifted that block a lot as well to me.

more of our needs and to make it less Eurocentric. We just did Explorers of the World from different time periods and different places in the world. That was a really interesting block too. there were explorers that I did not know even before the 1400s like Ibn Battuta.

and there was a Chinese explorer. Yes, that’s it. And that one in particular was really fascinating to me because their mindset was completely different in their travel and exploration. It was to meet and exchange ideas and gifts and

Hana (1:03:45)
Yeah, Zheng He, right?

Della (1:04:06)
bring those ideas and gifts back home. they loaded a huge fleet of ships with all kinds of gifts from Asia and set out to give these gifts and establish these relationships all around. I guess it would be Indonesia and the Pacific. How far did he go? Do you remember?

Hana (1:04:28)
Yeah, I want to say that he also might have almost made it beyond, like definitely to India, if I remember correctly, and maybe even beyond. But you’re right, understanding the cultural significance of that mission and then the cultural shift after that mission is really insightful and understanding probably more specifically Chinese culture, but maybe

Asian culture in general. I found that to be really insightful along with the rest of the explorers and why they did what they did. in some cases, which I find a little disappointing, was maybe economic gain or some form of exploitation, which is not great in and of itself. when you’re doing the age of exploration, I’m assuming as

Della (1:05:10)
Mm-hmm.

Hana (1:05:19)
for us as well. was at least for this content, the content that could become like, I don’t know that about like human nature. That sounds like not the best of human nature, but it’s at around the time, like puberty, post puberty, like middle, like that age range where students from a developmental perspective are ready for somewhat of the nuances between the right and wrong.

They are very much justice oriented, very much like consequence, like if that wasn’t right and those are the very much about that. But now we’re bringing in like this nuance of the character We also did an explorer’s unit not too long ago and there’s also a sense of conquering to or at least there’s that seems to come. I don’t want to say hand in hand always, but there’s a bit of conquering that comes with exploration.

And then we’re looking at, okay, for me as an adult, looking at the character of this person and trying to understand how do I teach this objectively or do I not teach it objectively? Do I talk about that person’s character or do I leave that up to the student to figure out? Those things I’ve had like,

different approaches and differences of opinions even with myself, But it, for me as an adult, it calls into question a lot about the character of these individuals and maybe it’s not just exploration. It could also be invention. It could be politicians. It could be any kind of person. They come with such a varied character. How do we take what they did that was good and how do we leave behind the rest?

And do we even do that? That’s the question. Do we even do that for these kinds of people where for you maybe that kind of character doesn’t align with your values? Then do you completely remove that person and we just, there’s an invention quote unquote, we found this land, but we don’t talk about that person. How do we go about doing that? And those are just questions that I have now because now

when you get to teaching young adults or adolescents, you get to have these conversations and it’s really exciting to have.

Della (1:07:35)
It is really interesting to have and some of them like Columbus, I don’t think you can get around not talking about him because

his voyages made such a huge impact even for historians there’s something called the Colombian exchange because after that consistent contact there were worldwide implications

with US history. started out with Native American. We did similar with Africa. We studied the peoples, the culture, the art, the stories, and then we went into American history so that we have some context.

to what was going on, but we spent quite a bit of time on the Columbian Exchange during that because of the implications. The Smithsonian has an interesting book, Seeds of Change, and there’s also an adult version, Seeds of Change, that talks about similar things, but in the Smithsonian book, they chose like a handful of items.

potatoes, corn, horses, disease, and a few others, and how that impacted the globe. It was a huge difference. Before that, Afro-Eurasia was kind of on its own, and the Americas were over here on their own. And there had been some little contact here and there. We have records of the Vikings.

from Vinland coming over. There were some Irish voyages that made it over, but we don’t have any kind of constant contact. But when we have Columbus make his way over, there is a constant contact from them and it changes the globe for everybody on both sides. You know, it’s interesting that you were talking about

child development during that time and how they have a strong sense of justice. They often see things as black and white and we’re bringing in areas of grayness because they do that in art too. The art goes from from using charcoal. So you’re black and white, the white of the paper and then the black of the charcoal and you’re finding those shades of gray.

in the art as well during this development, It’s really interesting how Waldorf Pedagogy does that.

Hana (1:10:22)
Yeah, it’s so beautiful to see it all connected and I know that you also just completed a perspective drawing main lesson block, I don’t think too long ago. And again, that also is brought in at that middle school age when they are now able to do that kind of perspective

Della (1:10:36)
Mm-hmm.

Hana (1:10:40)
drawing and the concept of perspective is exactly right for that development.

Della (1:10:45)
Right, right.

What has been your greatest challenge in homeschooling?

Hana (1:10:53)
this is like really kind of silly, but I think my greatest challenge in homeschooling is me. I am the greatest challenge. we learn so much through this experience and our children are our teachers and we are tested in ways that we didn’t think we’d be tested, emotionally, physically, mentally. we’re

have this opportunity for growth. And that’s not why we choose to be parents or to homeschool our children. It’s just a natural consequence of taking on this task. But it’s been a growth opportunity for me. It’s been an opportunity for connection with my children. It’s been an opportunity for reflection on who I am and my personality and my temperament and why I keep finding myself in these same

either predicaments or challenges or successes based on my own personality Contending with myself is like the biggest challenge. But it’s also been like one of

biggest rewards and it’s not that this would be the only way to do this. think anytime you come up against a conflict or a growth opportunity you are going to mature and change and grow from that. it’s also been like such a beautiful opportunity to have a relationship with my children. Hopefully they feel the same way too. Hopefully, hopefully that it is

as beautiful of an experience and a childhood as I envisioned it to be, because certainly in reality there were trials, but I hope the essence that’s left is something that’s beautiful and memorable and full of connection.

Della (1:12:37)
That really speaks to me. And I have the same experience with my kids when I look back over the years as a whole. I’m so grateful for the time that I got to spend with them. It was so meaningful.

last question for today, what was the biggest surprise for you in homeschooling?

Hana (1:13:04)
think the biggest surprise is both how easy and how hard it is. You can make it as challenging as you want it to be. And of course there are challenging experiences as well. But we can also make it easier. And it’s a surprise at how much

control I had over that experience, I could make things way more complicated than they needed to be. And the outcome would have been the same as if I had made it easier. in fact, in some cases, the outcome could have been better if I had just not done it in the more complicated way. And it’s the old saying, know, less is more. But really internalizing that and being

so careful about what you are going to spend your time with will have that meaningful outcome when we are curating that with intention,

so we can do less and we can make it meaningful and we can we can lessen the anxiety and the complication around it.

we can make it simple and it can be just as powerful and maybe in some cases even more powerful than if we had made it more complicated.

Della (1:14:26)
That’s really interesting. when I coach homeschoolers about what they’re doing, we start with the baseline. if we were just going to make sure three or four things happen, what does that look like?

And then we put those into place and we build on that until we hit our comfort level. Like this is ideally what I would like my homeschooling to look like. This is what we absolutely have to get done. And there are two things that happen when we do that. One, it shifts our perspective in that if we get the base done, we feel accomplished and

Two, it shows us the simplicity that can be needed for homeschooling. In addition to that, it sets us up for success in a number of different ways. One of them, which I’m going to talk with future guests about, is that at some point in homeschooling, especially if you have multiple age children, because you will be homeschooling from 12 to 20 years,

it’s a long time that you’re homeschooling. Something is going to happen in that journey. And you’re going to need to pull back and slow down to a baseline. Almost certainly there’s going to be a season of life, a pregnancy, a death in the family, some kind of illness, and you’re going to need to pull back to that baseline and maybe even shift and outsource a lot of things.

so that you can either physically, emotionally, spiritually be in a different place. so having that baseline already well-defined, I am doing a reasonable job if I hit A, B, and C is really helpful. And I love…

how your experience and your expression has shown that even when we do that and maybe focus just on A, B, and C, that sometimes that can be as impactful as our full cake of homeschooling.

Hana (1:16:47)
It really can be. I’ll tell you, I’ll end with this and tell you that I have a friend whose child reminds me over and again that she remembers with fondly the day that she came over and baked apple pie with me. And I

really struggled to remember in detail that day it’s so hard for me and all of the things that we did. And she did that one time with us. And what this reminds me of is that

those things that our children like I only did water coloring one time with my children are they even gonna remember it was even impactful yeah it’s probably gonna be more impactful than the weekly water coloring that we did because it becomes part of like the environment it’s not a significant experience so yeah you can just do that one thing one time don’t feel guilty about it it’s probably gonna be the one thing that your child remembers or your friend’s child remembers

For years to come, she’s 27. She still reminds me to this day.

Della (1:17:55)
Wow, that’s great. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation today, Hana. Thank you so much for talking with me.

Hana (1:18:03)
Thank you, Della. Thank you for having me and listening to me. I really enjoy our conversations as well. And I know that we’re going to be picking this up again.

Della (1:18:12)
Yes, okay, for our audience, please tell me all the different places that you can be found online.

Hana (1:18:19)
Yeah, you can find me at Pepper and Pine on my website at pepperandpine.com. And you can also find me on the social media platforms of YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

Della (1:18:33)
Excellent. Thank you again for joining me.

Hana (1:18:36)
Thank you, Della, for me.

Della (1:18:38)
Hi, friend, thanks so much for listening to the end. I hope it was useful to you. I think this is the spot that I’m supposed to ask for the five-star review or some such for CEO optimization. I don’t know anything about that.

But I am interested in the podcast making its way to the people that need it most. If you’ll forward it to a homeschooling friend or share it in your homeschool circles, I’d greatly appreciate it. I’ll see you next week with an interview with Jazz, who moved to Taiwan and is navigating homeschooling in Southeast Asia. See you next week.