Dr. Tanya Faisal is a doctor-lawyer turned homeschooling mom of 3 delicious hooligans, ages 16, 13, and 11. She shares her homeschooling journey at Project Happy Home on YouTube and Instagram (projecthappyhome), where you can find videos about secular homeschooling, ADHD & 2e parenting, and an essentialist approach to all things midlife. You can also find her sharing bookish and planner geek content on Tiktok @feralbluestockingreads. After a decade of homeschooling, she is about to return to the classroom as a 7th grade science teacher this coming school year.

Show Chapters

00:00 Introduction
01:40 Meet Tanya
03:33 NC Requirements & Standardized Testing
05:17 How Tanya Found Homeschooling
08:42 ADHD & Learning Your Child
12:11 Reassessment & Self-Care
19:24 Tanya’s Career Path
20:58 Trying Public School
26:20 Advice for New Homeschoolers
32:54 Labels, Mindset & Flexibility
46:38 Curriculum Choices
52:32 Avoiding Curriculum Overwhelm
01:06:52 Biggest Challenges
01:09:38 Schooling Multiple Children
01:12:02 Biggest Surprises About Homeschooling
01:15:37 Connect with Tanya

Read Alouds

Read Aloud books are essentially what the name implies. They are books that are read aloud together as a family where you are listening and discussing the books together. Audio books count! We often listened to audio books together. Any book can be used as a Read Aloud. I like to read aloud books that are slightly greater than my child’s reading ability (I use lexile scores for this,) to continue to enhance vocabulary. You can find some of our favorite Read Aloud’s below.

Our Favorite Read Alouds

Reverse Planning

Reverse planning is when the learning activities of the day are written at the end of the day in the planner labeled for that day. It is a great way to see how much learning is actually happening in your day to day. It is also a good practice if you are feeling frustrated that your daily planning is not happening, so you can get a realistic idea of the amount of learning actually taking place. Tanya has a great YouTube video on reverse planning below.

Unschooling

Unschooling is a bit of a misnomer. It is not, as its name implies, not doing any school. Instead it is following your child’s interest in facilitating their education. Many families will strew different items and resources, observe their children, and have discussions with their children to find their children’s interest, and then further their studies by helping them find more resources for learning. Strewing is when resources or ‘invitations for play’ such as logic puzzles, toys, games, or potential activities are left in prominent areas of the house where a homeschool child might frequent to allow them to engage with the material or not. Unschooling can look very different such as internships with community members, building or creating on their own or can look very typical such as using a textbook to learn about an interest that a child has. The defining factor in the unschooing philosophy is a child’s autonomy in a child-led educational journey. The parent does a lot of work finding resources, providing opportunities, and facilitating activities to support that journey.

Scheduling Types

Block Schedule

Block scheduling is where a particular subject is the main focus of study for several weeks before moving onto a new subject. Waldorf and Unit Studies are pedagogies that use block scheduling.

Waldorf Schools Rotation of Blocks for K-8th

from Jamie York

from The Art of Homeschooling

Loop Schedule

A loop schedule is when different subjects of similar time requirements are placed in a list as opposed to assigned to a day. Each day, the next thing on the list is done. This allows each subject to be done with the given weight it is assigned in the loop scheduling. For instance, if you want both history and science done about 2 to 3 times a week and they take roughly the same amount of time, you can place them on a loop schedule, doing history one day, and science the next, regardless of what day it is. This ensures that both are being done, particularly if there is a day of the week that you are more likely to miss school than another.

There are a couple of important aspects of doing a loop schedule to consider. One is that amount of time that subject usually takes. We spend roughly the same amount of time on history, science, and language arts, so those could be in the same rotation. Artist study for us was only five minutes, so it was not a good fit for this rotation, because it did not take nearly the same amount of time. Another loop of similar time frames could be created with art study such as form drawing, recitation, or copy work.

The second aspect of loop scheduling is the desired amount of time. If you wanted to do language arts more frequently than history or science, you might place language arts in the rotation two or three times such as

• science
• language arts
• history
• language arts

Transcript

Della (00:01)
Tanya, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (00:04)
Hi, how are you? I’m so happy to be here.

Della (00:08)
I have been starting the podcast with guests saying where they are from and the homeschooling requirements for that area. Can you do that for us?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (00:16)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so we’re in North Carolina and the requirements are really easy here. There’s basically just a requirement for the instructor to have a high school diploma equivalent. You submit that, the ages of your kids, and you’re pretty much registered. You also have to submit proof of immunization unless you have a medical or religious exemption, very similar to public school here. And you need to have

proof on hand for yourself in case of review of a standardized exam every year. And you have a choice of options. Like what standardized exam you take is really up to you, but you should keep it for at least one year in case someone calls you up. But I’ve never heard of that personally.

Della (00:56)
What standardized testing did you choose?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (01:00)
We use the CAT. We get it through academic excellence because it’s easy and not the test, but the whole process is easy. Like academic excellence makes it seamless. It’s an inexpensive exam. The kids take it at home, particularly with my eldest who had ADHD. I appreciated that they had the untimed option also available. that’s what we’ve done every year. I like having the standard measure honestly of what it is. We realized nobody can spell for a couple of years in a row.

Della (01:24)
Spelling’s not my greatest strength either. I don’t I don’t judge anyone for their lack of spelling ability. We did get a curricula for that

Tanya @projecthappyhome (01:28)
Yeah.

Yes, we did too. I

I thought it wasn’t as bad as it was. So sometimes standardized testing can really come in there and show you things that you had not seen. Because my kids know how to spell going forward, like to spell a word correctly, but to recognize misspellings was not their strength.

Della (01:49)
did you find yourself homeschooling? What did that path look like for you?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (01:53)
So we had not planned to homeschool at all. It was not on our radar at all. When my eldest was in kindergarten, I was not particularly pleased with how they were treating him. He had started to exhibit a lot of signs that would be similar to ADHD behaviors. It didn’t help that he was a very early reader, so he knew how to read pretty fluently when he was four.

not through any effort of my own. He was just one of those kids. He just understood how to read. it made kindergarten very difficult for him because he was very cheerful, very social, loved talking all the time, did not want to do listing alphabet words around the room. At that point, he could read chapter books. I think, felt like he was in like a daycare and other kids were just

having instruction, but he was there for a good time. The accommodations they would have made for him were isolating in my mind, that he would have to sit by himself, that he would have less of a requirement to do the work to completion. I thought, okay, let me take this kid out for a year, teach him how to sit on the line, teach him how school behaviors should work. And

quickly in the beginning of first grade when we started homeschooling, I realized this kid was not going to sit on the line. The line was not the problem. There was no real problem. He really enjoyed moving. He really enjoyed talking. He really enjoyed sharing his ideas. He was such a social kid that I was less concerned about missing the daily interaction with other little kids his age.

Like he talked to everybody we encountered everywhere all the time. I was still working part time at that point and I had my other two kids who were three and one. it became a lot of work. We moved before he went into second grade into the middle of nowhere and the girls were still in a little Montessori preschool, but I felt

really stretched thin at that point. I was working part-time, but also homeschooling. And by the time they all came home from half-day preschool, I was never sleeping anymore. I was doing my work at night. It was a whole mess of work. then I decided, you know what? Let’s just homeschool all these kids. We’re out in the boonies. We don’t really have better options. Let me make a choice and move forward in that direction. And that’s what I did. I started sharing about homeschooling very early.

because I was so grateful to the people who did share YouTube and social media that I thought, let me at least share about what we’re doing, what we’re using, like people’s flip throughs, people’s honest appraisals, especially social media back then, before it was all pretty flat lays and things. was really a lot of people saying this worked and these are the types of rewards I used. And this really motivated my kid to learn multiplication things like,

jumping on the stairs for answers and those simple tips that you could do in your own house without buying anything. That was so valuable to me. I wanted to share some of those things, especially having a kid with ADHD, like how we were managing, getting through our days and making it enjoyable for both of us.

Della (05:01)
Let’s talk about

that a little bit. What accommodations, if any, did you do for having a child with ADHD?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (05:10)
I think very quickly I realized that setting things up like a school was the wrong way to go because that’s what I did initially. And I think that’s what a lot of us do initially. I think a lot of us are very enthusiastic about our children and very enthusiastic about learning and teaching and books and all the things, the accoutrement of school. And I loved buying those things, things that I had seen in kindergarten classrooms and first grade classrooms

that isn’t where the focus should lie, particularly when you have a neuro-atypical kid. I think that it really helped to learn him rather than other people’s and other formats at the beginning to really spend some time focusing on who that kid is. not a monolith, right? Not all neuro-typical kids are the same. Not all neuro-atypical kids are the same. I always say we were all on a spectrum of

personalities and desires and learning styles. It’s really just these unique individuals that we’re grouping into letters, I think that really trying to learn your kid and having discussions with your kid, even when they’re small, is very, very helpful. did you like what we just did? Did you like going on this walk? Or am I just thinking you should like this?

Did you like sitting down for this? Some kids like things that you think would be incredibly boring. Some kids who have ADHD like things that people would say, ADHD kids can’t sit still for that long and do this thing. But they might love that particular workbook or that particular building activity, and they might like the direction associated with it. So I would say experiment with learning who your kid is, like at the beginning of homeschooling.

whether you have a neurotypical kid or neurotypical kid, learn your kid, also learn who you are in that space. Because I think both things are really, really important. As a teacher, you are just beginning, you are just learning how this goes. teaching is both a science and an art. I definitely recommend, getting advice from people who’ve been in it longer than you.

learning from the books and the podcasts the YouTube channels, but really in on yourself. I think at the beginning, there’s this urge to layer on like a costume of who we think we should be, wait and see until our kid becomes this particular person, this particular flower that we’re aiming for, But I think it’s much more of being observant of your own experience.

with this child, with this group of individuals, and really observant of who you are in reactions and things like that. You are the adult in the room. When you are with your kids 24-7, it is a shocking change from when you only see them at the end of the day. I say this as someone who worked full-time and came home and honestly was a pretty perfect parent, it’s not

Della (07:51)
most definitely is.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (07:58)
as hard and I truly, I’m not saying that anybody who works has it easier because it definitely isn’t. I’m just saying that when you have a limited amount of time with anyone, whether it’s your spouse or your friends or your kids or your parents, a limited amount of time is an easier frame of time to self-manage and self-regulate. And when that time becomes infinite with no beginning and no end, I think that you are going to have moments

Della (08:23)
Right.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (08:28)
where you lose it all together. I think that’s something to accept. I think if you are human, your kids will melt down, you will melt down.

Della (08:39)
Yeah, where you walk into the bathroom, close the door and say, I’m going to send everybody to public school tomorrow. We’re going to re-enroll. Yeah. There are two, three things that you said there that caught my attention. One is the reassessment, which I think is really necessary on the regular for homeschoolers.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (08:40)
Yeah, the pantry was my favorite place.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Mm-hmm.

Della (09:02)
This for me happens automatically, but for a lot of people, they need certain triggers that are like, okay, now I should do a reassessment. Now I should think of this. Anytime you hit a block, some reassessment is helpful. It doesn’t mean that you drop that curricula or you stopped studying that concept, but that you just take time to reflect on what’s working and what’s not working.

And I think your involving your children in that conversation is also really profound. we did that also. So you get a better sense of what works for them in addition to what works for you. And the second thing that I think is really important in what you said is not to lose yourself because

Tanya @projecthappyhome (09:53)
Yeah.

Della (09:58)
your needs and your personality are a large part of that homeschooling equation. And it’s important that you include that in your homeschooling. You want to talk a little bit about that?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (10:13)
I think so much of the emphasis of homeschooling is placed on children. And that’s wonderful because really the reason we’re doing this is so that they can have the best childhood, the best fertile ground for becoming lifelong learners. All of our intentions are beautiful. I think it is important to realize you are a human being and…

you are in this room with them, you’re in this life with them, and you need to take the time to cultivate yourself at the same time, like emotionally, intellectually, all of these things, because otherwise you will start to fray at the edges, and that won’t be good for anyone. I always tell my kids, I’m exactly as old a mom as you are a kid, so give me grace, because we are both learning at the same time how to do this together.

And I’m even younger as a homeschool parent. I think involving kids in the decision making and letting them know that you are still a growing being also, take some of the pressure off of them as well. saying, I think this went well, but I’m not sure if this went well. And I’m sorry that I reacted this way for this. I think today was a great day. Like positive reflections.

negative reflections, all of them. I think it encourages kids to, to think, this person is also thinking I could have done that better, and that’s okay. That, that it’s okay to make mistakes. Because the other thing I always tell them is mistakes are proof that we are learning. That quote resonated with me so deeply in every aspect of life, because I don’t think people understand who are not homeschooling, how rich.

your life is when you’re homeschooling, but also how many opportunities there are for mistakes, because your life is so full and so rich and there’s going to be so many experiences with your kids. it’s a stretching and pulling experience of who you are as a person, you, can let it break you sometimes, I think if you keep cycling towards something you’re not.

something your kids are not. But if you give yourself some grace and some plasticity to go in the direction that feels the most right, while also keeping your heading towards your ultimate destination, I think that’s the goal. You don’t have to stay rigidly towards your original heading, but I think it’s important to keep your heading in mind. And then flow, like a river does, rather than a road.

Della (12:39)
right

to make adjustments and go around those rocks.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (12:41)
Like there’s, yeah, there’s going to be obstacles.

There’s going to be falls. There’s going to be rocks in the way, but I think you can curve around things, and figure out a way. sometimes it’ll be a bigger problem than others for certain, if things like dyslexia pop up and, and real things that shift from your original plan, it can be disconcerting, but the more

more plastic you stay about it, the more fluid you stay about it, the less it’s gonna throw you off of homeschooling entirely.

Della (13:11)
Well, and I think it’s really important to consider your own needs. Like maybe your kids are able to spend three hours in one block, but maybe you’re not. And so that needs to be considered. Also, it is a major shift like you were talking about and you’re with your kids 24 seven. There needs to be a significant break from that and maybe also having something all your own.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (13:17)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Della (13:40)
that you do for some people that’s work, for other people that’s hobby or volunteer but whatever it is to make sure that you are keeping yourself in the equation, looking at your own needs throughout this whole process.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (13:41)
Yeah.

Yeah,

and that can be adjusting things that you perhaps thought you really, really wanted to do also, maybe you had this picture in your head that every day you guys were gonna read aloud for an hour to start your day or end your day and kids are babbling about and running around and either you’re frazzled or you’re not frazzled. Maybe it’s a time of day situation, you can change that and try it. But maybe it’s just that that isn’t really your jam. Maybe it doesn’t work for your dynamic.

then you can switch it to something like, we all read what we want in the same room together, There’s so many ways to make it work for you. I think we get very hung up on the picture perfect idea of how it’s supposed to be in our heads, which is true of life, right? Like this idea of how it’s supposed to be and what it really is, is where all of our dissatisfaction lies and our unhappiness.

Della (14:26)
Right.

I really, really wanted

to do the morning basket you see all over. I really wanted that. And it just did not work. It just did not work for our family. And I eventually just had to let it go.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (14:48)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Same,

Della (15:00)
I also really wanted to do the reading journal. I saw one that Christy did that was absolutely gorgeous where she took and did scrapbooking for a reading journal. We did that one day. That was the last day.

We never did it again.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (15:15)
Yeah, I had the morning basket experience also where we tried and I made a basket and it was all these books and my kids just they wanted to either do something in depth or not at all. So they did not like this. We’re going to talk about a bug and then we’re going to talk about this and then we’re going to talk about a composer. They were like

Are we talking about the composer or are we talking about the bug? What are we doing?

Della (15:43)
That’s funny. So tell

me what you did before children, before homeschooling and how that influences your homeschooling.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (15:52)
I did a lot of things. had a very, very long path in academia. So I was a baby doc, which is just someone who goes into medical school fairly early. And then I left to teach medical science to seventh graders, which I loved. And then I left to go to law school and I became an IP attorney doing medical patents for robotic devices and things like that.

it was a long path. And I think like so many former gifted children, you have difficulty sometimes landing on what is meant for you. When I originally started teaching, I was waiting for people to pat me on the back and say, you seem really happy doing this. You should do this. But everyone was like, what is the next smart person thing that you’re going to do? that point, I was too young to really grab the reins of my own life.

and do what I was meant to do. now I’m returning to the classroom. it all comes around. Seventh grade science. So, yeah. Yeah, I’m really excited. I’m really excited. And the kids have all these ideas to tell me now that they’ve the elder ones have done seventh grade in school. Well, one of them hasn’t done seventh grade, but one of them has. And she.

Della (16:41)
That’s exciting. What will you be

That’s awesome. That would be a lot of fun for me.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (16:59)
has all these tips and tricks for me about what was dumb and boring and what I should try to do.

Della (17:04)
So you’re getting some

advice from your soon to be seventh grader or?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (17:10)
And now I have a current seventh grader who’s in school for the first time.

Della (17:14)
Let’s

talk about that. You had two entries into the public school system, One was a trial that semi worked and then now everybody is transitioning back in. So let’s talk about the first one. How did that come about?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (17:18)
Mm-hmm.

The first one came about because I have three very different children, which, if I may interject briefly, is something you should also consider in homeschooling. Your kids are going to be different humans. If you have a very rowdy first one, you might have a very quiet second one. If you have very outgoing first one, you might have a very introverted second one. None of these things are going to stay constant. If I have one tip, please do not buy curriculum.

for all of your years of homeschooling because it worked in first grade. Wait to see who your kids are and where they are and how they change. But back to our getting into school journey, my middle was much quieter than my bookends and she really felt like she wanted to expand her social circle. The bookends were very good at making friends wherever they went.

surfacey friendships were great for them. Deep friendships were easy for them. They made friends everywhere. My middle was more quiet. So she had a couple of good homeschooling friends, but she wanted to see more. She wanted to have more of a group sort of friend situation. she really felt like it was time for her to go to school. And so she was talking to me about this towards the end of fourth grade. And I thought.

If one of them is going to try it, let’s let all of them try it. Let’s see what this is. We’re now out of COVID for the most part. I felt like this would be a good year to kind of see if they for this. we had also moved right during COVID. So I wanted them to get out the world, have an opportunity to make more friends that were in this area of town.

My eldest chose one school, my younger two chose another. I, in my homeschooling ignorance, thought that two drop-offs and two pickups would be no big deal. That was a big deal, But…

Della (19:11)
I can’t imagine one, Tanya, and you did

two.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (19:16)
I will get into that. That was, cannot believe how naive I was about that. But in any case, so my eldest, very grumpy about it, went into eighth grade. And my youngest, also grumpy about it, went into third grade and my middle tried out fifth. And the girls were very happy with their social situation in school. They liked making friends. They liked seeing them all day.

They were hugely unimpressed with every other facet of school. They did not like the fact that the entire class got yelled at if a few kids were misbehaving. They did not appreciate having to raise their hand and wait for a bathroom token or any of these things. They didn’t like that certain things on the playground were forbidden because someone had done something wrong on them. And so now the class couldn’t use that particular swing or slide or what have you.

They didn’t like any of the or rules and that was their biggest complaint. They also didn’t like all the wasted time. the sitting down, the collecting papers, the lining up. They were very, very aware of these minutes spent waiting in transition was a huge issue for them. they came home by Halloween. They were like, peace out. That was interesting.

And the eldest, who was the grumpiest about it, really thrived. He had a wonderful time. my husband, I remember, said, he’s gone from zero to 100 in two seconds in terms of life experience. I don’t like it. he had a girlfriend. He had all these friends. He was going out, so many play dates and things like that on the weekend. he definitely thrived. he really was the winner.

out of that going back to school situation. He didn’t know how ready he was for it until it happened. So you never know, when you put them back in. now after two more years, middle child recently decided last year to try school again and she went to her brother’s school this time.

and she has had a great year also. She, as my quietest child, surprised everyone by being extraordinarily popular in school. And sometimes the things you worry about with your homeschool kids are really things you worry about. because you haven’t seen them in this situation, you’re guessing how things might go. sometimes you’ll be right, I’m sure, but sometimes you’ll be completely wrong.

because I picked her up earlier last week. And it was like an after school movie where all of these children in the playground noticed she was leaving everyone called out her name and started saying bye. Random people came to the front everyone wanted to say goodbye. she says to me sometimes, I don’t know everyone’s names. I’m sometimes nervous that they’ll talk to me in the hallway and I’m just

trying to be nice, but I don’t remember who you are. I’m like, I have never been that popular in my life, but good for you.

Della (21:55)
That’s awesome. How is your

youngest adjusting?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (21:58)
The youngest has had a year alone and she has loved it. This has been my only year homeschooling one child she has loved it, loved it. I mean, she is one of those kids who really appreciates good things about homeschooling, like the real good things like second breakfast and pajamas and late wakeups. we sometimes say about kids who are homeschooling, they don’t realize how good they have it. This one, the youngest one.

realizes how good she has it and is relatively upset that I’m returning to the classroom next year she’s going to have to go to school. she bemoans the lack of pajamas and that’ll happen, yeah, in the fall. it’s going to be an adventure.

Della (22:36)
Will she go to the same school as the older two?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (22:38)
No, I have convinced her to come to school with me. she’ll be in my school building because she’ll be starting in six. I thought let’s put her in my middle school where I’ll be teaching.

Della (22:48)
That’s a good idea. Then you’ll have her close by.

what advice do you have for new homeschoolers?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (22:55)
I think that the advice that I ignored at the beginning was to unschool or de-school I don’t think that would have worked for me anyway because I am a little bit of a type A person. I need to have some sort of plan for the day. I do wish that I had built in more purposeful reflection time at the beginning, more purposeful gathering of casual data on my children.

that definitely came later to me. It came instinctively to me in one sense, but I kind of resisted it, this urge to reassess and figure out as we were going. I very much thought there is a right way to do this. I’m going to figure out the best way to do this and then I’m going do it. And all the pieces will fall into place. And I stayed in that for longer than I would have liked.

I think I was pretty flexible but reflecting upon it now 10 years in, I wasn’t. I had harder times than I needed to they were little. Also when your kids are little, if you’re starting early, remember that they’re little, there’s so much time. There’s no real set timeline to this. I think there’s a lot of pressure we put on ourselves like

By the end of this year, we should have all of these skills checked off. And really, by the end of this year, you should see Wherever you begin, try to see growth. Have your metrics. I really believe in having objectives and thinking about where you want to go. But again, try to stay flexible and try to stay kind to yourself as well as your kids about how you’re getting there. There is really no timeline to this thing.

No one going to ask you a question so detailed that you can’t show think we have this real pressure on ourselves as homeschool parents anything that happens with our kids is our fault. Now it’s just I think you should think of it differently. think that you should think of it as like anything that happens now is because of all of us. We are all on this adventure.

Be gentle with yourself and be realistic about who you are, not who you want to be, not who you’re striving to be, but who you are today. Because if you keep trying to operate in that future self, your days will become miserable and always a failure. Which is why also, I reverse plan rather than forward plan, my forward plans are fairly loose. I have objectives.

I print out state objectives. I pick a different state than my own because I like them better, but I have objectives. ideas of where the curriculum is going. I map out how many days it should take, when I would like to do various things throughout the year. I do not write everything down or type everything out for the entire year mapped to a calendar. I try to keep it list based so that

when I decide to do it every week, I can look at all my objectives in the various curricula and decide, okay, we’re gonna move it into here. this week we’re sick. this particular activity and these particular units seem great to do here. this is gonna be a movie and clay week, you can shift for your present circumstances and that way you’re still making progress. if you keep a reverse homeschool planner, which I have a YouTube video on it if you wanted to see.

how I do that, basically every week and every day you just write down what you’ve actually done. You put in pictures or cutouts or examples of work of what you’ve actually done. And you would be amazed at how much progress you’re making and how many experiences you’re having if you do it this way. If on the other end, you only have a forward planner and you’re expecting to check off everything every day, you will have like,

maybe 10 days out of 180 that you have done everything on that list. And that’s fine. That’s normal. So even if you have to stick to a forward plan, I urge you to have some book or journal or other planner where you’re writing down what you’re actually doing because it will make you feel better about everything.

Della (26:54)
feel like that’s really good advice on both ends, one on the de-schooling and on the reverse planning. We did reverse planning initially when my children were young. Once you get your feet under you, don’t necessarily feel like you have to lock everything. But in the beginning, it was really helpful for me to see all the different aspects of learning that were happening that weren’t

something that I had actually planned. can I just say that for teachers in particular, I think the de-schooling is a special kind of journey for them. It sometimes is a little more challenging.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (27:32)
Yeah.

Della (27:35)
but I have heard from several public school teachers about that journey, which is interesting, How many months was that for you and what did it finally look like when you were de-schooling?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (27:48)
I didn’t do school with my eldest because when we started first grade, I was like, first grade is going to be the year I teach him how to be like a school kid. That evaporated within a month. But so for me, D school was almost like that transition from forward planning to reverse planning happened very soon because I realized very quickly I wasn’t checking off even half the things on my list for the day. I did loosen automatically because he was so

I remember his kindergarten teacher described him as so cheerfully disobedient. that’s really who my eldest is. It was so cheerfully disobedient. was hard not to, it was hard to resist his enthusiasm for making the walk take three hours instead of one hour, doing it the way he wanted. And so he taught me much more than anyone else did about how this was going to go at the beginning. And I really do appreciate that. It is nice to have a cheerfully disobedient.

little person guiding you towards reality. It was the greatest blessing, I think, in the beginning of this journey.

Della (28:46)
The word disobedient is triggering That’s not I feel like disobedience has a nuance of intention. And that’s not intentional on his part at all. It’s funny that she described him like that.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (28:56)
Yeah.

She did, and she did it with not a twinkle in her eye. She said it in a very confused way. he wasn’t aware of how he should be feeling about the disobedience. But for me, I remember as someone who’s like inordinately fond of her children, I remember smiling because he is just such a tearful little soul. Like he still loved her.

in spite of all the reprimands and everything, he is so willing to see the best in people. I remember as a young mom too, you you’re very triggered when other people have negative opinions of your children. he was good in teaching me how to not be too upset about it. He would tell me all these nice things about her when I would say, slightly irritated things about what was going on. He would say,

no, but she’s so good at teaching, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was like, okay. We had a very negative experience in kindergarten. I wasn’t happy with the accommodations, but really what really triggered me to switch to homeschooling, crystallized the decision for me, was the kindergarten kids had treasure box. I didn’t even realize this was something that was going on because my kid never got treasure box.

One Friday when I was speaking of, I realized a bunch of other kids in his little waiting line had this particular little toy, because I guess usually they put it in their backpack, but this was one that wouldn’t let it fit. And he didn’t. I said, did you forget your toy? I just assumed everyone got this. he said, no, that’s treasure box. what he said next like broke my heart because he said, I’ll never get it. I was like, what do you mean?

he said, I’m never going to get treasure box because I’m never going to have five check marks for the week. I said, OK. you should get treasure you are a beautiful person. I’m going to go get you a treasure today. I remember even now, it makes me cry

to hear him say in his little like five-year-old voice, I’m never gonna get that. he was like cheerful about it too. he was just making the best of it. I could not as a mom, bear it. I couldn’t deal like how someone could do that to a kid, and casually have that happen. I’m gonna cry. he was such a good little kid,

Della (30:56)
Mm-hmm.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (31:00)
Like he said it with no malice, no anger at her, nothing, just so matter of fact. I was like, I don’t want my kid to be matter of fact about doors or opportunities being close to him, you know? Whether it’s like a pinwheel that you’re getting or something more serious. no one is a static being, people are always changing. We’re always growing.

Della (31:13)
Right.

Did you get that treasure?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (31:29)
I did.

Della (31:29)
How did the teacher respond to that?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (31:32)
told her that I think it’s inappropriate for kids to believe that they are limited forever from something at such a young age. It is perfectly fine to have reward systems. It’s perfectly fine to have incentives. It is not perfectly fine to tell a child that they are something, anything.

honestly, to say that they are permanently something, permanently put in a box. I cringe when when I hear people tell their kids like, you’re going to grow up to be an XYZ, when they’re little, little. I think that this idea of children being put into boxes, you’re the smart kid and you’re the artsy kid and you’re the engineering kid. You are just a kid.

you are learning about how things work in the world around You might be very good at building towers. It doesn’t mean you have to be an architect or an engineer. These limitations that we put on kids can be positive or negative. It’s why when people ask me, why did you tell your kid that he had ADHD? I think that’s a very personal decision. I don’t think there’s a right answer or a wrong answer. For me, I wanted him to know why we were switching from schooling to homeschooling for a year. I wanted him to know that it could be

Della (32:16)
Right.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (32:42)
an advantage to him. I wanted to present it in a way that felt empowering. I wanted him to have the language around his own brain. That is the language we use. I presented it in a way that I felt was the most honest, but also the most empowering. you have a different brain. your brain works very, very fast. And sometimes that is hard to fit into.

how typical systems we want to learn our best techniques to put your fast car in a regular road. he’s always been very into cars and that worked for if you have a Ferrari brain, how do you drive that on regular How do you take care of it? it takes a lot of care. It’s such a special car.

I think how we present things to kids matters a lot. How we talk to them matters a lot. how we talk to ourselves matters a lot too. These quizzes where they ask, what kind of homeschool parent are you? Are you a ocean parent or this parent? They’re fun. if you keep it light and fun, it’s fine. But I don’t think you should identify with any particular methodology or type of

homeschool parent. I think it can be really limiting. think people who make fun of, for example, Waldorf, it’s very popular to make fun of Waldorf when you’re a very traditionalist homeschooler. It’s very easy to make fun of traditional school homeschoolers when you’re like more Montessori or more Waldorf. I think these limitations we put on ourselves are the same as limitations we put on kids.

there’s a lot to be learned from all of these different modalities. a lot of them come from good places trying to get kids to to reach their best potential. the bottom line is you are different than any other homeschool parent and your kids are different than any other homeschool kids, even in your own house. your eldest will not be like your youngest, will not be like your middle. that is okay. It’s like a wonderful, wonderful thing that you have the opportunity to

fine tune your experience. we really should make our homeschools unique.

Della (34:36)
as

a homeschool coach, one of the things that I have learned, because I kind of see myself as a homeschool midwife when I had my midwife with the birth of my children, I remember at one point, I think with my oldest, where I was like, breastfeeding is best. It gives the most nutrition,

Tanya @projecthappyhome (34:45)
Mm-hmm.

Della (34:58)
all in on the breastfeeding. How can someone not choose to breastfeed their children? And she very gently and kindly went into various scenarios where breastfeeding was not best for the mother child scenario. And my eyes were open right. She really said that she has to move without judgment.

through situations and that her job is to cater and guide the experience in a way that is best for that individual. that’s what I feel like in my homeschool coaching. I cannot judge. I have to guide and walk this path with this person and do what they need. And the one thing that I realized in my coaching

Tanya @projecthappyhome (35:31)
Mm-hmm.

Della (35:44)
capacity was that as soon as somebody judges and says you should never recreate school at home or whatever Waldorf doesn’t have the academic rigor or which is not necessarily true or whatever it is that indeed there was a situation where you definitely needed to recreate school at home for whatever that means

when we make these rigid labels, we confine ourselves in ways that don’t serve us.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (36:17)
Yeah. And

I think sometimes the things that you are most resistant to are the things that help you the most. I know for me, like as a very type A person who found school easy and actually loved traditional schooling, I love books. I love reading. I love taking notes and annotating and remembering things and taking multiple choice tests and writing essays. I I love all of it. I’m a terrible person to have as a homeschool parent in that way, because to me, it’s all fun, all of the traditional stuff.

for me, learning about Waldorf was so helpful because it really informed me into the things that didn’t come easy to me. I remember seeing a Waldorf homeschool planner that had the head, the hand, the rotation. that was something that I found early and I started using that when the kids were very small. that helped me so much because I could put in all my traditional pieces.

but space them in such a way that our days were so much more pleasant and age appropriate to who they were, which is something that doesn’t come naturally to me at all. That is not instinctive at all. But I, as a grown woman, found it so soothing to myself, to run through those rhythms, not just for the benefit of the kids, but for me, because I often run at a hundred and forget to do things that are enriching.

to the spirit, pause really do something with my hands. think that what you are most resistant to, really look into, because sometimes those are the things that come hard for you and may have come hard for you your whole entire life. this is your opportunity learn something As you implement it in your homeschool, I think there’s so much of value that I have learned.

Della (37:30)
Mm-hmm.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (37:52)
throughout homeschooling because I really never approached life in those if people start following just their own type of homeschooler, think the temptation to just follow Montessori if you’re a Montessori schooler or just follow unschooling if you’re an unschooler really broaden who you’re listening to and who you’re following because you might be surprised. There might be little things, little tips, little

scenarios from lessons to lifestyles, that resonate with you. you might be confused as to why it resonates with you at the beginning. It might be because it’s been what you’ve been lacking, your body, your mind, your spirit responds to it in a way that resounds with it, you might need that piece. homeschooling has been beautiful in that way. I have loved learning from people

I know in today’s political climate, it has been hard seeing people also, but in homeschooling, has also been lovely to see people who I fundamentally disagree with in many ways do beautiful things with their kids and in their homes. And I mean, it’s a double-sided thing, but I think there’s much to be learned from people who you think you might not have anything to learn, anything.

Della (38:54)
Mm-hmm.

I think this whole conversation also has an undercurrent of growth mindset, which is so important, not pegging the child, the individual, the parent as, good at math, good at art, and understanding when we work towards any one thing, we become better at it.

When we do more math, when we do more art, when we practice, we get better at it instead of defining an individual as this one thing or that one thing. And growth mindset is very important in education overall. So I feel like it’s really apt that that has been the undercurrent of our conversation.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (39:27)
Exactly.

I have seen myself as a student in homeschooling, alongside my children. I think there have been things that have worked really well from the outset that we luckily wandered into. there have been things that were not right for us. there were things that were right for us at one time that then grew into things that we weren’t suited for. the way it goes. I think that

It’s very rare to find a homeschooler who sticks with it for a long time, who is doing it exactly the same way they did at the beginning.

Della (40:11)
Yeah, I don’t know anybody that happens with I don’t know anybody at all. In fact, what I find is that really it takes three or maybe even four years to get your feet fully under you where you feel confident in the homeschooling. You have a rhythm. You have an understanding and you feel confident in that. Having said that.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (40:18)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Della (40:35)
it’s just a period of time before something’s going to up in that and you have to do a reflection and you’re going to have to come up with a new plan because it’s all going to change again.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (40:45)
Yep.

Yeah, and some of it is going to change just because of life and years passing. You’re going to have kids who have different schedules. even if their personalities stay the same, which they won’t, but you’re going to have different lives. You’re going to have different hours. People are going to start taking extracurriculars. Things are going to change. Your life’s going to move outside of the house somewhat. There’s no right way to do this thing. there’s just the way that’s the most enriching for your own.

Della (41:09)
song.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (41:12)
family. It’s like gardening, right? you could tell me all the tips in the world for how to grow a particular plant, but I won’t be in the same zone as you. My household be oriented the same way as you. I won’t have the same amount of sunshine or the same type of soil. That doesn’t make any one way right or wrong. It just means you’re going to have to figure out a different thing to grow your beautiful plant.

Della (41:31)
Right. So as more of a traditional homeschooler, what kind of curricula did you choose for your children?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (41:39)
I am as literature-based as they come mentally, emotionally, myself. I realized that that only worked with one of my children. I love Build Your Library. I think Emily Cook does such a great job of choosing books that are actually good, which was a big pet peeve of mine with some literature-based curricula where I felt like it looked very pretty.

But when you started reading some of the books, they were not good. I took great exception to that because I’m a big reader life is too short to read bad books. one thing you can rely on with Build Your Library is that the books are great. while my kids were small, we were all using Build Your Library because the kids were small and didn’t have opinions, the little, little ones, my eldest loved it.

as my middle got to be a little bit older and it would have become more of an independent reading situation, she very calmly informed me, I do not want to read 70 books this year. I would like to read closer to 10 or 12. So make it happen. And I did. I adjusted there. I still keep it fairly traditional. I think people get this idea that when you have a lot of curricula, you’re doing all of it from start to finish. I very much do not.

I go through curricula and decide what kinds of pieces from that curricula work for us and work in whatever unit we’re working on. I don’t quite do unit studies. I do a sequential curriculum, but I don’t do 100 % of all of these overlapping curricula because that would be impossible and terrible and make everyone miserable. And really, you’d just be sitting there and writing things down all day. So like I said, I reassess every week.

and I kind of see where we are and where we’d like to be going and how everyone feels and what the schedule is is. And then we fill in the pieces. And I’m not too precise about it now. So I mentioned Build Your Library. I have really loved Math Mammoth for math. I do a lot of math in my home school. I had Right Start because I like the games. But again, I didn’t go through the curricula straight through. Someone gave me Right Start early on and I just really liked the games. So we played a bunch of the games.

I did a lot of your curriculum for math for multiplication, division, and math facts. And it was beautiful. My kids really love art. seeing the visual depiction of things was great for them. So I take different pieces. And I guess I would call myself eclectic more than traditional, because even though I do a lot of book work, I try to do a lot of other work at the same time.

that makes it more enriching. we watch a lot of videos. I like to use curricula like Blossom and Root and Mint and Bloom, right? So that I can get all of those pieces put in like the audio visual component. And people will say you buy this curricula just for the audio visual component. And I say, yes, have you tried to make an entire year’s worth of audio visual resources? Because it takes a lot of time, to vet them, to know that they’re good for the kids, to know that they’re relevant to the topic.

Della (44:08)
Mm-hmm.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (44:28)
I will pay for that whether or not I’m using any other parts of the curriculum. I will pay for someone who’s overview I kind of appreciate and trust. that’s why we have a lot of curricula, but we don’t do 100 % of it. have used non-secular curriculum also. Like I have used, I think there was a book by Roddenstaff that is made for North Carolina.

I don’t know if they have it for other states, called Nature in the Summer or something. I bought it, I think it’s some homeschool resale. And they are so good. talk about every chapter is like this little family finding some animal or plant and talking about it. And there’s all these little sketches in the margins. we try to copy the sketches into our little notes.

I think that that’s another way of growth mindset. Don’t limit yourself to one thing or another. Really explore what might work for you. A lot of people would say I would never buy that because it’s run in staff, but it has been one of our favorite homeschool resources.

we read one little chapter every day. And so at this point, we’ve read like so many of the chapters through spring and summer that they really know all of these animals and plants that are here. I would say my most consistent curricula have been Build Your Library and Math Mammoth and everything else we have peppered in and out.

Della (45:36)
How far up does math mammoth go?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (45:39)
We brought through seventh. So I had my eldest go to school in eighth, right? So I’m not positive. I do think they have other units. They’re not the light blue books. They’re the dark blue books because I think they have that dark blue book for decimals and things like that. So I’m not sure if it, I think she has a pre-algebra unit though. we also used a lot of Eben Moore resources and critical thinking company resources too.

things like mind vendors from Critical Thinking Company their math reasoning books, those are really good. I have liked a mix of think it keeps the kids engaged. I think it keeps them thinking about similar concepts in different ways.

Della (46:14)
One of the more common coaching scenarios I find when people are overwhelmed and need help is that they are doubling up on the language arts They are often doing

all kinds of language arts and not as much math and there needs to be like a little more balance. They will be doing the full program for three or four different language arts programs every single day. if you want to use Michael Clay Thompson and all about spelling build your own library, you completely can.

But you need to pick and choose and balance so you’re only doing, XML of language arts every day. And language arts encompasses so much with grammar, spelling, writing, reading, that those things can be separated out

Tanya @projecthappyhome (47:09)
I think my worst times

have been when I do similar things, where I get overly enthused about different things and try to do too much of them. So my suggestion to people now is to prevent the overbuying, which I was a consistent and horrendous overbuyer. So I say this with lots of authority. Make a notebook, just a spiral bound cheapo notebook.

and have it be the things I think are interesting. And throughout the year, when you think about things for next year, write down, have a few pages for English resources, have a few pages for grammar resources, have a few pages for math resources, et cetera, and just write it down. Write down the price point, write down when you think the sale came around, and don’t buy any of it. Just write it down. Write down your notes about it, what you think about it. Anytime you see someone talk about that curricula, turn to that page.

where you had jotted it down before and write down, there’s this pro, but there’s this con. take your notes about it, ruminate on it. Don’t be so enthused on a bad week of math about some other curriculum that you just saw and buy it and then institute it next week and then realize that it’s not gonna be the best fit and then go back to the other one, but then think, but I wasted all that money, so let’s do both of them. Don’t do any of that. it comes time to buy stuff for the next year,

Really look at that list, look at that notebook of ideas, then have one sheet. One, not two, not three, not five, one, where you have a little table, a grid that you’ve drawn for yourself with math, spelling, grammar. You can split out language arts into different concepts if you like reading, writing, great. Science, history, social studies, and we’re getting into the weeds here, geography, really, indulge yourself.

and then write down one thing for each of those ideas or subjects that you think is gonna be your core. Really, this is what I want to get through for the year. You don’t get to write down two, you don’t get to write down three, you get to write down one, just one. So if my core for grammar is gonna be Michael Clay Thompson, it is gonna be Michael Clay Thompson. It is not gonna be Rod and Staff, Michael Clay Thompson, build your library, it’s not gonna be all of the things, it’s just gonna be that one.

If your core for reading is going to be build your library, you have to think to yourself, okay, so build your library also includes these other things. Am I going to do those other things at all? am I going to buy the grammar suggested by that or am I not? if I really want to do Michael Clay Thompson for grammar, great. Then I’m not going to purchase the grammar books suggested by this other thing. You have to be judicious about how you allot your resources and your time.

I also really, really, really advocate for people making a weekly time sheet at the beginning of the year. you lay out on this weekly hourly spread, again, one sheet. What are your times? When do people wake up? When do people go to bed? When are your piano lessons, your swimming lessons, your taekwondo lessons? block out all that. What are your travel times? Block out all that. Block out another half an hour around all that.

really, you think you’re gonna eat breakfast in half an hour? Plug out an hour. be generous with all the time you’re going to spend doing other things. And now look and see how many hours you really have left. If you’re gonna do a co-op day, take out that whole day. Just do it for your own sake. Remove that day from your schedule. If you get to use it for academic things or your own homeschool things, great, great.

but remove it from what you’re planning at the beginning. And really think, okay, this only leaves this many hours. How much can we really spend on And then you can experiment. Now you can really experiment. Maybe you guys have a homeschool where you do all your core subjects every day and sprinkle in all your supplemental things. Or maybe a block system works better for you.

Maybe a loop schedule works better for you where you really know you want to do math, science, arithmetic, English. And if you haven’t gotten to the next thing on your loop, you don’t go backwards and do math again because you’re stressed. You keep going with your loop. Figure out how you work best, but be honest with yourself about how much time there is. And as somebody who has wasted so much money, don’t do it. Just don’t do it. Stay true to that one page system.

At the beginning of the year to plot out your year, you really just need those two pages. One page of resources for your subjects and one weekly calendar. we put too much on ourselves, in our enthusiasm, in our new planner enthusiasm. we set ourselves up for disaster and then wonder why in three weeks we feel so bad about how homeschooling is going.

Della (51:35)
I think that’s really good advice. I think people tend to over plan in general and think that they will get more done than what they will and don’t understand really how much time school is actually going to take. And as they get older, because when they’re young, it’s not as important, but when they hit

middle school, have to guard that time a little more to make sure that the things that you want to get done are done. it used to be generations before me with homeschooler didn’t have a lot of options. They had very few curricula options. They had very few outside options. They basically had to create a lot of their own.

It is completely the opposite now where the biggest challenge is the overwhelming amount of options for everything. There are classes now that are specifically for homeschooling in the middle of the day. There are extra curricular activities, horse riding, archery.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (52:30)
Mm-hmm.

Music.

Della (52:46)
music,

in the middle of the day available for homeschoolers, co-ops, there’s so much available. You really have to guard your time when they get older so that you prioritize what you want to get done.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (52:58)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And I think that when we look at our schedules, I cannot emphasize enough, really look at transition times because you will build in, this is my piano lesson, this is how long it takes to get there, this is how long it takes to get back. What you will not build in is second and third breakfast right after you get back, there will be people hungry, there will be people who need a break, which is normal, think that through.

And again, another plug for reverse planning. have an idea of where you want to go, have a plan, do not tie it to a calendar. My first year homeschooling, I literally, I mean, you’ll laugh, but like, I think a lot of people do this. I blocked out the entire year. Like every day of that planner was filled out with what math we were going to do, what English we were going to do. Handwritten, by the way. When I think about it now.

Della (53:43)
wow.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (53:51)
I mean, and I was just going through and crossing out and the beginning I was a little bit alarmed, but then I was like, it’s okay, it’s still good to have a plan. I can just keep crossing things out. But at a certain point, we were so many months behind where I thought we would be that it wasn’t like a day or two or a few weeks. It was like two months before I was like, okay, next year we will not be doing this.

a list of assignments and projects that I wanted to do that was not tied in any way to a calendar. So it was so much more soul satisfying all year. It was wild. I don’t know what I was thinking, but in case you’ve done that, we’ve all been there.

Della (54:17)
Full year! my goodness.

I, yeah.

Well, you were new.

Right,

we’re at a point where

I could do that when they were younger in a map out a general sense. Like I want to cover these different Waldorf style blocks. I want to choose these certain goals for the year in a general sense. But now she has her own interests, her own ideas. And this is what I found for high school with my oldest two. Like you can go in the general direction.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (54:34)
Mm-hmm.

Della (54:57)
Like we know we’re going this way. We don’t know what part of this way. We don’t know exactly where the path is, but we know we’re going this way. But they keep you on your toes. Like my daughter just asked last week, can we study marine biology? Which I’m thrilled, thrilled at. My children have never been really interested in marine biology. And as a marine biologist, I’m like, I would love nothing more than to teach you marine biology.

But it was out of the blue surprise for me. And so now I’ve got to figure out how to teach marine biology. And then also where that fits in with all the other blocks we have yet to get done for this year. I mean, it’ll push it off till next year, but I’m really feeling

that hopefully it’ll be fun. We’ve run into instances before where our communication is different. She has this one idea in her head of what that is. And then I have a different idea. This happened with Botany early on. She had an idea of what Botany was going to be. And it was not the same idea that I had.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (55:44)
You are super good qualified for that.

Della (56:10)
for botany and so then when we’re doing botany, she’s like, this is not what I wanted. This is not what I asked for. I had that experience to rely to ask her at this when you say you want to study marine biology, what do you mean by that? What is it exactly that you want to be studying? Apparently it’s sharks. So yeah.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (56:11)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

I think that…

Della (56:36)
Yeah, so we’ll definitely include

some shark and egg theology, that can’t, well, I guess it could be the soul thing, but we’ll probably add more stuff to it.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (56:46)
I think the danger of asking our kids opinions too is something to learn because I have vacillated wildly between you really setting the show myself when when they’re kids, kind of do that when they’re very, very little, but then giving way too much weight to their opinions also because it is important to remember that they are kids and they are

having their feelings about, whatever it is, whether they think they hate art projects, or they think they hate worksheets, or they think they hate writing essays. They might dislike certain aspects of it, but certain things you’re still going to have to figure out on your own as a parent. You’re still going to have to observe them. This is why I feel like observing your kids on the regular days when you’re not asking them these questions is so important. if they are having problems with writing essays, like what is their pain point,

is it that they’re handwriting it? Because I know for one of my kids, that was literally the pain point. it wasn’t the essay writing at all. It was just that the initial stages were handwritten. I was like, would you like to type out your rough draft? They were like, yeah, sure. They didn’t even realize that in other words, pain point. And then it was easy. It was like smooth sailing, like no issues. So sometimes it’s really just about observing them throughout the process and don’t give up on things too soon. you might think it’s

IEW, for example, which has also been remarkably effective for us, that’s not working. But it’s actually just something like this, something tactile that’s not It can be just the fact that they’re doing it in a room with siblings at the same time. yeah, homeschooling is a giant science experiment, right? It is about observing, You have that hypothesis about things are going to go, what you think might work.

You’re going to observe your initial experiment, set a procedure, observe it. And then you’re going to take your notes and think to yourself, OK, well, this is what I’ve concluded. But then when you create your next experiment, there’s no guarantee that your second experiment is going to solve all those problems. You’re just going to gain more information. You’re going to hone it as you go. I think we all, like you were saying, this idea that before we used to have very limited resources, and now we have like 10,000 things to pick from.

There’s this fallacy that we all believe that there’s this perfect curricula, if not for everyone, for us. There’s going to be this perfect English curricula. There’s going to be this perfect math curricula and it’s going to solve all our problems. And that is not true. That just isn’t true. if anything, there’s probably too many perfect curricula and you’re going to want to use all of them,

There is no I think that in homeschooling in particular, it’s so beautiful. The social media we get on it is so beautiful. There’s this idea that everything around that table lays as beautiful. And it’s not. It’s about so much more than people shoving aside all the stuff on the desk. It’s literally about life. Life is messy.

Della (59:10)
Right.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (59:31)
And that is totally okay. And we can have beautiful moments inside that. This striving for like perfect is the death of it. You are not going to have 180 perfect days of homeschooling.

I find it humorous when some people will say, there’s this lesson and we just can’t get through it and I don’t know how to do it. And I’m like, why not just scrap it and move on? figure out a different way to teach that thing that you don’t like in this format. There’s no rule that says you have to do lessons 75 through 80. Just skip, go to 81. 81’s great

Della (59:59)
Right.

that’s a really good point. When we are doing a lesson, particularly if we are having something with difficulty or if I’m having I ask myself, what am I teaching? What is it that we’re trying to get out of this lesson? Am I going to teach it another way, which is almost…

always a yes, like will we hit this again? Will this lesson be taught another way? And is it worth pushing through now or focusing in on it later? I’m always asking myself those questions and sometimes going back to your previous point of finding the pain point, sometimes when they’re like,

I hate math or I hate art. It is an expression something being challenging at that time. We have definitely run into situations where we have been doing something she has expressed frustration. It’s usually general for her and I have scrapped that and then later she’ll be like, well, why don’t we do that thing that we did before?

And I’m like, what?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (1:01:15)
Yeah, exactly.

I’ve scrapped things and not bought them for subsequent year because of how negative they seem to respond to it. And they’re like, where is this? Why don’t we have this anymore? And I’m like, oh, I thought based on that outburst you did not like it. And they’ll be so cavalier. Oh, I was just having a bad day.

Della (1:01:26)
Right?

They can just be having expressing another emotion about something that they don’t fully recognize and it’s not the curricula or the activity or even the lesson. So tell me one thing that has been the most challenging for you in

Tanya @projecthappyhome (1:01:51)
The most challenging thing for me, I will say two. One has been getting out of my own head about how this should look. Truly that has been far and away the most challenging thing. The children have been lovely. The children have been great. I have been the problem. Hi, it’s me. I’m the problem, it’s me most of the time.

that is something to be humble about. It is a humbling experience, homeschooling. It is very kids will tell me sometimes, you’re doing so great today. I’ve always told my kids, we’re in it together. You guys tell me when you see something that needs to be addressed, I’ll tell you too, and we’ll all be honest together. that has been a humbling experience.

Again, everything we’ve been talking about growth mindset, this idea that you are not starting this process with this I’m already formed notion. we haven’t, I cannot say it enough and I know I’ve been saying it over and over, but really give yourself grace, give your kids grace, see where you’re going. don’t be where you’re going. Don’t put this emphasis on yourself to be there already,

to be completely a unified whole already, it get there. What is quote from a little prince, love is looking outwards in the same direction, it’s not looking at each other? It’s this idea for homeschool too, Look outwards this direction of where we all wanna go, everyone’s going to succeed somewhere,

and have that be in the back of your mind. How can I help this child succeed? How can I succeed here? instead of, I must already be successful. I think that shift was very, very helpful for me. And then my other thing would be, in all honesty, having different ages in a room together and trying to do things as a group. was harder than I expected it to be.

When they were very small, was very easy because my kids are fairly good natured. As they got older and they really started to shift into preteen and teenage feelings in years, and those differences between your youngest and your middle and your oldest become more pronounced. That was interesting. it’s interesting to think about because Waldorf really helped me there. That whole nine-year-old shift and these types of emotional teachings about what’s going on with a child.

That was so much more helpful to me than I would have figured at the beginning. working with kids where they’re at, when they’re all in the same room, and you’re trying to do a family lesson or trying to read a read aloud, that might not be hitting the same for everyone, that shift, managing that shift was difficult for me. It did not come easily.

Della (1:04:17)
this is definitely a universal challenge. I hear this very commonly, particularly in Waldorf, anytime I do a workshop with Hannah, people are asking, how are you schooling more than one child? What advice do you have for that?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (1:04:20)
Mm-hmm.

Della (1:04:34)
challenging and then I also think in some ways it makes it easier

Tanya @projecthappyhome (1:04:39)
I had to let go again, this idea of how you think it should look. is continuously letting go of that, you will have years where it works beautifully and then the next year inexplicably, the system that had worked beautifully for a few years is not at all functioning. really shifting with changing personalities and not always doing the same subjects at the same time, for example, like when they were small,

we would do math together everyone was at a different level, but we all kind of were doing it. it’s much easier to manage when all you’re teaching is multiplication and division and addition number lines then as you get one kid into pre-algebra and one kid is learning equations for the first time and one kid is learning geometry for the first time, it helps to have your attention not be split. You as a teacher too, because they get frustrated when

they have to wait and all of the same things that made them frustrated in public school. So I tried to switch up our schedule in a way that for their most challenging subjects or for my most challenging subjects to teach, I made sure that I wasn’t splitting my attention between several children at those times. I would try to have the other two in something that they could do on their own comfortably for the most part while I was working on the most intense thing with one of them. That was a huge shift for us.

then I also let go of some of my dreams and hopes for together things, some things I kept in line, but other things that just weren’t working in that way. I let them go. I bit them a sad farewell because it just wasn’t working for their developmental stages. that was okay. it’s rough on you, it’s rough, particularly after great years, after great periods where things are going swimmingly because you feel like you’ve arrived,

Somewhere in third to fourth to fifth year of homeschooling, there’s this period, especially if you start young, where everyone is at their most developed stage. It’s before all the pubertal hormones have kicked in. You’re coasting. understand what homeschooling is about. And then it all shifts again as they become preteens. there is a period of mourning to be had when you have to shift it all up again.

Della (1:06:28)
it weren’t that way for us to I’m remembering that before adolescence when we’re all sitting at the table together doing our schooling together scaffolded at different levels for different children then as they get older and they are going into more complex.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (1:06:36)
Mm-hmm.

Della (1:06:45)
studies, there does, there needs to be more, they are both autonomous, have more autonomy in their lessons, and more independent in their work. also, when they do need you, it needs to be full focus, directed, one on

Tanya @projecthappyhome (1:07:01)
Yes.

Della (1:07:02)
So the last question of today, what was something in the homeschooling that surprised you that you weren’t expecting?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (1:07:11)
most surprising thing for me has been seeing the kids interact with each other, me and the material in a way that is entirely different than everything I had experienced as a traditional school kid. I thought that homeschooling

would be not necessarily school at home, but very similar to how I had learned previously. we learn in a very different way at home, which I was unprepared for. The way we process information and the rabbit holes we take and how much more we learn in a rabbit hole than in our actual lesson and how we remember things and how they recall things is so different.

than when you’re in a traditional environment. I think partly because of how much time we spend together and also that you have this little troop, this merry troop before who are recalling things in real time so that when you encounter it out in the world somewhere else, like wild onion growing or something, you remember it in a real way and someone will find it and someone else will call out what it is and someone else will remember.

know what seasons it grows in and it’s not like anybody has to ask the question. Sometimes they’re just talking about it. That has been a delightful thing about homeschooling and my kids still even though the older two go to school will come home and tell me things about things they’ve learned whether it’s in school or from their friends or somewhere else. learning seems to be more a ever-present kind of universal concept to them than it ever was for me. I

felt like I was very nerdy and I was. But learning was definitely separate from life in a way that is not true for my Truly, as far as that we’ve been eclectic and mostly traditional and classical and whatever, they really see it everywhere. To them, there is no line that separates the space for learning from the space for living. All of it is one continuous experience.

that has been a wonderful thing to see. learning has become much more like that for me as well. Because now you encounter it. There’s something about homeschooling where you encounter it everywhere, as opposed to just when you go to a museum or just when you go a documentary or something. You really are looking for it everywhere. teaching them in this way has trained my mind in this way. And for them, it’s just a natural way of existing.

if I think of any one real advantage to homeschooling, I think that’s it. That you are in this life, all of it is available to you for learning about. It’s not something you have to go to a do, or have a particular time and space and book to do. the other thing I would say is that I am so known by my children, and that has surprised me too.

I feel very known by them in a way that I don’t know my parents, and that has been lovely and a big surprise. they know me so well, so much better than friends I grew up with, than my parents, than my spouse. They know me. They know my good things, my bad things. They know all my little foibles, they know my favorite things. They know like what I’m scared of. They know all the things.

that has been surprising and wonderful for a fairly introverted person.

Della (1:10:16)
That’s beautiful. Both of those are absolutely beautiful.

Thank you so much for joining me today, Tanya. I really appreciate it.

Tanya @projecthappyhome (1:10:24)
It has been lovely to talk to you. And I just want to say, Della, like I have learned so much from you personally. So I really, really appreciate it. Like this is like such a nice full circle moment for me.

Della (1:10:36)
Could you tell us where we can find you online?

Tanya @projecthappyhome (1:10:39)
you can find me on YouTube and Instagram at Project Happy Home. And I recently started a TikTok account more for books and skincare and things about being in your 40s. And that’s at ferralbluestockingreads.

Della (1:10:52)
Thank you so much.