Heidi is a mother of three living in the mountains of southern Tasmania, Australia’s southernmost island state. A second-generation homeschooler and former intensive care and emergency nurse, she left nursing to educate her children at home. For over fifteen years, her family has followed a Waldorf-Steiner-inspired approach to home education while establishing a productive permaculture property, growing much of their own food, and caring for the land and animals.

Inspired by Waldorf-Steiner principles, a love of the arts, and a belief in children learning through nature and practical, real-world skills, she continues homeschooling her youngest while writing curriculum. Heidi is the writer and creator behind Twig & Berry Homeschoolcurriculum guides, which grew from lessons she originally wrote for her own children. Alongside this, she works in literacy and numeracy learning support across two independent schools, supporting small groups and assisting with relief teaching from Kindergarten through to Class 10 at her local Waldorf school.

Show Chapters

00:00 Introduction
00:00 Meet Heidi
00:00 Homeschooling in Tasmania
00:00 Heidi’s Path to Homeschooling
00:00 Life Before Home Education
00:00 What Is Waldorf Pedagogy?
00:00 Handwork and Developmental Stages
00:00 Homeschool vs. Waldorf School
00:00 Letting Go of Perfectionism
00:18 Favorite Curriculum Blocks
00:18 Transitioning Boys to School
00:18 Homeschooling One Child
00:18 Literacy, Dyslexia, and Learning to Read
00:18 Biggest Challenges and Self-Care
00:18 The Surprises of Homeschooling
00:18 Twig and Berry Curriculum

Table of Contents

Transcript

Heidi (00:00)
homeschooling is like how long is a piece of string? we all do it a little bit differently. It’s so individualized. there are families out there that homeschool in a very traditionally Steiner way. There are homeschooling families out there who just take what works for them, leave what doesn’t, and move through it like that.

you had these different divergent philosophies that came out of that movement, but really at their heart they all had the same goal, which is child development and how we educate children so that we create, well-rounded, well-educated but fully human humans rather than just pushing, academic

education, which at the time it was very much, that real push for only academics at the expense of other areas of learning and development.

kids are where they are, and as long as they are making progress and you can see progress happening, there’s learning happening.

there’s most of all connection happening. that is the sweet spot. That is the real benefit of home learning in particular,

sometimes it feels so busy and you feel stretched thin but what a beautiful life, what a beautiful life of connection that we get to build with our children.

What a privilege that is. And it’s hard work, absolutely. And we make sacrifices to it, a hundred percent. But what a privilege too that we can spend that time with our children.

You’re doing enough, you’re enough, and your children are enough. And it’s okay too if they’re not academically inclined. The world is full of people with different skills, different pathways, and it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.

Della (01:41)
I think.

Della (01:45)
This week we’re meeting Heidi. Heidi is a mother of three living in the mountains of southern Tasmania, Australian southernmost island state. A second generation homeschooler and a former intensive care and emergency nurse, she left nursing to educate her children at home. For over fifteen years her family has followed a Waldorf Steiner inspired approach to homeschooling.

While establishing a productive permaculture property, growing much of their own food and caring for the land and animals. inspired by Waldorf Steiner Principles, a love of the arts, and a belief in children learning through nature and practical real world skills, she continues homeschooling her youngest while writing curriculum.

Heidi is the writer and creator behind Twig and Berry Homeschool curriculum guides, which grew from lessons she originally wrote for her own children. Alongside this, she works in literacy and numeracy learning support across two independent schools, supporting small groups and assisting with relief techniques from kindergarten through the class 10 at her local Waldorf School.

Della (03:00)
This is a homeschool journey.

Della (04:01)
Hi, Heidi, welcome. Thank you for joining me today.

Heidi (04:04)
Hi, Della, thank you for having me.

Della (04:06)
Yeah, I think this appointment has been my most challenging to schedule. Jazz is in Taiwan, but she is 12 hours away. So, when it’s eight here, it’s eight there just in the evening. But you are fourteen hours ahead. And yeah, this one’s a little challenging. So as we’re recording.

It’s eight at night at my house and it’s ten, roughly. Yeah.

Heidi (04:30)
Mm-hmm.

Ten thirty here. Yes, yeah,

yeah.

Della (04:35)
so what I’ve been starting the podcast with is where you’re located and what the homeschool requirements are for your location.

Heidi (04:43)
Okay. so I’m in Tasmania, Australia, which is a little island state, at the bottom

in Australia we’re made up of states and territories, and every state has its own jurisdiction, it has its own education department. all of the requirements for different states and territories are all different. so I I’m not that all over the whole of the country, but I can talk about Tasmania because that’s where we’ve homeschooled all of our lives. we have

A department within the education department of the state, which is for home education. it has a educational registrar, and they have moderators who report to the registrar for education and

all home education families are required to apply initially. then we’re monitored every year and we do a written report which we submit, which is then assessed by the moderators, then we have a moderator come and visit us in our own home and meet our children, speak with our children, and we go through the report.

that we’ve made together. the report includes both our educational philosophy, how we approach education, and then individual information about each child, what they’ve achieved over the last year, the progress they’ve made, how we’re meeting their different needs or different challenges if they have them, and then of course what we’re going to do within the next year.

What I will say about Tasmania is that they’re really all home educating mothers themselves. so they’re really pro-home education they are really supportive of home education and offering support to the families, which is not the case in all.

States of Australia. I think some states of Australia, it’s a lot more onerous. certainly the people I’ve talked to have said that sometimes they have to prove a lot more and they’re not as supportive. But we’re really lucky in Tasmania. We have a huge home educating community and all of the moderators are really offering support, offering help. How can we make this work for you? How can we make this work for your children?

So it’s pretty rare to ever come against any issues that they might bring up. But I think, it’s there to make sure that educational neglect doesn’t happen, and to make sure that families are given the support that they need. we are really lucky in that respect.

Della (07:02)
our school system has a really good relationship with homeschoolers and is generally pretty supportive in that way. they’re more hands-off, but I other school systems that are less supportive and it’s a little more challenging when you’re dealing with that kind of homeschooling. How did you find yourself to homeschooling? What was that path?

Heidi (07:17)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Della (07:26)
Like for your family.

Heidi (07:27)
So I was home educated myself between the grades of seven to ten. I went to school in grade 10. We were living overseas at the time. We were living in Asia and we started home educating there because we were traveling around a lot. and then we came back to Australia and continued because we we really enjoyed it. My mum enjoyed it, us kids enjoyed it. So I am a second-generation homeschooler now.

it was always sort of something in my mind. I I didn’t go into home educating thinking this is definitely what I’m going to do. In fact, we actually enrolled our eldest in the local Steiner school here, and he was young in his year, and he was not really coping with the full day, The school were amazing.

At trying to get him to a a place where he he was comfortable. They were really wonderful. I have no criticism at all about how they sort of handled it. And in fact, they suggested, why don’t you register as home educating and then come in for whatever he can manage. we did that for a while and then I it felt

choppy and disruptive to our rhythm at home. I had another little boy who was quite young at the time. He was just a toddler. I was, constantly traveling and it was really disruptive. we went, like, why don’t we just give home education full-time a go and we can reassess it. at the time the minimum requirement was six months. you could register for home education for six months.

And then you could reapply or go back to school. So we thought let’s give it six months, we’ll just reassess after that time. however many years it was later, we just we just kept going. It was working for us, it was working for my children, and we we just, went into a really lovely rhythm. We found a community, which I think is really important to be able to find a community.

And yeah, yeah, all these years later I’m still still home educating my youngest. Yeah.

Della (09:18)
roughly how old? What’s the range of the children?

Heidi (09:21)
so my eldest is eighteen and my youngest is just ten. Yeah.

Della (09:24)
Nice. So you’re

doing that last lap in the rotations. I’ve been seeing some of that so lovely online to watch them go through each of the blocks. And some of the blocks are such milestones. So Heidi, what did you do before children, before home educating, and how did that influence your home education?

Heidi (09:28)
Yeah Yes.

Yeah, so that’s a good question. I’ve done a few different things. Originally what I was trained is I’m a ICU an emergency nurse. completely out of the field of education, or mostly out of the field, although I did take education roles within that. I would take student nurses and graduate nurses and and educate, be involved in the education there. I was always involved in

education in one way or another because I really enjoy it. prior to that I lived in Ireland with family that I have in Ireland and I home educated their children. that was wonderful I really enjoyed that. that was the first time I had actually had any experience of of actual home education itself.

I worked for many, many years in emergency. I worked in ICU as well, I worked in medical research as well, doing population health studies on the causes of prostate cancer. I had as often nurses do, a lot of varied jobs within the the scope of nursing. But when I had my own children, I went from loving the chaos of the emergency department, loving the

fact that you don’t know what’s coming in yet. I’ve always loved communication and working with people. in that sense you’re working with people in crisis and that was part of the job that I really loved but when I had my own children I found it really difficult to go in, do a shift in emergency and then come home to these young children who needed me.

emotionally and physically I was spent from dealing with all of the grief and the trauma and all of the stuff that you see every day. And I take my hat off to nurses and doctors who can do that and then be emotionally available to their kids. I really do. And physically available ’cause you’re exhausted when you get home from being on your feet for eight, ten, twelve hours. I

I really struggled with that transition. It was only the drive home and then bam, I was with kids who hadn’t seen me for that day. I was only working part-time. I wasn’t working full time, but I made the decision that no, that’s not what I wanted to do. I couldn’t. I felt I didn’t have those resources within me to keep doing that. then as they reached school age

Like I said, we tried out schooling, we sort of bounced into educate home education and continued from there. In terms of the skills, I think certainly being able to adapt very quickly to be able to organize things on the fly, which is actually a strength in home education, because you see the child and you’re able to adapt and

pivot and turn and go down little rabbit holes of really meaningful learning I think there’s transferable skills there. But of course just dealing with emotion and all those sorts of things that are crossover skills I I did work in information within nursing.

I had some experience in that as well, which was which was helpful in a way, I suppose, because there is you know, there is some similarities there. Adult learners are different than ch child learners, but yes, there are there are similarities there,

Della (12:52)
so you also have some background in Waldorf pedagogy. Can you talk about that background?

Heidi (13:00)
when I was helping with home education with my family in Ireland, they were interested in the Waldorf method. They were only interested in bringing the parts of Waldorf that worked for them, which is home education in a nutshell, really, isn’t so I’d been exposed to it then. I also knew some Steiner home educated.

children that I grew up with and they were always so incredibly creative and musical there was craft in their house and knitting and weaving it was always really inspiring to go to their house because they’d put on a play or they would do all these like really inspiring creative things. as a child myself it was always really inspiring to see. I had a little bit of knowledge of what Steiner education was, but not a great deal.

Until my own children came along and then I started looking at different schools and what educational philosophies I most aligned with. that’s when I started doing lots of reading and lots of research and read and read and read. when I deep dive, I deep dive. we ended up putting him in a Steiner school for that short period.

I was involved there, which is actually the school I now work at. I work there just relief work it’s a lovely school, beautiful school. I was largely self taught really through reading and through attending different seminars as they came up within the school community and

home educating my own children, spending hours and hours reading and researching, which, I’m sure home educating mothers do.

Della (14:27)
Yeah,

that was similar for me for finding Waldorf. My son was in fifth grade when I found Waldorf was looking for more math curriculum, we bumped into Waldorf geometry, which I just fell head over heels in love. I mean, I love math anyway.

And then to see Waldorf Geometry, I’d never seen anything like it. And I was like, this is so beautiful. Like, why aren’t we teaching all of geometry like this? So that’s when we dove into it.

Heidi (14:50)
Mm-hmm.

Della (15:02)
what is Waldorf pedagogy in a nutshell?

Heidi (15:05)
Okay, it was started by Rudolf Steiner, who was an Austrian sort of philosopher, mathematician, who lived around the turn of the century. and he was part of the educational reform movement that was happening throughout Europe. I’m not sure where else, but certainly within Europe it was happening. Montessori was one of his

Contemporaries, so they’re all around the same time, and they were working on some of the educational philosophers’ work. They were sort of springboarding off that, and they went in different ways, but surprisingly similar in many ways too. They were looking at children, child development, and how education can meet the needs of children and how it fits within child development.

So you had these different divergent philosophies that that came out of that movement, but really at their heart they all had the same goal, which is child development and how we educate children so that we create, well-rounded, well-educated but full humans rather than just pushing, say, academic

education, which I think at the time it was very much, real push for only academics at the expense of other areas of learning and development. So he sort of came out of that movement. he was a tutor originally, so he privately tutored families, including a family that had a child with intellectual disability. I think he tutored

That child through the majority of their education. And that experience informed a lot of his understanding of child development and how to meet the needs of individual children, regardless of their ability. How do we meet every individual child where they are and with the capacities that they have?

That was the founding. funny enough, the first Waldorf School was a school for the children of factory workers. owner of the cigarette factory had approached Steiner, it must have been exposed to Steiner’s work, asking for a program that would help the children of these workers.

I don’t know what the children of the workers were doing before this, presumably they had no other educational outlet he took on that job and that was the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart. from then on he sort of developed his educational philosophies and did lots of lectures, went round Europe lecturing.

teachers of Waldorf schools which started springing up around the place. that’s where the beginnings where it originated. pedagogy is probably what drew me to Steiner education. It sees the human as a threefold you’ll often hear head, heart, hands, or

Thinking, feeling, willing. he understood the human and the developing child within this framework. and I guess it was a response to education being very thinking or head knowledge without the feeling and the willing, and he saw all of those as equal parts in learning and and development.

Obviously, you have your thinking or your head learning or your academic intellectual learning. The heart represents the feeling life, that is the emotional connection to the learning. And then you have hands,

of knowledge and of experience and it sort of brings it all together. So handwork can seem as not as important, but in fact it’s some of the most important work. that’s a quick rundown.

Della (18:35)
just

say that handwork has so many advantages to the child on so many different levels. Just a few that I can think of. It’s great for fine motor skills when we want to enhance letter writing or hand-eye coordination.

Heidi (18:47)
No.

Della (18:53)
Handwork is great for that. It’s great for their self-confidence. There’s doing something with their hands and they have a finished product after. It’s also was wonderful for us, particularly during our history blocks, because they had a whole lot of reading. We use living history books instead of presentation. And they enhance the listening to whatever material that we were doing because you’re

Heidi (19:18)
Yeah.

Della (19:20)
doing something with your hands. There’s actually research to back that up,

Heidi (19:25)
Yes, yeah. And you get that

heart connection as well, that emotional connection to the intellectual side of the learning as well. I love handwork too for the will building aspect of it because it’s hard sometimes, it’s hard learning a new skill. I often find with my own children there’s sometimes resistance at first because every new thing is always hard. But it’s that gentle encouragement that we do as parents.

Della (19:29)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Heidi (19:50)
push through that difficulty. and that’s will building and that’s really important. that we get from handwork, which I think is a really underlooked area or reason that handwork is so important.

Della (20:02)
I just want to say for our audience too, we didn’t and don’t do hand work all year round. I know some families do, but sometimes that can be overwhelming. And we were definitely ebbing and flowing through the year depending on what we were doing, particularly if we were doing like a math block or a science block that was doing hands-on

projects and labs every single day, we weren’t doing handwork in addition to that. I used it more for reading.

Heidi (20:35)
yes, yes, yeah,

absolutely. Yes, yeah. It depends on the block what you’re doing, for sure. The other thing I’d say about Waldorf pedagogy is that it’s really developmental. It’s a developmental pedagogy. So it is very much based on the ages of children and what Steiner felt that they were developmentally ready for.

there is groupings of ages. So zero to seven is the first grouping, seven to fourteen, and then fourteen to twenty-one. So he worked in these sort of seven-year cycles of of development. as your own experience as a parent, you’ll see that. You’ll see the difference between a seven-year-old and a fourteen-year-old. Obviously, they’re different, they have different questions.

Della (21:05)
Yeah.

Heidi (21:16)
they contextualize things differently. that’s really important to add. So the zero to seven grouping is largely play, song and story based and also using your hands. the beginnings of fine motor skills. you’re using your hand to model or to work with yarn or or whatever it is.

You’re starting to bring that, but in a very gentle way in that first seven-year cycle. the largest, the most important part of that seven-year cycle is probably the rhythm that you’re establishing with children. The rhythm in your home, the daily rhythm that you’re gently bringing them through an awareness of time, but not time as in watching the clock time, but rhythm through the day as you’re bringing them now.

It’s time to do this, and now it’s time to do that, and now, we’re bringing them through that phase. then seven to fourteen, which is where my youngest is, that is the heart of childhood. That is where they are becoming more self aware, they are becoming more aware of the world around them and of friends and relationships, and they start with that sort of academic learning as

they come into themselves and into the world. as you go through those grades, you’re bringing different stories to them based on their point of development and what their internal life is and what their development is. stories are a huge obviously a huge part of Steiner education and the stories are what feed

The children as they move through development. They feed their inner life as they move through the development of childhood. then you go into the next, final seven years of formal education, which is the 14 to up to 20 ones. And that is, you know, when they’re starting to critically think, they’re starting to question, they see nuance, they see context, they want to wrestle with complexity,

they’re more capable of abstract thought and abstract concepts and they want to wrestle with them. they crave difficult conversations you often see that conflict of children and parents as they push back and they’re finding their own individual self. and how the education method meets that need in the child, the need to question, the need to actually find their own identity in the world as a

actualized full person who is making choices and decisions for their own lives. Obviously a child is an actualized full person too, but you are assisting them as they grow. I love teens because they challenge you. They challenge you and they push back and you can parented and educated right, they can be

Della (23:49)
I do too.

Heidi (23:57)
wonderfully stimulating, also challenging, but you know, they’re wonderful. I love teens because of that mind. You see that real mind developing. So the education meets those needs, the need for wrestling with difficult conversations and difficult topics we don’t bring those to the the five year old or the six year old. We don’t bring those to the ten year old because they

Della (24:18)
Right.

Heidi (24:21)
They’re not in that stage of development, but we do bring those to the fifteen year old who wants to wrestle with why, why do we do this like this or why is society like this? I I think I’d be remiss not to add all of that as as part of the world of pedagogy, that it is very much a developmental pedagogy with child development in mind and stages of child development.

Della (24:42)
the whole child, the whole mind, body, heart, the whole child at the stage of development that they are what is most appropriate for them to meet them where they are.

Heidi (24:44)
Mm.

Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Yes, absolutely.

Della (24:56)
You have experience working within a Waldorf school and then you also have experiencing homeschooling in a Waldorf style. Can you talk about similarities and differences within the two?

Heidi (25:12)
Yeah. it’s a difficult question in some respects because homeschooling is like how long is a piece of string? You know, we all do it a little bit differently. It’s so individualized. and there are families out there that homeschool in a very traditionally Steiner way. There are homeschooling families out there who just take what works for them, leave what doesn’t, and move through it like that.

it can be quite similar to a Steiner school. It can be really different and in fact very Waldorf inspired, just bringing in aspects that works for them. so that’s quite different. Obviously, a Waldorf school follows the Waldorf pedagogy it’s quite a different learning environment, you might have 20 or 25 children.

So there’s a lot more sort of group dynamic learning that’s quite different. and there are differences too by the time you’re in grades, you’ve got specialist teachers coming in to teach language or to teach handwork. by the time you’re in high school, you have specialist teachers in many different areas, including art. then the

main teacher, the class teacher will do the main lesson that develops over the course of grade kindergarten to grade ten. I don’t I I work in a school that goes to grade ten, so I don’t have experience with eleven and twelve, but I imagine it was it’s quite different quite similar. so it’s quite different. Some things are similar, but home education, the beauty of home education is that it’s

flexible and adaptable to your individual children. So that’s always going to look different for every family. There are certain similarities usually within Steiner homeschooling you would bring blocks at similar ages, but the blocks might look a little bit different. I certainly started to group my two older boys together at a certain point. They’re only 18 months apart so it was very easy

Developmentally they were in a really similar phase. So we did blocks together I think we started that in grade five. Once they’re both reading and writing and at a similar sort of level in that sense, we started combining blocks. And that was lovely because it gave us an opportunity to do more group learning scenarios. and I also had my youngest then who was coming through, or she would have been a toddler or a

younger baby at that time. I was splitting my time between children needing and requiring very different things from me. there are similarities, there are differences, but again, how long’s a piece of string? Like how do you bring signer education into your home that’s gonna always gonna look different for every family.

Della (27:31)
Right.

Is there anything in particular that the Waldorf schools do that you let go of in your own homeschooling?

Heidi (27:44)
yes, there’s a few things. Crochet. I don’t crochet. I didn’t crochet. I know, don’t judge me. No. I’m sure you won’t. look, there are some things. We didn’t do Eurythmie.

Della (27:54)
Can you explain for our audience what eurythmy is?

Heidi (27:57)
Yes, so Erhythmie is a movement system. It’s not quite dance, although it probably looks like dance.

Della (28:05)
was there anything else that you let go of?

Heidi (28:07)
like I said, at a certain point I let go of trying to do three main lessons. We did three main lessons up until the end of grade four. then from grade five, I combined my two boys, and as my youngest started to come through, I was doing her individual main lesson. I think I just let go of

the pressure on myself to do it all and be it all, because I realize that in a school you have specialist craft teachers, you have specialist language teachers, you have all these specialist teachers, and I can’t replicate that by myself. So what I have done is I have enrolled my kids in an art class or I’ve enrolled my kids in a craft class.

my daughter does craft with a Steiner teacher who has a homeschooling craft class I have let go trying to put the pressure on myself to do everything and be a mum and have different age children. So that’s one thing I let go of. And I let go of the sense of perfection because I think it’s very easy to look, especially online, who

on Instagram, it looks so beautiful, it looks so perfect. And you think, why’s my day been fraught? Or my kids have been bickering? Or why doesn’t it look like that perfect Waldorf school? my child’s done a drawing and they’ve just scrubbed it on the page and it and it’s not beautiful. I let go of the perfectionism from from my perspective, but also from my children’s perspective as well. Because

That is one thing about posting online is that you bring yourself out for judgment, but you also bring your children’s work out for judgment. whilst I haven’t had very many comments about that, thankfully, we’re in a lovely home educating sort of bubble here, and perhaps that just doesn’t go out to the wider community, but

But people forget, I think, that there are real people behind the account and real children behind the account. And I don’t want to expose my children to that. for me, letting go of the need to produce something perfect, but remembering that it’s not the product that matters, it is actually the process that mattered. So if my child does a form drawing that is not Instagram worthy.

Della (30:11)
Mm-hmm.

Heidi (30:12)
It is

actually the process of that that’s important. It’s not the pretty picture at the end that’s going to look great on Instagram. because that’s not their real work. And I think that’s reassuring on the other side when you’re looking at somebody’s work and you sort of look at this picture and you think, right, okay, well, that is actually something similar to what my child’s doing. It’s not because I think there is that sort of tendency to try and put highlight reels on Instagram and not real life reels on Instagram. And I get it, but

Della (30:38)
And that’s our tendency.

We love to share our highlights. we don’t want to revel in the misery of a particular moment or day. it’s the tendency, if we can just remember that when we look on Instagram or social media, that that’s somebody’s highlight. I’m laughing internally a little bit, Heidi, because your children’s work and your work are absolutely stunning.

Heidi (31:05)
well not all of it is.

Della (31:08)
Well, not all of anybody’s is, but it’s absolutely beautiful. And your talk about the beautiful picture, whatever that is, in Waldorf is the last step.

there’s a lot of work that happens before you get to that particular thing that goes on the page, especially with form drawing and main lesson books. those are the last portion of their.

Heidi (31:30)
Mm.

Della (31:34)
learning that makes it into their notebooks. because it’s easy to look at something and think, they just write stories and draw pictures all day. No, there’s so much work that happens beh before that.

Heidi (31:46)
Yeah, that’s like you say, the

finished product is the the end product. It’s not the process. It’s not the practicing of the form which went squiggly and wiggly in all the wrong directions every time until over time it was it was mastered and then it’s finally ended up in the main lesson book or or whatever it was. we don’t usually show the whole process, but there is a whole process to the end.

And sometimes even the end result is wiggly and squiggly. But like I said, that is the learning. We’re not we’re not learning for a Instagram outcome. We’re learning for the process. working in a Steiner school now, seeing 25 kids of the same age, obviously they’re all, age cohort-based, and seeing how much variation there is within one grade of children.

Della (32:21)
Right.

Heidi (32:34)
in terms of where they are in literacy or numeracy or even with drawing or with form drawing There’s a huge range within the one age group of what those children produce and do. And no one’s judging them on that. No one’s going, my goodness, look at that. what they’re doing is they’re looking at the progress over time and saying, well this is where they started in the year. We’re now mid year and

This is where they are now. Look at that progress. And that’s gonna look different for every child. If you’re sort of find maths easy, that’s gonna look different for that child. If you are very literacy-minded and love writing stories, well, that’s gonna look really for that child. Instagram doesn’t show that. but there is so much variation within the one age group, and as long as your child is making progress.

Della (33:17)
Mm-hmm.

Heidi (33:24)
However slow that might be, progress is progress. that can look really different. I think it’s really easy to judge ourselves and judge our children’s work on what we see other people doing or what the curriculum says we should be doing. if I could reassure parents, there is so much variation within an age cohort. And as long as your child is making progress.

As long as they’re connecting with the material, as long as they are enjoying it, and well, they don’t always have to enjoy it. Struggle is part of education too. Struggle is part of learning too. It’s not all fun and and it’s not always going to be enjoyable. But as long as you can see that progress and connection is being made, I think for me they’re the two guiding principles for my own children, but also the children I work with in school. Progress and connection.

They’re the two things that I would say are most important.

Della (34:16)
That that’s a good

key to think of and keep in mind. Progress and connection.

Della (34:25)
Hi friend, it’s Della here. You may not know, but I have a lot of information to support you on your homeschooling journey. I have a YouTube channel with lots of videos on homeschooling and how we do math in particular. I have lots of highlights on Instagram of our homeschooling over the years, from our animal study to botany, math highlights, and more. I also have a substack with musings about homeschooling and math.

But my best work is on my site. You can visit my blog by age or by subject. There are things like handcrafting projects, physics study, math units, and more. I have our favorite read alouds, the various curricula that we’ve used over the year, and all my chalkboard drawings. You can find even more support in my shop. They’re mostly math.

Guides, but a handful of science guides as well. You can visit my shop at the beautyofplay.com.

Della (35:26)
So just being a little flippant here, which of your blocks are your favorite? we definitely have favorite blocks. What are your favorite blocks?

Heidi (35:35)
That is such a hard question because it changes every grade that I’m teaching or year that I’m teaching. I don’t know. I have a favorite, at least one favorite in every year that I teach. I would say that North Smiths one of my all-time favorites. I really enjoy those. The stories are funny.

Della (35:49)
Okay.

Heidi (35:52)
they’re quite fun. I would also say that I love history, so I’m always gonna say all of the history blocks, every single history block. if I had to say one.

Dunno, I can’t.

Della (36:02)
That’s so

funny. I love all the science blocks. we loved botany. I think we’ve done botany two or three times now. We love the animal block. we are supposed to be doing something else, but for the first time in all of the time I’ve ever been educating, my child asked me to teach marine biology. I’m like, are you kidding? because I’m a marine biologist.

Heidi (36:04)
You do you?

Della (36:27)
neither one of my kids has really ever been interested in it. And the funny thing is that I also love math. And both of my kids can do math. They’re proficient, all of that, but they’re like, mm, whatever. but don’t you love this? so I am like parting the waters and ending what we are doing early and

Heidi (36:40)
Yeah, that’s quite

Yeah.

Della (36:49)
pushing us back. We’re gonna be late, late in air quotes for everything else, but we are going to get a block in for marine biology.

Heidi (36:58)
That’s awesome. That’s

Della (37:00)
So you were telling me that your oldest two are in school now. what kind of school were they in? What did that transition look like?

Heidi (37:06)
Yeah.

So they decided, for grade ten that they would like to try school. and of course we were always supportive. home education is one of the options, I love it, it’s a great option, they’ve loved it. But I think when they got to that age where they were seeking sort of peer community more and more.

I find certainly in our area, the homeschooling community really dropped off, especially with boys for some reason. There weren’t very many boys of their age that was still homeschooling. A lot of had transitioned to school too. We went and toured a lot of different schools and spoke with principals, and we let our eldest choose the school, and he’s chosen a school that goes

through 11 and 12. so that he didn’t have to change, I don’t know how the school system works where you are, but some of our schools will only go to grade 10, and then some of them will go to grade 12, which is the pre-tertiary years for university. so they do all the university entrance subjects in those two years. so

Della (38:06)
that’s really

interesting. That’s different than the US. All all of our high schools go to twelfth grade. And then university is separate from that. That is really interesting.

Heidi (38:09)
Yeah, I think.

right.

Yes, university

university separate too, but yes, not all schools will go through to grade twelve. in fact a lot of schools go through to grade six and then you will start at a different school, depending on where you are. Some schools will go from pre kinder all the way to year twelve. it’s quite variable really.

Della (38:34)
most of ours are separated from kindergarten to fifth. We have middle school sixth, seventh, and eighth, and then high school ninth through twelfth. But all of the schools end in twelfth grade. None of them s stop at tenth grade.

Heidi (38:42)
Right,

Stop there. Yeah, right. Okay. It’s

quite common to stop here at ten. and we count high school as grades seven to ten. And then we say college for eleven and twelve. So that’s not university. College is eleven and twelve for us. So anyway, he decided that he wanted to go to a school that did 10, 11, 12.

So he went to that one. And then my middle child, he is in year 10 now, so he followed at this the same school, and I only have the one homeschooled now at home, which is such a different experience, just homeschooling one child. it’s going really well. It’s it’s so different. and she’s very social, so I have to make sure that we’re out of the house, socializing.

Della (39:22)
Mm.

Heidi (39:30)
a lot to meet those needs as well.

Della (39:33)
Which is so

interesting because homeschoolers get asked about social skills a lot. most of the time what people are talking about are things that aren’t applicable or useful in a homeschool child’s life, like how are they gonna take turns and get in line and it’s classroom management things, but the social aspect of it

Heidi (39:50)
Yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yes. Yes, yeah.

Della (39:56)
in homeschooling is important and it can be a challenge, but just in a completely different way than what other people are thinking. I also have to make an effort to get out there. I would be happy to stay home every day.

Heidi (40:10)
Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, yeah. I’m a homebody.

Della (40:12)
But but we have to get

out there so that she gets social interaction. So how did the transition for the boys go? Was it an easy transition? Were there hiccups?

Heidi (40:19)
Yeah.

No, no, it was really easy transition. Because Tasmania has quite a large home educating population, I think schools are I wouldn’t say used to, but that it’s certainly not a foreign thing for them to have home educated children coming in at various ages. I’d say grade seven is a big age, where home educated children will transition. But then again, probably ten or eleven and twelve is another sort of

peak time for people to transition. we were by no means the first home educated family. in fact there was another home educated child that we knew from our community that started at the same time. they’re always coming in. the teachers are very much aware and actually my

eldest maths teacher was home educated himself and now works as a maths teacher. so they’re always very excited to have home educated kids come in. and they’re aware of the little nuances that home educated kids bring. Like we didn’t do a lot of testing in our program. so that is a skill that they had to learn. We did a little bit but not heaps.

This is life in general, but you learn from your, experiences. And one thing I learned with my second child is to run him through just things like note taking in class. Because we had never really done note taking at speed, and so little skills like that I was able to do for my second that my first didn’t get because I didn’t think of it. yes, test taking was a skill that they had to learn, like timed tests. We had done some.

tests but they were never like strict time tests like you get in school. when they made the decision to go to school, they gave me about six months to a year’s notice, depending on which child. So I was able to actually say, Okay, Let’s go through a couple of things, let’s do a few more essays than we’d been doing. so I was able to sort of

smooth the transition for them in that sense a little bit. and as far as like they have transitioned beautifully, they’re doing really well academically, they’re doing really well socially, which is no surprise. I think there’s that myth that homeschoolers are are not well socialized, but in my experience, their teachers love them because they sit down and they’ll have a conversation with their teacher just as they would with a friend. And

You actually realise when you go into school that’s actually not always that common. and they really appreciate that my boys will ask, how was your weekend back at the teacher? because you know, they often get those sort of one word answers from a lot of teens. Whereas, yeah, no problems on the social front.

I remember thinking, gosh, this is where it all hits rubber beats the road. have I done a good enough job? You know? Have I I missed stuff? I had so much anxiety around that.

a lot of fear around that. then I remembered that in a class of 30 children, there are gonna be gaps. There are gonna be gaps of knowledge or experience. There’s gonna be kids coming from other schools that haven’t done the same thing. There’s just going to be a huge variety of where those kids are academically, and it’s gonna be okay. so now I have one at home.

I’m able to homeschool with that in mind, it’s going to be okay. Because I think we put so much pressure on ourselves and we can sometimes operate with some fear around the fact that home education is all on our shoulders and we don’t want to do the wrong thing by our children. We don’t want to set them up for situations that they’re not equipped for.

Della (43:42)
Mm-hmm.

Heidi (43:53)
And I know myself, not everybody’s like this, but I know myself, I put a lot of pressure on myself to to sometimes do what I think is right. But yes, if I could reassure my younger self, it would be it’s going to be okay. You’re doing enough, you’re enough, and your children are enough. And it’s okay too if they’re not academically inclined. The world is full of people with different skills, different pathways, and it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.

Della (44:15)
I think.

Is there

anything that you would have done differently now that your boys have been in school?

Heidi (44:25)
I don’t think so actually. I look back and I think I hit the right spot. I would probably say the only thing I’d do differently is probably for myself, put less pressure on myself and put less weight on my own shoulders. I’m a shocker for putting the responsibility on me. that didn’t translate to my children, but I definitely put the pressure on myself and felt that.

little gnaw of anxiety that, maybe I’m not doing enough, or maybe my children are behind, that I think we all feel. but in terms of actually what we did, I don’t think I would change much. I treasure the days where we went outside and just played all day, or we pivoted and read a beautiful read aloud all day. I treasure those days now.

Della (44:53)
Mm-hmm.

Heidi (45:08)
And I think I was lucky that at the time, and I wasn’t lucky actually, it was the guidance and the experience of homeschoolers that have gone before me that said the same thing that I’m saying now to people who are coming through the ranks, it will be okay. just because you have a day where it sort of didn’t pan out how you had thought, you pivoted and you went on a bushwalk instead. That is also okay.

it is the little steps that you do that that make the progress and make the difference over time. It’s very easy to have a blowout day or a blowout week and think, my goodness, this is not working. I’m failing my kids or or whatever you think, my kids are gonna be behind. But actually, kids are where they are, and as long as they are making progress and you can see progress happening, there’s learning happening.

there’s most of all connection happening. that is the sweet spot. I suppose I would maybe

Encourage my children to finish more projects. We had a little tendency to let the inspiration peter out a little bit. And in terms of wheelbuilding, I see such benefit to pushing through the difficulty to get to the end point to then be able to go. I did it. It was really hard and I went through it, but I did it. The same thing you do when you do a hike or something and there’s

Della (46:29)
Mm-hmm.

Heidi (46:29)
Huge hill in front of you you’re trudging up the hill and you’re like, why did I think this was a good idea? I’m tired, my feet hurt. But you get to the top and you go, Wow, I did it. And then you forget all the difficulty later. a week’s time, you forget how hard it was and you forget how the blisters were. And you look back and you think, that was such a great experience. I want to do that again.

Della (46:49)
and

it preps you for the next whatever. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Heidi (46:52)
yeah, the next challenge, which is slightly harder than the challenge before. Exactly. I think

I’d probably encourage the kids to push through the difficulty more. I always do anyway, but just stick at it because everything’s hard until it’s easy. Everything takes challenge and stickability until you’ve got something, then it’s easy. which is I think why things like learning instruments is really useful.

because when a child learns an instrument, they can really see their progress over time and all those daily practices that they did that they didn’t want to do, but then they’re able to do it and they can look back and see, that was actually worthy of my effort in the end.

Della (47:29)
Are you enjoying having your youngest at home? Are you savoring that last child? I know you spend so much time on the older children and the last child you feel guilty that they didn’t get so much of you I now am also only homeschooling one and I’m just really savoring that time.

Heidi (47:38)
Yeah.

Yes.

It’s yeah, it’s lovely, isn’t it? I know, I remember what it was like for a lot of mums out there with, young ones underfoot and hungry children and competing demands on your time and your energy it is hard when you’re in the trenches. I’m very conscious of that. I remember that. I remember what that was like. And it is it is so lovely just to have the one now.

And to have that time with her ’cause I know that’s my last child. it’s like that with anything though, I think. I remember when it was my last pregnancy and my last breastfeeding or my last whatever, I was able to savour it in a different way than I did with my boys, which is sort of survival mode for a number of years. So yeah, it’s lovely. it is different though. I don’t know how you find it. I find that in some ways when there’s a group,

Della (48:23)
Mm-hmm,

Heidi (48:37)
you have a bit of a group dynamic to get things done. okay, now we’re going to do this or let’s gather and we’re going to have a conversation it’s sometimes easier to herd a group than it is to herd one child. I’ll often hear my one child say, just five more minutes on the trampoline or just ten more minutes or I’ll be there in a minute.

And you don’t have that same group sort of coming together. So that’s being different. So I often just pivot and adjust and we’ll do times tables on the trampoline or whatever,

Della (49:07)
Right.

there’s a big gap between my oldest and my youngest. there was only a a narrow set of years where we were schooling together. And I really savor that time when we’re all at the table together.

Heidi (49:12)
Yeah.

Mm. Me too.

Me too. And I’m so glad that I took a lot of photos because it is so lovely to look back. There’s one particular photo I have of my boys, they were laying on their stomachs reading books, and their little toddler sister had wiggled herself up in between them on the cushions and was just looking through a book of her own. I took a photo, they didn’t know I was taking it. And I’ve looked back at that so many times.

it was one of those beautiful moments I’ll always remember it. because it’s easy to forget how special it is to be able to home educate sometimes it feels so busy you feel stretched thin what a what a beautiful life, what a beautiful life of connection that we get to build with our children.

What a privilege that is. And it’s hard work, absolutely. And we make sacrifices to it, a hundred percent. But what a privilege too that we can spend that time with our children. as somebody who has older children and looking back, I don’t regret a thing. And the connections between our family but our children as well are really precious and they’re built.

through the shared experience of of all those years. It is. Yeah. So I try to remember that on my difficult days. ‘Cause we all have

Della (50:27)
Yeah, it’s a real treasure for sure. I

yes. yes.

Yes. You try to take those connections and soak up all the good parts that carry you through the more challenging aspects of it. So you have done a little bit of work with early literacy, and I want to talk about how your boys learn to read and how you adapt.

Heidi (50:45)
Yeah, that’s right.

Yeah.

Della (51:01)
Did that for your girl.

Heidi (51:03)
Yes. Okay, this is a great question. so I’ll start at the start and I’ll go backwards. right now I work in literacy and numeracy intervention groups, like so small groups or one-on-one with children who need some sort of extra coaching and extra work. I work in two different schools.

one is a just a mainstream school and one is a Steiner school, a Waldorf so that has been wonderful. I really enjoy that. I really, really enjoy working one-on-one with children. It’s quite a different dynamic, and I really enjoy that. It’s a bit more like home education. You can sort of get alongside someone, really encourage them and work with them where they are. and it’s lovely to see the progress.

And the joy and the spark come back into their eyes. Because often these kids think, I’m dumb, there’s something wrong with me, I can’t do it, I’m just not good at maths, and I hate it. And they really internalize all those feelings. But to actually take them out of that and show them that they’re making progress and being that encouraging support person, it’s lovely. I really, really enjoy that. But going back in time to my own children, so like

most or almost all homeschooling mums, I learnt on the job, I learnt on the fly. My eldest was really easy. He just picked up reading naturally. He wasn’t reading for pleasure until about age ten, but he could read. he was just a natural speller. it was really easy. I taught him with a traditional Steiner approach

My middle child came along and it wasn’t sticking. It wasn’t easy. And I realized that I needed to pivot at a certain point. And in hindsight, it would have been better for me to start earlier. But I didn’t pick it up. Dyslexia wasn’t on my radar.

I wasn’t working in the school then, so I hadn’t had any experience with what that looked like, how that presented, the struggles that a child might have. I pivoted at that point and I realized that he needed explicit phonics instruction and a lot more intensive work to get to the place that my elders just naturally

fell into, I did a bit with him. I didn’t not do it, but I didn’t have to do it so explicitly. It wasn’t as intensive. So with my middle child I pivoted and I ended up buying a mainstream curriculum that was story and image based, but that we used alongside what we were doing in our main lessons. And I tried to integrate it with our main lessons as much as I could.

based on, whatever sound or blend or vowel team we were doing, I tried to integrate that into main lesson. But for him I had it as a separate program alongside. it was a great program. It was wonderful. he got there in the end. it is interesting because Steiner Education does so much work with composition and verbal recall.

very similar to what Charlotte Mason would call narration, no matter how much of that we did, he it just was never easy for him. so I would always have to guide him through it and prompt him through it. it was never something that came easily to him. just side note here: kids that do have dyslexia.

Della (53:50)
Mm-hmm.

Heidi (54:05)
My goodness, they are wonderful kids. The amount of effort that it takes for those children to reach the same level that a child that hasn’t struggled like that, they are so resilient and amazing. Like that takes a lot of energy.

Della (54:17)
I agree. Well, and in my experience,

their brain works in a different way and they’re just amazing and talented and skilled in a different area.

Heidi (54:24)
Yeah. Yeah.

my middle boy, he is able to envisage things 3D, and he can just think, I’m going to build this. He’ll go up to our workshop, come back, have built something without plans. my husband, who has built our own home, is just constantly amazed by wow, did you write a plan for this? he’s just like, No, no, just thought about it. he’s able to sort of envisage things in a 3D way, put it all together.

And produce something that there is people need plans for need to write it down. yes, dyslexic brains are incredible. They have great skills in different areas. but written language can be a real struggle for them. I realized that probably a little later than I would have liked to otherwise. when my youngest

Started to come through, I started to see the same patterns. so I was able to start that much earlier with her. So with her, I took the knowledge that I had gained from both my middle child but also my work that I’ve done in school since then.

So at the moment I’m writing one that I’m using for my daughter right now, and it is a lot more integrated within spans, grade two, three, four for those children. Because there is so much variation in where children are with comprehension, with reading.

And with writing and with spelling. within those age groups, you can have a grade four child who is probably more like a grade two child, which what are grades really? We’re all making progress, but I suppose if you had to group them together. you may have children anywhere in that sort of spectrum.

Literacy is really interesting like that I think. There’s just so much variability within one age group. it’s only because schools group them by age that we think, someone’s behind. that’s just a nonsense word in a way, because they’re not actually behind. They are where they are. we can help all those children progress and we can help all of those children move through those. some are gonna take longer, and that’s just the way their brains often are. I’ve started

doing more explicit phonics instruction with my daughter from an earlier age because I recognized the same patterns in her that I had in my middle boy.

Della (56:31)
That’s exciting that you’re writing

a Waldorf stall guide that incorporates those explicit phonetic aspects of learning to read.

there’s a particular technique that’s great for dyslexic children. Orton Gillingham?

Heidi (56:47)
yeah.

Yes, killing ham, yeah, yeah.

Della (56:51)
Yeah.

And all about spelling is based on that. Root in languages. Pinwells is based on that. Logic of English is based on that as well. But I don’t think there’s a Waldorf one.

Heidi (56:56)
Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Yes.

No, I was really surprised. so I’ve done the OG training and I am writing a OG based program for Waldorf homeschool or school.

probably the the best way to say would be the sequence of OG, when things are introduced and also how they’re introduced as well, but framed within Waldorf pedagogy, how we bring that to the child, how we bring that

often through image. At at this age, not everything needs to have its own story. it’s not brought through story, but it is brought through image. and multi-sensorial learning, which is very OG based as well, to make those concepts stick. Because English is a funny language, as you know, it’s difficult to learn, especially for a non

native speaker of English, somebody who’s grown up in a different language, I always take my hat off to them because English is so confusing. It’s hard enough when you’ve grown up speaking English, let alone trying to learn it as a child or an adult. I’m in awe of those people because it’s borrowed so many words from different

Della (58:07)
Mm-hmm.

Heidi (58:08)
languages and then kept those spellings also there’s difference between British we use British English in Australia and not American English. there’s differences in spelling it is a very complicated language and it makes sense that it’s hard for some children to pick that up and internalize that. so yes it’s working really well. As with everything I write I have usually used these

for the Steiner blocks I’ve written those for my boys but I’m tweaking them and testing them on my daughter but for this one I’m doing the same I’m writing it and then testing it on her to see how it’s working on her before I release it into the wild I always did that with my boys to

a certain extent, but I felt a bit lost at sea with the order that you brought different sounds or blends or teams with my boys so once I did my OG training I, had a really clear idea of a really good structure and a really good flow and

Della (58:52)
Mm-hmm.

Heidi (59:01)
I’m able to adapt that then to what we’re doing in main lessons

Della (59:05)
So what has been your biggest challenge in home schooling?

Heidi (59:09)
I suppose that changes on the phase of homeschooling that we’ve been in. it’s such a dynamic thing, homeschooling. it’s so different depending on the ages of your children, the capacities of yourself at different times of life. the most challenging part, probably just the self-pressure that I put on myself.

for my children, I suppose the most challenging part is figuring out dyslexia. that was a challenging moment. It wouldn’t be the most challenging, but realizing that, yep, there’s something that’s not sticking quite right here and having to pivot. But that’s also one of the great things about homeschooling is that you’re constantly learning.

Constantly pivoting, constantly reassessing and assessing and working out what’s working, what’s sticking, what’s not working, and forging that path through all the things. I wouldn’t say that was the most challenging, but it was definitely a challenging aspect of it. I would say self-care.

Is a really challenging aspect to avoid burnout. That is challenging for me personally. I tend to put everything into what I do and my family and children and I’m always the last person to fill my own cup, which is silly I know, but I think it’s a easy to fall into. Yeah.

Della (1:00:22)
And very common. So in what ways do

you do that self care for yourself?

Heidi (1:00:27)
Now I became really religious about going for my daily walk and it is a part of my rhythm that I stick with because it’s just that me time. It is fresh air. as much as I love walking with the kids, we always did a daily walk, usually before we started our structured part of the day, we would always go on a walk.

it was an ambling, dawdling walk looking in puddles and looking for tadpoles and looking at spiderwebs and that was beautiful, but it wasn’t a walk for me. so I am quite particular about taking my daily walk and getting out, getting fresh air, I go for an hour and having that time where nobody’s asking me questions as

Awful as that sounds. Sometimes I just don’t want anybody to ask me any questions. Bless my children. But sometimes it’s just not quite so that is probably the best way that I have just refreshed myself. I always come back feeling a lot calmer, a lot happier, a lot more.

Della (1:01:16)
I think it’s a universal mother experience. Yes.

Heidi (1:01:31)
Just refreshed, I guess, replenished. because I’ve been able to have that time by myself with my little dog walking out in the bush and getting some exercise, getting some fresh air, just just taking a bit of me time. that’s probably the biggest way that I’ve been able to do that.

Della (1:01:46)
I definitely have a good 30 minutes to an hour in the morning. I’m not walking. I am having a cup of coffee and a definitely giving don’t talk to me yet vibes. but also when the children were little, I would have a large block of time, like all morning or all afternoon.

Heidi (1:01:58)
Yeah.

Della (1:02:07)
four to five hours that my husband was responsible for the kids and they actually left the house and were gone for that block of time so that I would have that huge block of time each week. I would use part of that to plan our home schooling. That’s a

Heidi (1:02:15)
Yeah, right.

That’s

Yeah,

that’s wonderful. I I tend to do that too. usually on a weekend my boys are older now, so they sort of have their own things that they often do anyway. they’re big in mountain biking, so they’ll often go mountain biking But he’ll often take my daughter out. and again, it’s just amazing when you’re a mum and I don’t I wouldn’t change a thing, but it’s amazing how

replenishing just a quiet house can be when you’re at home and there’s only you at home. That’s actually really magical and you really appreciate it when you’re home educating because your house can be full of noisy and I’m sure when I’m old and all the kids have moved out, I’ll miss those days of the noisy chaos. But it’s actually nice to be able to schedule in that every now and then when I need

Della (1:02:52)
Yeah.

Okay, last question for today, Heidi. What was something about home schooling that surprised you?

Heidi (1:03:13)
I was home schooled myself for some of my education. So I came into it with some understanding of of how it can work. I suppose my biggest surprise would be how different individual children are, even when you’re the same parents and the same environment and the same household, they are different. They’re such unique.

Different individuals. They learn differently. Their likes are different. Their personality or temperament is different. I don’t know why that always surprises me, but it always surprises me how different my boys are they’re only 18 months apart, but they are chalk and cheese in terms of temperament. My eldest is very easygoing, very just no fast, nothing’s really a bother. He’s

Yeah, so different than my middle child. The reason we had them so close together was because we thought, we are acing parenting. This is just easy. Let’s go straight away and have another one. And then all its wisdom decided to give us the middle child, which bless him, he is gorgeous, but he is just such a different personality. he is so driven. He is so

stubborn and all of those things are beautiful qualities when they’re ironed out and they’re gently shaped and molded but it’s such a different child and and I remember thinking what happened there like how are they so different in personality but they’re individuals they’re individual children from a parenting perspective or a homeschooling perspective you do you pivot and you adapt.

Della (1:04:36)
Right.

Heidi (1:04:42)
And you look at the child in front of you and you say, What does this child need? So you’re never the same parent for all three of your children or all five or however many children. You’re not the same parent. you don’t necessarily realize that or acknowledge that, but you’re a different parent to each child, and ideally you’re meeting that individual child for those things that they need. My eldest, because he’s so easygoing, he sometimes needs encouragement.

my middle child, because he’s so stubborn and so powerful in those emotions, he sometimes needs to remember other people’s opinions or other people’s feelings or to slow down and take time with his work. Because the goal here is not getting it done. The goal here is not how fast can I do this thing. And in terms of Steiner education is quite big on temperaments and

temperaments change as children develop and children grow. So you shouldn’t ever think of a child as a fixed temperament, because none of us are a fixed temperament. But the temperaments of my children were quite obvious in their early years as they, sort of went through those years. I suppose that’s the surprising thing is that just how individual children are, even when parented with the same

family culture that you have. and how it’s a beautiful opportunity to allow yourself as a person, as a parent, to grow, because children will needle at different areas of your own personality or your own little quirks They have a wonderful ability to hone in on those little things and allowing yourself to grow as a parent and to,

move out of that reactive space into a more, okay, what is this child, what do they need? What do they truly need? and allowing that sort of growth to take place for both you and your child. I think that is another surprising thing is how much you grow as a person through home education, through parenting in general, but definitely because you’re with your kids so much more often,

Della (1:06:35)
Mm-hmm.

Heidi (1:06:35)
you’re the person who’s there with them in their strong emotions how much you grow as a person through that. and it’s not always easy. Growth is never always easy. that is also the beautiful thing about home education, that it’s not just for my children, it’s also for me. I look back and I think,

how much I’ve changed over the years and how much I’ve grown as a person over the years. And I never would have had those opportunities in the same way if I hadn’t have home educated and and gone through that. So

Della (1:07:02)
Right.

And also how much you learn over the years. Yeah.

Heidi (1:07:05)
Mm. Yeah,

yeah, absolutely. And it’s funny, you’re very maths minded. I’m not, I’m language and history minded, but I’ve always enjoyed maths. having to go back and teach something is actually a real privilege when you teach it because you really realize when you don’t understand something. If you’re trying to explain it and teach it, it’s a different framing and you realize, hmm.

I actually don’t understand that. I’m gonna go and educate myself and then I can explain it to you better. and that’s a beautiful sort of thing that we have as home educating parents is the opportunity to go back. I remember when I was teaching my eldest long division, I had learnt in a very rote way. I didn’t really understand what I was doing. I had learnt it as a rote method, not

actually really taking the time to stop and think what was actually happening in this process. And then when I had to teach it, I had to go back and go, well I’m gonna have to explain how to do this. So I’ve basically learnt maths again, but I’ve had so many penny dropping moments where I’ve gone, okay, that’s why we do it that way. Or that’s what’s actually happening. which I’ve I love. So so it’s Yeah

Della (1:08:12)
I love that too. And can I just say, Heidi,

I know very few adults that really know what’s happening in long division.

Heidi (1:08:19)
I know. Well, yeah, I know. Because we learn it as a rote process. We learn it

Della (1:08:22)
Right. As an algorithm and we’re just learning the algorithm and not

why we’re doing that algorithm, what mathematical concept is happening behind that.

Heidi (1:08:34)
That’s

right. I love Jamie York for maths. We’ve l used making maths meaningful stuff. And I really like how he and I’m sure there’s other programs that do this too, but he takes it back to place value and I don’t know why I never thought of it like that, but it all of a sudden the penny just drops. I’m like, okay, that’s why we do it. That makes sense now. so yes, anyway.

Della (1:08:37)
Me too.

Mm-hmm.

And it’s so funny because I did that for history

because I never did well in history in school. I didn’t like it, I didn’t understand how it was taught, it didn’t click. And I have to go back and learn the history to present the history, and I have fallen in love with it. It is so

Heidi (1:09:15)
Yeah. Well I’m the same

with maths. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I’m the same with maths. I always quite liked maths, but I never loved maths. but yeah, having to go back and learn it again has been has been lovely. Lovely for me, to actually have all those penny dropping moments. Yeah. Hmm.

Della (1:09:32)
Mm-hmm. Me too. Me too.

I know you’re working on and have finished a few Waldorf guides. can you talk about what you have available and where it’s available?

Heidi (1:09:44)
yes, thank you. over the years I had a lot of people message me and ask, would you send me your lesson plans? at the time, I didn’t have any capacity to put them out there in any sort of way. I had three children, really busy. we have a massive homestead, my time is sort of divided between a lot of different things.

I had written all of these blocks for my boys, but often they were in, bulleted point form or things that I could understand, but it would take work for me to put those into something that somebody else could use. so now that my two boys are at school and I’ve only got the one at home, I’ve got a little bit more time to start putting all of those notes and those

documents into some order and integrating all of my children’s work that they’ve done over the years as examples

mid-last year, probably. I do apologize to people that have used my things. I started in a really awkward spot. I started in grade three with grade three materials because that is where my child was last year. I had a grade three child. So I started publishing there, the reasoning was

I was using these materials that I had written for my boys, but using them with my daughter. it was just easier as I was doing them to be able to fill them out and pad them out and make them more usable for other people as I was teaching my daughter. I worked a couple of lessons ahead of where we were. I had the information that I’d written for the boys, padded it

written it in a form that other people could use and then tested it on my daughter so she was the guinea pig for the sort of final product that is a good thing to do because you actually realise that sounded really clunky. didn’t really come off the way I had thought it would when I was writing it. that’s been really nice. So I do plan to go back and do grade two and

grade one. I’ve got all the material there. It’s just a matter of time. It takes a lot of time to write. I always take months and months and months and months for me. team of one here, except for my darling 70 year old mum who does the final proofread. It is a team of one and it takes me months and months

Della (1:11:28)
It takes a lot of time. Yeah. It takes a lot of time.

Mm-hmm.

Heidi (1:11:48)
even though I have the material just to put it in a form that’s able for for others to use. And take the photos of us doing things so that there are, photos of the process that we’ve used. I have most of the grade three blocks out. and I have a couple of other things like circle time songs and

Della (1:11:55)
Mm-hmm.

Heidi (1:12:07)
Finger what are they called? finger plays, They are seasonal based. I have a festival guide out, I have a couple of other things there.

Della (1:12:10)
Finger play.

Heidi (1:12:19)
I have a website and a Etsy shop that you can have a look and I will be updating that as I finish writing and finish editing and publish things.

Della (1:12:29)
And I’ll

put links to that on the website in the show notes. But can you tell us what your website is?

Heidi (1:12:36)
Yes, so it’s Twig and Berry Homeschool. the reason our our name is Twig and Berry is because we actually have a juniper farm as well, which probably I don’t put much on Instagram, but we have a little juniper farm and when we decided to give our homeschool a name, that’s what we we came up with all those years ago. but yes, so my website is

Twigandberry dot com and my Etsy

Twig and Berry Designs, but its shop name is Twig and Berry Homeschool.

Della (1:13:02)
are you on any other social media?

Heidi (1:13:04)
I am. I have recently started a Facebook it’s just linked to my Instagram so it’s a Facebook page but within that there is a Facebook group for people that have my curriculum and that’s a place that they can ask me questions. I’m there to answer their questions or help them, support them through using the materials.

Della (1:13:25)
Well, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it, Heidi.

Heidi (1:13:29)
Thank you. It was lovely.

Della (1:13:31)
Thanks for listening. If you have time, I’d love to hear about how you felt about the podcast so far. You can leave a review or you can go to the podcast URL and leave a comment. The beautyofplay dot com forward slash series forward slash A Homeschooling Journey.

You can also email me at dela at the beautyofplay.com. Next week we’ll be meeting Carrie from Sift Organics. Carrie talks about her journey of becoming a potter in the middle of starting a family. about the journey through where she started to where she is now and how her family homeschools with both parents working.

You’re going to love that episode. I’ll see you next week.