➡ Heather Martinson, a homeschooling expert, and Peggy Hall from thehealthyamerican.org discuss homeschooling experiences and strategies, emphasizing that structured learning outside school doesn’t confine children’s curiosity but fuels it. Martinson stresses that homeschooling encourages children to learn from the world itself, turning learning into an exciting adventure via numerous sources and experiences.
➡ The text emphasizes the importance of experiential learning that caters to each child’s unique learning style and pace, as opposed to a rigid, one-size-fits-all educational approach. The speaker promotes the idea of parents acting as facilitators of their children’s learning adventures, relying on their intrinsic knowledge of their children’s interests and capabilities.
➡ The text discusses the value of homeschooling, highlighting the ability to control children’s influences and social environments, greater flexibility with schedules, and potential improvements in parent-child relationships. The author also underlines the possibility of quality education using less formal, personalized learning methods such as reading together, math games, and journaling.
➡ The text emphasizes a child-based educational approach that focuses on a child’s unique interests and strengths, rather than attempting to ‘fix’ their weaknesses. It criticizes the one-size-fits-all mentality of most public schools and advocates for a personalized method of learning, including project-based tasks, real-world experiences, and independent learning opportunities. Thus, children develop self-assurance, confidence, and a strong self-identity by realizing their inherent value.
➡ The text captures a discussion on child-led, immersive learning opportunities outside traditional educational systems. The speaker advocates for flexible education that includes real-life lessons and encourages the involvement of the whole family.

All right. Hey, friends, it’s Peggy hall back with you from thehealthyamerican. org and I am with a friend and an expert in homeschooling. This is heather martinson. She’s been on the show before, and, in fact, let me make sure I’ve got everything queued up here. In fact, heather and I, for a couple of years, ran an online training program which was called freedom learn outside the box. And it helped prepare parents, grandparents, young adults, retirees, anyone who was interested in helping create and facilitate a superior learning environment.

And if you don’t know, it’s about time that you know that having your children in public school holds them back. And there are so many reasons why you keep your kids in school, and we want to help you overcome those obstacles. So, Heather, welcome back to the show. Good to be here. Well, I want to tell everybody right off the bat that heather is from a program called celebration education.

So go to celebrationeducation. com. Heather, tell us a little bit about what you’ve got, a really brief overview about lesson plans, but then let’s talk about how you don’t have to go this alone. Friends, you don’t need to know what you’re doing. Heather knows what she’s doing, and she wants to help you. So what is celebration education? And give us your wonderful story about how you got into I don’t even like to call it homeschooling because you’re not sitting over your child’s shoulder with a workbook.

I never did that. Tell us what you did and how you did it. I love the story. Right. Well, the reason why I started homeschooling my kids, it was back in the 80s when I decided I would homeschool them, and that was before my oldest was even born. And the reason why I wanted to is because I wanted my children to have the opportunity to learn from more than one teacher, one textbook.

I wanted them to be able to have the opportunity to learn from the world itself and from various sources all over. Wherever we go, we could be learning. And that was before there was even internet. My kids are all grown and gone now, but they were homeschooled all the way through, and our learning was through adventures. We rarely used any type of standard curriculum because I wanted to be able to learn from everything, anywhere.

And of course, by now, a couple of my kids have graduated from college, so we’re okay. I wanted to share. Of course, learning is more fun with friends, so we I we had homeschool friends, and we started getting together at first just once a month, for some larger learning experiences that the kids did together. I’ll never forget the time, the first time I ever dissected a squid with my kids at a park and their friends and their moms.

We didn’t know what we were doing, but we were learning as we went, and it was just so exciting to discover what was inside a squid together and we was just like it was such a memorable experience that I still remember today and probably my kids do as well because it was so profound. But those are the type of activities that we had just with my friends and their kids as we got together and shared these things.

And then after a while I went ahead and started Celebration Education, which was essentially those learning experience, making them available to other families where they could come to our classes, the families could pay or they use their charter school funds to come to our classes and have those fun hands on experiential learning experiences with friends. So after all of these years of doing that, I have years and years and years of these lesson plans that I’ve built up.

And so now@learningoutthebox. com that’s where I’m actually starting to sell my lesson plans. I’m going to pull that up. Let me keep talking and I’m going to keep talking. I’m going to pull that up to show people no problem. Yeah. So at Learning Outside the Box, people can get a membership there where you can get lesson plans, the same lesson plans that we’re going through this year with our teachers in our classrooms here in Southern California.

You can use if you have one of these memberships, like the free membership, there’s just some sample lessons. The family membership gets some ideas of things you can do at home. The learning group gets all of our lesson plans, which includes lesson plans that are designed for family style learning, which is where you’ve got three to five families that come together for their kids to learn and share these learning experiences together.

And each week is more content than you’ll probably even use it’s a lot, where we use it for up to 10 hours of classroom time each week with our classes here in Southern California. So that’s that. But then also we recently started uploading some of our past year’s lesson plans into our shop. So if you’re not interested in this year’s theme, which is all on sustainable gardening theme, you can go to our shop and you can look at I don’t have all the icons up, but our most popular is the Revolutionary America where it’s actually six weeks worth of content here.

And if you’re not doing 5 hours a week or 10 hours a week, you can actually stretch it out for a lot longer so the kids get to experience Boston Tea Party, Revolutionary War, signing the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and how America is today affected by what those decisions were made way back in the founding of our country. So this is really exciting and like I said, this is a six week course that you could stretch longer if you want to, but it’s part of a whole year’s worth of content.

If you wanted to start off first with a colonial component, then do this one and then move from there to our American timeline and then to 50 states. Our fifth one in this component was California Dreaming, which is specific to our state. So it’s not necessarily applicable for everyone. But it was a great theme. We had a great time with it, and that’s why I uploaded this particular lesson plan, because there was a lot of people who enjoyed it so much, and so we can share it with anyone anywhere.

Now, I love that. Heather and friends, I need you to know that Heather is super creative. Every one of these lessons. And listen, let me come off the screen, share for a second. You might be watching this going, Peggy, I’m a grandparent. I don’t have children at home. I get to see my kids on the holidays and vacation. Oh, my gosh, what a perfect thing to do with them.

What else do you do with your kids or your grandkids? Why not invest in these? You have something that’s structured. Tell us what you get, Heather. There’s a craft I saw. They get to be an inventor. You’re not sitting and reading a boring textbook. You’re exploring, you’re living it. Each week’s lesson includes all school subjects. So you’ve got a little bit reading of some math, some writing experiences.

You’ve got a craft, you’ve got even running activities for the kids. So if you’ve got five to ten kids, they’re actually going to be doing a relay race or something fun and interesting to just make it as exciting as possible for them. They’re going to want to be there. They’re going to want to share these experiences with their friends. It’s just so much fun. Well, I love it.

It’s not sitting and filling out worksheets exactly. So you know how whether you have children or just your own learning experience, being an adult, it’s so much more interesting and fulfilling and relevant when you’re engaging and you’re learning naturally. It’s not something that’s drudgery and friends especially if you live in California, if your children are in public school. I just have one question for you, and that is why, even if we didn’t have all of the politics, that we’re concerned with the curriculum that’s being basically jammed down our throats in ways and information that we don’t want.

Even if it was, like, an excellent curriculum, Heather, why is being in a regimented school not optimal for learning? Because children were made to move children. A lot of times children, if they say school is boring, that’s because they don’t have the opportunity to learn as fast as they want to. Children love learning all those questions that they ask, at least until they’re age five or six. Sometimes they stop asking questions because school kind of beats it out of them because they’re not allowed to ask the questions.

Only the teachers are allowed to ask the questions after, of course, they give all the answers. Children love asking the questions themselves and then finding the answers. And I feel like that’s the right order that it should be. It should be where the children want to know, and then they seek the answers and find themselves. It makes the learning come alive. It makes it more memorable. It also turns into a family, a whole family experience.

The things that you’re doing outside of even our classroom exploring, going on field trips, and learning just from the world itself and the many things that you can encounter as you’re studying different things and you find some information. Here and there, and you’re like, oh, well, that makes sense here. And that relates to this. It just becomes such an exciting experience that I really wouldn’t want to hold a child back by bringing them home and sitting them at the kitchen table and telling them to fill out a worksheet.

It’s just like that is like the most dead form of learning. Worksheets were designed for the credit classroom because that’s the only way that a teacher can keep that many kids all on the same page at the same time. But reality is, kids are not all the same. Reality is every child is different. Every child should be learning and exploring and absorbing the information in a way that makes sense to them.

And they’re going to do it if you let them. So when they’re doing it through experiential learning, one child might be how they say, some are more auditory, some are more visual, these types of things, they’re going to take it the way that makes most sense to them. They’re going to be learning it in the way that is going to be most impactful to them because otherwise it’s boring.

They’re not going to do the stuff that’s boring. They’re going to do what’s best for themselves. And children are really good at choosing to do the activities that will stretch them. They don’t want to do stuff that’s too easy for them. They honestly don’t because that’s boring. They don’t want to do stuff that’s too hard that’s beyond their reach. But they’re really good at choosing the activities that will help them to the next step and move forward.

And in that way, they move at their own pace, but they also have the opportunity to move faster than if they were just like, you can’t do that worksheet until you’ve done. This worksheet. It really holds them back when they’re just confined to a boxed curriculum. That’s why I never did it. If somebody’s watching this and they have some specific questions, Heather, could they contact you? Absolutely. Yeah, go ahead and email me.

Heather@celebrationeducation. com. And Heather, yeah, she can get you in touch with resources because you might have questions like, okay, you guys are inspiring me. I want to take the next step, but how do I do this legally? Do I just not send my kids to school tomorrow or what? Do, I do. So Heather can connect you with resources. And even if you’re not in California, there are national organizations that actually take you through this step by step.

So our goal, and Heather and I are going to be doing these regularly because we want you to feel empowered to literally, it is take the next step. You don’t have to know what you’re doing, actually, and tell us why parents are the best natural teacher anyway, because you know your kids, when you put your children in the system, the teachers have their credentials and their degrees and that sort of thing.

But again, that’s for the crowded classroom. They will never know your child as well as you do. You know what they’re capable of doing, and you don’t even need to test them. So many times parents are like, what if they’re falling behind? I don’t know. And they worry, and that’s natural, and that’s fine. You can worry because that means you care. But know that it is also natural for your child to want to learn.

And they will be fine. Because when you are working one on one with your child, you know where they’re at, you know what they’re capable of, and you know what books to get at the library for them, because you know what they’re capable of and what their interests are. So you can do this. You are far better than the teacher in the classroom at providing to them exactly what they need and want for their learning experiences.

And listen, parents and aunties and uncles and grandparents and cousins, and all of the names that I just mentioned are teachers, okay? You don’t have to have a teaching credential. You don’t even need to be engaged in this kind of learning outside the box from eight to two. Okay? Learning takes place, right? It’s family style learning. What do you do on the weekends? What do you do on the evenings? What do you do on vacation? Ideally, the kids, your children are engaged in activities that they love, and this is an opportunity.

Heather’s got ideas to just kind of crank it up a little bit. You call these fireworks? Heather, we don’t talk about homework at celebration education and learning outside the give. I know I’m putting you on the spot, but in our training that we did over the last couple of years, there were so many great ideas for fireworks. You talked about going to the park or California, going to the beach, and even just brainstorming.

I’d love to hear in a comment from people that are listening, what are some things that you could think of that would be learning experiences? Well, tell us how you do it, Heather. First of all, you just go and have, you know and that’s what I did with my own kids as well. I mean, when they were interested in something, we would go get books from the library.

And again, Internet was still new when my kids were growing up, but certainly there’s so much information on the Internet as well. But we would research things and we would go out and touch them in real life as much as possible. One time there was one of my sons, we were studying Southeast Asia, and in one of the books that we got from the library, it had this little sidebar that talked about a Kiris sword, sometimes pronounced Chris sword.

And he was very intrigued by it, and he began to study more about this sword. It’s like it’s something that’s passed down from one generation to another, but it sparked this interest in ancient weaponry, and he started studying weapons from multiple cultures I love it. Countries throughout the world. And by the time he I mean, it took more than a year where he was just kind of it was his hobby interest that he was learning all about these weapons.

And by the time he was content with that learning experience, he could see a weapon, name it and what country it’s from and the significance that it holds in their culture. So this is something you’re not going to okay, maybe they don’t teach weapons. What age, Heather, what age was he doing this? He was probably nine or ten. This is incredible. So I just want to really pause for a moment to just absorb the magnificence of this.

Here you’ve got a nine year old who has acquired more knowledge than you or I or most people in ancient weaponry around the world. It was a natural curiosity that he had. You didn’t limit it or say, oh, no, it’s time for math. And I’m sure that in all of his research and reading and again, this is prior know, Google and all that other stuff, he was learning about reading, about researching, probably about identifying and organizing and all different types of skills.

There was history involved, there was geography, there was probably art and design and engineering. So this is what I want everyone to understand. I called this family style learning. I mean, it’s natural learning, it’s just lifestyle learning. But to break down the barrier of, well, I’m not a teacher, and my husband works all day and I work all day, and I’ve got a special needs. Oh, that’s even more important, that you’re the teacher.

If you have a child that we all have special needs. Trust me, we all have our own learning style. I don’t even care for labels that are limiting. And as a matter of fact, Heather, just speaking about your you’ve got all the lesson plans to help people with these exciting family style learning, but you’ve also got a program in Southern California where children can come a few times a week.

And what I want you to tell us about is the story of the little girl that you might say had some learning challenges. And I believe she’s in one of your videos, and if you could tell us that story is so encouraging and heartwarming. Sure. Well, she was at, I believe, a private school, and she had high anxiety. She wouldn’t talk, she wouldn’t play with the other kids.

She was exempt from picture day. She was just so closed. And then her mom found our program, and they came and tried out a class, and it seemed like a good fit. So she went ahead and put her in, and her daughter just blossomed. She lit up. She made friends. She was smiling and running around, and she was just a completely different person, and it just made such a difference in their lives.

Unfortunately, they moved away. I’m like, how could you do that? But they got what they needed. She needed to come out of her shell, and it worked. And it was just such a blessing for the family, and it was an honor to be part of that process. And that’s one of many stories. And everyone who’s listening, you know how important it is in these early years and lifelong, of course, but when the children are more impressionable and why would you want your children to have their mind be exposed to things that you may not even know, really, the depth of it, of what’s going on at school.

And then to think of someone like this poor little girl just breaks my heart that she was suffering from that anxiety. And even someone who’s you might call them well adjusted, they still are going to be exposed to competitiveness potential bullying at all ages, I’m certain there’s all sorts of nefarious things going on anywhere from just maybe cheating to bullying to drug use to who knows what. So why would you expose your most precious gift, what God gave you to protect and raise and nurture? Why would you just give that over to the government? I know you don’t want to do that.

And the only reason you haven’t is well, there’s a couple of reasons. Your child loves school. Let me mention a couple, and then let’s answer them, okay? Your child loves school, and your child loves the friends. Let’s just start with that one. That’s an easy one to overcome. Have your friends do this. Have the children’s friends learning with you. That’s it. Let’s talk about that for just a moment.

So somebody listening right now is going, I love everything you’re saying. I’m trying to get my spouse on board with this. Or sometimes we’re working with divorced families, and one of my approaches is, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. So you could strike a bargain where you say, you know, let’s try this through the end of the year. We only have a few more weeks by the time the holidays come around.

And let’s just make a note with Heather’s help, you’ll alert the school that you’re going to be keeping your child in a new learning setup and you could let your family know, let’s experiment with this, let’s see how we do it. So that takes the pressure off you’re leaving school and you’re never returning. I think that right there reduces some of the I can’t leave my friends and I’m going to fall behind.

Just try it out. So that’s one thing right off the bat, the socialization. I mean, that’s an easy one, too. You’ve got kids are involved in all sorts of things that don’t have to do with school, right. All sorts of camps and sports and all of that. But what would you say to the ones that are like, my friends are at school? Well, I mean, my kids friends were in the classes that they attended with celebration, education, also Disneyland.

We went to Disneyland frequently back then. But what’s really excellent about having a small group class is you actually get to choose who your child’s friends are because you know their parents, you trust their parents, you’re in communication with them. If anything happens in so called class while all the kids are there, you can talk right to the other parents. You don’t have to be ignored by the school because your child’s being bullied.

You can address the matter and even if things don’t work out, you can go into a different group or find a couple of other different friends to do the group with. It’s just anyone. You have the opportunity to have more influence on your child and who they are hanging out with, which I think makes a difference in their mean. It’s not just whoever shows up in a know, yeah, that’s brilliant.

That is such an important aspect of this. So what Heather’s promoting and I wholeheartedly support is you don’t have to do this alone, especially if you’re considering or if you’re concerned that you don’t really know what to do. Or maybe because your children are going off to school every day, maybe the relationship is a little tense. Maybe they don’t listen to you like you’d like them to. Maybe the level of respect isn’t there.

And I want to tell you about several, I’ll just call them happily ever after stories that we had of parents that went through our training program and they took the plunge. We had people that retired from nursing and we had teachers that actually still were teaching in public school, but applying these strategies and principles. But the ones that said, you know, Peggy, I was a little concerned about this because I felt I had two children.

One was considered special needs. They were of different ages. I think they were like 13 and 15, something like that. And the one sibling said, I’ll do it, mom, because I don’t want my brother to fall behind. And it turned out that their whole family dynamics improved for the better because the children, even at the teenage level, the children were getting the attention, the care, the love the validation, the interaction that they were starving for.

And this was a wonderful parent. Not neglectful in any way, but going to work every day, children going to school, you have limited time together. How can you have natural sufficient interaction with a couple of hours a day when you’re stressed? And what are the children doing after school? Homework. So we have to come back to the fireworks. Heather but the point being, your relationships are going to improve.

And I promise you that given the evidence that I’ve seen of the dozens that have come through our program of just spending time and you don’t have to pull your hair out figuring out, what do I do with them all day? First of all, it’s not all day. It doesn’t need to be all know. Heather, tell us about that system that you have, how you divide up your day a little bit, where they have their creative genius time, and then let’s kind of come full circle back to the fireworks.

We’ll finish up with that. And everybody, I want you to know that you can contact Heather. Heather@celebrationeducation. com, she is going to be very generous with helping direct you to the resources that you need. She’ll answer your questions, she’ll encourage you to get started at whatever level you’re comfortable with. But the most important thing is to know that you have support. You don’t have to do it alone.

And we want to talk. Oh, my gosh, there’s always more to talk about. Why don’t next time, Heather, why don’t we actually give them the system of creating a group? But right now, the point was to just let you know you can just do it like family style, right? Whatever activities you’re doing with your family can be a lesson, whether you’re going to the park, whether you are.

I love cooking, gardening. You have complete lessons that are written around this. So tell us, kind of just walk us through what a day in the life of a child learning outside the box is like. It’s really pretty casual. I mean, a lot of people who home school like the fact that they don’t have to get up and be at school at a certain time or that they can do all of their schooling, their pajamas.

So that’s a lot of fun. But even before I started celebration education, I just wanted my children to do three things each day a little bit of reading, a little bit of writing, and a little bit of math. And I found that a little bit with one on one interaction is a lot more than what they’re doing in school. It didn’t even take very much time to get those three things out of the way.

And again, they’re learning at their level. They don’t have to wait for anyone to catch up. It just so much less time involved. And the reading itself is usually actually, we would read together as a family, I would always read starting when they’re age one. It was kind of like a big deal year one. Now I’ll read bedtime stories to you. But then it was more than that because I read to my kids until they were teens.

We would read more and more increasingly difficult books, but it was a family experience that we shared together. We created a reading environment. And so our children enjoyed books they liked to read. So anyway, it’s not reading lessons, it’s reading experiences, right? And then math is a little bit harder because it kind of does need to be sequential. But even then you can learn it through games, through literature, through projects.

And if you wanted to use some apps or other things to supplement, those are available. It doesn’t have to be drudgery. It can be game based. And then as far as writing goes, my children, when they were young, they wrote in journals every day. Again, it didn’t have to be a highly structured program, but because I know how to write and when my children were writing, I’d be like, okay, well, this word is spelled wrong, may I help you correct it? Kind of thing.

And through time and through very applicable exactly what they need at the moment, they were able to learn to write. So those are the three R’s that people worry about so much. Those are taken care of. Beyond that, we just would explore. We would have our activities with our friends, we would go on field trips. We would be part of the world. And the kids had the opportunity to learn whatever they wanted, like I described my one son, and to research whatever they want.

And I also like to promote the idea that every child has their own genius and so that they can and should be working on things, on their strengths. So much of the public schools is worrying about the child falling behind, no Child left behind kind of thing. And so the children that are falling behind get all the extra attention and help and money and whatever needs so they don’t fall behind.

Of course they still do. The problem is you’re focusing on the wrong thing. The reality is children do better when you focus on their strengths. When the things that they are good at, the things that they enjoy, the things that they want to do, when you focus on those things and I help them get more of those experiences, all the other things, they come, they catch up. You don’t have to panic.

Oh, if I don’t do this today, then tomorrow they’ll be behind and they’ll forever be behind. It’s not true. They will catch up. They will be fine. If you focus on the things that they’re great at. This is when they come to know who they are as an individual. That’s when they’re like, I have value because I am good at this thing. And. That thing. And I know how to do these things.

They’re not being told, Shut up and sit down. They’re not being told, you’re not good enough because you haven’t done this other thing. They learn for themselves that they have value. They know who they are, and other people cannot tell them who they are because they have that inner knowledge. So anyway, there’s so much great that can come from really being in tune with your child and providing these things to them.

I just love I love your passion. Absolutely, Heather. And it is so important that children spend time in their genius. I mean, to this day, I could not tell you what an isosceles triangle is. And the fact is, I’ve never had to use that in my life. All right? I’m a teacher. I use English. I speak. I had a really nice geometry teacher that probably gave me an A because I kept trying so hard, but it just wasn’t my thing.

And to force that upon a child whose mind isn’t geared for that is a recipe for the exact opposite of what you talked about. You just described a child developing naturally with a high degree of self assurance, confidence, willingness to explore, and that’s, sadly, exactly what the public schools don’t want. I’m painting a broad swath. And there are wonderful public school teachers, absolutely amazing teachers, that are dedicated to their students that are working against the system.

They are actually kind of like shackled in that system because of the way that it’s set up. So it’s nothing to do with the individual teachers that have a true heart for learning and guiding and supporting. And I thank God for those teachers, because there are some students that are coming from rough setups where you’re like, oh, my gosh. I couldn’t really imagine them being homeschooled. That’s where the group homeschooling and the group communities come into play because absolutely.

You may have someone whose native language isn’t English, or they literally don’t have the capacity either mentally, physically, whatever, to carry this out. But there are other opportunities, there are other options. So it doesn’t have to be you always doing this. That’s why I talk about the parents, the grandparents, maybe the retired neighbor down the street wants to teach your child woodworking or something. There is an abundance of stories of I did this on my show a couple of weeks ago asking how people made money when they were children, because it was fascinating how people children naturally want to contribute, they want to start businesses.

And I had a whole there were people telling me about lemonade stands, making knitting potholders and selling them door to door. These are children taking the initiative, I mean, under the age of ten. And then there were others that actually were, we could say, apprentices that were learning at the elbow of their parents. And there was one in particular that learned all about farming and tractors, and to this day is still carrying that out.

So not worrying parents about your children if they have a fascination in a certain area that should be emphasized. You know what? Next time, Heather, you’ve got to read the story about the duck. Okay? Yeah. And I want everybody to tune in next month because we’re going to talk about it’s. A very poignant story of when children struggle to try to keep up with others in realms where that’s not where they’re gifted, and let’s keep that focus where they are.

I’ve used the story before, and I just love it, about a young girl whose mom had a garden. And so the little girl would kind of watch her mom and she would kind of have her own little herb garden. And she just became fascinated with this. She was homeschooled, and that became her passion. And now she is a published author and she’s an expert in growing herbs and the use of herbs.

And so thank goodness the parents supported and encouraged that and didn’t brush it away as, oh, get out of the garden, you’re making a mess, or sit down and do your arithmetic. Yeah, okay. We do need to know how to add up and all of that, but trust me, I didn’t take trigonometry or calculus, and I don’t even know what you use it for unless you’re an engineer.

But the engineers who would be loving that might not be so interested in organic gardening. So there’s something for everybody. And I would love for everybody to go to learningoutsidethebox. com. If you are at all interested in these lessons that Heather has put together, you can gift them to someone, you can teach them to your neighborhood children, you can learn. I mean, I learned looking at some of the lessons you had, and I just want to finish out by talking about a part of your lessons.

This concept of fireworks what always drove me crazy, and I’ve been a teacher all my life. Well, I did teach 9th grade and twelveTH grade in Morocco, so I don’t really have an experience in the United States, but I did do professional development for K, twelve teachers, and I know very well what the state of California was requiring of them. And I’m scratching my head going, so much of this is busy work.

Where does the student focus come into play? And this concept of having hours and hours of homework, like now the parent is the teacher, and the children are being taken away from that precious time with their families. And you know the old expression, wait until your homework is done, you can’t do it until your homework’s done. All that anxiety and pressure, a lot of it is busy work.

And by the way, if the teacher wasn’t able to adequately explain it within those hours of school, I think something’s wrong. So that’s my opinion on homework. I’m not opposed to independent projects and independent learning, that’s a whole nother ballgame, but having everybody with the same exact homework just to show that you did it. So we don’t do homework. It’s fireworks. Tell us about that, Heather. Well, I call it fireworks because it’s intended to be done at home, but it’s far better at lighting the fires of learning because they’re project based.

So the fireworks that are@learningoutthebox. com there’s reading, writing, and math activities there each week, and they can help build on the experiences. It’s designed for multiple ages. And then there’s also ideas for projects. See, the thing is, like the experience that I explained to you about my son that got into weapons, I want that to happen with any child and you never know where it’s going to come from.

And my son, it was a sidebar in a book about Southeast Asia. That’s why as part of the fireworks, there’s always ideas of projects that the kids can do. And so they could get comfortable working on projects, doing a little bit of research, and maybe making a poster or something to show what they know and making it fun. It could be a whole family project. So they have those experience and so they become comfortable and they know how to do these things.

And if they do go off on their own, where they’re doing all their reading, writing, and math because they want to, you don’t even have to give them assignments. You don’t even have to make suggestions if they’re already going in a good direction when they take off, you don’t want to stop them. You could try, but you really don’t want to stop them. When you see them so engaged and so excited about learning, you just kind of step back and, oh, you want to go to Home Depot for okay.

Yeah, I’ll be know, you provide you kind of take a seat and you help them with their projects and the things that they want to work on because they’re in the driver’s seat. And that’s just exactly where you want it to be. It’s just amazing. I love it. It is so exciting. And I want everybody to really understand what Heather said. Because Heather, you didn’t know anything about all of those ancient weapons from around your child taught you.

The children are the instigators. They’re the ones that are doing the discovery and the exploration, and you literally are going to be learning alongside them. You do not have to know at all. Like you say, you step back, they’re going to run with it. And Heather, didn’t your children make like a bat cave in the bathroom or something? My children is my friend’s children. They were studying caves and they turned their bathroom into a cave.

And it was like that for a couple of weeks with stalactites and stalagmites and insects and all these things in there because they wanted to thoroughly live and experience a cave in their home. So it’s not just a poster or not just filling out a worksheet. It’s so much more immersive. It’s immersive, yes. And it’s fun. And I know everybody can pick up on your passion and your enthusiasm and that’s what the children pick up on.

Again, you’re not going to put on the brakes. They are going to. Soar that’s why it’s learning outside of the box. They’re not boxed in by society, by even your own expectations and friends. We’ve done content like this before, so I’ve got a playlist called Freedom Learning. That was sort of the broad concept that I gave to this because it’s not traditional homeschooling, although there are wonderful programs and some parents like that.

And if that works for your children, where you’ve got a set of curriculum and you work your way through the grade levels and all, and if your children are thriving, that’s what you need to go by. But if they feel that there’s a drudgery and again, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You might pick up a curriculum off the shelf for the math or the science or language or whatever, and then you augment it with everything else.

I want to leave everybody with that concept that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing this way or that way. That’s why I just decided to title this one family Style Learning. The whole family can be involved. The younger kids can be nurtured and guided by the older and vice versa. The older children, even though there is that natural grouping of ages, they can learn, it can be a mixed group, and your family is the ideal place to start.

So think about having everything could be turned into a lesson. I mean, just, okay, you want your children to help you with the laundry, let them put everything out according to size. Let them gauge, like, let’s talk percentages. How much bigger is this shirt than this? Know, whatever is age appropriate. You can just think about these things on the fly and if you’re like, Peggy, I am not that creative.

That’s what Heather is here for. She already did these creative lessons and you don’t even need to follow those A to Z step by step. Use it for your own creativity. It’s affordable. It’s an investment in your child’s future. And listen, Heather and I, we’re just doing this as a couple of friends. This is not a paid promotion or anything. I believe in what she’s doing and I want you to check it out, contact her for any help in getting started, regardless of where you are in the country.

So she wants to help get you together with others that may want to, again, be a learning partner on this journey. So next month, let’s talk some specifics about how to get a group going. So right now, you’re like, okay, Peggy, this sounds great. I’m going to tell the school that my children aren’t coming back tomorrow. We’re going to go grocery shopping and compare prices. We’re going to organize our clothes according to color.

We’re going to do some painting and music and songs. We’re going to go to the library and get some books. Then we’re going to play at the park. And that’s like, more than a full day. And Heather will keep you going from here on out. So thank you so much, Heather, for this get together. I absolutely love it. We will continue to do this monthly, maybe even more frequently.

There’s always more to talk, friends. You know, my lovely, healthy Americans, you know how important it is going forward for our country’s future. You know how important the children are. I know it sounds like a cliche, but it is. And that is the best way that we can maintain our freedom, that we can live in liberty, and that we can just remove the restrictions from the children and really help them.

Soar I’m thrilled about that, that know how to think for themselves. Absolutely. Yeah. What better gift for you, for your family, for your children, for the future of our country? So, all right, Heather signing off for now. I look forward to seeing you. We’ll schedule for next time, friends. You can always catch me. Remember, I’ve got a substac. Substack. It’s Peggyhall substack. com. I send you three or four times a week links to my videos with longer form analysis.

And I want to make sure that we are covering all of the topics of interest to you. All right, Heather, we’ll see you soon. Thanks, everybody. Look forward to our next get together. Bye. .