(soft music) - Welcome friends to this episode of the Everyday Educator podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Bailey, and I'm excited to spend some time with you today as we encourage one another, learn together, and ponder the delights and challenges that make homeschooling the adventure of a lifetime. Whether you're just considering this homeschooling possibility or deep into the daily delight of family learning, I believe you'll enjoy thinking along with us.

But don't forget, although this online community is awesome, you'll find even closer support in a local CC community. So go to classicalconversations.com and find a community near you today. Well, listeners, I am super glad to welcome you back. I have Katie Beth Pearson with me again today because we did not get done with our chat from this time.

I want you to know also that I have had a lot of questions forwarded to me in the last six months about our very newest resource, Scribblers at Home Recipes from Lifelong Learners. There are lots of folks out there, like through practicum season and through some of the big media pushes, there have been lots of folks wondering how to use it, when to use it, who should use it, why does everybody think it's so wonderful?

And so today, we are gonna explore those ideas a bit as we continue to chat with Katie Beth, because honestly, I think Scribblers can really help families find some answers to the questions that they're asking about homeschooling at the beginning, homeschooling in the middle, and homeschooling as our kids get older.

I think Scribblers can help us as families sort out our priorities and set some real goals, not just for academics, but for family life. I really think Scribblers can both help us get started and stay the course of learning for a lifetime. So we're gonna poke into it a little bit.

In the context of the conversation that Katie Beth and I were having last time, just about homeschooling, about what is the most humbling aspect of this homeschooling journey? What's the greatest joy? What's the biggest surprise? Katie Beth, these are the takeaways that I had from our talk last time, that it won't be easy, but it will be rewarding, that wrestling with big ideas is good for everybody, for kids and teenagers and grownups, that getting to know your kids by heart is maybe the best gift of homeschooling, and that reading together and exploring the world and talking about God is what homeschooling joy is all about.

So those takeaways, Katie Beth, have led me to ask you this question. What do you already know about Scribblers? Because a lot of what you said echoed for me what I know Scribblers at Home is really about. So let me ask you, I know that your kids are teenagers now.

Do you know much about Scribblers? Oh, you know, I didn't at first. I saw the name Scribblers and I thought, my kids are teenagers. Why in the world would I glance upon this book, much less own a copy? But then I kept reading the title and I saw recipes for it and I thought, you know what, sometimes even as an adult, I have to go back to the grammar of things because maybe I thought I understood a topic and then I find myself in deeper conversations about that topic and I have to circle back around and go back to the basics and make sure, do I understand really well whatever that topic is so I can expand my knowledge base.

And so I grabbed a copy of the Scribblers myself. Even though we're a teenager household and I'm an adult, but I just can't put this book down. It is so beautifully laid out and it has such wonderful visuals and I love the simplicity of the recipes that are inside of it because they're approachable.

Even for teenagers where I can look at them and go, hey, the power just went out and we're all bored. Let's open to a random page in this book and do one of the recipes just to spend time together because we can't do our research project without internet or you've already used all of the books on our bookshelf and you need to pick a couple more things that technology is required.

So let's just do one of these over here and enjoy that time together. - That's really neat. That's really neat that you picked it up. I keep having questions from product sales specialists out in the field saying, hey, people are wondering if this is just supposed to be for the little kids.

Can I sell this to challenge families? And I'm like, of course, of course, because what so many parents, even in our pilot studies, what a lot of parents discovered was that the chart pages are absolutely awesome for parents who are trying to get a big picture view of all of the things, all of the pieces of information, all of the skills that we as parents are trying to load into our kids.

Strand by strand, these charts give parents a really good picture of what is coming and what that information looks like as it builds. And so I can see lots of challenge parents wanting the book just because all the charts, hey, I've had people say, I want this book because all those charts that I need are in one place and I don't have to go looking for it.

- I have already tabbed this book with some of the charts that I think would be helpful for my students this academic year, right? We talked last time about wrestling with something and just kind of digging your heels in and stubbornly dominating that wrestling match and making sure that you don't give up.

One of my daughters still struggles with Latin verbs and lo and behold, you have a beautiful chart that explains why you need to understand the four principle parts of a Latin verb and what the differences between the tenses and the conjugations are. And it sums up pages upon pages upon pages of the Henley book and just a couple of charts in Scribblers that she can flip through and reference it as she continues her wrestling match in her weekly studies.

So had I not picked this up, she would have still been wrestling, but her wrestling match would have been more exhausting and I don't know if she would have lost hope and questioned whether she should just do just enough. Does that make sense? - It does make sense. I know that for me, sometimes as a grownup, I just want to know all the things.

Okay, so tell me, as grownups, we need to see the big picture. Like I need to see all of the pieces and where I'm going with all of the pieces. And so I think for us as parents, the charts are very reassuring because we can see, okay, so this is the whole piece of pie.

I'm not asking my child necessarily to see the whole piece of pie, certainly not to chew up the whole piece of pie, but as the parent in charge, I need to see it. I think as our children grow, so challenge students probably have more of that view of the chart that parents have than the view that little kids have.

So I think for our challenge students, it is really helpful to see the big picture of it. And I always taught, when we were developing Scribblers, I told people the activities are for the kids. The charts are for the parents and it's twofold. The charts help the parents reclaim the education that we missed, right?

So these are the pieces that you really need. But the charts also give the parents the vision of where all of these pegs of information are taking our children. The chart is the culmination of all the pegs and all the skills that we pour into our children as they grow.

- Yeah, I love the idea. First of all, where was this when my kids were Scribblers age? - I know. - Right? - We were all just trying to figure out what we didn't have. That's where it was. - I know. But it's wonderful in that the layout of the recipe tells you your serving suggestion, which is basically, is this an activity I can do in the car?

Is this an activity I do in the backyard? Is this, where am I gonna do this, right? And then you get all of your ingredients together and you follow the steps. It's beautifully designed in an approachable way. So that way you can do it with your littlest learners who may not understand what the chart is and they're not expected to.

- Most of the activities don't even suggest that you show your littlest learners the chart at all. - No, it's more of a, oh mom, I don't remember what a polyhedron is. Can I, oh, let me take a look at this chart. That's what it is. And I can use that word while playing with my toddler or playing with my younger child.

But I don't have to hold them accountable to remembering or understanding or mastering that knowledge. I'm just sprinkling those big chewy words into their vocabulary so that it's not scary when I need to hold them accountable. But I can remember what I learned when I was being held accountable to that knowledge.

And that chart's beautiful to keep me in check because there are some things I learned in school I have not used since. But that doesn't mean that I should shy away from introducing that information to my own children. But then as my kids got older and into the challenge years, I did have to start holding them accountable to the understanding of the information so they can use those charts just as much as I do.

- I love it. I love what you've said because it does give families the understanding of what is the recipe for and what is the chart for. There is, I know you have your scribblers in front of you too. There's a literature spread on page 90 that's called the Plays the Thing.

And okay, so if you open it up, all of the recipes are on the left-hand side of the spread and all the charts are on the right. Well, the chart, which is for parents, is all about the parts of a drama. Drama is one of the three genres of literature along with poetry and prose.

And so this gives all the parts of the drama. So it gives actors, script, act, scene, dialogue, stage, set, theater, costumes, props, with definitions of what all of those things are. So you get the big 50 cent word, the dialogue, okay? And then, but what does that have to do with my kids?

Well, like you said, you are bringing them along toward understanding of what a play is by letting them experience it. So the activity tells you to read a story and we suggest The Frog Prince from Old World Echoes, but you could read any favorite story from your own book or a library book.

And then what you're gonna do with your children is explore how the story might be presented as a drama. So you discuss the characters by asking them questions. So you ask your kids, what does that character look like? What do they wear? What's their attitude like? So, and then you're just asking your children questions.

So how would you know that they were rich? How would that characteristic manifest itself in costumes or clothing or facial expressions? You know, if it was a hwani princess, or if she was a shy princess, how would you show that? You ask your children, 'cause they know those things.

What do you think that they would be? Then you discuss the plot by asking more questions. So what does the princess do first? And when does she meet the frog? And what does the frog ask? And what happens next? And then with your child, you doing the writing, if you have a pre-writing or a slow writer, you make a list of all the things that happened in the story in order.

Then, depending on the age or abilities of your children, you create a play that retells the story. You can write the story down or not. You can make costumes or not. You can perform it for an audience or not. See how open-ended all of this is? But then you ask them, after you do that, you sit back and you ask some thinking questions.

It's all about conversation with your children. So are there lessons to be learned? Do you think the princess learned anything? Could we learn anything by studying what happened to her? What kind of lessons did the frog learn from his actions? What do we learn from the king's actions? You could even ask, would you like to be like the princess?

Would you like to be like the frog? And the cool thing about scribblers is you can look at this recipe and you think, that was fun. And now my children know a new word. They know costumes, they know dialogue, they know scene. I wrote it down and told them that it was the script.

So they've learned some new words and we had a fun time, but what did that really do? Well, the cool thing is that this will give you the yield. The recipe tells you what you and your children are getting out of this. And for this activity, what the yield is, a deeper understanding of narrative skills.

So look, you thought you were playing with your kids, but you are giving them a deeper understanding of narrative skills by engaging in a different way of telling a story. So what you did with your children after you read the story, and then you ask what happened first and what happened next, deconstructing the story in order to put it together in a different form, in the form of a play, gives the children the opportunity to see the lessons that character development of a story might offer.

The lessons sometimes, you know as parents, we always are looking to teach a lesson and our kids sometimes know that. I just wanna hear the story, I don't want it to teach me anything. I had, my kids said that to me. But listen, y'all, the lessons are sometimes more winsome when children discover them on their own.

As you're just asking them questions, not about themselves and what they would do, when you're asking them questions about what did the character do, and then what happened to the character, and what did the character learn, the lessons are more winsome when they come upon them themselves. And so, look, what's the big deal about that?

Well, it helped us as parents feel good about what we know about a play, 'cause we could study that chart. It helped us have a great conversation and a fun time with our kids. It helped them learn to tell and retell a story and look at different parts of it and think about other people's reactions and other people's actions.

But at the bottom of the recipe is one of my favorite parts. It's called Tips and Hints. And this recipe's tips and hints say, do we ever judge someone by the way they present themselves, their clothing, their facial expressions, or their words? Do we make assumptions about others based on expectations from past experiences?

How does God judge us? How should we evaluate one another? Paul offers us some insights in Galatians 2.6. As many parents through the years have maintained, actions speak louder than words. So the tips and hints gives us, a lot of times, a spiritual application or a deeper thinking for us as parents to see where can this, how can this help me train my child's character?

How can it help me turn them to what God wants them to be, as well as teach them about drama? And that's a fun thing. That's a cool thing for scribblers to do. I think it was a big undertaking for one piece of, or one resource to do, but that's what it tries to do.

It tries to help parents engage their kids in fun activities that have meaning. - Yeah, you know, and looking at this, I could absolutely see my 17-year-old and my 13-year-old and then my husband and myself doing this for anything, doing it with a children's story, doing it with Shakespeare, doing it for some book that we've read on a larger scale and thinking more deeply about the ethical problems that they will see in the world.

What choices did they make that you don't agree with? Why don't you agree with those choices? And we are a playful family. So yeah, we could get caught up in some costumes in the living room and do some silly voices and things like that. And I think it expands.

It helps that mother of a preschooler or father of a preschooler who's looking at their young learner and thinking, "What do I do with you?" You're clumsy, you're slow, you don't understand many of the concepts of the world. And I want to teach you these things, but how do I get there?

And so you open up your scribblers, the recipes from lifelong learners, you can find a recipe, see what the yield is, which is really, that's what I look at. One of the first things I look at, 'cause I want to see what am I running towards when we do this activity, right?

What am I trying to accomplish? Or what's the point? I have a lot of friends that are like, "What's the point of this activity? "This feels like it's just a time waster." So I love that you incorporated the yield for each of these recipes so that I can get my heart set and understand what we're running towards and then start playing with your kids and be comforted.

And the fact that play is still learning because you're still educating your children, even though they're not taking a test or a pop quiz, maybe they're not even doing book work, but they're still learning something. And it's something that can both be academic in nature because they're gonna use that information moving forward, but it's also heart learning, thinking about right from wrong, thinking about who did something that could have been done better.

And that's education as well. - Yeah, I have always said that play is the work of childhood. And I think that so many of us, when we begin schooling our children at home, it's natural, kids like to play and we like to play with them, it's fun. But so many moms and dads, especially when they start out feel guilty, if they get to the end of the day and they look back and they think, wow, what we mostly did was play.

I am a terrible homeschooler. And what I, scribblers was, because that's, I remember having those thoughts, Katie Beth, you said, where was this when our kids were little? We were living it, we were living the angst of that moment. You look back and what do I have to show for the day?

A bunch of play, what a failure am I? And I knew that parents were feeling that. And what we want to say to them through scribblers is look, your play has a purpose. And if you, every activity in scribblers is fun. It looks from a child's side of the activity, it's gonna look like play.

I mean, there are relay races in here. You get to beat on pieces of furniture or on your lap, you get to march in place, you get to run around, you get to make a mess. It absolutely looks like and is play. But what scribblers does is show you how the play you're doing with your children is intentionally building into them and you the skills that they need to grow and expand their understanding of the world and what they can do with the skills they're gaining.

So they think that they're just, they are just learning to clap out. There's a phonics, there's a phonics. I don't even remember what the name of the activity is over the recipe. There's a phonics where you clap out your names, Katie Beth, okay? And every child can do that.

They don't know the word syllabication and lots of us frankly do not know the word syllabication. But all of us can clap out suspense, jello, chocolate pudding you can clap it out. Kids think that they just get to beat on things or clap rhythms of words. But what they're learning is that words have syllables and that is eventually gonna help them spell words.

English words and foreign language words. And so what looks like play is becoming a skill that will help them grow and learn as they go on. And so that's one of the things that I love about Scribblers is that it helps us feel good about playing with our kids.

- Absolutely, I'm actually looking at that recipe. It's called the rhythm of words and the syllabication chart is wonderful. I don't think I ever learned the formal rules of the breakdown for syllables. But this chart tells me that, right? So when I was teaching my own children that at the very beginning of their learning, they're trying to make these sounds that they're looking at on a page connect with the letters and they don't know where the syllables fall or lie.

And, you know, definition's my favorite of the five common topics. I know we're not supposed to have favorite children, but definition's my favorite. And I love that a lot of these charts are just full of definitions or explanations. And it's a helpful chart for me as the mom to remind myself how to guide my learner, my student.

Okay, when you see that there's two consonants side by side, we're going to split our syllables right there. So now let's try this word again, bubbles. Where do you hear the syllables? And walk them through it so that they have their own memory as they're learning their words. But then, yeah, what kid doesn't love making loud noises?

- Oh yes, permission to make a loud sound during school. - Absolutely, so whacking a board or a pot or your hands or the back of the car seat as you're driving down the road and getting your bodies in play does not make it any less educational for them.

In fact, I would argue that because it invokes more of their senses, it solidifies it better. And it's fun. - And it's fun, absolutely. It is absolutely fun. I love what you've said. It's a really good way to look at the chart. The chart helps parents guide the children.

The chart, parents, will give you words. It will give you words to explain the concepts that you're trying to put into your children. And sometimes it gives us words to explain concepts that we're a little fuzzy on. Or we know, but like there are lots of things that my kids would ask me and I would say, well, I can explain it to you, but I have to use a lot of words because I'm kind of go, I'm wandering around in my mind, gathering up all of the pieces that belong to this and organizing as I go.

And sometimes all that does is confuse our kids. So the chart actually gives you words, succinct ways of explaining things. And that can be a real blessing. That can be a real blessing. I wanna just, before we run out of time, I want to talk about the beginning. I've had lots of people say, I love scribblers, but yeah, I didn't read the introduction.

And it makes me so sad because the introduction really helps you get a handle on why am I doing this? Why am I homeschooling? And if you begin with the end in mind, you have a much calmer journey. There's suggestions in there of just ask questions of yourself and your spouse as you get ready to homeschool.

What is your family's purpose? What are your family's priorities? How does education fit into your purpose and priorities? Lots of us begin homeschooling and it's years before we think, wow, does this kind of education really fit what we believe God's made us to do and be in our community?

You actually kind of need to know that first in order to design the education that's gonna fit his purpose for your life. You can ask questions like, what do your little ones need? What do your middle children need? What do your older kids need? What will prepare your children for lifelong learning?

Now, I know that when we start out, I remember thinking I've got to teach them to read and they need to know enough math not to be embarrassing and to be able to organize their own lives and I want them to know history and all that stuff. I did not think at the outset, what will make my children lifelong learners?

What will help them love? Now, as we went, I did think I need to keep them curious because I had discovered that that was what kept me and my husband learning. We kept being curious about things and so I knew that that was one of the ways I could keep them learning, if I could keep them curious.

But Scribblers is full of good questions. How do you promote wonder and excitement and constant curiosity? Think about that ahead of time and you will have a better chance of doing that thing. - Yeah, I really like that within your introduction, you challenged the reader to create their own family mission statement, right?

When we first started homeschooling, I was not running away from the public school. I was running toward a conviction that was placed on my heart and I think putting that to words and saying, why is this a conviction of my heart? What is the purpose of what I'm gonna do?

'Cause I'm gonna be honest with you, Lisa, 18 years is a long time to see any kind of results. That is a long time to wait, yes. And so I'm a box checker, but I'm also a person that likes to celebrate when something has finished. And so I love vacuuming the floors 'cause I can see results when I'm done vacuuming my floors.

But when I'm wrestling with phonics or Latin verbs or even formal lab reports for chemistry, it's not very easy to see the results right away and you're trying to figure out what is going on. So turning back to our family mission statement and reminding ourselves what is the point of me homeschooling my children?

Why was this important enough for me to prioritize my time, my energy, my money into pouring into my children's education rather than whatever the alternative might look like. So when you have those seasons, which we get every year, my season starts around February when it's too cold to do anything outside.

And here in North Carolina, it's too wet and cold to do anything outside. It doesn't have fun snow for us to play with. It's gross, wet, cold mud. And so we're stuck inside. There's not a lot going on as far as like family celebrations or vacations or even like holidays anymore.

And it's just those dreary days of homeschooling where my kids have started to feel like they're hitting a wall. They don't feel like they're growing anymore. I don't feel like I'm actually reaching them anymore. I turn and look at our family's mission statement and our schoolhouse's mission statement. And I remind myself why we're doing this and what we're running towards so I can reset my heart and my children's understanding of the beauty of perseverance in those seasons.

- Yeah, absolutely. That is so wise. And it is very important, like you said, when the doldrums come to have that statement written down somewhere that you can go back and reflect. No, this is why I'm doing it. And the introduction of Scribblers helps families wrestle through those ideas, what belongs in a mission statement.

It helps you consider really practical things like what are some ways we can start the days together that will lead us toward our mission? What are some ways that we can end the day together so that our hearts are one and we can reflect with gladness on what God has brought us through?

It helps us to consider things that are not academic but are part of our family rhythms, are part of the culture of learning that homeschoolers are trying to build. Things like what is living in a family gonna teach your child? I mean, it's not how to conjugate Latin. - No.

- It's not how to map a line. It's not how to debate in the Lincoln-Douglas format. Living in a family should teach your children about mercy and grace and compassion and hard work and celebrating one another. And the introduction for Scribblers helps us as a family to work through all of that.

But it's not just for beginners. It's not just for beginning homeschoolers. And I think you've done a beautiful job of showing us that. There is a quote in the book from an early, from one of the pilot users who said, who had kids of all levels. And she was mostly gonna use Scribblers with her Foundation's age kids.

But she says, "My Foundation's kids "loved the science activity." And the one she was talking about was called Tiny Beauties in Your Backyard. My Foundation's kids loved the science activity, but so did my Challenge A student. And my husband even wanted in, "Maybe we will use Scribblers on Saturdays "so the whole family can enjoy it." And that was one of my favorite comments.

When she was telling us this story, she explained that she was doing the activity in the family room with her younger kids and the Challenge A student wandered by from her bedroom. And she's like, "Oh man, oh man. "I wish I had done that. "I have to draw pictures.

"I have to draw diagrams. "Man, that would be so, can I do this one with you, Mom?" And so she stayed and then the husband wandered, husband offered they wandered by and he was like, "That's what you're doing in homeschooling? "That kind of looks fun. "Could you do that at a time when I could participate?" And so we've had lots of families say, "We're gonna try to use this at a time "when our whole family can do it." I've even had people say, "This is gonna be perfect "because my parents are coming for a week "and they wanna be involved with our homeschooling, "but they don't know what we're doing.

"I mean, they've not been writing papers and essentials, "so they don't know all that keyword outline stuff "and they don't know anything about those charts. "How can I, but Scribblers recipes, "they're one-offs. "You can open the book, pick a recipe. "Everything you need is simple and it lists what you need "and how long it's gonna take." That's a great way for an older sibling or a grandparent or even a babysitter to be involved with the homeschooling.

And the cool thing about Scribblers is that it's not a daily curriculum. I mean, you do not have to do one activity from each strand every day. In fact, that would be way too much. You need to be reading and exploring and praying and playing every day with your children.

So pick activities. They're not necessarily sequential within each strand. They sometimes, the activities will build in complexity and the charts kind of build in complexity, but you don't have to do it in any certain order. And there's nothing that says you can't do the same activity multiple times because there's scaling instructions in there or instructions for, or you could try it this way or you might like to try it that way.

So really Scribblers is kind of cool for everybody because it gives you a lot to think about and a lot to play with. - It does. And I'm looking at, it's in the phonics section and it's called Meet Me at the Easel. And I love this exercise because sometimes you're looking at something and you just think what you're seeing is so very obvious to what everybody else is seeing.

So we maybe just jump over taking the time to attend to certain details or to express the things that you see. And this simplifies that skill to be able to look at a picture and walk your students through being able to say what they see. And so again, that chart on the right, which is amazing for the parents, gives the some really great leading bits of information to say, okay, if your student is like, I see a dog.

Well, now let's ask some good questions to say, well, when you're looking at this picture, is it a painting or a photograph? Is it needle point or is it a crayon drawing? Do you see the brush strokes? Do you see this? Describe this better using these details. And it allows the student to learn what kind of information is good to have, which will absolutely help them when they start in challenge with the art appreciation papers that they write.

And they're studying different mediums and different styles of art. Now they have more language to say, oh, now I know how to describe this image and to compare it with another artist's work and things like that. It was just, sometimes I find myself in a situation where I just don't have the language because I think everybody else sees the exact same thing I see.

- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, that's really good. I'm glad that you picked that activity too, because it illustrates what I was saying. That is one of the last activities in that phonics section of the cookbook. And so it is, the chart is all about art appreciation that our challenge two students will do.

And it gives you, like Katie Beth said, the vocabulary that you as a parent or your older child would need to critique a piece of art or evaluate it or talk about it. But the recipe, the activity for your kids is about looking at the artwork in a book that you choose and talking about the picture and what's it about and actually calling your child to attend are the colors bright or are they dull?

Are they primary colors? Do you like or dislike the subject? Look at the other parts of the picture. So you're calling them to attend. And then what you're gonna do is trace the picture. Look for the shapes, which is a very beginning drawing thing to do. And then choose three main colors that the artists use and color with crayons the picture that you traced.

And so it gives our children the opportunity to begin what they are going to work into as they grow. And that's what Scribblers does. It's just like a feast of learning for the whole family. And it's one of the reasons that I feel so strongly about it is that it helps us get started on the homeschool journey, but it makes the homeschool journey a feast for all the years that we're together.

I love it, I love it. Thank you for helping me dive into Scribblers a little bit and talk a little bit more about homeschooling through the years. Katie Beth, this has been great and I really do appreciate it. - Oh, well, thank you for inviting me. I have so much fun talking with you, Lisa.

- We have a great time together. - Listen, you guys, if you have never considered that Scribblers was for you, and now you've changed your mind, go on classicalconversationsbooks.com and you can find the Scribblers at Home recipes from lifelong learners there. It is a wonderful resource, a renewable resource, useful for all of your family for lots of years.

And I think it'll be a blessing to your home. I've enjoyed talking to you and to you, Katie Beth, and you guys, I will see you next week. Bye-bye. (gentle music) you