(upbeat 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'm excited today to tell you that I have somebody who can answer all your questions about how to get started with foundations.

And so, okay, automatic disclaimer, nobody can answer all of your questions probably, but I do have with me Courtney Bradshaw who serves as an academic advisor with Classical Conversations, and she helps foundations and essentials and even scribblers parents all the time figure out which end is up and how to walk forward.

She is a great encourager, a homeschooling mama with lots of experience. And so we are gonna talk today about, oh my gosh, I've registered for this program, now what do I do? What does it look like at home? How am I certain that I've got everything I need and that I'm doing it right?

And I want everybody listening right now to take a deep cleansing breath and realize that if God has called you to do this, you are enough, you will find your people and there are resources to help you. It is going to be, like I said in the intro blurb, the adventure of a lifetime.

And I'll be perfectly honest, the homeschooling journey for me and my husband was one of the hardest jobs we've ever loved. It has been a blessing beyond all measure to our family, but it hasn't always been easy. But then again, nothing worth pursuing is easy. So all that aside, Courtney, thank you so much for being with us today.

- Thank you for having me, Lisa. - I am really excited. Now I've told everybody that you have all the answers and I gave the disclaimer, but that's probably not exactly true, but you do have lots of years of experience. How many years of experience does your family have with foundations and how old were your children when you started?

- Well, we are beginning our 11th year in foundations. - That is great. - Yes, my oldest daughter was seven years old and she just began challenge four. - Wow, oh my gosh, you are going to have, you are going to have a child that has the whole program.

That is super exciting, Courtney. - It is exciting. So I will have a child where she's already began the program that she is in challenge for, and then I have an infant. So we still plan all of the ages. - Oh wow, that's awesome. That is so cool. So your oldest was seven when y'all started.

So do you still have foundation students? - I do, I still have four foundation students and then one who's not yet old enough. - Oh my goodness. - We're starting our 11th year and we still have about 10 more years to go in foundations. - Girlfriend, you are going to be so good at memory work by the time your children graduate.

- I should be. - You need to sign up for Jeopardy now. You're going to know all the things, that is so cool. Well, let me ask you this. How much did you know about CC or about classical education or even about the foundations program when you started? - Basically nothing.

- Oh my goodness, this is going to be a good story. - We had moved to a new town. It was a really small town with very few homeschoolers. And I was looking for community and we did a co-op for one year and it was not really what we were looking for because they were all older than my kids age at the time.

And so I found, or the director in the next town over found me, I guess we found each other and she told me about CC. And so we just jumped in with no knowledge of the classical model of classical conversations, just community is what I understood and was looking for.

- That is so cool. Now, did you go and visit a foundations class before you jumped in as the director of a new community? - I did not. I tutored the first year. I found CC about a month before community began, it was during the summer. Practicum had already happened.

So I had not seen it at all. And my very first experience outside of the really wonderful online academic orientation that we had 11 years ago. - Yes, yes, very brief at that point. - Yes, it was wonderful to have it. But it has definitely come a long way.

But outside of that, I had no experience and my director led my community day for my foundations group on our first day so that I could see what it looked like that week. And so we just, we went on from there. - That is so inspiring, okay. I know, I look back and think the things that I did in the early days of being involved with CC and the fact, okay, here's a story too.

I jumped in in 2004 at the Challenge B tutor level. And I did not realize that I was accepted as a director because nobody else wanted to do that at the time. We taught Greek and physical science and mock trial and formal logic to eighth graders. And my tutor training in 2004 was one half day.

- Wow. - And so I look back and think, well, that was some kind of crazy, but you know what it was? It was some kind of belief that the Lord had led me to this, just like you, that the Lord had led me to a community and that He was gonna show me what to do and that there were other families that were willing to practice on our kids along with me.

And I look back and I think, wow, I guess that took either a lot of trust or a lot of faith or a lot of stupidity. And I'm not, some days I'm not sure which it was, but I think that's really cool. And that's really inspiring, Courtney, to people who are thinking, I am tutoring for the first year and I don't know what in the world I'm doing.

Surely I'm not good at this yet. And here's the truth, y'all, probably none of us are really good at it the first year. We are learning alongside our children, but God is good and God is gracious. And there's always a mentor out there who we can follow and who will answer our questions.

And so I think that's cool. Your director is to be congratulated and at bringing you along like that. So was it community? 'Cause you said you didn't know a lot about classical education. You didn't really know a lot about what CC was gonna give your kids beyond community. So was that what drew you in?

- It is, community and accountability was what drew me in to CC. What kept me there was that and wanting and hoping that my children would receive an education that did not need to be redeemed. I know at the time I heard a lot about I'm redeeming my own education through CC.

And I did, but I was hoping maybe to give them a better start than what I had experienced. And I'm so grateful. I remember on the way to community in our first year and just being overwhelmed emotionally, listening to the timeline song and thinking just like what you said, Lisa, that this was it.

I had found what we needed and I didn't even know I was looking for it. I didn't know, I wouldn't have known how to look for it, but I was so grateful that we found it. - That is really, I think that is probably the testimony of a lot of us that whole, and I'll be perfectly honest, Courtney, I didn't really think that when we started, I didn't really think my education needed a lot of redeeming.

I mean, I had a public school education, but I love to read and I love to learn. And I went to a very well-respected liberal arts college. So I knew a lot. I felt like I knew a lot about a lot of stuff, but man, were my eyes opened to all the connections I had missed as my children began to gather pegs of information and then connect them as they matured.

I realized how badly my own education did need to be redeemed. And I will tell you, one of the most exciting things to me about raising children whose educations do not need to be redeemed is the realization that I came to, y'all have all probably experienced this, when things get really hard or when you are really anxious or fearful, you come upon a subject or an assignment even that you don't feel equal to.

What most people do when they get scared is revert back to what they know. And so I reverted back to my public school education practices. It was the teacher's fault or somehow the book had misled me or I didn't have what I needed. Somebody should have helped me know how to do this.

And I realized that what my children were learning was I'm responsible for my education and I have the tools to learn anything I want to know in the world. And if there's something I don't know now, I know how to find out what's missing and then know how to replace that piece of information so that I can move ahead.

That's what my girls got. That's the classical model. And so when they get scared or they come up on an assignment or a class in college that they don't know what to do with, they do have the skills. So when they revert back to what they know, it's classical.

- And it is so beautiful. And so I agree with you. That's what our hope for our kids is to receive the education that doesn't need to be redeemed. All right. So when you were getting ready for foundations, getting ready to tutor foundations and getting ready to do it at home with your seven-year-old, what did you do to get ready?

- Well, I trusted my director when she said, "All I needed was the foundations curriculum and a tin whistle." - All right, right. - So I got that. And we really have not changed very much in the past 11 years as to what I needed. So for foundations specifically, I got the curriculum and I prepared weekly.

I just, I looked at it. As a tutor, I looked ahead, but as a parent, I probably would have just waited and let the tutor introduce it to me. But we really did the very basics that we needed to do in that first year and did not add very much for foundations.

- Yeah. So I guess you were doing what everybody does. You had a teach them to read or a reading program and some kind of math computation program. But as far as everything else went, did you mostly just work on memory work? - I did. We worked on memory work.

We would go to the library and find some books about some of the things that went along with memory work. And there were times that I would try to add in something different, another history or a science curriculum. And I never finished any of those because I didn't, I would just, we wouldn't need it.

We would take the memory work and we would go, we would learn about what we wanted to. We would take from it what we would wanted to learn more about. And on this side of it with the Challenge 4 student, I'm so glad that we gave up anything extra along the way, because everything we did in foundations, we've repeated in challenge and they were ready for it.

They were ready to take it further once they moved on to the challenge level. And so we still in my home, I have set aside any extra curriculum outside of a language arts and a math. We just use what we have from the library. I do have the Scribblers at Home curriculum and I love that so that I can open it up and say, hey, we're gonna, we're talking about this today.

Maybe I can find something that's open and go from the Scribblers at Home, or I've learned how to use those recipes, make it my own and that helps as well. But I have, I think the longer we've been in CC, the less I try to do outside of the grammar of foundations.

- Wow, that is so encouraging. Okay, all you moms and dads out there who are listening here thinking, oh, I've got to get a unit study on this and we've got to have a field trip for that. And I've got to find another curriculum to teach this little niche.

Take a deep breath and listen to what Courtney said. The memory work is a spine. It is a skeleton, but it is a complete spine and skeleton. And if you stay right there connected to that memory work in all of those areas, your child is gonna be well-prepared when they hit the challenge years and start fleshing out all of the memory pegs that they have hammered in over the years.

It is beautiful to see. And I think it's really freeing and energizing, Courtney, to parents for us to be able to say, yeah, chase your child's interest, especially within that memory work. If they are really into knights and castles, read more of that stuff. If they like to build forts in the backyard or out in the woods, do that.

You know, if dinosaurs and fossils are their thing, then go to the library or go find a history museum. I love that, I love that. So you didn't worry about buying a lot of extra supplies or stocking up on extra curriculum, at least after you realized you didn't need it.

No, I didn't. I don't now. Anyway, I've learned to set it aside. I tried it. I tried several things a few different times, but we never finished. We never, it was a waste of, it was a waste of my resources, honestly. For me, it may not be for others, but for me, it was not something that I utilized often.

Yeah, everything looks like a good idea, and I have a lot of stuff on my shelf that looks like a good idea. That, like you said, it wasn't necessary. There was enough for us to chew on, and we learned enough with what we had, with the basics. Okay, so you jumped in to foundations, 'cause I suspect we have a lot of families who maybe are joining a foundations community for the very first time this year.

So how did you learn what to expect from the foundations day? Were you surprised by anything? I was surprised that in the beginning that we just did memory work for the new, we just learned and memorized from those strands for the new grammar section. I thought maybe we would talk a little bit about it during the community day, but then after that first day where my director modeled it for me, I realized we really are chanting and singing, and I was also surprised at how fun it was, how fun it could be to do that in a day, and really surprised at how much my children retained.

Yes, yes. That's really true. There are lots of people that I've talked to at practicums, and they come up and they say, "Well, I know that on the foundations day, "it's just about these crisp components, "and we're just going to go through the memory work, "but tell me the truth, "that's not really all we're gonna do, is it?" And you have to say, well, I mean, it's not that long of a time.

It really, you won't have time to do a lot because you will do hands-on arts, and you will do hands-on science, but yeah, pretty much what you're gonna be doing is memory work. And people think, like you said, that that's gonna be boring, but your kids don't find it.

Why is it not boring? Well, children love repetition. They thrive on it, especially when they're young. And so that's really, I think that it's not boring for them, but we're doing hand motions, and we're moving our bodies, and doing exercises, or the hands-on science and the hands-on art are very much fun for my children because I'm not the most fun parent at home with things like that.

There's a lot of them, and so it gets very messy in my house. - Yes, oh my word. - I love being able to leave that for community days. - Yes, yes, yes. - And blow up somebody else's kitchen or do that. I mean, can you imagine wanting to like finger paint or clay or use lots of glue with six or eight little children at home?

- Well, I have seven. - Foundations, it's fun. That's right, Courtney, oh my word. I can't even. - So I can imagine, Lisa, I can imagine. - Oh, and that's why you love foundations, and that we do art and science in class. - Yes, yes. - That is so great.

That is so great. Now, listen, the moms and dads come to foundations, mom and/or dad or grandma, somebody comes with the foundation student into class. Are the parents not bored? What are they supposed to be doing? Are we supposed to be chanting and finger playing along with our kids?

- Absolutely. - Oh, cool. - We are, we are to help, and really the foundations day is a time for the tutor to model what we can do at home. And so as a parent, we come and we learn new ways to introduce the concepts, to introduce the memory work.

I take notes, I write it down right into my foundation curriculum, and I say, "Oh, she did this, I really enjoyed that," or I have notes, I'm tutoring again. I have not tutored in a few years, and I'm tutoring foundations again this year, and I have all of my notes from the last time we went through cycle one, which is wonderful.

Very helpful this year as we're going back, but parents are very involved on community day. We are chanting and singing right along. We're also just being helpful. Someone needs to help little ones to erase maps, or sometimes they help them open their snacks if they're really little. - Yeah, oh yeah.

- They're there to support the tutor. So the day flies by for parents just like it does for the children. - That's so cool. I know the first weeks in foundations, a lot of times are very eye-opening for parents who were not educated classically, and that's most of us, still, that's most of us.

And just that whole idea that drilling memory work, I mean, nothing sounds more horrific to say, you're gonna spend hours drilling memory work with five and six and eight-year-olds, but the practice of it is delightful. The doing of it is actually delightful because tutors have learned from each other.

They've shared ideas about finger plays and body motions and changing your voice and different ways to get that memory work into these little minds. And I can remember, I still remember way back when my girls were in foundations, I was determined that I was gonna learn all the things that they learned.

And so I was pretty good at keeping up with all the timeline stuff for about the first six weeks. And then, man, they outstripped me. Their little minds memorized so easily. I mean, it sounds like when people outside say, you just memorize like hundreds of pieces of information with little children, don't they hate it?

No, they love it. And they're so stinking good at it. And they are so much faster to retain information than we are that it's amazing. And so I think I'm glad that you brought that out, that parents, listen, parents, you need to sing those songs. Let them become an earworm for your soul because that way you can redeem your own education as well.

All right, I wanna ask you this, Courtney. I think we've convinced everybody that the Foundations Day is super fun and super profitable, both for kids and parents. But how can families incorporate Foundation's memory work into their at-home days or into their weeks at home? How do most families use the memory work?

I think the quick answer is that most families practice the memory work together at some point each day. So the great thing about it is for, I have a six-year-old and I have an 11-year-old and I have a couple in between, but we can all do this at the same time.

'Cause all the classes, no matter how old the children are, all the classes are learning the same things every week, even if their tutor might use a different song or chant or finger play, right? Right, yes, it's all the same information no matter their age. And so most families will get together at some point and practice that together.

We, in my home, do a morning time. I love that from where we get together, we do a morning meeting. Even my challenge age children join us for that, as we get together and spend some time praying and doing devotion together. But then my challenge girls go off about their business and then we practice memory work at the table together.

It takes about 30 minutes or less a day. And if we do that every day, we're pretty well equipped for at CC the next week. Many families will take the memory work with them in the car, as they go to appointments, that's something we do in the waiting room.

Right, right, right. We take our memory work with us because it's easy. It's just one book. It's just one week and we practice. And it really does not take long. There's different ways to take it with you. There's the CDs you can take and have memory work. And there's also a brand new CC Connected Lite app that has all of the audio files from CC Connected that you can download into the app and just take it with you in your phone, which is helpful.

And so most families, that's how they incorporate specifically the memory work. And then they take it further as they like at home. - Yeah, we did something very similar to what you guys did. We would pick, we worked on the memory work every day too. And I had, when we started, I had a second grader and a fifth grader.

So they were both in foundations and that was our first experience. So it was all new to us. All the memory work was new to us. Even the strands that repeat every year, you know, like math, it was still our first year. And so we practiced memory work together and then we would use it, like you said, as a jumping off point to decide what will we study for history?

What kind of history focus will we have this week? What kind of science focus will we have this week? But I, like you, stuck really close to the foundation's memory work as our spine. And I was not ever disappointed. I didn't find huge gaps for my girls as they got older.

But we did mention there are things that families need to add to foundations. What are they? - You'll need a math of some sort and a language arts. So although they are memorizing math facts and English grammar facts, they're not learning to read. And they're, you know, through the foundations program.

So you'll need to add something for those two subjects specifically. - Right. With my younger daughter, she was only in the second grade when we started. So she was not a great reader. She was still learning. She was still gaining proficiency. And I guess we all gain proficiency. But she was still really working on the basics of reading.

My older daughter was ready to do essentials. And so she was getting writing practice as well. And once your student is old enough for essentials, then that might very well be enough language arts for your family if you add essentials to it. If your student is proficient in reading already.

So that's really good. And I always try to tell people that it is a complete curriculum, except you still need to teach your child to read and you still need something that will help you practice math computation. So, and things like simple geometry. But it's what my girls, when they were little, they called it mama made math.

I mean, I went to enough practicums to know what are the things, what are the building blocks that they need to do. And I would just make it up. And sometimes we would do it on a whiteboard and sometimes we'd do it out on the patio in chalk. And sometimes we would draw, we would do math flashcards if they were going up and down the steps.

We made it fun, but we did have to add a few things. So I just mentioned the essentials program. Tell, some folks on our call are already familiar with essentials. Some have heard of it, but they're not quite sure what to make of it. Tell us a little bit, give us a thumbnail of essentials.

And then I might have a couple of questions for you about essentials. - Sure, essentials is a language arts program that meets usually in the afternoons after foundations is over for students beginning who are nine years old, about nine to 11 years old. And it's a three-year program that, or it's intended to be a three-year program.

And we have several who start in their last year and that's okay, but it is intended to be. But it is, we take 45 minutes for English grammar where we learn concepts all about different parts of speech. And we learn to diagram sentences and parse the sentences. And then we have 45 minutes of writing.

And then we have 30 minutes of math games where we work on speed and accuracy for math. So that in a nutshell is what essentials is. It is led by a tutor who introduces what you will do at home on your community day. They'll take you through what you will do after you get home and help you to know what's coming and what to expect for the week.

- And so families have an essentials manual, a curriculum, and they take home. And there are things that they work on during the week that go along with what they were introduced to in community. - Yes, and it really is a complete language arts curriculum for those ages. Like you said, if they are proficient in reading.

So there's spelling involved. They have your editing or punctuation and capitalization. It's all encompassed. You wouldn't need something in addition to that once they are in the essentials program. - That's cool. Okay, so what would you tell parents who are just coming in? Because I've met lots of families who are brand new to classical education and brand new to CC communities and their child is nine.

And so they've heard a nine-year-old should do foundations and essentials and they come into essentials. And maybe the parents don't have a great English grammar or writing background. But anyway, they come into essentials the first week and they're like, oh my goodness. I don't even know what this tutor is talking about the whole time.

How am I supposed to help my child? What is essential to remember? - Well, it is essential to remember that you are not intended to master all of the information in the first year. You can take from it what you can and then come back again. It will repeat in the three years that you are in essentials.

And it's intended for you to take a little bit of a deeper dive each week or each year. And so you don't have to know really anything before you begin because the curriculum is there. Your tutor is there to help as well as the other families. So we learn from one another and you're not expected to be a grammarian, an expert in English grammar.

I am not or was not before I began. And I'm a nurse. I don't have an education background either. And so you get what you need from the program. You will be given what you need to lead your family each week. - Oh, I love that. I want to write that down.

You'll be given what you need each week. That is very encouraging, I believe, for new families. And I love what you said. In the beginning, you started talking about essentials and you said it's a three-year program. And then I love it. You said if you don't get it the first time around, you'll get more of it the next two times.

So this is a three-year program, but it's not three years of material. It is material that you go through for three years. You're gonna do the same thing every year. And like you said, go deeper every year. - Absolutely. That's very helpful. I like the way you said that, Lisa.

I need to write that down as well. - Add that to my orientation. - It is such a classical way to learn that repetition over time is what gives us mastery. And I think that's really helpful for us as parents to realize, look, it's repetition over time that builds mastery.

So you are not expected and you should not expect your student to get it all the first time. You have to repeat it. And it actually helps if there's some time separation that you're gonna see this again. You will be a slightly different student the second year that you come through.

You'll have more context. Some things will be easy for you, and then you can breeze past those and narrow, hone in on the things that are harder or that you still aren't good at. That's really encouraging that it's gonna take a while and that we should all expect it to take a while.

And there are some kids who are more natural grammarians than others, and that's okay. Your child is going to get so much out of essentials. I know my older daughter was one of those natural readers, natural writers. It was like I was reminding her of something she already knew when I was teaching her.

My younger daughter, it didn't come as easily, and she bemoaned the fact that she didn't enjoy writing. And she would say, "I'm just not a good writer. "I'm not as good a writer as," and she met her older sister. But when she finished essentials, it was beautiful to me.

She stood up and I said, "Oh, this is such a good piece "of work," her last little essay. I said, "You need to go read this to daddy." And she read it out loud. And I think that as she read it out loud to herself, she heard it. She heard what she had written and she got to the end and her eyes were so wide.

And she said, "I can write, I am a good writer." And it just, it brought me to tears to think that just that perseverance. And I started to say patient perseverance. She was not always patient. She didn't always want to do it, but it paid off. And so I'm excited now about how she will parent and homeschool her own little children.

I'm looking forward to watching that. - All right, I have just two questions to ask you. One is, what is the biggest misunderstanding about foundations that you've heard over all your years? - I think it's the same misunderstanding that comes in two different ways. Without an understanding of the classical model, really I think that's the core of it.

But people will feel that foundations is either not enough or too much. And what I mean by that is that they'll feel, they will feel like they have to add to the memory work with things like worksheets or tests or additional curriculum if they feel as though it's not enough.

On the other hand, some people will think that maybe their six-year-old should be a memory master or that their 11-year-old needs to have mastered every aspect of the material. The memory work in foundations is meant to be a peg that you will later hang more information on. It's not something that has to be so completely mastered that they can regurgitate it without thinking about it every time.

- That is awesome. That is such a good thing for us to keep in mind as foundations parents, that we are building a foundation, but that's not the end. That's not actually where we intend to stop. Nobody ever goes around to say, well, let me just go and look at this neighborhood of foundations.

No, you want to go look at a neighborhood of beautiful homes. But what we're doing in foundations is building the basis of what we're going to construct that will be beautiful later on. That's really, really good. So what is the key to enjoying foundations? - The key to enjoying foundations is to make play the focus.

You will find in the foundations curriculum that that is how it is written. There's lots of articles at the beginning and play is one of the main components of all of it. If you play with the memory work, if parents and children play together with the memory work, then everybody is going to enjoy it.

- Oh, I love that. I love that. I have been reading, I can't find the copy of it. Now it must be upstairs, about a book, about play and how important it is for our children and how play really is the work of childhood and that that's what we should be about.

And the cool thing about joining a foundations community is that your tutor will model ways to make quote unquote, just memory work fun and like play. And so that's the perfect place to end. That was a great encouragement, Courtney, to us. If play is the focus, then we can all enjoy our foundations day.

I really like that. I really also want to highlight one other thing that Courtney said. There's lots of joy to be found in reading with your kids. If you just read about the things that are part of foundations memory work, you will learn so much together and reading together, especially as part of a gentle easing into the day during morning time can be just such a revival of family relationships for your family.

I want to remind you guys that Copper Lodge Library is a great book series that helps us present timeless stories to families that they can read and use together and build their storehouse of memories, but also build family relationships as they read. They are collections of stories. We've got echoes, the echoes readers, lots of fairy tales and poems and folk tales.

We have stories of Rome that give the history of Western civilization. When they study the history of Rome, we have Uncle Paul readers that delve into all kinds of science topics that your children will find fascinating. And then there are even Copper Lodge Library editions of classical literature that you might want to read aloud with your children, even though they're not assigned to study it this year.

The Copper Lodge Library offers collections of stories that will help you build community. So if you wonder what titles are out there and what you could add to your morning read aloud time, go to copperlodgelibrary.com and see what we've got to offer, okay? And I will give you guys a heads up, next week on the "Everyday Educator" podcast, I'm gonna be talking to Amy Jones and we're gonna dive a little bit more deeply into this whole idea of morning time and what do you do with it?

So that thing that Courtney mentioned is gonna be explained more detail next week on the podcast. So Courtney, thank you so much for being with me today. I really appreciate you sharing your wisdom and your inspiration with our listeners. - Thank you for having me. I enjoyed our time, Lisa.

- I'm glad. All right, see you guys next week. Bye-bye. (upbeat music)